"Colossal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to each other, as might have been expected, though as much regularity as possible has been observed. The most central spot is the Admiralty Square, a vast, irregular, open space, with the river on one side of it; and near the river stands, on a vast block of granite, a colossal equestrian statue of Peter the Great, with his arm stretched out in an attitude of command. Forming the different sides of this vast open space are some of the finest public buildings in the city: the Admiralty with its golden spire, the beautiful Isaac Church ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... this group the air had been heavy and black the whole time, showing that more land must be concealed there. Suddenly, in one of the brightest intervals, there came a rift in this curtain, and the summits of a colossal mountain mass appeared. Our first impression was that this mountain — Mount Thorvald Nilsen — must be something over 20,000 feet high; it positively took our breath away, so formidable did it appear. But ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... being hurtled at terrific thundering speed, by some strange power but half understood, through the black corridors of the night that reigned under old Manhattan, to some unseen goal. It was magnificent; it was colossal; but it was uncanny. Mr. Neal had always been moved by the romance of the subway, but tonight, in his elevation of spirit, it seemed something of epic quality, full of a strange, unreal grandeur. Faint ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at Baalbec is the foundation platform upon which the temples stand. Even the colossal fabrics of Ancient Egypt dwindle before this superhuman masonry. The platform itself, 1,000 feet long, and averaging twenty feet in height, suggests a vast mass of stones, but when you come to examine the single blocks of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... cut for you where needed: August the Strong's Hunting-Lodge (JAGDHUTTE) is here (August went thither in a grand way, 1708, with his Wife); Lodge still extant, by the side of a wood;—Lilienstein towering huge and sheer, solitary, grand, like some colossal Pillar of the Cyclops, from this round Pediment of Country which you have been climbing; tops of Lilienstein plumed everywhere with fir and birch, Pediment also very green and woody. August the Strong, grandly visiting here, 1708, on finish of those stair-steps cut for you, set up an Ebenezer, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... used to enjoy your visits so much, partly because of the way in which you always talked of Dad. She left you some jewelry that she was fond of, and that colossal old mahogany buffet that you used to rave over whenever you came up. Heaven knows what you'll do with it! It's a white elephant. If you add another story to it, you could rent it out ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... were we destined to remain up there very long. We heard colossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the Rajput's head reappeared through the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... a giant, towering well over six feet in height. On several occasions when the expedition's cars had stalled in deep sand he had strikingly demonstrated the colossal ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... and his ignorance colossal. What time he could spare from his English tailor—"and you just ought to see his clothes, and especially his checkerboard waistcoats"—had been spent in abusing everything in English art that wasn't three hundred years old, and going into raptures over Lincoln Cathedral. The more ...
— A Gentleman's Gentleman - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... affairs of so great a nation. In the centre of the Place is an Egyptian column, which was with much difficulty brought from Egypt, and raised with considerable ingenuity where it now stands, without any accident; gorgeous fountains of bronze and gold are constantly playing, whilst colossal statues, being allegorical representations of the principal towns of France, are placed at regular distances, and appear as it were in solemn contemplation of the splendid scene by which they are surrounded. ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... letters and sending off telegrams. The letters he signed and had posted himself, so that I never learnt his real name—not during that fortnight—but I gathered enough to be aware that he was a man whose business interests must have been colossal and world-wide. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... Pacific being in a sailing vessel, was a longish one and occupied nearly ten weeks from start to finish. However, anchor was dropped at last; and on August 23, 1855, a "colossal attraction" was announced in "Lola Montez in Bavaria" at the Victoria Theatre, Sydney. There, thanks to the interest aroused by her exploits in other parts of the world, the newcomer was assured of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Deutschland was a colossal beehive. If Frederick the Great started the beehive, William the Second was increasing its size to unbelievable proportions. Insignificant villages everywhere contained millions of dollars' worth of machinery, manufacturing goods of untold ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... sound of sliding ladders on the walls outside. The workmen had finished their task. A moment later a great bell overhead rang mellowly; the colossal sphere trembled and rocked and then rose and swung easily forward like the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... woefully torn and much-soiled shirt-waist; a gorgeous gold watch worn on her breast like a medal; a black taffeta skirt, which, under the glue-smeared apron, emitted an unmistakable frou-frou; three Nethersole bracelets on her wrist; and her feet incased in colossal shoes, broken and stringless. The latter she explained ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... A colossal statue of the Emperor Napoleon, thirty feet high, is to be placed on the top of the Triumphal Arch, at the end of the Champs ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... with all possible respect, the Senora Montfort, though high-born and accomplished, is a hysterical wildcat. You did well, my child; you did extremely well. So long as I have found you, nothing matters; but, nothing at all. As my great, my gigantic friend, my colossal preserver, el Capitan Gimmo, says, 'Ourrah ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... morning to dawn the hermit arose, took Mazin with him, and they ascended the mountains, till they reached a structure resembling a fortress, which they entered, and proceeded into the inmost court, in which was an immense colossal statue of brass, hollowed into pipes, having in the midst of it a reservoir lined with marble, the work of magicians. When Mazin beheld this he was astonished, and began to tremble with fear at the vastness of the statue, and what miraculous power it might contain. The hermit now kindled a fire, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... construct the Servian wall. The new continuous city-wall began at the river below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications—portions of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height—emerging as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Geoffrey, with his thick legs planted apart, gazed round the rooms, and made his comments in French to Ciccio. When they climbed the stairs, he fingered the big, smooth mahogany bannister-rail. In the bedroom he stared almost dismayed at the colossal bed and cupboard. In the bath-room he turned on ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... through hexameters and pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket; with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the "magnificoes" of mankind—the colossal figures which overtopped the age by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour—the "dii majorum gentium," who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell saw nothing great but his tailor—nothing worthy of respect among the human arts but the art of cutting out a coat—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... their chief feature. It is simply colossal. Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... statues. The death of the duke of Mantua left him to his own resources, and for several years he earned a precarious maintenance from these restorations and the commissions of goldsmiths and jewellers. In 1640 he executed for Pietro Buoncompagni his first work in marble, a colossal statue of San Filippo Neri, with kneeling angels. Immediately after, he produced a similar group, representing the execution of St Paul, for the church of the Barnabite Fathers in Bologna. These works, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... His outlook upon the country, its increasing power and wealth, fascinated my imagination. Was I not resolved to be rich myself? And for moments I was under the spell of his great power. He was a world thinker, but with his own country forefronted in the playing of a colossal part. It appealed to my English blood, that blood which does great deeds through great vision, and then repents the iniquities along the way and corrects them at last. And who was Douglas in spirit? ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... you fellows have your bullocks last night?" demanded Martin, his eye resting on the sun-cracked stucco which covered three-fourths of Damper's colossal personality. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... having tied the traces, and a second time the great yard gates were opened, and in spite of the press closed again and barricaded by the porter Vernet, and M. Moulin himself, both of whom were men of colossal strength. The aides-de-camp, who had remained in the carriage until then, now alighted, and asked to be shown to the marshal; but Moulin ordered the porter to conceal them in an outhouse. Vernet taking one in each hand, dragged them off despite their struggles, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the great Premier, is a matter of history. He has frankly owned that if the decisive battle should have resulted in a Prussian defeat, he had resolved not to survive the shipwreck of his hopes and schemes. And there was a period in the course of the colossal struggle of Koeniggraetz, when to many men it seemed that the wielders of the needle-gun were having the worst of the battle. An awful hour for Bismarck, conscious of the load of responsibility which he carried. With great effort he could indeed maintain a calm visage, but his heart was beating and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the colossal shock of the American war and a sudden transvaluation of all the old values. Anti-clericalism got on its legs and Socialism got on its legs, and out of the two grew that great movement for the liberation of the common people, that determined and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... for so long a period, buried in sand, that even its existence remained unsuspected. It had been dedicated to Isis by the Queen of Rameses the Great; and the descriptions which travelers give of it, resemble those of the palaces in the "Arabian Nights." Four colossal figures, sixty-one feet in height, are seated in front. Eight others, forty-eight in height, and standing up, support the roof of the principal inner hall, in which gigantic bas-reliefs represent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... which naturally horses do not do, or they would fall—and this perchance came about because he was not accustomed to ride, nor used to horses as he was to other animals—this work would be absolutely perfect, since the proportion of that horse, which is colossal, is very beautiful; and on the base there are these letters: PAULI ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... mother-o'-pearl flakes of white wild roses, that drifted down the red rock into water green as onyx. There were blossomy bits of Holland and long tracts of Switzerland. Glacier-mills in narrow gorges were like empty niches for colossal statues of saints; pink and white orchards foamed at the feet of ancient look-out towers; black rocks, like huge watch-dogs, seemed to crouch on cushions of wild flowers; and weeping willows fringed the river with silver before it dashed ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... America, which was of colossal size, represented a woman seated, leaning her left hand upon a rock. The right hand held slightly uplifted a bunch of maize and tobacco plant; her head wore a crown in which the architectural embattlements ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... invisible, but I saw the outline limn itself upon the air, as though slowly revealed by the rising of a curtain. It apparently had not then quite concentrated to the normal proportions, but was spread out on all sides into space, huge, though rapidly condensing, for I saw the colossal shoulders, the neck, the lower portion of the dark jaws, the terrible mouth, and then the teeth and lips—and, as the veil seemed to lift further upon the tremendous face—I saw the nose and cheek bones. In another moment I should have looked ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... without the French police having their suspicions aroused? It is a case, my dear Watson, where the law is as dangerous to us as the criminals are. Every man's hand is against us, and yet the interests at stake are colossal. Should I bring it to a successful conclusion it will certainly represent the crowning glory of my career. Ah, here is my latest from the front!" He glanced hurriedly at the note which had been handed in. "Halloa! ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love—it was the merest bud—red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... two possible solutions to the question were left, creating two very distinct groups of supporters: on one side, those favoring a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favoring an "underwater boat" of tremendous ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... easy carelessness, and that slow drawl of his, as if he were talking airy nothings in a London drawing-room, instead of recounting the most daring, most colossal piece of effrontery the adventurous ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down. Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... exactness the details of his crime. He was convicted, but with extenuating circumstances, and condemned to hard labour in Siberia for fifteen years. He heard his sentence grimly, silently, and thoughtfully. His colossal fortune, with the exception of the comparatively small portion wasted in the first wanton period of his inheritance, went to his brother, to the great satisfaction ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... transactions, it postponed for a half century the inevitable conflict between capital and labor, the first outbreaks of which in Europe had been with difficulty suppressed, when the news of good tidings gave promise of unexpected relief. Credit revived, new enterprises of colossal magnitude were undertaken, and the demand for labor quickly exceeded the supply. Emigration to America rose to incredible proportions. Had Mr. Gallatin lived, he would have found new elements to be weighed in his nice balance of probabilities. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... most lawful fashion. One of the greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune... What! You don't know the story? Well, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... Sphinx! The Pyramids are thine; Their giant summits guard thee night and day, On thee they look when stars in splendor shine, Or while around their crests the sunbeams play: Thine own coevals, who with thee remain Colossal Genii of ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... his might, till suddenly he became aware that he was vanquished in this curious duel. His brain grew confused, and to his fancy it seemed that the woman before him had shifted shape into the likeness of colossal and horrid spider sitting at the mouth of her trap, and that these bones were the relics of ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... workmen, seeing the direction in which the body lay, dug down just above where he thought the head might be, and his shovel struck the nose. The face and head were soon uncovered, and in a short time the entire figure exposed to view. There then appeared to the few assembled spectators the colossal, well-proportioned form of a human being of ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... containing those splendid green carbonates of copper from the mines in the Uralian Mountains, known commonly as Malachite, and when in a polished state vulgarly mistaken for a green and beautifully veined marble. Most visitors on examining these lumps of malachite will think of the beautiful colossal furniture manufactured of it by the Russians, and exhibited by them in their department of the Great Exhibition. The next three cases (52-54) are filled with series of sulphates, and some nitrates, including native nitre, or saltpetre. The Sulphates ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... anatomy were imitated by painters and sculptors, who thought that the grand style lay in the presentation of theatrical athletes, but who could not seize the secret whereby the great master made even the bodies of men and women—colossal trunks and writhen limbs—interpret the meanings of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them, by a law of his own, make his own ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... five thousand dollars, so that a man with a pack of fine furs was a capitalist. The profits of the business were good for trapper, very large for the trader, who doubled his first gain by paying in trade; but they were huge for the Albany middleman, and colossal for the New Yorker ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was an Asiatic, and a soldier in a colonial regiment. Of a colossal stature, short hair, a nose extremely large, an enormous mouth, dark complexion, he made a most hideous appearance. At first he had placed himself in the middle of the raft, and, at each blow of his fist, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... two possible solutions of the question, which created two distinct parties: on one side, those who were for a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those who were for a submarine ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... and the rococo stucco-work are due to the restorations of 1740. The apse contains remains of mediaeval painting—a seated Christ of colossal size surrounded by the symbols of the four Evangelists, with raised right hand and a closed book in the left; on one side S. John the Baptist holding an open scroll, and on the other a saint in green, with gold-shot stole ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... all the colossal Oriental market right at your door," I said to Editor Shihotsu of the Kokumin Shimbun a day or two ago, "what excuse is there for further dependence on the government? What can be the effect of your new tariff except to increase the burdens of the farmer for the ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... quarrel between rich and poor definitely settled? Charles Kingsley (of whom the moralist was writing) seems really to have believed it, and attributed the exulting affirmative to—the Crimean War! The Crimean War, after our five years of colossal nightmare, looks to us like a bicker of gnats in a beam; yet perhaps any war will do for a text, since any war will produce some moral upheaval in the generations concerned. Let us suppose, then, that the British were seriously turned to domestic politics in 1855; let us admit that they are ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... of the stables, where he had been regaling himself with the company of his fellow-creatures the horses ever since breakfast. But that was no matter to my little namesake; as soon as the colossal person of her father darkened the door, she uttered a shrill scream of delight, and, quitting her mother's side, ran crowing towards him, balancing her course with outstretched arms, and embracing his knee, threw back her head and laughed in his face. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... interview our wrong-directed young friend went home with more clearly defined purposes touching her conduct toward her husband than she had hitherto entertained. She saw him in a new aspect, and in a character more definitely outlined. He loomed up in more colossal proportions, and put on sterner features. All disguises were thrown away, and he stood forth, not a loving husband, but the tyrant of her home. Weak, jealous, passion-tost child! how this strong, self-willed, false woman of the world had bewildered her thoughts, and pushed her ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... cold air was intense. I walked to the end of the Quay and leaned on the stone parapet. The Neva seemed vast like a huge, white, impending shadow; it swept in a colossal wave of frozen ice out to the far horizon, where tiny, twinkling lights met it and closed it in. The bridges that crossed it held forth their lights, and there were the gleams, like travelling stars, of the passing trams, but all ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... to many of the great violinists of his time, who all had their special merits. One criticism, in which Sivori is compared with Spohr, may be interesting: "Spohr is of colossal stature, and looks more like an ancient Roman than a Brunswicker; Sivori is the antithesis of Spohr in stature. Spohr has the severe phlegmatic Teutonic aspect; Sivori has the flashing Italian eye and variability of feature. ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... soon overpaid the score presented by the goddess Fortune—his nerves were sadly jangled. A horror of the human face obsessed his waking and sleeping hours; he dreamed of colossal countenances with threatening eyes, a vast composite of the audiences he nightly faced. As his popularity increased the waning of his self-respect told him that he must go into retreat, anywhere out of the musical world—else would his art suffer. It did ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... thousand people on ascending galleries, protected from the sun by a canopy of spangled silk; an arena three acres large carpeted with sand, cinnabar and borax, and in that arena death in every form, on those galleries colossal delight. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... "He's running a colossal bluff, I think. He's good, all right, but he lacks quite a lot of being omnipotent. But don't get too cocky, either. Plenty has happened to plenty of women here, and men too—and plenty may happen to us unless we put out a few jets. Keep a stiff upper ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... nothing," says Governor Ford, "and everything from abroad was paid for by the borrowed money expended among us." Not only upon the railroads, but on the canal as well, the work was begun on a magnificent scale. Nine millions of dollars were thought to be a mere trifle in view of the colossal sum expected to be realized from the sale of canal lands, three hundred thousand acres of which had been given by the general Government. There were rumors of coming trouble, and of an unhealthy condition of the banks; but it was considered disloyal to look too curiously into such matters. ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... perhaps the simple one that the means which a man takes to ruin or seriously damage himself generally do seem a mystery to others, and probably are so to himself. Nor is there anything more unusual in the colossal irony of the situation, when we find Scott, just before his own ruin, and in the act of giving his friend Terry the actor a guarantee (which, as it happened, he had to pay), writing[36] words of the most excellent sense on the rashness of engaging ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... African hunters who train falcons to dart on gazelles, and pick out their beautiful eyes. The illusiveness of life that results from teeming love and trust is as a mist of gold sifted into the atmosphere, through which all the objects of our regard loom, colossal and glittering. As we advance in years, we should indeed learn to recognize, and make allowance for, this refraction and these tints, but without ceasing to enjoy the beautiful aggrandizement they bestow. When there is danger that a character will melt ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... defaced! The path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine Hill, and seek among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theater, the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero's palace; survey the other hills of the city,—the vacant space is interrupted only by ruins and gardens. The Forum of the Roman people, where they assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now inclosed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops for the most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... plain, about five leagues in diameter, at a distance of scarcely two from the spot they had reached. At the base of all the mountains, rising upon their sides, and extending nearly a mile inward upon the plain, was a dark green forest of colossal trees and florid shrubbery, girding it around; while the even valley itself exhibited large tracts of uncultivated fields, fenced in with palisades, and regular, even to monotony, both in size and form. "Large herds of deer, cattle, and horses, were seen in the openings of the forest, ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... more was known than of all the rest of the continent together—that there were pyramids and ruined cities, colossal statues, temples and tombs, crocodiles and hippopotami in the waters of the sacred river, and Christian Copts and dark-skinned Mahommedans dwelling on its banks. But few had explored the mighty remains of its past glory, or made their way either to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... I'm ill at ease, touching a certain matter I've taken to heart—don't speak of't—and besides I have a sort of horror of my bed. Last night a squadron charged me in a dream, With Isis and Osiris at the flanks, Towering and waving their colossal arms, While in the van a fiery chariot roll'd, Wherein a woman stood—I knew her well— Who seem'd but ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... an heroic race: A giant's strength, a maiden's grace, Like two in one seem to embrace, And match, and bend, and thorough-blend, in her colossal form and face. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... took the words out of her mouth. "With such colossal cheek what NEED have you of confidence, which is such an ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... tell you what to say." I paused, and stood over that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Lady Macbeth, not Catherine de Medici, not Phillip the Second, not Nero, not any face you have ever seen, but a gathering up from all the faces you have seen—the greatness, the splendor, the savagery, the greed, the pride, the hate, the mercilessness, into one colossal, terrifyingly Satanic woman-face. The first was clothed in a simple, soft, white robe; the other in a befitting tragic splendor, mostly blood-red. I looked from one to the other. What immeasurable distance between them! What single point have they in common? But as I look back and forth ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... hardly a necessary medium for thought, and magnificently uncertain of mood. Moreover, whether riding a donkey up the steep dusty grades of the Yosemite, or half veiled in a mist of steam, reeking of Hell, or standing with wondering eyes and parted lips among the colossal trees of Calaveras, she was always beautiful. And Trennahan worshipped her beauty with the strength of a passion which had sprung from a long and recuperative sleep. That he was twice her age mattered nothing to him now. Nothing mattered but that ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of identity. The doorkeeper clearly did not know all the members of the gang by sight, but it might be different upstairs. On the whole it seemed to him that luck had served him very well so far, but that there was such a thing as trusting it too far. To enter that room was a colossal risk. He could not hope to sustain his part indefinitely; sooner or later he was almost bound to betray himself, and then he would have thrown away a ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... originally a FISHMONGER, keeping a shop near Temple Bar. By embarking in this speculation he laid the foundation of the most colossal fortune that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... mouthed at me. We had reached the stage at which we had become intensely patriotic by the singing of songs. A beautiful actress, who had no thought of doing "her bit" herself, attired as Britannia, with a colossal Union Jack for background, came before the footlights and sang the ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or wealth. Public edifices of colossal grandeur were multiplied. Meanwhile the people at large were being fashioned to that self-conscious and intelligent activity which is fostered by the modes of life peculiar to political and social centers in a condition of continued ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... years, from 1870 to 1880, we produced over seven hundred millions of dollars of precious metals, and the last year the valuation is estimated at seventy-five millions in gold and silver; and rising above these colossal and phenomenal figures, our great manufacturing people during the past year have produced not less than five thousand millions of dollars in valuation. The mind staggers in the presence of these ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman
... instant he was plucked from her by a resistless force and hurled violently to the ground. Dazed and half-stunned he looked up and saw the elephant standing over him with one colossal foot poised over his prostrate body, ready to crush him to pulp. Brave as the Chinaman was he trembled with terror at ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... substantially an obscure person, but I have at least one distinction to my credit of such colossal dimensions that it entitles me to immortality—to wit: I refused a book of yours, and for this I stand without competitor as the prize ass ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... moreover, very clear that the Germans had early realised that the war was to be one calling for colossal supplies of munitions; supplies, indeed, upon such a stupendous scale as the world had never before dreamed of, and they also realised the vital necessity for heavy artillery. They began with an inferior field gun, and they never stopped to remedy this defect, ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... Of Troy, a colossal wooden statue of Pallas Minerva, which "fell from heaven." It was carried off by the Greeks, by whom the city was taken, and burned ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... not that shaft that made us clutch each other. No! It was that through it uprose a colossal column of the cubes. It stood a hundred feet from us. Its top was another hundred feet above the level of our ledge and its length ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... up for himself a fanaticism quite as gloomy and intense. He lost sight of God the Father, and night and day dreamed only of God the Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise out of its own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black with the everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled and perplexed Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to administer—and to his unspeakable ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as particles in a collective humanity, the "colossal man." But would there be much satisfaction in existence when individuality and personal consciousness had been lost? Would the prospect lead the ordinary man to work and suffer for generations to come, at all events, for any beyond the ...
— The Religious Situation • Goldwin Smith
... was the contrast of the great masses of lamplit foliage and the dark sapphire night sky with just one blue star set overhead in the middle of the largest patch. In the dark walks, too, there are crowds of people whose faces you cannot see, and here and there a colossal white statue at the corner of an alley that gives the place a nice, artificial, eighteenth century sentiment. There was a good deal of summer lightning blinking overhead, and the black avenues and white statues leapt out every ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out into Perleberg,—a ricketty old place, full of rats and legends. There is a colossal figure in the market-place of an armed knight, eighteen or twenty feet high, gazing eternally into the fruit baskets below. He has his head uncovered, his hand upon his sword, and is made of stone; but who he is nobody seemed to know; I was only told that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... a while, I myself struggling with a sickening sense of despair against this newborn and most colossal folly. I think that I was always possessed of an average amount of self-control, but my great fear now was lest my secret should in any way escape me. Mabane's words had carried conviction with them. Life itself for these few deadly minutes ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arranged in storied box Of triple epoch, we survey the rocks, A learned nomenclature! Behold in time Strange forms imprison'd, forms of every clime! The Sauras quaint, daguerrotyped on slate, Obsolete birds and mammoths out of date; Colossal bones, that, once before our flood, Were clothed in flesh, and warm'd with living blood; And tiny creatures, crumbling into dust, All mix'd and kneaded in one common crust! Here tempting shells exhibit ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... miles away when Hoddan fired his rockets. They made a colossal cloud of vapor in emptiness. The yacht stirred faintly, shifted deftly, lost just a suitable amount of velocity—which now was nearly straight up from the planet—and moved with precision and directness toward the liner. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... Alhambra; while below the narrow windows, and extending downwards to the marble panelling, runs a grand series of gold-grounded mosaics, their subjects taken from the Old and New Testaments. But far older than even these are the colossal grim circles of saints and apostles who cling to the roof of the choir, and yield in size only to the awful figures of the Saviour, the Virgin, and Saint Paul, enthroned in the apsides of the nave and aisles. The ambones, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... picture in his brain of the supposed murderer of McGregor in the wood at Mambury as that murderer had been described to him by the police that morning, from a verbal portrait after the landlord of the Talbot Arms. This colossal, red-faced, loud-spoken person, who required a large and roomy berth, was certainly "not" the rather slim young man, a little above the medium height, with a dark moustache and a gentle musical voice, whom the inn-keeper had seen in an excited mood on the hunt for McGregor along ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... Taj, especially as the lamp is exquisite in workmanship and adds rather than detracts from the stately beauty of the interior. But just the same the first verdict of the spectator is that Lord Curzon displayed a colossal egotism in ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... sacred lake, over which the bodies of the dead were carried by the priests before burial, and the beautiful Mokattam Hills bounding the view, wearing the soft lilac hue of distance. Only two or three places on earth can rival the overwhelming interest which the city possesses. But the colossal associated temples of Karnac and Luxor are absolutely unique. There is nothing on earth to equal them. They are man's greatest achievements in religious architecture. Long rows of stupendous pillars, covered from base to top with coloured pictures ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... for a time deceive, And prove me one too ready to believe, Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act, I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact. ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... whole, I had a high old time among the Orientalists. But when discussion ensued, I longed to throw off my disguise and rush, Achilles-like, into the fray. But MAX might have thought that inconsistent with my "colossal humanity;" so, very unwillingly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... plying pilot. Somewhere, in that pale phantasmagoria of cliff and cloud, our haven lay concealed; and somewhere to the east of it—the only sea- mark given—a certain headland, known indifferently as Cape Adam and Eve, or Cape Jack and Jane, and distinguished by two colossal figures, the gross statuary of nature. These we were to find; for these we craned and stared, focused glasses, and wrangled over charts; and the sun was overhead and the land close ahead before we found them. To a ship ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artificial channels of water under yellow-tinted trees, of rustic bridges going nowhere in particular, and of a kind of brickwork ruined castle, greatly decayed and ivy-grown, in which we sat for a long time looking out upon a lawn and a wide gravel path leading to a colossal frontage of conservatory. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... to the race in its struggles upward from one source as from no other. In history one figure appears colossal and unique. Whether we classify Jesus Christ with men, or regard Him as a special divine manifestation is of little consequence in our inquiry. If He is the consummate flower of the evolutionary process, then, because of some unexplained influence, that process reached a degree of perfection in ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... bombast and tinsel" of Voltaire. The praises of Homer and Ossian he was never wearied of sounding. "Read again," he said to an officer on board the BELLEROPHO—"read again the poet of Achilles; devour Ossian. Those are the poets who lift up the soul, and give to man a colossal greatness." [1914] ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... still unwilling to retire. My aunts cried out upon the "spoiled child, the most unreasonable child that ever was,—if brother could but open his eyes to see it,—who was never willing to go to bed." They did not know that, so soon as the light was taken away, she seemed to see colossal faces advancing slowly towards her, the eyes dilating, and each feature swelling loathsomely as they came, till at last, when they were about to close upon her, she started up with a shriek which drove them away, but only to return ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... colossal marble carved by an American. Fronting it on one of the buttresses of the main entrance of the Capitol, is the second, also by Greenough. It is a group called "The Rescue," and shows a pioneer saving his wife and child from being tomahawked by an Indian, ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... to Duncan, and to you, if you are the right sort of woman," was Lady Alicia's retort. And still again I was impressed by the colossal egoism of the woman confronting me, the woman ready to ride rough-shod over the world, for all her sparkling veneer of civilization, as long, as she might reach her ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... beautiful. And in the gallery of Nature hung Colossal pictures hard against the sky, Set forests gorgeous with a hundred hues; And with each morning, some new wonder flung Before the startled world; some daring shade, Some strange, new scheme of colour and of form. Autumn spoke loudly ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... into the house, where the females were already astir; Zillah urging flakes of flame up the chimney with a colossal bellows; and Mrs. Heathcliff, kneeling on the hearth, reading a book by the aid of the blaze. She held her hand interposed between the furnace-heat and her eyes, and seemed absorbed in her occupation; desisting from it only to chide ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... common thing for even the higher types of civilized men to make in home-building just as serious mistakes as are made by wild animals and savages. For example, among the men of our time it is a common mistake to build in the wrong place, to build entirely too large or too ugly, and to build a Colossal Burden instead of a real Home. From many a palace there stands forth the perpetual question: "Why ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... hills behind them, with their lower slopes covered with thousands of healthy-looking firs, pines, and some deciduous trees, while the bare moorland above formed a fine background. On the hill "Beinn-a-Bhragidh," at a point 1,300 feet above sea-level, standing as if looking down on all, was a colossal monument erected to the memory of the duke's grandfather, which could be seen many miles away. The duke must have been one of the largest landowners in Britain, as, in addition to other possessions, he owned the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... all the silly details of the affair. My cheeks are burning now at the thought of my colossal folly. He won his mother over to his side. He was an only child; and she would have chopped off her hand to serve him. She joined her persuasions to his. He swore if I married him he would go out West, turn over that everlasting new leaf, and make his fortune. He wanted ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of Belgium and of Luxemburg. This was an illuminating, indeed an ominous, experience. Entering the Kaiser's dominions by the route from the town of Luxemburg to Treves, one came of a sudden upon a colossal detraining station that was not quite completed, fulfilling no conceivable peaceful object and dumped down on the very frontier—anything more barefaced it would be difficult to conceive. Treves ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... said, "do you not see that the very fact that the chevalier is trying to induce you to go to France alone with him is proof either of his villainy or of his colossal stupidity? Were he the angel of light he has sometimes seemed to you, and should he carry you safely to France and deliver you into the hands of your friends, yet who, in gay and skeptical Paris, would not be willing to believe ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... in truth as if he were well able to take care of himself in most circumstances, being of colossal bulk although somewhat ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Missourian led his guest inside a small private office, handed him to a chair and stood up before him, big, colossal, dominating the younger man, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Silver was a financier in the great style, and a superlatively honest one. He had the initiative, the knowledge, and above all the judgment that made some men call him the Napoleon of Threadneedle Street. At forty-five he launched the Union Bank of Brazil and Uruguay; and to that colossal undertaking he devoted the last twenty-five years of his strenuous ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Damer's going to Italy for the winter, 'the great duke should beg Mrs. Damer to give him something of her statuary; and it would be a greater curiosity than anything in his Chamber of Painters. She has executed several marvels since you saw her; and has lately carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which is the most beautiful in the world, next to the Ponte di Trinita and was principally designed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... around me so much to be done—so much that I can not touch because of lack of means. But, being in the work to stay, I may, in the end, contribute my share to the betterment of man. If I have suffered much to build up this work, I can not feel that it is a sacrifice. It is a colossal opportunity. The greater the sacrifice, the more extensive the opportunity. Whatever may have been accomplished already is certainly due more to my wife's superior judgment than to my own activity. Whatever I have been able to do myself here in Mississippi for my people has been due, first, ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... airfields jammed, all available planes, new, old, obsolescent and obsolete assembled, and for three days and nights the great fleets shuttled backandforth over the jungled area, dropping thousands of tons of incendiary bombs. Following close behind, still more planes dropped cargoes of fuel to feed the colossal bonfire. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore |
