"Astonishing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on Nelson's?' 'What did you say?' asked Nelson. 'That it was not a gift,' replied Layman, 'as your Lordship had gained the victory by a turbot.' 'A turbot!' 'Yes, my lord, I well recollect your great desire to catch a turbot, and your astonishing many, by insisting upon its being immediately sent to Sir Hyde, who condescended to return a civil note; without which opening your Lordship would not have been consulted in the Cattegat, and without such intercourse your Lordship would not have got the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... her, and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing riddles, never did a kind smile come to visit Foker's lips. In fact he never heard ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... invisible substance which we continually breathe, which surrounds the whole surface of the earth, is very elastic, and possesses weight. It is always filled with an astonishing quantity of all kinds of exhalations, which are so finely subdivided in it that they are scarcely visible even in the sun's rays. Water vapours always have the preponderance amongst these foreign particles. The air, however, is also mixed with another elastic substance ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... crimes of the soul. In the packet of papers which the express had brought to Sir George Staunton from Edinburgh, and which Butler, authorised by his connection with the deceased, did not scruple to examine, he found new and astonishing intelligence, which gave him reason to thank God he ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... He might navigate the river with a big tea-kettle in the bottom of his boat, but he would be sure to set all the houses along the river on fire. And who was to pay the damages? Steam was, however, a reality, and the little Fire Fly went puffing and splashing up and down the river, alarming and astonishing the people along its banks. She could make the voyage from the upper end of the Tappan Zee to New York in a day, no matter how the wind blew. Hanz Toodleburg called the Fire Fly an invention of the devil, and nobody else. The bright ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... chemist's wife, and has the people of the baths to dinner. Mostextraordinary woman. I like her, I enjoy her society; but I can't follow her in her opinions. She says that only men are bad; that all animals are good; that it is only men who make them bad. Her views on hydrophobia are most astonishing. She says it is a mild and easy death, and sees no reason why the authorities should attempt to stamp it out. She quite frightened me with the story she told me of a mad dog that died in her arms. But ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... everything else had been going up at 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, 9% a year, the price of computers has gone down, at about 33% per year. . .a truly astonishing rate that lets you buy something hundreds of times better for less than the price was just 10 or 15 ...
— Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1989 - Estimated to 2010 • United States
... some news had come in to which the Colonel was pleased to give publicity. It was astonishing all the trifling tit-bits we did hear; and they occasionally excited interest—until discovered to be of home manufacture—the distinctive work of local genius. On this occasion, however, the tit-bit was "Official," ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offence, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... "have I recalled the mayor's look of intense disgust, the astonishing dignity of the commanding general, and the expression, half-sad, half-quizzical, on the face of the President at the evident infelicity of his introduction. If I did not leave that distinguished presence with my reputation for integrity ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... but happy. They certainly were well trained and efficient. The Science Community grew. In ten years it had a million people, and was a worldwide wonder of civic planning and organization; it contained so many astonishing developments in mechanical service to human welfare and comfort that it was considered as a sort of model of the future city. The common man there was provided with science-produced luxuries, in his daily life, that were in the rest of the world the privilege ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... demanded by his position as he had himself. And yet each, before the close of the interview, understood the point of view of the other. What he recognised was that, though she had not seen Sir Nigel since her childhood, she had in some astonishing way obtained an extraordinary insight into his character, and it was this which had led her to take her present step. She might not realise all she might have to contend with, but her conservative and formal action had surrounded her and her sister with ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... each one of the elephants who went through the military drill, there is no reason to doubt the entire ability of each individual to be trained to obey the whole thirty-three commands, and to remember them all accurately and without confusion. The most astonishing feature of the performance, aside from the perfect obedience of the huge beasts, was their easy confidence and accuracy ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... three young people this was the most surprising moment which life had yet afforded. It was an astonishing thing to find a fellow mortal there at all, but to find that mortal was the Scarhaven estate agent was literally short of marvellous. What was also astounding was to see Chatfield's only too evident distress. Swathed in a heavy, ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... his prospects, threw him self out of the Treasury window, was taken up alive, and lived thirty-six hours in the most perfect possession of his mental activity, his religion, and his reasoning faculties. With an astonishing composure he settled his affairs with both worlds. He never seemed to feel any remorse, or to reproach his conscience with the guilt of suicide. In vain had they entreated him to accept of this place. In a fatal moment he consented: after this, he never had a moment's peace, and little ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... three Persons make only one God; that the Son of God was made man; that the dead shall rise again; but also, that Jesus Christ becomes every day present on our altars, under the species of bread and wine, at the words of consecration; and you believe all the other astonishing wonders that are proposed to you in our holy religion: why, then, do you find such repugnance in believing those of the Lives of the Saints, which are far inferior to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... both his love for social management and his zeal for his church in this organization of worship; and when all hands were called aft, and stood round in decorous silence, he read the lesson for the day, and conducted the service with a gravity astonishing to the sailors, who had taken him for a mere dandy. Staniford bore his part in the responses from the same prayer-book with Captain Jenness, who kept up a devout, inarticulate under-growl, and came out strong ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... distances from each other some time this morning. Two were carefully placed on bench marks of the continental grid. In twenty minutes or so of cooperation, the distances of six such instruments could be measured with astonishing precision and tied in to the bench marks already scattered over the continent. Presently photographing planes would fly overhead, taking overlapping pictures from thirty thousand feet. They would show the survey points and the measurements between them would be exact, the photos could be used ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... attracted by his literary style. This gentleman's diction contains so much clearness, force and elegance that I can not resist quoting him verbatim: "The residentiary buildings lie on the ascent of the contiguous eminences, whose projecting parts and bending declivities, modeled by Nature, display astonishing harmoniousness. It contains an elegant profusion of wood, disposed in the most careless yet pleasing order; much of the park and its scenery is in view of the residence, from which vantage-point it presents a most agreeable appearance to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... threw the reins down on Lion's back, and said, briefly, "Can't you unharness him yourself, Buster?" she stuck out her tongue, opened her eyes wide, and said nothing except, "Yes, father." Then she proceeded, with astonishing speed, to put Lion into his stall, run the buggy into the carriage house, and slam the stable door, after which she tore up to her ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... of this particular. Lousteau paid the cabman, giving him three francs—a piece of prodigality following upon such impecuniosity astonishing Lucien more than a little. Then the two friends entered the Wooden Galleries, where fashionable literature, as it is called, used to reign ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Cairo offered no home; Levantines, who had fled from that underground world where every coin of reputation is falsely minted, refugees from the storm of the world's disapproval. There were Greeks with Austrian names; Armenians, speaking Italian as their native tongue; Italians of astonishing military skill, whose services were no longer required by their offended country; French Pizarros with a romantic outlook, even in misery, intent to find new El Dorados; Englishmen, who had cheated at cards ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... there was a hustle in both tents, and it was astonishing how quickly each scout managed to get some of his clothes on. A professional fireman could hardly have shown more expedition about dressing than Ned and Jack did, though hampered more or less in ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... effects of the interference of parents in the lives of their children, and of brothers and sisters in the affairs of each other. It becomes therefore, not only the story of an individual, but the life history of an entire family, the members of which are portrayed with astonishing vividness and realism. The hero of the book also illustrates, in his sufferings and failures, the unfortunate effects of a too narrow orthodoxy in religion, coupled with his family's interference with his growth out of this environment. Offsetting the tragedy of the story is "Hiram," ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... It is astonishing how cunning, wise and faithful an old lioness is. She seldom leaves her kittens. From the time they are six weeks old she takes them out to train them for the battles of life, and the struggle continues from birth to death. A ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... body of volunteers for the work was soon organized, and an official placed in charge of it. All night they worked without intermission, Beric and his comrades keeping together and astonishing those who were working with them by the strength and activity they displayed. But fast as they worked the flames advanced faster. They were half suffocated by smoke, and the sparks fell thickly round them. The workers carried the ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all. Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... that in which one might be likely to see the greatest number of old, and make the greatest number of new acquaintances. I lived there for more than thirty years, and the number of persons, chiefly English, American, and Italian, whom I knew during that period is astonishing. The number of them was of course all the greater from the fact that the society, at least so far as English and Americans were concerned, was to a very great degree a floating one. They come back to my memory, when I think of those times, like a long procession of ghosts! Most of them, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Hirtius that he would go and spend his summer at Athens, and return again when he entered upon his office. So he set out on his journey; but some delay occurring in his passage, new intelligence, as often happens, came suddenly from Rome, that Antony had made an astonishing change, and was managing the public affairs in harmony with the will of the senate, and that there wanted nothing but his presence to bring things to a happy settlement. Therefore, blaming himself for his cowardice, he returned to Rome, and was not deceived in his hopes at the beginning. For such ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... should, by going out from the forts, when the Indians were so generally watching around them, expose themselves to captivity or death, may at first appear strange and astonishing. But when the mind reflects on the tedious and irksome confinement, which they were compelled to undergo; the absence of the comforts, and frequently, of the necessaries of life, coupled with an overweening attachment to the enjoyment of forest scenes and forest pastimes, it ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... CANNOT CELEBRATE THE CENTENNIAL.—The city dailies criticise the suffrage association somewhat severely for declining to unite in the centennial celebration. Perhaps from the outlook of masculine satisfaction it may seem astonishing that patriotism should not inspire us with gratitude for the crumbs from the national table; that we should not rejoice at the great banquet being prepared. But it is as impossible for us to look from their standpoint, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the crater, but none was entirely ejected while we were there. Occasionally an explosion was heard like the bursting of heavy guns behind an embankment, and causing the earth to tremble for a mile around. The distance to which this mud had been thrown is truly astonishing. The ground and falling trees near by were splashed at a horizontal distance of 200 feet. The trees below were either broken down or their branches festooned with dry mud, which appeared in the tops of the trees growing on the side hill from the ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... It is astonishing how much better everything goes to music. The ragged paddling straightened out into steady, rhythmic dipping; drooping backs stiffened up, and aching ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... It is astonishing to see with what facility people daily take on trust things which they have it in their power to ascertain. The seventy-three owe a great part of the interest they have excited to a persuasion of their having voted either for a mild sentence on the King, or an appeal to the nation: yet this ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... returned, ushering in Master Peter Rainham and a fresh brace of Brilliana's servants, staggering, like their predecessors, under the weight of a great chest. The certainty that some astonishing jest was towards set Evander on the alert as he scrutinized the forbidding form ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... take (walking a mile and back, after breakfast); and, that hour excepted, and my meals, (barely the meals, for I remain not one minute after them,) the pen or the book is always in my hand." Our own time and country afford a yet more astonishing instance. Theodore Parker, to my certain knowledge, has often spent in his study from twelve to seventeen hours daily, for weeks together. But the result in all these cases has sadly proved the supremacy of the laws which were defied; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... carried off, not, as it seemed to me, without even a reverential demeanour on the part of his escort. Those who surrounded me, a kind of body-guard of six young men, had entirely recovered their composure, and behaved to me with a deference that was astonishing, but reassuring. From this time, I ought to say, though permitted to go where I would, and allowed to observe even their most secret rites, enjoying opportunities such as will never fall to another European, I was ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it. Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy—very unhappy—it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... said, with a smile, as he gazed at his rescuers. "Thank you, boys, and you, Drinkwater—very sincerely, one and all. I am grateful. Astonishing how helpless an accident like this makes a man. Now with a cold compress and a rest I ought soon ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... wounded. The whites rushed for their guns, but unfortunately not one weapon was ready capped, and it was some time before any of them could be discharged, when a volley caused the blacks to scamper off. It is most astonishing that the whole of the members of the party were not cut ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... scrambled to their feet again almost as soon as they touched the deck, and when they looked ahead, fully expecting to find the launch under the schooner's fore-foot and on the point of being run down, they saw an astonishing as well as a most discouraging sight. The boat was farther away than she was before, and her whole length could be seen now, for not only was she broadside on, but the darkness above and around her, which had hitherto rendered ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... smiled goody Liu, "you people eat just a little and finish. It's lucky you don't feel the pangs of hunger! But it isn't astonishing if a whiff of wind can puff ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... stamped his name upon the roll of famous men, whose industrial inventions have done so much towards the accomplishment of the marvellous progress of the present century. From the distillation he obtained the well-known Young's Paraffin Oil, and the astonishing developments of the process which have taken place since he obtained his patent in 1850, for the manufacture of oils and solid paraffin, must have been a source of great satisfaction to him before his ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... will be of any value against the power of 'armed nations,' it is necessary to provide modern weapons, and here again we are weak just where we should be strong.... It is one of the most astonishing features of our 'system' that, with all our enormous expenditure, we manage to drop behind other nations both in the quality of our weapons and the proportional number of them to the hands that would have to use them. The reason probably ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Paul it was very wonderful news. A mystery, as he said; quite a new and astonishing thought, that heathens had any share in God's love ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was painted wholly in yellow, except the blinds, which were green, is one of the few houses in the little town which has two stories and an attic. And this is why: Before the astonishing rise in the prosperity of Ville-aux-Fayes the first floor of this house, which had four chambers, each containing a bed and the meagre furniture thought necessary to justify the term "furnished lodgings," was let to strangers who were obliged to come to Soulanges on matters connected with the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Exchange members and firms, nevertheless, thanks to the general interest manifested, and the widespread advertising consequent thereto, contributions were received from generous friends outside of Wall Street, to an extent that was simply astonishing. Checks for $1,000 each were not unusual items, and as a rule the request was made, 'please do not publish my name.' A well known artist, in addition to a cash subscription, presented one of his paintings to the Committee. Through the kind assistance of the Chairman of The Stock Exchange Luncheon ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... sink under the intensity of painful sensations, that never has death presented itself to me under such terrible features as a prisoner a dungeon, where I might remain for years without ever hearing a friendly voice. I have been told that one of the Spaniards who defended Saragossa with the most astonishing intrepidity, utters the most dreadful shrieks in the tower at Vincennes, where he is kept confined; so much does this frightful solitude affect even the most energetic minds! Besides, I could not disguise from myself that I was not courageous; I have a bold imagination, but a timid character, ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... astonishing to us, as it did to Stafford himself, that the peers, after a solemn trial of six days, should by a majority of twenty-four voices, give sentence against him. He received, however, with resignation, the fatal verdict. "God's holy name be praised," was the only exclamation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... vegetables and fowls. The little garden on the roof was the envy of all Carrie's female friends—many of whom, indeed, began imitations of it, on a small scale. Under the hot sun, and with careful watering, everything made astonishing progress. The cutting of the mustard and cress had, of course, begun in little more than a week from the time when the garden had been completed, and the seeds sown. The radishes were fit for pulling three weeks later and, ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... Verily, with my spouse, I am in good health. I see my goddess become as beautiful in body as an Apsara. Verily, she is endued with as much comeliness and splendour as she had ever been before. All this, O great ascetic, is due to thy grace. Verily, there is nothing astonishing in all this, O holy Rishi of puissance ever unbaffled.' Thus addressed by the king, Chyavana said unto him, 'Thou shalt, with thy spouse, return hither tomorrow, O monarch!' With these words, the royal sage Kusika was dismissed. Saluting the Rishi, the monarch, endued ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... races may be developed out of the pre-existing one ad infinitum, or, at least, within any limit at present determined. Given sufficient time and sufficiently careful selection, and the multitude of races which may arise from a common stock is as astonishing as are the extreme structural differences which they may present. A remarkable example of this is to be found in the rock-pigeon, which Mr. Darwin has, in our opinion, satisfactorily demonstrated to be the progenitor of all our domestic pigeons, of which there are ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... very bold, and shew an astonishing play of imagination; in place of the naive simplicity and naturalness of antiquity, this modern genius gives us a dazzling display of wit and thought. To quote ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Visit to Victoria Gaol," through which runs a pathetic contrast of the English system of imprisonment for reformation with the Spanish vindictive methods of punishment. A souvenir of one of their many conferences was a dainty modeling in clay made by Rizal with that astonishing quickness that resulted from his Uncle Gabriel's training during ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... until at least the sixteenth edition, but in subsequent editions the hymns were all placed at the end of the book after the psalms. I doubt not that the Puritan youth, debarred of merry catches and roundelays, found keen delight in these rather astonishing renditions of the songs of Solomon, portions of Isaiah, etc. Those Scripture-Songs should be read quite through to be fully appreciated, as no modern Christian could be full enough of grace to sing them. Here is a portion of the song of ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... noticed her absence. "She does not waste time in her mission to procure that astonishing product of a shallow soil, her reasons; if such be the object of her search. But no: it signifies that she deems herself to have need of composure—nothing more. No one likes to be turned about; we like to turn ourselves about; and in the question of an act to be committed, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and was not even relaxed in the presence of a common enemy— is very fully recorded in the pages of Monstrellet and other contemporary historians. I have here only attempted to relate the events of the early portion of the struggle—from its commencement up to the astonishing victory of Agincourt, won by a handful of Englishmen over the chivalry of France. Here the two factions, with the exception of the Duke of Burgundy himself, laid aside their differences for the moment, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... interests were so largely wrapped-up in the story of that country. Ford was possessed of a very interesting personality, which was not revealed to the public until Mr. Rowland E. Prothero issued his excellent biography[164] in 1905, although Ford died in 1858. This delay is the more astonishing as Ford's Handbook for Travellers in Spain was one of the most famous books of its day. Ford's father, Sir Richard Ford, was a friend of William Pitt, and twice sat in Parliament, being at one time ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... tremendously impressed me was the coming back from death to life—for so it seemed to us. But what do you suppose must have been the feelings of those two women and the disciples, on that astonishing morning when the two Marys went at early dawn with spices to place about the Lord's body,—the body which they had seen die upon the cross two days before; the body they had seen lifted down from the cross and which they had helped to prepare for burial; ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... the second of these two assumptions, viz., that some at least among migratory birds must possess, by inheritance alone, a very precise knowledge of the particular direction to be pursued. It is without question an astonishing fact that a young cuckoo should be prompted to leave its foster parents at a particular season of the year, and without any guide to show the course previously taken by its own parents, but this is a fact which must be met by any theory of instinct which aims at being complete. Now upon our own ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... segment of the lobster (Fig. 3), in which the parts homologous with those represented in the figure of the typical vertebra (Fig. 2) are indicated by the same letters. The ingenuity of the comparison is astonishing. ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... an intelligent use of the revolving principle—that is the secret, the true secret, of the astonishing perfection of the industrial products of our epoch; this is what now gives to the steam-engine a rate entirely free from jerks. That is the reason why it can, with equal success, embroider muslins and forge anchors, weave the most delicate webs and communicate a rapid movement ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... evidence of this in the Trostgedanken, the Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence, which he laid down as the last literary utterance of his full and eventful career. But this is not all; for most astonishing of all in the richness of this well-rounded harmony of over ninety years of life is a lively source of humor, due more to endowment and inheritance from his mother than to her influence, as his letters to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... rich gold deposits had been discovered in the midst of the archipelago of the Caribs, but that it had not yet been visited. Off the left coast of Hispaniola there lies to the south and near to the port of Beata an island called Alta Vela. Most astonishing things are told concerning sea monsters found there, especially about the turtles, which are, so it is said, larger than a large breast shield. When the breeding time arrives they come out of the sea, and dig a deep hole in the sand, in which they deposit three or four hundred ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... so successful to-day as to procure for both ships a tolerably good supply of refreshments. In consequence of which, I, the next morning, gave every one leave to purchase what curiosities and other things they pleased. After this, it was astonishing to see with what eagerness every one caught at every thing he saw. It even went so far as to become the ridicule of the natives, who offered pieces of sticks and stones to exchange. One waggish boy took a piece of human excrement ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... Monsieur Etienne Dumont, of Geneva, the friend and commentator of old Jeremy Bentham, at Romilly's house in London, in 1789. He was a man of astonishing talents, sagacity, acuteness, and clearness of head. What part he had in the brilliant effusions of Mirabeau, and in the French Revolution, may be seen by his posthumous work, just published at Paris, entitled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... follows a steamer in the open sea, day after day, waiting for whatever may chance his way; and it is astonishing what strange objects he will swallow. These monsters are often caught on a hook baited with a lump of meat, and are hauled to the steamer's deck. One Shark was found to contain all the rubbish that had been pitched overboard; tin cans, a bundle of old ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... stigmas every day, so that they were thoroughly fertilised; and he left the same number of other flowers to the agency of insects. Afterwards he counted the seeds of both lots: the flowers which he had fertilised with such astonishing care produced 11,237 seeds, whilst those left to the insects produced 10,886; that is, a less number by only 351; and this small inferiority is fully accounted for by the insects not having worked during some days, when the weather was cold ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... and her curious friendship with Natalie. Audrey the careless, with her dark lazy charm, her deep and rather husky contralto, her astonishing little French songs, which she sang with nonchalant grace, and her crowds of boyish admirers whom she alternately petted and bullied—surely she and Natalie had ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to know that Josef's interest, stimulated by our mutual businessfriend, goes beyond my mere personality. He reminds me—Philippa is quite affected by this—that there are others. "The astonishing advantages ... must induce to serious consideration anyone who is looking after his own welfare, and that of those near and dear to him as well."—Yet Josef can be almost stern when there is occasion, and he tersely warns me that it is a chance which "probably NEVER ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... of Vorsteher, except incidentally in Section 7, which is the more astonishing, as the annual settlement of accounts, in the same book, in the handwriting of Muehlenberg, both before and after the adoption of this constitution, mention the settlement as made by the pastor, elders and Vorsteher. There are also entries ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... runs with great speed, and always prefers to trust to its legs rather than to its wings. It is crafty, and when alarmed it slips quickly out of sight behind a bush or through a hedge, and then runs away with astonishing rapidity, always remaining under cover until it reaches some spot where it deems itself safe. The male is not domestic, passing an independent life during a part of the year and associating with others of its own sex during the rest ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... at Hanover, Professor Dana had been much interested in Electro-magnetism, then a new science, and in preparing apparatus for exhibiting its wonders, freely stating his conviction that it would produce more astonishing results than any power previously known. When surprise was expressed at his selecting for his Athenaeeum lectures this subject, so little known even in Europe, and in which so few in this country would feel any interest, Dr. Dana replied that he had chosen it for those ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... inactivity was a great annoyance to his wife. According to several Balzacian writers, Madame Carraud became the type of the femme incomprise for Balzac, but the present writer is inclined to agree with M. Serval when he calls this judgment astonishing, since she was a woman who adored her husband and sons, was an author of some moral books for children, and nothing in her suggested either vagueness of soul or melancholy. Madame Carraud herself gives a glimpse of her married life in saying to Balzac that she and her husband are ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the peculiarity of the child, prematurely born within a month after. He had long passed the age at which children usually begin to walk, before he would even attempt to stand, but he had grown capable of a speed on all-fours that was astonishing. When at last he did walk, it was for more than two years with the air of one who had learned a trick; and throughout his childhood and a great part of his boyhood, he continued to go on all-fours rather than ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... behind that again. The buggy they say very nearly capsized going over the bridge of the creek when near Winnipeg, otherwise they got on beautifully; but it was a funny arrangement altogether, and they seemed to cover a quarter of a mile of ground as they left here. Winnipeg grows in a most astonishing way; every time we go in, a new avenue or street seems to have started up. Emigrants, they say, are coming in at the rate of a hundred a day. A few years ago the population was about five thousand, in 1878 ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... been thinking again to-day of those astonishing times when neither of us ever looked at a newspaper; when we were purely happy in the boundless consumption of paper, pencils, tea and our elders' patience; when we embraced the most severe literature, and ourselves ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim fingers. What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings is mere conjecture, for Colonel Sevier himself stepped up on the porch, laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone. What he said we didn't hear. The astonishing thing was that neither of them for the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them. I saw Nick's expression change. He smiled,—the smile the landlord had described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him. After that Colonel ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cleft. His university course had hardened rather than polished him. He still remained one of the people, rough almost to insolence, direct in speech, intolerant in his opinions, relying upon absolutely no one but himself; yet, with all this, of an astonishing degree of intelligence, and possessed of an executive ability little short of positive genius. He was a ferocious worker, allowing himself no pleasures, and exacting the same degree of energy from all his subordinates. He was widely ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the officials of the express company on one of these lines of railroad. The exhaustive amount of information that they had been able to collect regarding this interesting man with the wooden leg was astonishing. From out of the abundance of the data there were a few items that were of interest to the officer. Several of Eldridge's haunts when not actively engaged in his profession were located. In one of these haunts ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... in Prussia and in England, by this astonishing victory, was shared largely by the inhabitants of the country through which the French army had marched. Everywhere they had plundered and pillaged, as if they had been moving through an enemy's country instead of one they had professed ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... of this kind a simple "sweet" forms a most agreeable conclusion, and really, when one comes to experiment in this direction, it is astonishing what a variety of luxuries can be cooked and conveyed in a cup or small basin, holding little more than half a pint. Perhaps it may be helpful if I give recipes for a few of these trifles. Before doing so I should like to suggest that in packing the luncheon basket a little fruit, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... astonishing how little consciousness of time there is in these reminiscences. The seasons are all confounded, and it is as if things had happened not in succession but abreast. There was snow on the ground when her brother Jim was with her in the wash-house, making horse-hair snares to catch birds. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the major, when he had heard Cornish's story across the table, and during the consumption of a perfectly astonishing luncheon—"yes; half the trouble in this world comes from the incapacity of the ordinary human being to mind his own business." He operated on a creaming Camembert cheese with much thoughtfulness, and then spoke again. "I should like you to tell me," he ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... a sturdy army was more worthy of a gallant end than Jacson Gootes. He died, not in some burst of audacity such as may occasionally actuate men to astonishing feats, but doggedly and calmly in the line of duty. More than a mere hero, he was a ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... expression in serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the Dies Irae. Rhyme, alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of vowel and consonant values,—all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or the felicitous accident ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... throughout this astonishing phase of the inquiry remained perfectly calm and correct. It was no doubt the consciousness of being able to prove his innocence with such absolute conclusion that had steadied ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... great epochs are as astonishing as the exploits of individual frenzy. The era of the Greek rhapsodists, when a body of matchless epical literature was handed down by memory from generation to generation, and a recitation of the whole "Odyssey" was not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Edwin Reardon found himself regularly at work once more, ticking off his stipulated quantum of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages—a passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five for the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... trouble the reader with, as it was not very profound, both sides knowing very little on the subject. It did, however, end with our hero being convinced that he was desperately in love, and he talked about giving up the service as soon as he arrived at Malta. It is astonishing what sacrifices midshipmen will make for the objects of ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... think the discard of the Rejects two hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are three natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfection and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing." ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... frolicksome, and does not seem altogether happy except when he is fondled and petted, when he enjoys himself immensely. During the night he delights in active motion, climbing and playing like a kitten, often uttering a loud, clucking noise, which ends with a sharp, shrill call, of astonishing volume. The animal is not so ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Academy, the Oread Institute, the State Normal School, and the Roman Catholic Parochial schools. There are also several private schools of note. The educational interests of the city have kept pace with its rapid and astonishing growth. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... which he had stolen out while she wept, ignominiously, in that girl's arms? And then of a sudden he perceived, with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had never spoken. His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge. For the first time, he recalled that this quiet girl had been beautiful, the other night; and though now by day that beauty was rather of line than of color, he could not understand how it had been overlooked. Tiffin, meanwhile, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... to a queer little street. This little street must have been made on purpose for little boys and girls to have fun in, for there were all sorts of astonishing things there. There were jugglers doing strange tricks with tops and swords. There were acrobats, and candy-sellers and toy-sellers going about with baskets hung from long poles over their shoulders. It ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... have many lion-tamers and tiger-tamers, who rely simply upon human will and craft. Therefore it is not astonishing that St. Francis, who relied upon Divine power, should have been able to tame beasts. What is surprising is, that he should have been able to control men, who are ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... day to do that; and the Tallahatchie exhibits an astonishing power of resistance. Besides, she will soon repair her extra wheel, and have it ready for use. I am inclined to believe that we are wasting time, which will make it all the worse for us in the end," reasoned the commander. "I am prepared to board her, for I think ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... their own follies. Nor does he even excite emotion apart from a moral end. He lived to be ninety years old, and produced the most beautiful of his tragedies in his eightieth year, the "Oedipus at Colonus." He wrote the astonishing number of one hundred and thirty plays, and carried off the first prize twenty-four times. His "Antigone" was written when he was forty-five, and when Euripides had already gained a prize. Only seven of his tragedies have survived, but these are priceless treasures. The fertility ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... following abrazan los escudos, and the like), to that second marriage connecting the Cid afresh with royalty, which is almost as common in the chansons as the initial ingratitude. It would be altogether astonishing if the chansons had not made their way, when French literature was making it everywhere, into the country nearest to France. In face of the Poema del Cid, it is quite certain that they had done so, and that here as elsewhere French literature performed its vigorous, and in a way self-sacrificing, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... attempts succeeded with great dexterity in getting it round the body of the kid, which she gradually hauled up to the rock where she stood. Her movements were most graceful, and her address and dexterity truly astonishing. As soon as her success was complete she fondled and embraced the kid as though it had been a favourite sister whom she ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... he was known to be largely responsible for the massacres in the prisons of Paris early in September. Little is known about the publicist, Lebrun, on whom now rested the duty of negotiating with England, Spain, Holland, etc. It is one of the astonishing facts of this time that unknown men leaped to the front at Paris, directed affairs to momentous issues, and then sank into obscurity or perished. The Genevese Claviere started assignats and managed revolutionary finance; Servan ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... frank, chatty, and easily polite— completely disconcerted me, and I could see it disconcerted the Captain. It seemed to reduce the whole expedition to an ordinary picnic; and (more astonishing yet) the ladies accepted it for that. They fell in, one on each side of him, as he led the way to the waterfall, and for a climax Miss Belcher shook out a parasol which she had been carrying under her arm and spread it above her ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait of Mahomet II. It's an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When his beard comes he'll be Mahomet himself. Anyhow he has good taste, for Bergotte is a charming creature." And seeing how much I seemed to admire ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... later an astonishing whisper went circulating among the guests. Before they could grasp its significance Tom St. Clair and Jen's husband, broadly smiling, were hustling scattered folk into the parlour again and making clear a passage ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... break this rule against saying "good-bye," for our same splendid "Automobile Girls" are soon to be met with again, under astonishing and startling circumstances, and on historic ground. The next volume in this series will be published under the title: "THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON; Or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow." In this spirited narrative, the girls will be shown doing the work of true heroines, ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... touch the floor. She had carefully arranged her position so as to turn her back towards me, and she went on picking her teeth with a hair-pin. I stood aghast at this specimen of colonial manners, which was the more astonishing as I knew the girl had lived in the service of a gentleman's family in the North of England for ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... immense saws and knives, skeletons of animals, &c.; over which preside the surgeon and his assistant in appropriate dresses, with tin spectacles. This surgeon is generally the chief feature of the parade, and his reports are astonishing additions to the surgical lore of our country. He is the wit of the College,—the one who above all others is celebrated for the loudest laugh, the deepest bumper, the best joke, and the poorest song. How well he sustains his reputation may ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... and superior mockery in her eyes as well as in her voice, Keith felt somehow like a small boy. He was stung to a momentary astonishing fury. ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... herself to be decoyed into a visit. Instead of taking warning by numerous tokens of the real character of that woman, in her behaviour and in that of her visitants, she consented to remain there one night. The next morning took place that astonishing interview with you which she has since described to me. She is now warned against the like indiscretion. And, pray, what benevolent scheme would you ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown |
