"Thundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recourse to strategy. There was a sharp turn in the road a hundred yards ahead, and on reaching it the three flung themselves off their horses and lay down behind cover. As Ezra and the sergeant, the grey horse and the bay, came thundering round the curve, there was a fierce splutter of pistol shots from amongst the bushes, and the grey sank down upon its knees with a sobbing moan, struck mortally in the head. Ezra sprang to his feet ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head like a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick: I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick, But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard: I've made the cinders fly, And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal's eye. With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, O it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.B. For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and resisting the Guard — 'Strewth, but I ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... also, by their thus rejecting of Christ and grace, say, that for what the law can do to them, they value it not; they regard not its thundering threatenings, nor will they shrink when they come to endure the execution thereof; wherefore God, to deter them from such bold and desperate ways, that do, interpretatively, fully declare that they make such desperate conclusions, insinuates that the burden of the curse thereof is intolerable, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with six thousand men, was defending them against Wittgenstein. But with the first dawn of the 28th, when they saw that marshal preparing for a battle, when they heard the cannon of Wittgenstein thundering over their heads, and that of Tchitchakof at the same time on the opposite bank, they rose all at once, they descended, precipitated themselves tumultuously, and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... in order, then have they their hobby horses, dragons and other antiques, togither with their baudie pipers and thundering drummers, to strike up the devil's daunce withall. Then marche these heathen company towards the church and church yard, their pipers piping, their drummers thundring, their stumps dauncing, their bels jyngling, their handkerchefs swinging about their heds like madmen, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... had dined, and I went up to my wife. And strange it is to think, that these two days have held up fair till now that all is done, and the King gone out of the Hall; and then it fell a-raining and thundering and lightening as I have not seen it do for some years: which people did take great notice of; God's blessing of the work of these two days, which is a foolery to take too much notice of such things. I observed ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... by his thoughts that he forgot his notes and said many things he would never have dared to write; and after the last thundering outburst, he concluded with a short and burning prayer for himself and for all, to have power to defy the falsehood by which man was bound, and to live ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... with his old schoolfellow. You would not have thought it was the same man. As Cinderella at a particular hour became, from a blazing and magnificent Princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a grey petticoat, so, as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful wrath of ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sleepy guards, not yet sober from the night's carouse, admitted the Vermonters as friends. In rushed the whole two hundred. In a trice the Canadian garrison of forty-four were all captured and Allen was thundering on the chamber door of La Place, the commandant. It was five in the morning. La Place sprang up in his nightshirt and demanded in whose name he was ordered to surrender. Ethan Allen answered in words that have gone {299} down to history, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... child, sleep, my child, Where is thy nurse gone? She is gone to the mountains To buy thee sweetmeats. What shall she buy thee? The thundering drum, the bamboo pipe, The trundling man, or ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... has already been mentioned as having occurred soon after the death of Cleopatra's father, and as having prevented Pompey from undertaking the office of executor of the will. This war had been raging ever since that time with terrible fury. Its distant thundering had been heard even in Egypt, but it was too remote to awaken there any special alarm. The immense armies of these two mighty conquerors had moved slowly—like two ferocious birds of prey, flying through the air, and fighting ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... discreetly, and not waste powder for nothing. Now, as I said before, I was never a maker of phrases. I can march up to a fortress and summon the place to surrender, But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering No! point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I am afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it! Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... time as he came out with a wheel-barrow full of waste he cocked his eye to the west. Bible-Back Murray would be coming over soon, if he was still at his camp around the hill. Yet the second day passed before he arrived, thundering in from the valley in his big, yellow car; and even then he made some purchases at the store before he came ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... there were times when it threatened to become more than vocal; when, all order lost, nine-tenths of the men on the other side of the House were on their feet shouting jeers and denunciations, and the orator faced them, out-thundering them all, with his own cohorts, flushed and cheering, gathered round him. Then, indeed, Uncle Billy would have thought him a god, if he had known what a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... moment stupefied. He heard Prim thundering downstairs. Then suddenly he returned to his senses. He rushed to the desk, and pulled out one drawer after another. Not a scrap of paper remained in a ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... I know not; certainly many hours, for I woke at the close