"Towering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is still destined. She was a queen among women. She was in intellect the complete equal, and in still better things than intellect far the superior, of Isabella and Elizabeth themselves. As she says in an outspoken autobiographic passage, hers was one of those outstanding and towering souls on which a thousand eyes and tongues are continually set without any one understanding them or comprehending them. Her coming greatness of soul is foreseen by some of her biographers in the attempt which she made while yet a child to escape away ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... my fathers!" shouted the bonde in a towering passion. "This passes my utmost endurance! Have I not told thee again and again, thou silly soul! . . . that thy grandchild is no slave? She is free—free to return to thee an' she will; free also to stay with us, where ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... with surprise and concern that they at last debouched upon a wide green space where a flag waved at the top of a towering pole; for, behold, the grass was covered thick with children, with here and there a ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... wave of her hand that dismissed him; but he ranted on in a towering passion of wrath and grief. It had all burst up anew in his heart, in and for a moment. He ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Douthats. Some years ago the plantation passed to strangers. From the riverward portico, we saw traces of an old garden whose memory is kept green by the straggling box that long ago bordered the fragrant flower-beds. On beyond was a glint of the sun-lit river. A group of towering cottonwood trees, standing in the dooryard, is so conspicuous a feature of the landscape that it serves as a guide for the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... bulk has been mainly formed out of air. We, in our gross conceptions, were wont to think that the fatness of the earth was the tree's chief source of nourishment. But it is not so. In some cases this is almost perceptible to the eye, for we see the towering pine springing from a soil manifestly of the scantiest nutritive power. When we once apprehend how large a constituent part, air is, of bodies inanimate and animate, of our own for instance, we shall be more easily convinced of the danger of ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... Hogue, as Jellicoe in our own day stopped the Kaiser off the Jutland Bank, so Nelson stopped Napoleon by making British sea-power quite supreme. Century by century the four mightiest warlords of the land have carried all before them until their towering empires reached the sea. But there, where they were strangers, they all met the same Royal Navy, manned by sailors of the only race whose home has always been the sea, and, meeting ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... country after a fighting old grey boar. You see the long waving line of staves, and spear heads, and quaint shaped axes, glittering and fluctuating above the feathery tops of the swaying grass. There is an irregular line of stately elephants, each with its towering howdah and dusky mahout, moving slowly along through the rustling reeds. You hear the sharp report of fireworks, the rattling thunder of the big doobla or drum, and the ear-splitting clatter of innumerable tom-toms. Shouts, oaths, and cries from a hundred noisy coolies, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... ever passed the city of Ogdensburg by steamer will no doubt recall a large gambrel-roofed house standing near the water's edge, just out of the town, surrounded by towering trees and enclosed on all sides by a wall nearly as high as the eaves of the building. The wall suggests an asylum, a house of detention or some like place set apart for the unfortunate members of society. In reality, however, it is the residence of a mysterious recluse of the name of Lane, ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... across the north-eastern part of the Sea of Showers, with enormous cliffs, mountain masses and peaks shining on the right, while in the other direction the view was bounded by the distant range of the lunar Apennines, some of whose towering peaks, when viewed from our immense elevation, appeared as sharp ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... strange room swam before her eyes. As in a dream she saw him start to his feet and come swiftly to her across a seemingly unending length of carpet that billowed and wavered curiously, his big frame oddly magnified until he appeared a very giant towering above her; as in a dream she felt him take her ice-cold hands in his. But the warm strong grasp, the grave eyes bent compellingly on her, dragged her back from the shuddering abyss into which she was sinking. Far away, as though coming from a great distance, she heard ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... There were the old gabled houses, quaintly roofed and timbered; there the lace-like masonry of High Cross; there the slender proportions of Low Cross; there the mighty bulk of the great church built over the very spot whereon the virgin saint suffered martyrdom; there, towering above the gables on the north side, the well-preserved masonry of the massive Norman Keep of Hathelsborough Castle; there a score of places and signs with which Bunning had kept up a close acquaintance in youth ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... south-western basin was the big grey hull of the cruiser, newly painted, and looking very formidable, with its tall masts and fighting-tops towering into the blue void, and its massive bow rising high ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... moment the door opened, and Alice, who had been listening, entered the room in a high and towering passion. Her eyes sparkled: her complexion was scarlet with rage; her little hands were most heroically clenched; and, altogether, the very excitement in which she presented herself, joined to a good face and fine figure, made her look exceedingly ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... were able to regain its level far below. The going was rough and stony, and hard on the porters, but the scenery was very wild and fine. We met the river bottom again in the pleasantest oval meadow with fine big trees. The mountains quite surrounded us, towering imminent above our heads. Ahead of us the stream broke through between portals that rose the full height of the ranges. We followed it, and found ourselves on the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... while he spoke thus; and when the crowd permitted her to approach near him, she was heard to whisper,—'O, be not rash! try no experiment! there is something mysterious about that opal talisman; be prudent, and let the matter pass by.' The baron, who was in a more towering passion than well became the wisdom to which he made pretence, said, 'Are you, too, such a fool?' and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... high into the air from various parts of the mass, like smoke from a cannon's mouth. Presently, a low continuous roar became audible above the noise of the oars; as the boat advanced, the swells from the southeast could be seen towering upwards as they neared the foaming spot, gradually changing their broad-backed form, and coming on in majestic walls of green water, which fell with indescribable grandeur into the seething caldron. No rocks were visible, there was no ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... room at Hiawatha Institute one evening, Marion cast about her mental horizon for some scene or association in her life that would suggest the desired name. The first that came to her was the picture of a towering mountain, conspicuous not so much for its actual loftiness as for its deceptive appearance of great height. In all her experiences at home, it had never occurred to Marion to think of this individual portion of ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... England, but New York existed (he felt) as a new and startling expression of them. They shrieked in every light and from every sky-scraper. The whole question of America was: would the older simpler really great historical tradition win, or would it be defeated by the new and towering evil? He has an interesting chapter on the countryside, finding hope in the considerable extension of small ownership among the farmers and in the houses built from the growing material that wood is, but he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... market-house shows the torn and dishevelled fragment of the keep of Helmsley Castle towering above the thatched roofs in the foreground. The ruin is surrounded by tall elms, and from this point of view, when backed by a cloudy sunset makes a wonderful picture. Like Scarborough, this stronghold was held for the King during the ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... girl showed an extremely violent temper, but became of gentle disposition after she had reached the age of two (Perez). Another, observed by the same author, when only eleven months old, flew into a towering rage, because she was unable to pull off her grandfather's nose. Yet another, at the age of two, tried to bite another child who had a doll like her own, and she was so much affected by her anger that she was ill for ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... the second ridge, only a hundred yards distant, stood a stag, towering in black outline, the sun just coming up behind him. Then two other pairs of antlers rose from behind the ridge, two more stags lifted their heads and shoulders and all three stood silhouetted against the sky. ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... cabin high on the slopes of the Sangre de Christo range, overlooking the broad, level San Luis Valley, in Colorado. At the rear of the cabin rose a towering cliff or rather a huge slab of rock standing edgewise more than two hundred feet high, apparently the upheaval of some mighty convulsion of nature in ages gone. Near the base of this cliff flowed a clear ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... the Halfmoon neared the towering cliffs it seemed utterly hopeless that aught else than a fly could find a foothold upon that sheer and rocky face that rose abruptly ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... good, after such visions of human infirmity and of death, to ride over the plain to the Seldja gorge, an astonishing freak of nature. I was twice within its towering walls of rock; the first time on horseback, accompanied by a young Tripolitan miner, and in the evening; yesterday again, in ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... vast continent variegated by chains of lakes and rivers stretching away in all directions except toward the equator, where lay a placid ocean as far as their telescopes could pierce. To the eastward were towering and massive mountains, and along the southern border of the continent smoking volcanoes, while toward the west they saw forests, gently rolling plains, and table-lands that would have satisfied a poet or set an agriculturist's ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... which nestles between two of the emerald waves. Far, far beyond the steeples which rise dimly from the distant town a range of hills; beyond it still, a faint film of blue, the indistinct and misty semblance of towering mountains. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... narrowing and expanding, among verdant knolls and lawns, joined here and there by little wooden bridges; and the water is fed by torrents that plunge down among pine-woods from crags of fantastic form, glowing with hues of lapis-lazuli and jade; under towering peaks are luxuriant valleys, groves with glimpses of scattered deer, walled parks, clumps of delicate bamboo, and the distant roofs of some nestling village. Here and there is a pavilion by the water in which poet or sage sits contemplating the beauty round him. These happy ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... Beauharnais had he been willing to accede to the conditions on which the First Consul offered him his step-daughter's hand. But Duroc looked forward to something better, and his ordinary prudence forsook him at a moment when he might easily have beheld a perspective calculated to gratify even a more towering ambition than his. He declined the proposed marriage; and the union of Hortense and Louis, which Madame Bonaparte, to conciliate the favour of her brothers-in-law, had endeavoured to bring about, was immediately determined ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and then Tarzan led them down into the valley below. There was no trail, but the way was less arduous than the ascent of the opposite face of the mountain had been. Once in the valley their progress was rapid, so that it was still light when they halted before the towering ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... character. His public virtues and public principles were as firm as the earth on which it stands; his personal motives, as pure as the serene heavens in which its summit is lost. But, indeed, though a fit, it is an inadequate emblem. Towering high above the column which our hands have builded, beheld, not by the inhabitants of a single city or a single State, but by all the families of man, ascends the colossal grandeur of the character and life of Washington. In all ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... keenly and saw the jungle crowding close against the city's metal walls, the flapping of the ornithopter's wings changed again and it seemed to plunge downward like a stone toward a narrow landing place amid the great city's towering buildings. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... over the dark waters, her masts towering to the sky like some phantom of the night. A strange feeling came over me as I thought that in a few minutes we might be hotly engaged in firing away at the enemy, round shot and bullets flying ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... a voice as hearty as the kiss, and Patty, with a wild spring, jumped from the encircling arms, and turned to face a towering giant, who, she knew at once, must be ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... plunged on into the gloomy passage. Presently the walls began to widen like a letter "Y" and in a great open space they saw a placid lake on the bosom of which the moon was shining. On all sides the towering walls rose for hundreds of feet. Speechless with wonder and with quickly-beating hearts they stumbled forward over the uneven road till they reached the shore of the lake. The water was so clear ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... capitalist social system, undertakings executed that were thought impossible or insane a century ago. Wide isthmuses are cut through; tunnels, miles long and bored into the bowels of the earth, join peoples whom towering mountains separate; others are dug under the beds of seas to shorten distances, and avoid disturbances and dangers that otherwise the countries thus separated are exposed to. Where is the spot at which could be said: "So ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... complete ignorance of Mr. Laing's indubitable conclusions about the antiquity of Egyptian civilization. Unfortunately, even the best scientists have not that perfect freedom from bias, which gives Mr. Laing such a towering advantage over them all. "An authority like Prestwich," who "cannot be accused of theological bias," influenced, however, by a servile astronomical bias, "reduces to 20,000 years a period to which Lyell and modern geologists assign a duration of more than ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... said. The storm was coming nearer, sending vivid shafts of lightning in splendid awfulness across the sky. Torrents of rain descended, thrashing the lake into uneven, towering crests of white foam. The weeping willow tree groaned over the shanty roof, jarring and tearing at the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... are the towering lattices of patent derricks, forests of them, that handle coal and ore and cargoes of infinite variety. And the [Transcriber's note: word(s) possibly missing from source] derricks and the elevators are the uncannily long and lean lake freighters, ships with a tiny deck superstructure ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... three or four days were spent by the savages in mending their canoe, which had been damaged by the violent shock it had sustained on striking the shore. This canoe was a very curious structure. It was about thirty feet long, and had a high, towering stern. The timbers of which it was partly composed, were fastened much in the same way as those of our little boat were put together; but the part that seemed most curious to us was a sort of outrigger, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... marvels to me, as now for the first time I saw in all their beauty the tall cocoa-nut trees and other palms, like vast ferns, towering up on their column-like stems and spreading their enormous feathery leaves so gracefully towards the earth. Then after a few steps we came upon bananas, with their long ragged leaves and mighty clusters of curiously-shaped fruit, with hundreds of other trees, such ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... official position can snub HARCOURT—and does. Shall HARCOURT go for him? Shall he take him up in his powerful arms and tear him to pieces with delighted teeth? A moment's pause, whilst HARCOURT, towering at table, toying nervously with eyeglass, looks down on Chairman who has just ruled him out of order. Shall he? Struggles with his suddenly awakened wrath, gulps it down, turns aside ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... transparent, the changing tints on the autumnal foliage so rich, the sun so bright and warm, that we seemed surrounded by an enchanted atmosphere, and the very consciousness of existence was delightful; but, with those descending floods of light towering above us, and filling the echoing shores with their sublime ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... bridge, and joined him, looking astern. Even von Schlichten, who had seen H-bombs and Bethe-cycle bombs, was impressed. Keegark was completely obliterated under an outward-rolling cloud of smoke and dust that spread out for five miles at the bottom of the towering column. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... valley within valley we have come to see. Our road makes a loop round the valley so that we see it from two levels, and under two aspects. As we return, winding upwards on higher ground, we get glimpses of sunny dimpled sward through the dark stems of the majestic fir-trees towering over our head. There is every gradation of form and colour in the picture, from the ripe warm gold barring the branches of the firs, to the pale silveriness of their upper foliage; from the gigantic trees rising from the gorge ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in the next field. He decided to fly even farther. But he had gone only a short distance when he changed his course and turned to the South, for below him was a long, shining, creeping thing, fringed with willows, while towering above them were giant sycamore, maple, tulip, and elm trees that caught and rocked with the wind; and the Cardinal did not know what it was. Filled with wonder he dropped lower and lower. Birds were everywhere, many flying over and dipping into it; but its clear creeping ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... distance, and in the eastern horizon there was a streak of fearful light impending over the gloomy waters, in which the swelling outline formed by the rising waves was becoming each moment more distinct, and, consequently, more alarming. Several dark clouds overhung the vessel, whose towering masts apparently propped the black vapor, while a few stars were seen twinkling, with a sickly flame, in the streak of clear sky that skirted the ocean. Still, light currents of air occasionally swept across the bay, bringing with them the fresh ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his voice gazed at the speaker; at first almost with fascination, then as the real meaning of the interruption came over them, with sensations as divergent as their various individual minds. There was no need to tell them who looked at that towering, intruding figure that tragedy lurked in the air, that death on the slightest provocation, at the twitch of a trigger finger, dwelt in those big twin Colts lying menacingly across the folded arms. A lunatic escaped was a pleasant companion, a child, to deal with, compared ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... found everything scrupulously clean. Strange cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... Like the rest of us married men, he knows when dodging positively won't do," and Macauley sighed as he settled his tie before the reception-room mirror, obtaining a view of himself with some difficulty, on account of the towering masses of flowers and foliage which obscured ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... shimmers in the sun, and displaying gaudy banners on which the signs of the guilds to which they belong are printed in large characters, it is a beautiful sight to watch a fleet of these stately ships glide by, with their towering sails goose-winged before the breeze, and churning up the waters with their blunt, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... look down on the water from the high deck of a large ship, they had at first felt some doubt as to the ability of the low bawley to struggle safely through the towering waves; but as soon as they saw how well she behaved, and how little water she took over the sides, they felt that all danger was over, and became disposed to look at things ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... places, in its narrow leafy valley, surrounded by towering cliffs, is celebrated as having been the home of Petrarch for sixteen years during the thirteen hundreds. We may hope that his worshipped Laura sometimes brightened his home there with her presence. The famous Fountain of Vaucluse rushes out from its cave a full-grown river. It wastes no time in ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... stood erect, towering above the drooping girl, like a queen above a slave or suppliant. Red and pale by turns, with compressed lips and flashing eyes, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... tree, Whose glory and renown Are spread o'er land and sea,— And wouldst thou hew it down? Woodman, forbear thy stroke! Cut not its earth-bound ties; O, spare that aged oak, Now towering to the skies! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... yourself be lured into a Kultur-kampf. It is not the pennies of the servant-girls which build the towering cathedrals; it is not the two-dollar contributions for the salvation of souls which support the Catholic Truth Society and the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society and the Mary Sodality and the National Shrine ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... day in April when he and Gascoyne rode clattering out through Temple Bar, leaving behind them quaint old London town, its blank stone wall, its crooked, dirty streets, its high-gabled wooden houses, over which rose the sharp spire of St. Paul's, towering high into the golden air. Before them stretched the straight, broad highway of the Strand, on one side the great houses and palaces of princely priests and powerful nobles; on the other the Covent Garden, ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... special and important dances, and especially those worn by chiefs, are enormous things, towering 6 or 12 feet above the wearer's head, and are generally larger than those of Mekeo. They are held in a framework, which has an inverted basket-shaped part to rest on the head, and downward pointing rods, which ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... ship of Clyde securely now may ride In the breath of the citron shades; And Severn's towering mast securely now hies fast, Through the seas of ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... That Sycorax loved truth must be admitted; but that he loved no one so much as himself to speak the truth must also be admitted. Nor had he, after all, any grand notions of the goddess. She was, in his sight, rather of diminutive than gigantic growth; rather of a tame than a towering mien; dressed out in little trinkets, and formally arrayed in the faded point-lace and elevated toupee of the ancient English school, and not in the flowing and graceful robes of Grecian simplicity. But his malice and ill-nature were frightful; and withal ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the Highlands, cliffs seemed piled on cliffs rising precipitously from the water's edge, forming a surprisingly beautiful and sublime spectacle. The majestic river hemmed in by towering heights densely covered with forests made a picture of impressiveness ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... him, in which she stated that she could not at the moment say when she would go home again, but that she expected to advise him shortly. After answering it he started North, and, obtaining Agatha's address from Miss Rawlinson, went on again to a certain little town which stands encircled by towering fells beside a lake in ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... had no money, whereupon she burst into tears and began to coax him. But her blandishments were apparently ineffectual, for Burle's husky voice could be heard repeating, "Impossible! Impossible!" And finally the widow withdrew in a towering passion. The major, amazed at the turn affairs were taking, waited a few moments longer before entering the office, where Burle had remained alone. He found him very calm, and despite his furious inclination to call him names he ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Jamaica. Coming from the southeast quarter of the island, we were passing under them where they are highest. They rose, seemingly almost from the water's edge, to the height of seven and eight thousand feet, their towering masses broken into gigantic wrinkles and corrugations, whose fantastic unevenness was subdued into harmony by the softening veil of yellowish green darkening above, which clothed them to their tops. Between their base and the sea actually lies one of the most richly cultivated districts of the island, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the muffled sound of a steamer's paddles was heard. Probably the fog had something to do with the peculiarity of the sound, for next moment a fog-whistle sounded its harsh tone close at hand, and a dark towering shadow seemed to rush down ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... east of the palace the King had made a great pleasure-lake for the Queen, surrounded by the trees of Asia. Here, floating in her golden barge, which was named Aton-gleams, the Queen might look westwards over the tree-tops to the splendid Theban hills towering above the palace, and eastwards to the green valley of the Nile and the three great limestone hills beyond. Amenhotep III. has been rightly called the "Magnificent," and one may well believe that his son Akhnaton was born to the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... the turbaned porters with their badges, the staring children and the ragged wanderers who thronged about the train, she thought of the desert to which she was now so near. It lay, she knew, beyond the terrific wall of rock that faced her. But she could see no opening. The towering summits of the cliffs, jagged as the teeth of a wolf, broke crudely upon the serene purity of the sky. Somewhere, concealed in the darkness of the gorge at their feet, was the mouth from which had poured forth that wonderful breath, quivering ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... for delay, was that his fault? If he had never educated himself to see any connection between a seed and a plant, a cause and a result, was that his fault? The first seedling impulse to destroy the book was buried and forgotten. If he mistook this towering, full-grown determination which had sprung from it for the will of God, the direct answer to prayer, was ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... favourite Du Barry were still working underground. Their pestiferous vapours issued from the recesses of the earth, to obscure the brightness of the rising sun, which was now rapidly towering to its climax, to obliterate the little planets which had once endeavoured to eclipse its beautiful rays, but were now incapable of competition, and unable to endure its lustre. This malignant nest of serpents began to poison the minds of the courtiers, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the parks and palaces of the Cotton Kingdom have not wholly disappeared. We plunge even now into great groves of oak and towering pine, with an undergrowth of myrtle and shrubbery. This was the "home-house" of the Thompsons,—slave-barons who drove their coach and four in the merry past. All is silence now, and ashes, and tangled weeds. The owner put his whole fortune into the rising cotton industry of the fifties, and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... among burning lavas, molten rocks, boiling waters, and all kinds of volcanic matter; we are going to be pitched out, expelled, tossed up, vomited, spit out high into the air, along with fragments of rock, showers of ashes and scoria, in the midst of a towering rush of smoke and flames; and it is the best thing ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... above my pillow. And it rained all the day following; but my men, eager to earn their reward of one shilling, pushed on through the slush. It was hard work following the slippery path above the river. Few rivers in the world flow between more majestic banks than these, towering as they do a thousand feet above the water. Clad with thick mountain scrub, that has firm foothold, the mountains offer but a poor harvest to the peasant; yet even here high up on the precipitous sides of ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave O'er ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... opportunity for people to meet as folks, as neighbors representing no one but themselves, and the ideas they cherish most. The towering advantage of Community Service is that it is the one movement to ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... had been bidden to do, at the conclusion of the feast, to seek Edwy, and found him, it is needless to state, in a towering rage. ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... this time was as red as his whiskers, and, though he was in a towering rage, he quickly calmed down again, like boiling milk when it is taken off ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... was here that we obtained our first view, except at a distance, of the principal group of mountains. They are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to Heaven: he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head. Let us forget the other names of American statesmen that have been ...
— Sketches From Memory (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... so eager to sate themselves in the possession of this chimera and who had betrayed my omnipotence, they now suffered the penalty of their blindness. For it was evident that to them, this chimera was still real. She was an avenger towering with a knife ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... time, and for a certain consideration—had failed to be as good as their word, and had thereby seriously hindered the progress of the campaign. As might have been expected, this was enough to throw such a man as Braddock into a towering passion; and, to mend his humor, the governors of the different provinces were not as ready and brisk to answer his call for men and supplies as he thought he had ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... where shepherds as well as sheep were in daily danger of landslips, and which to the ordinary pedestrian were signalled by a warning board as "Dangerous." But "Giant's Castle" itself was merely the larger and loftier of the two towering rocks which guarded the sea-front of Weircombe village. A tortuous grassy path led up to its very pinnacle, and from here, there was an unbroken descent as straight and smooth as a well-built wall, of several ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... him with four bars of amber. Near Sullo, the eyes of the jaded and weary travellers were a little revived by the picturesqueness of the scenery, which presented all the possible diversities of rock, towering up like ruined castles, spires, and pyramids. One place bore a very striking resemblance to a ruined Gothic abbey,—the niches, windows, and staircase, having all counterparts in the natural rock. Mr. Park describes the banks of the Ba-Fing and Ba-Lee, two tributaries of the Senegal, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... murm'ring brooks Invited me to roam; Old towering trees their heads upreared Around my ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... fluttered the phlox; the red nasturtiums that climbed up at the foot of the slab shuddered and shook their blood-colored banners over the polished marble. A holy hush fell upon all things save a towering poplar that leaned against the church, and rustled its leaves ceaselessly, and shivered and turned white, as tradition avers it has done since that day, when Christ staggered along the Via Dolorosa bearing his cross, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... all they needed to know, at least, until they reached the city. Then, tumbled out of the cars without ceremony, they were no better off than before; they stood staring down the vista of Dearborn Street, with its big black buildings towering in the distance, unable to realize that they had arrived, and why, when they said "Chicago," people no longer pointed in some direction, but instead looked perplexed, or laughed, or went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in their helplessness; ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... aback by this explosion that he let go his shoe-strings, fell over with a crash, and lay flat, with shovel and tongs spread upon him like a pall. In rushed Mrs. Snow and Polly, to find the boy's spirits quite quenched, for once, and Aunt Kipp in a towering passion. It all came out in one overwhelming flood of words, and Toady fled from the storm to wander round the house, a prey to the deepest remorse. The meekness of that boy at dinner-time was so angelic that Mrs. Snow would have feared speedy translation ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Pacifico's towering figure appeared ascending a lower flight of steps toward them, coming from the house. He trod with that firm, grand step churchmen have in common with actors—only the stage upon which each treads is different. Behind Fra Pacifico was ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... from upland monasteries You speak the word that summons us. But where In peace is room for all once-towering hopes— Nay, even for the wrecked and prostrate monoliths That ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... by lofty crags, but full of crags of lesser height, many lifting their heads from dark-green groves of trees. The morning sun, not yet above the eastern elevations, sent its rosy and golden shafts in between the towering rocks, to tip ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... a cliff in the mist above; it was a mere suggestion, a gray patch, but yet a towering wall, implacably there, its presence disclosed by a shadow where the mist had thinned. Fog had broken over the cliff and was streaming down with the wind. Obscurity was imminent; but light yet came from the west, escaping low and clean. And there was a weltering ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... and all of gigantic size. In the middle of these monsters browses Germany, very white and woolly-haired and loveable, a little lamb among the nations, artlessly only wanting to love and be loved, weak physically compared to its towering neighbours, but strong in simplicity and the knowledge of its gute Recht. And when they say these things they all turn to me for endorsement and approval—they've given up seeking response from the Swede, because she only eats—and I hastily run over ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. The sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, the batons, the faded, and sometimes bloody, garments, the trinkets and decorations, associated with towering personalities of the past, attuned my spirit for some adventure above the commonplace. As I came down into the street, narrow and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier passed me on the run into an open space just beyond, where instantly ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... nearly to the heart's desire." Slowly the mobile blur moved away from the town, and presently the gray half of it dissolved into its elemental units, all in slow recession. The retaken guns in the embrasures pushed up towering clouds of white smoke; to east and to west along the reoccupied parapet ran a line of misty red till the spitfire crest was without a break from flank to flank. Probably there was some Yankee cheering, as doubtless ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... they were all weaker than Barker, who besides was now in a towering fury, and kicked ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... this running down hill, the horse continues to jog along for a considerable distance, stopping at last under a towering old wall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... last. There was a tiny farmhouse, a low stable with a thatched roof, and, towering over all, the arms of a great windmill. Chickens cackled round my feet, a pig grunted in a corner, and apparently from directly underneath came the ear-splitting reports of a battery ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 1778—two hundred years after Drake's famous voyage—Cook's ships descried thin, sharp lines of land in the offing. As the vessels drew nearer the coast towering mountains met the gaze of the explorers. Cook had orders to keep a sharp look-out in this region for the strait of Juan de Fuca; but storm drove him off-shore, and, although he discovered and named Cape Flattery at the entrance to the strait that now bears the name {47} ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... United States, Mount Shasta is one of the most interesting of them. It has an altitude of 14,350 feet, towering more than a mile above its nearest neighbor. Four thousand feet of its peak are above timber line, covered with glaciers, while the mountain's base is seventeen miles in diameter. Shasta is almost continually showing slight evidences of its internal fires. Another of the famous cones is that of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... will return it me for thirty-five soldi, if I pay money down." And while they were yet talking, in came one that made it plain to Angiulieri that 'twas Fortarrigo that had robbed him of his money, for he told him the amount that Fortarrigo had lost. Whereat Angiulieri, in a towering passion, rated Fortarrigo right soundly, and, but that he stood more in fear of man than of God, would have suited action to word; and so, threatening to have him hanged by the neck and proclaimed an outlaw at the gallows-tree of ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is a good illustration of the self-made man. He inherited good lungs, a strong voice and a splendid physique. He is really a physical giant, his stalwart frame towering upward six feet, and tipping the beam at 265 pounds. His erect and dignified movements have made him a commanding figure among his people. His constant endeavor to promote their best interests has made him a popular leader among them. A slave by birth and denied the privilege ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... fiercely as though it was a dagger. It sank into rotten wood. I had made no sound; for I could hardly breathe. But the slight noise of the blow had reached Edgar. I heard the springs of the hack creak as he vaulted from it, and the next moment he was towering above me, peering down into the pit. His eyes were wide with excitement, greed, and fear. In his hands he clutched the two suit-cases. Like a lion defending his ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... Appenzell, we had to face the by no means easy crossing of the Santis. It was my first experience also of travelling over an extensive snow-field in summer. After reaching our guide's hut, which was perched on a rugged slope, where we regaled ourselves with exceedingly frugal fare, we had to climb the towering and precipitous pinnacle of rock which forms the summit of the mountain, a few hundred feet above us. Here Karl suddenly refused to allow us, and to shake him out of his effeminacy I had to send back the guide for him, who, at our request, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... mouth with water, made offerings on the fire, created the terrible Vritra, and spoke to him, saying, "O destined slayer of Indra, grow in might even from the strength of my austere rites." And that Asura grew in might, towering towards the firmament, and resembling the son of fire. And he asked, "Risen like the doomsday sun, what am I to do?" "Kill Indra," was the reply. And then he departed towards the celestial regions. And next ensued a great fight between Vritra and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... alone the "handful of Bolsheviki" apparently stood alone that grey chill morning, with all storms towering over them. (See App. VI, Sect. 1) Back against the wall, the Military Revolutionary Committee struck-for its life. "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.... At five in the morning the Red ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... very steep street, and up another still, all the crowd following. The king's palace-castle rose towering above them; but they stopped before they reached it, at a low-browed door in a ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... was about to see murder done. He was a strange young man, with the rare marked look that would compel even a poor memory to pick him out again. For example, he was very tall and very slim, with red hair blown every which way over a high and towering forehead that seemed as long as the face under it. The face, too, was long, and all freckled by the weather. The blue eyes held me in wonder, and these blazed with such prodigious wrath that, if a look could have killed, Hump Gibson would have been stricken ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thrill of pleasure to look back upon my acquirements. I rather felt as a tired traveller might be supposed to feel when, having exerted himself to reach the top of the first peak on a mountain, he has only secured a position where he can see Alpine peaks towering to the skies, which he must scale before his journey is ended. I very many times have felt as though I was not a particle wiser since I graduated than before I first left home, yet I suppose I may ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... (the company of my) husband without a protector, and afflicted with calamity, hither have I come, O best of mountains, seeking my husband. Hast thou, O foremost of mountains, with thy hundreds of peaks towering (into the sky) seen king Nala in this frightful forest? Hast thou seen my husband, that ruler of the Nishadhas, the illustrious Nala, with the tread of a mighty elephant, endued with intelligence, long-armed, and of fiery energy, possessed of prowess and patience and courage and high fame? Seeing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... monster, in whose capacious belly so many human creatures lived and suffered, had dwindled to a walnut-shell, and yet beside her bulk how infinitely small had their own frail cockboat appeared as they shot out from under her towering stern! Then the black hull rising above them, had seemed a tower of strength, built to defy the utmost violence of wind and wave; now it was but a slip of wood floating—on an unknown depth of black, fathomless water. The blue light, which, at its first flashing over the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... emphasis of the word "purchase" were none too reassuring to Malbihn. Evidently, unless he found means to escape, this devil would have both his secret and his life before he was done with him. He wished he would be gone and take his evil-eyed companion away with him. The swaying bulk towering high above him, and the ugly little eyes of the elephant watching his every ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of mountains has no connection with our two great western mountain ranges. The towering plateaus, cut with yawning canyons, are plainly the result of some special volcanic action. This unknown region extends over a hundred miles northwest and southeast, and on all sides drops suddenly into the sandy ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... into the Market-Place before we knew where we were; and yonder in the street at the back of it was Viola's pension, and here on our right hand was Jimmy's hotel, and there, towering before us, was the Belfry. We looked at each other. And through the war and across nine years, it all came back ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... straight for two days. At the end of that time you will find yourself in the middle of a forest, and in front of you will be a tree towering high above the others. Cut it down and your fortune ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... around him towered mountains, reaching to the skies. The path was so winding, that, as he looked round bewildered, he could not even imagine how he came there. To retrace his steps, seemed quite as difficult as to proceed. The sun too had declined, or was effectually concealed by the towering rocks, for sudden darkness seemed around him. There was but one way, and Stanley prepared to scale the precipitous crag before him with more eagerness than he would a beaten path. He threw off his cloak, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... thus much was not small, and I hied, with renovated spirits, to the opposite brow. This proved to be a steep that could not be descended. The river flowed at its foot. The opposite bank was five hundred yards distant, and was equally towering and steep as that on which I stood. Appearances were adapted to persuade you that these rocks had formerly joined, but by some mighty effort of nature had been severed, that the stream might find way through the chasm. The channel, however, was encumbered with asperities, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... conception of American art may be modified by these considerations: that it requires more genius to build a free state than to make a sonnet, and the Colonists were mighty state-builders; that a ship is a beautiful object, and American ships with their graceful lines and towering clouds of canvas were once famous the world over; that architecture is a noble art, and Colonial architecture still charms us by its beauty and utility after three hundred years of experimental building. "Art" is a great word, and we use ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... deceit, is greatness. Here was one who could, with natural simplicity, amuse a child; and the same one could command and successfully wield a great army, and, with equal success, direct the destinies of a great nation; whose genius was tempered with simplicity and tenderness, and when towering most in its grandeur, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... wife, towering in her passion, "if you call me wicked in regard to your children, I will not continue to live under the ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... e'er my eye can see, Hills on each other rise, Towering their heads in majesty Far in the western skies; And as I view the landscape round, No artist here could dream The beauties of the Vale of Aire, ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... to do, until finally a favorable strong wind on the 4th of August fortunately blew the fleet out of the current. On the 10th of August the fleet offered an excellent and very hopeful appearance as it, in a most speedy wind, with high towering sails, was cutting its course through the little waves. On the 11th, at the hour of noon the happy signals indicating the sight of land were to be seen. Soon the charming coast of Long Island came into ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... brush the fields as visibly As a rough hand brushes against the nap Of gleaming cloth—killing the season's colour, Each hour charged with the wasting of a year; And sailors panting on their warping decks Will watch the sea steam like broth about them. You'll know what I know then!—That towering star Hangs like a fiery buzzard in the night Intent over our earth—Ay, now his journey Points, straight as a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh) |