of day, in a strange confusion of thought. I was probably roused to recollection by some one thundering at a huge, unwieldy gate. Attempting to ask where I was, my voice died away, and I tried to raise it in vain, as I have done in a dream. I looked for my babe with affright; feared that it had fallen out of my lap, while I had so strangely forgotten her; ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... is loud, blustering, threatening. The eyes stare; the eyebrows draw down; the face red and bloated; the mouth pouts out; the voice hollow and thundering; the arms are set a-kimbo; the head often nodding in a menacing manner; and the right fist, clenched, is brandished, from time to time, at the person threatened. The right foot is often stamped upon the ground, and the legs take ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... soon in sight of the environs of Geneva. They passed by a great many charming country seats, with neat walls of masonry bordering the gardens, and wide gateways opening into pretty courts, and little green lawns surrounding the chateaux. At length the diligence came thundering down a narrow paved street into the town. Every thing made haste to get out of the way. The postilion cracked his whip, and cheered on his horses, and shouted out to the cartmen and footmen before ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... silent as the grave, and the house might be miles in the country. The roar of London's traffic reaches me only in heavy, distant vibrations. It holds an ominous note sometimes, like that of an approaching army, or an immense tidal-wave very far away thundering in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... knocking at the dore to sollicite one to deliver all sorts of Comfits, another to deliver the ornaments for the Brides Garland, Flowers, &c, a third to be Cook, & Pastryman, & so many more, which come one after another thundering so at the door, that it is one bodies work to let them in, and carry their message to ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... did not know that we were poor We see nothing whole, neither life nor art What I had not I could hope for without unreason What we thought ruin, but what was really release When was love ever reasoned? Wide leisure of a country village Words of learned length and thundering sound World's memory is equally bad for failure and success Worst came it was not half so bad as what had gone before You cannot be at perfect ease with a friend who does not joke You may do a great deal(of work), ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... been denied. In the emergency, Speaker Stanton left his desk and took the floor to plead for delay. For once in his life, at least, Phil Stanton was impressive. He did not say much, - and as the sequel showed he had little to say - but there was a suggestion of thundering guns and sacked cities and marching armies in his words, that caused the listening statesmen to follow him with ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... the warriors and guests who had come to the funeral banquet, Fridthjof, a sorrowing host, his eyelids with tears overflowing Drank in accordance with ancestral usage, a skoal to his father, Heard the old minstrels sing loudly his praises, a thundering drapa, Rightfully took of his late father's seat undisputed possession, And sat between Odin and Frey. So ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... to me in the shape, of a vast monster on wheels, bright with yellow and scarlet, thundering over the road. "That's my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... the mosquitoes, whose relentless persecution became almost unendurable, we rode on more briskly through a broad, level valley, filled with a dense growth of tall umbelliferous plants, trotted swiftly up a little hill, and rode at a thundering gallop into the village of Korak, amid the howling and barking of a hundred and fifty half-wild dogs, the neighing of horses, running to and fro of men, and a scene ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... lofty soul Throws all its fetters off; in its proud flight, 'T is like the new-fledged eaglet, whose strong wing Soars to the sun it long has gazed upon— With eye undazzled. O! ye mighty race That stand like frowning giants, fixed to guard My own proud land; why did ye not hurl down The thundering avalanche, when at your feet The base usurper stood? A touch, a breath, Nay, even the breath of prayer, ere now, has brought Destruction on the hunter's head; and yet The tyrant passed in safety. God of heaven! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... archivault of horizontal columns which formed a kind of half-vaulted roof above the sea. At certain intervals, and below this natural basin, the eye was pleased and surprised by the sight of oval openings through which the outward waves came thundering in volleys of foam. Some banks of basalt, torn from their fastenings by the fury of the waves, lay scattered on the ground like the ruins of an ancient temple—ruins eternally young, over which the storms of ages swept without producing any ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... either out on the verandah, or at the windows of the upper floors of the dwelling straining their eyes eagerly toward the blockhouse. Firelocks and muskets were banging, and the surrounding woods swam in smoke. Volley after volley swept the pines, then came the thundering report of the cannon. The smoke came driving toward the town into their faces, blinding and choking them. Again and again the cannon flashed and thundered. Again and again came the dense black pall of smoke. But so long ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... much obliged to you," said the boys as they received them, and they proved them immediately. The balls struck the floor with a delightful sound, and rebounded higher than Mr. Gresham's head. Little Patty clapped her hands joyfully. But now a thundering double rap at the door ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... highest value, and it unquestionably kept many Turkish riflemen inactive. 'B' squadron under Captain Bulteel, M.C., was leading, and when 1000 yards from the objective the order was given to gallop, and horses swept over the last portion of the plain and up the hill at a terrific pace, the thundering hoofs raising clouds of dust. The tap-tap of machine guns firing at the highest pressure, intense rifle fire from all parts of the enemy position, the fierce storm of shells rained on the hill by the Berks battery, which ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... friend good-night, and stood on the edge of the pavement watching him make his way across the street to catch the last omnibus. Mike's mind filled with memories of Frank. They came from afar, surging over the shores of youth, thundering along the cliffs of manhood. Out of the remote regions of boyhood they came, white crests uplifted, merging and mingling in the waters of life. It seemed to Mike that, like sea-weed, he and Frank had been washed together, and they then had been washed apart. That was life, and ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... instant, every thing but the glory of being the first to give this jewel to the catalogues of science, he sprang upward at the prize with the avidity with which the sparrow darts upon the butterfly. The rocks, which instantly came thundering down, announced that he was seen; and for a moment, while his form was concealed in the cloud of dust and fragments which followed the furious descent, the trapper gave him up for lost; but the next instant he was seen safely seated in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... now, Chester continued on his way. Before him he could still hear the thundering of many cannons as the battle progressed, but he kept his face turned in ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... ready to march off to their several duties of mounting guard, drilling at the guns, and cleaning accoutrements, when there was the sound of hoofs rapidly beating the road across the moat, and directly after a figure, mounted upon a heavy cart-horse, came into sight, thundering along at full gallop. At the first glimpse it seemed as if the horse had run away with his bareheaded rider; but directly after it became plain that, though only riding saddleless, and with no rein but a halter, ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... came thundering down the path together and found her huddled under an overhanging rock, sheltered by the branches of a spreading pine. Bello and Seppi dived under the rock beside her, and the goats gathered close about them just as the storm broke ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and patches his robes are wrought, His crown is brass, Himself an ass, And his power is fiddle-dee-dee. Prankily, crankily prating of naught, Silly old quilly old Monarch of Thought. Public opinion's camp-follower he, Thundering, blundering, plundering free. Affected, Ungracious, Suspected, Mendacious, Respected contemporaree! ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... stick to," Mr. Benjamin declared. "When this case comes off, it'll be the biggest thundering sensation of the day. And who'll get the credit of it all? Who tracked him down for all his false name and sly ways; hunted him all over Europe, found out who he really was, and why he hated Sir Geoffrey Kynaston so much that he murdered ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to a time when it is impossible even to catalogue the numerous stirring events which the cathedral witnessed. William Fitzosbert the Longbeard, for thundering forth at PAUL'S CROSS—where the citizens' folk-mote was wont to be held—against tyranny and corruption in high quarters, suffered the extreme penalty. But people in a higher position were soon to do the same. When John and Innocent formed their strange alliance ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... to the mines of Sardinia by Marcus Aurelius. Thus that profligate emperor was really more merciful to the Church than the philosophic author of the "Meditations," who, in the year 174, had witnessed the miracle of the Thundering Legion. The reason is evident. The wise rulers foresaw the destructive effect of the new doctrines on pagan society, and indirectly on the empire itself; whereas those who were given over to dissipation were indifferent to the danger; ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... All that was nothing to Gilbert, who only saw in perspective so many spacious studios and workrooms. At last I noticed that a paved road wound round the outside of the pavilion, and just as I was pointing it out, there came several heavily laden carts thundering along, and shaking the whole building quite perceptibly. My husband had enough of it after that, and I rejoiced inwardly at the opportune appearance of those carts. The day after, the diary says: "Went in the afternoon to Sevres. Found ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... going some, roaring and shrieking, swinging madly around curves, thundering over trestles, one car-end bumping up when the other was jarring down, or jerking to the right at the same moment the other was lurching to the left, and with me all the while praying and hoping for the train to stop. But she didn't stop. She didn't have to. For ...
— The Road • Jack London
... the first man to leave the ship. He would have to come hand-over-hand along the rope, through the waters that boiled over the deadly rocks, and through the thundering seas that beat the shore. And hand-over-hand he came, past the reef on which the ship lay, across the wild stretch of deep water, over the second and more perilous reef, and into the middle of the breakers of the beach. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... desolation brooded over the lesser hills and mountains about them; what then must it not have been at the period we are describing? From a hill a little to the right, over which they had to pass, a precipitous headland was visible, against which the mighty heavings of the ocean could be heard hoarsely thundering at a distance, and the giant billows, in periods of storm and tempest, seen shivering themselves into white; foam that rose nearly to the summit of their ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... come? The poor devils of steers have never done anything but ramble off the run now and again, while we—but it's too late to think of that. It IS hard. There's no saying it isn't; no, nor thinking what a fool, what a blind, stupid, thundering idiot a fellow's been, to laugh at the steady working life that would have helped him up, bit by bit, to a good farm, a good wife, and innocent little kids about him, like that chap, George Storefield, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... to indulge in. Not the two-and-two, dull, dreary, daily procession round the ramparts, but the disbanded freedom of the sunny afternoon, spent in gathering wild-flowers along the pretty, secluded valley of the Liane, through which no iron road then bore its thundering freight. Or, better still, clambering, straying, playing hide-and-seek, or sitting telling and hearing fairy tales among the great carved blocks of stone, which lay, in ignominious purposelessness, around the site on the high, grassy cliff where Napoleon the First—the Only—had decreed ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a while at school at Louth; despite bullying from big boys and masters, Tennyson would "shout his verses to the skies." "Well, Arthur, I mean to be famous," he used to say to one of his brothers. He observed nature very closely by the brook and the thundering sea- shores: he was never a sportsman, and his angling was in the manner of the lover of The Miller's Daughter. He was seventeen (1826) when Poems by Two Brothers (himself and his brother Frederick) was published with the date 1827. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... or an ocean, or a thunderstorm has to do in this world. And it was doing it right out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun-leprosied, forbidding, with only the stars and the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or two to behold. Thundering out its message into the waste places, careless of audiences—like a Master! Bully, grizzled old Master-Bard singing—as most of them do—to empty benches! And it had been doing that ten thousand thousand years, and would do so for ten thousand thousand more, and never pause for plaudits. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... grew the din of tongues until Count Terzky, who was alone with Illo and Colonel Kinsky in Wallenstein's confidence, arose, and in a thundering voice declared that all were perjured villains who should recede from their engagement, and would, according to their agreements be treated as enemies by the rest. His menaces and the evident danger which any who might now draw back would run, overcame the scruples of the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... altercation of voices, rang out upon the air, and grated upon the impatient lover's ear like death-knells. "Up stairs, up stairs!" shouts the old negro, and in an instant he has burst the outer door in, mounts the stairs with the nimbleness of a catamount, and is thundering at the door, which gives way before his herculean strength. "I am here! I am here! Maria, I am here!" he shouts, at the top of his voice, and with an air of triumph stands in the door, as the flashing light from without reveals his dilating figure. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... himself; for unhappily the king not only smoked in the queen's rooms, but the world knew that his wife and children were often the objects of his violent temper, and that the queen had more than once been terribly frightened by his thundering reproaches and unbearable threats. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hearing the voices of earth and sky, felt his spirit mount with the mounting voices. So to ride with Love to doom! On, and on, and on! Left behind the sophist, the apologist, the lover of the world with his tinsel that was not gold, his pebbles that were not gems! Only the man thundering on,—the man and his mate that was meant for him since time began! He raised his face to the strife above, he drew his breath, his hand closed over the hand of the woman riding with him. At the touch a thrill ran through them both; had the lightning with a sword of flame ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... serious theory of knowledge. The sophistical intent of it, however, is to deny our right to make a distinction which in fact we do make and which the speaker himself is making as he utters the phrase; for he would not be so proud of himself if he thought he was thundering a tautology. If a thing were never perceived, or inferred from perception, we should indeed never know that it existed; but once perceived or inferred it may be more conducive to comprehension and practical competence to regard it as existing independently of our perception; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... her no less for that. We admired her qualities aloud, we boasted of them to one another, as though they had been our own, and the consciousness of her only fault we kept buried in the silence of our profound affection. She was born in the thundering peal of hammers beating upon iron, in black eddies of smoke, under a grey sky, on the banks of the Clyde. The clamorous and sombre stream gives birth to things of beauty that float away into the sunshine of the world to ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... came thundering up, and streams of water were directed effectively at the burning bales. The flames were extinguished, but not till considerable damage ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... to have at least a dying blow at the enemy. As they struggled up the height a tremendous storm of darts and stones was showered upon them by the Moors. Sometimes a fragment of rock came bounding and thundering down, ploughing its way through the centre of their host. The foot-soldiers, faint with weariness and hunger or crippled by wounds, held by the tails and manes of the horses to aid them in their ascent, while the horses, losing their foothold among the loose stones ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... They came thundering back up the road, flogging and flopping on top of the loads like the wooden monkeys-on-a-stick the fakers used to sell for a penny on the curb in Fleet Street, glancing behind them at every second bound like men who had seen a ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... ships being supplemented by the sharp, rapid report of the quick-firing guns, which were supposed to be sending a storm of small shell among the defenders of the Rock. The incessant rattle of the ships' machine guns was also heard in the intervals between the thundering broadsides of heavy ordnance. All the ships were, of course, cleared for action, with topmasts and yards sent down, and it is needless to say they looked exceedingly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... three in the afternoon, till ten P.M. the programmy wuz stidy over and over. Fillin' the tank, low snortin' and rushin' of the waters up and down, chasin' along the pipes in every room, hammerin', kickin', shootin', like enraged artillery, at last thundering like the most skairful clap of thunder and then with a fearful roar the volume of water would mount up and pour into the spare room and drizzle down into the settin' room below, takin' off the plasterin' in spite of our very best efforts to bail it out. Over and over agin ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... majestically near in her moods of cloud and sunshine, overlooking the picturesque curve of the shore and the rippling waters of the lake. Shadowy to the eastward gleam the purple crests of Banahao and Cristobal, and but a few miles to the southwestward dim-thundering, seething, earth-rocking Taal mutters and moans of the world's birth-throes. It is the center of a region rich in native lore and legend, as it sleeps through the dusty noons when the cacao leaves droop with the heat and dreams through the silvery nights, waking twice or thrice ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates. Confess how many times you have read Beranger, and how many Milton? If you go to the "Star and Garter," don't you grow sick of that vast, luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the wheels of a cab were heard rattling towards the front door, as if in haste. The vehicle stopped suddenly. Then there was impatient thundering at the knocker, and wild ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... she runs away when ordered to stop, will be shot on the spot. This latter clause allows a very great latitude for zeal, more particularly as the "lines" just now are little more than a geographical expression. Their Emperor is a prisoner, the enemy is thundering at their gates, they are shut up here like rats in a hole; they have been vanquished in the only engagement they have had with their besiegers, and yet the Parisians believe that, compared with them, the Germans are an inferior race, and, like the slave before Marius, will shrink abashed ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... who had much to do with preparing me for the quixotic folly in point was that Thomas Babington Macaulay, who taught simplicity of diction in phrases of as "learned length and thundering sound," as any he would have had me shun, and who deplored the Latinistic English of Johnson in terms emulous of the great doctor's orotundity and ronderosity. I wonder now that I did not see how my physician avoided his medicine, but I did not, and I went on to spend myself in an endeavor as vain ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gods, and was made to suffer real sorrows in his unreal existence. Day by day he wandered over his limited domain, twisting his golden body amidst the pumpkins, and rearing himself above the fig-trees; thundering down to the beach to salute the passing dolphins, or sunning himself, a golden blaze, upon the rocks. There remained naught for him to do but to await the cessation of the phantasy of his life; and yet, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... No compromise with injustice for an election, or for an hour, not even for a good ultimate purpose! Colonization proposed a double purpose, the final extinction of slavery, and a meanwhile redemption of Africa from the midnight gloom and horror of heathenism. "Get thee behind me, Satan," was the thundering response and just rebuke of it by the Abolitionists! "Let us compromise with the South, and buy up their slaves," said Elihu Burritt and his overgrown mushroom convention, at Cleveland. "Our curse on your slave trade, foreign and domestic," ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... proceeding with its prostrate crew—quasi to ram an enemy; our dinner at night in a wild open anchorage, the ship rolling almost to her gunwales, and showing us alternately her bulwarks up in the sky, and then the wild broken cliffy palm-crested shores of the island with the surf thundering and leaping close aboard. We had the ward-room mess on deck, lit by pink wax tapers, everybody, of course, in uniform but myself, and the first lieutenant (who is a rheumaticky body) wrapped in a boat cloak. Gradually the sunset faded out, the island ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her father kissed her glowing cheek, and thanked her for the pleasing recreation she had given him. She had scarcely spoken, when a carriage was heard driving somewhat rapidly through the Square, then stopped, it appeared at their door, and a thundering and truly aristocratic rap resounded, startling not a little the inmates of that ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... to throw a stone down," said Marco. He accordingly, after looking around for a moment, found a stone about as large as his head. This stone he contrived to bring to the edge of the precipice and then to throw it over. It went thundering down among the rocks and trees below, while Marco stood upon the brink and listened to the sound of the echoes and reverberations. He then got another stone larger than the first, and threw that down; after which he and Forester ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... Mountain there is supposed to be a cave through which a torrent rushes at times, that being the only way in which to explain the strange thundering, roaring noise always heard after a storm, and never ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... avenue, Van Ness, Rang with the cries of battle and distress! Brave lungs were thundering with dreadful sound And perspiration smoked along the ground! Sing, heavenly muse, to ears of mortal clay, The meaning, cause and finish of ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... what is more, satisfied with Disraeli's title—the Representative. If Mr. Powles does not produce some thundering objection, let this ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... an answering shout from behind and the thundering of horses' hoofs told those among the trees that the enemy was ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... decorated barges and triremes, and describes the magnificent loggia hung with tapestries and wreaths of flowers which had been erected in front of the palazzo occupied by the Milanese ambassador, at the entrance of the Canal Grande. But what impressed him most of all were the thundering salvoes of artillery which burst from the fleet of galleys, from the arsenal and the Milanese embassy, at one and the same moment, as about five o'clock the Ferrarese bucentaurs reached Malamocco and entered the Venetian waters. "The whole air," he writes, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... passenger with desperation, gazing down from lofty peaks to yawning chasms below, hearing the crack of the long-lashed whip urging the noble steeds to faster speed, turning the rough, ragged, serpent-shaped drive, thundering through clouds and mist with lightning rapidity, and always in constant terror of a breakdown or error on the part of the fearless driver, gave one a sensation that would nearly make his hair stand on end. During the descent a slight error on the part ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... old brick, Buckhurst!" cried Mac, giving the jovial farmer a thundering slap on the back, and a hearty grasp of his hand; "and you shall drink the boy's health with Ned and me this day, or I'll know the reason why. Ned Blount, a'n't it glorious? Said I not, you ill-omened bird, said I not, 'Il y ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... right As God shall give us light, Let us finish the work already begun, Care for the battle sons, the Nation's wounds to bind, Care for the helpless ones that they will leave behind, Cherish it we will, achieve it if we can, A just and lasting peace, forever unto man!" Amid old Europe's rude and thundering years, When people strove as battle-clouds are driven, One calm white angel of a day appears In every year a gift direct from Heaven, Wherein, from setting sun to setting sun No thought of deed of bitterness was done. "Day of the Truce of God!" Be this day ours, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... Raynal. "He is prejudiced. He has been digging a thundering long mine here, and now you are going to make his child useless. We none of us like that. But when he gets the colors in his hand, and the storming column at his back, his misgivings will all go to the wind, and the enemy after them, unless he has been committing some crime, and is very much ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... me as he talked, pacing the floor, thundering his paean of triumph, his Titanic gestures bruising the harmless air. Only one explanation, incredible, but possible, sufficed. Anything was possible, I thought—anything was probable—with this dreamer whom the trump of Fame, executing a whimsical fantasia, proclaimed ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... surrounded by rocks that lay piled in confusion. But the whole place wore an air that was more than desolate; the peak itself had a cruel look, and there was an intent silence, which was only broken, as he gazed, by the sound of rocks falling loudly from the face of the hill and thundering down. The sun warned him that he had gone far enough; and he determined to go homewards, half pleased at his discovery, and half relieved to quit so lonely and grim ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would that I could go there where lies the great blue water surging, and smoking and thundering, till after a time it retires again: I shall sing as the quetzal, the blue quechol, when I go back to Huexotzinco among the waters (or, ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... His deep, thundering, protracted "A-hem-em" was like nothing else that ever I heard; and when once, as he was in the midst of one of these performances, the parlor door suddenly happened to swing open, I heard one of my roguish brothers calling, in a suppressed tone, "Charles! Charles! ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... landed and entered the gates, attended by his train of monkish brethren, he was hailed with thundering acclamations by the army as the true victor of Oran, in whose behalf Heaven had condescended to repeat the stupendous miracle of Joshua, by stopping the sun in his career. [14] But the cardinal, humbly disclaiming all merits of his own, was heard to ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... purpose it thus appeared."—"And in heaven's name what was the reply?"—"Before he deigned to speak, he lifted up his staff three several times, my lord, and smote the floor, even so loudly that verily the strokes caused the room to reverberate the thundering sound. He then waved the pale blue light which he bore in what is called a lantern, he waved it even to my eyes; and he told me, my lord, he told me that he was—yes, my lord—that he was—not more nor less than—the watchman! who had come ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... said, "there isn't much to tell. Jack Benton had been eating his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at the after corner of the table, on the port side. His brother used to sit at the end, next him. The doctor gave him a thundering big piece of pie to finish up with, and when he had finished he didn't stop for a smoke, but went off quick to relieve the wheel. Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from the galley, and when he saw Jack's empty plate he stood stock still ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... touch this matter without exposing himself to certain calumny. This has been his portion whenever he has attempted to plead the cause of his ignorant and ever-oppressed red brethren. Nevertheless, he will endeavour to speak independently, as if all men were his friends, and ready to greet him with thundering applause; and he would do so if their voices were to pronounce on him a sentence of everlasting disgrace. He writes not in the expectation of gathering wealth, or augmenting the number of his friends. But he has not the least doubt that all ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... night. It blew so hard for the three succeeding days, that we could not carry more than close reefed topsails to it, and a reefed foresail. Indeed, towards six bells in the forenoon watch, it came thundering down with such violence, and the sea increased so much, that we had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... her beauty, to the portly Sir John, who patted her kindly on the cheeks, and reminded Netta so strongly of her father that the tears sprung into her eyes. Howel's frown soon checked them, and a thundering knock at the door, followed by the entrance of Mr Simpson, junior, and his friend, Captain Dancy, turned her attention from the father to the son. The look of decided admiration that the new comers cast upon her, quite revived her drooping spirits, and she smiled, curtseyed, and blushed as ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... said, 'and there is none other: at the lower end the rocks rise sheer from out the water, and a little further down is a great force thundering betwixt them; so that by no boat or raft may ye come out of the Dale. But the outgate up the water is called the Road of War, as this is named the Path of Peace. But now are all ways ways ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... horses rounded up and were driving them towards camp when, about half a mile from the wagon, four old buffalo bulls ran quartering past the horses. This was tinder among stubble, and in their panic the horses outstripped the wranglers and came thundering for camp. Luckily we had been called to breakfast, and those of us who could see what was up ran and secured our night horses. Before half of the horses were thus secured, however, one hundred and thirty loose saddle stock dashed through camp, and every ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... veins, material things are spiritually discerned. There is not science enough nor scientific method enough in the schools of all Christendom for a man to listen intelligently to his own breathing with, or to know his own thumb-nail. Is not his own heart thundering the infinite through him—beating the eternal against his sides—even while he speaks? And does he not know ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... mariner supplied the deficiencies of the shipyard by caution and patience. He was never in a hurry. He waited with a resigned countenance upon the will of the wind. He plied his lead and log-line with indefatigable diligence. There was no prompt despatch in his day, no headlong thundering, through weather as thick as mud in a wineglass, to reach his port. We have diminished many of the risks he ran through imperfect appliances, but, on the other hand, we have raised a plentiful stock of our own, so that ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... burst, and in five minutes after the first spatter all were wet to the skin. Selim and I stood close together, trying to light a match, when a sheet of white fire seemed to be let down from the black sky, passing between us with a simultaneous thundering crash and rattle, and a sulphurous smell, as if a battery had been discharged. I saw my factotum struck down whilst in the act of staggering and falling myself; we lay still for a few moments, when a mutual inquiry showed that both were ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... then? Hear him, hear him now, cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his hands far down into his pockets, — hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I was thinking of; and how to save all hands —how to rig jury-masts — how to get into the nearest port; that was ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... "You thundering fools!" he bellowed. "Is it foul play that tickles you? One of our candidates you've contrived to poison, and I've left him at Tregoose between life and death. What have you done with the other?" By this time ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... later she ran upstairs, her heart thundering with a sense of her own daring. She entered the dark bedroom hurriedly, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... came thundering down the street after them, his horse having regained its footing. The reins of the big steeds were dragging on the ground, and Walter and his girl companions saw no way of getting hold of the lines and so pulling down ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... to the last, Full in the centre stands the Bull at bay, Mid wounds, and clinging darts, and lances brast,[92] And foes disabled in the brutal fray: And now the Matadores[93] around him play, Shake the red cloak, and poise the ready brand: Once more through all he bursts his thundering way— Vain rage! the mantle quits the conynge hand, Wraps his fierce eye—'tis past—he sinks ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... partisan denunciation of particular acts, and a partisan incitement to a given practical policy. We may appreciate the policy as we choose, but our appreciation of Burke as a thinker and a contributor to political wisdom is at an end. He is now only Demosthenes thundering against Philip, or Cicero ...
— Burke • John Morley
... found never a soul at the meeting-place of the all-faithful Volunteers. What amazed him most was that he found not even a man there to ring the bell. The rope, however, was flouncing about in the wind, and the bell itself was still thundering alarums ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... Thundering plaudits greet the hero of the occasion, who presently strolls about among the assembled multitude, attended by his 'coegi,' or 'servant,' who collects the offerings with which they liberally reward his exertions. When money ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team; its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads, haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly up into the air, and showed ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... him at your throat!" shouted the Master, thundering up. "Stan' back, I say, yo' fule!" And, as the little man still came madly on, he reached forth his hand and hurled him back; at the same moment, bending, he buried the other hand deep in Owd Bob's shaggy neck. It was ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... who had lost an arm, took command of the dilapidated combined fleets, and fled into Cadiz with five French and five Spanish ships, and by 5 p.m. the thundering of the guns had ceased, and the sea all round was a scene of death, dismasted ships, and awful wreckage. The Rear-Admiral Dumanoir was sailing gaily towards the refuge of Rochefort or Ferrol when he came into view of, and ultimately had to fight on the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... maple, two inches through, lately set out, but it might have stopped a pair of very small horses. Those in the road were large—almost too large to run well. They were well-matched grays, and they came thundering along in a way that was really fine to behold; heads down, necks arched, nostrils wide, reins flying, the wagon behind them banging and swerving—no wonder everybody stood still and, except Mary Ogden, shouted, ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... great violence, and at the height of Granite House the sea could be heard thundering against the reefs. In some places, the wind, eddying round the corners, formed the snow into tall whirling columns, resembling those waterspouts which turn round on their base, and which vessels attack with a shot from a gun. However, the storm, coming from the northwest, blew ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... "You thundering old lunatic," said Cashel, rising and putting on his hat; "is it likely that I want a pair of mufflers? Perhaps YOU think you could teach me something with them. Ha! ha! By-the-bye—now mind this, Mellish—don't let it out down here that I'm a fighting ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... there they'll talk you dead, For fools rush in where angels fear to tread Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, It still looks home, and short excursions makes; But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, And, never shocked, and never turned aside. Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide, ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... delicate, that there was no refusing it. I had to write her thanks, and got in a violent fit of the "trembles" at the idea of writing to a stranger. One consolation is, that I am not a very big fool, for it took only three lines to prove myself one. If I had been a thundering big one, I would have occupied two pages to show myself fully. And to think it is out of our power to prove them our appreciation of the kindness we have universally met with! Many officers were in church this morning, and as they passed us while we waited for the door to be opened, General ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a booming roar, a thundering crash, and the riddled Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and drifted ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Highness drove eight, ten, and sometimes twelve horses together, thundering through the country, and the peasants soon learnt to associate their heretofore beloved ruler with clouds of dust and ruthless speed. A demon driver rushing past, who, they said, would crush them were they not quick to fly to safety in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering sea,—the storm, and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the opposite direction; the other stood stricken in his tracks. Gale ran in close and picked up the gun that had dropped from the raider leader's hand. This fellow had begun to stir, to come out of his stunned condition. Then the frightened horses burst the corral bars, and in a thundering, dust-mantled stream fled ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white, standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!" Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... was determined that, whatever people might think of him, his job was to get the Regiment to the highest state of efficiency in the shortest possible time. The pill certainly was a bit bitter, and it was only when the effects began to be felt that we realised what a thundering good Doctor "Mick" was. Shortly before we went out he admitted that we were as good as any cavalry regiment in the Army, but characteristically added—"but don't tell the ——!" A very effective combination were the Colonel and Mick, and if we didn't love them ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... born,' continued he, 'of idolatrous parents, it was my good fortune to have a woman governess who was a strict observer of the Mohammedan religion. She taught me Arabic from Al Koran; by her I was instructed in the true religion, which I would never afterward renounce. About three years ago a thundering voice was heard distinctly throughout the city, saying, "Inhabitants, abandon the worship of Nardoun and of fire, and worship the only true God, who showeth mercy!" This voice was heard three years successively, but no one regarded it. At the end of the last year all the inhabitants were in an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the trains were well filled. We were discussing the situation when suddenly, without any warning, the whistles of every engine began to shriek, and in the noise could be heard the warning of the first engineer, 'My God! Rush to the mountains, the reservoir has burst.' Then, with a thundering like peal came the mad rush of waters. No sooner had the cry been heard than those who could with a wild leap rushed from the train and up the mountains. To tell this story takes some time, but the moments in which the horrible scene ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... stood by him, calling for fair play and one at a time. Of course a fight ensued, Stephen and his champion on the one side, and two assailants on the other, till after a fall on either side, Ambrose's friend interfered with a voice as thundering as the manly crack would permit, peace was restored, Stephen found himself free of the meads, and Spring was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... come alone. The astonished Susan Nipper and her two young charges were rescued by the bystanders from under the very wheels of a passing carriage before they knew what had happened; and at that moment (it was market day) a thundering alarm ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... hundred feet, and the lower thirteen hundred. In the spring and early summer no more magnificent sight can be imagined than the tourist obtains from a stand-point right in the midst of the spray, driven, as by a wind blowing thirty miles an hour, from the thundering basin of the lower fall. At all seasons Cho-looke is the grandest mountain-waterfall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... length to the creaking sign of the "Red Slipper." A great noise came from the place. A large company was roaring out a chorus. Without many words I was introduced into the room in which the disturbance was proceeding. It was blue with smoke, and the thundering chorus was still unfinished. I sank unnoticed into a ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane |
