"Frightful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if, having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this means death and diseases being introduced, with a ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... an accident again changed the current of my ideas. When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... according to the most competent authorities. In Odessa alone more than one thousand persons were killed and many thousands wounded in a four-days' massacre. In all the bloody pages of the history of the Romanovs there is nothing comparable to the frightful ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... time being on a dangerous line they parted. But Ethel could think of nothing and talk of nothing but the frightful change in her friend, and the unceasing misery which had produced it. Tyrrel shared all her indignation. The slow torture of any creature was an intolerable crime in his eyes, but when the brutality was exercised on a woman, and on a countrywoman, he was roused to the highest pitch ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... the frightful astuteness of twelve. "And old Madam Bartlett won't let him come to the house, and Nell has to see him ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save; together with the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London; haunted me, and finally impelled me to an ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... short time, but the dispersed thieves soon mustered again, and had the impudence to bid defiance to the government in a cartel signed, it was said, with their real names. The civil power was unable to deal with this frightful evil. It was necessary that, during some time, cavalry should patrol every evening on the roads near the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... glory which the other's industry had sown. 14. Ca'ius Ma'rius was born in a village near Apin'ium, of poor parents, who gained their living by their labour. As he had been bred up in a participation of their toils, his manners were as rude as his countenance was frightful. He was a man of extraordinary stature, incomparable ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... or that we had come so far from the fishing place and left our tackle behind. His face expressed confusion, such as a child will exhibit when he is waked suddenly by falling out of bed, and commences grasping around the bedpost preparatory to getting in again. I knew that something frightful was there, and felt that we had escaped some great peril, but what the object or what the peril I had no idea whatever. I am sure, however, that the notion of a snake never entered my mind, but if any thing tangible, if was of a wild cat, for the recollection ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... but she escaped only with the loss of her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, her face swollen, her bloom gone, her skin blotched and blistered, and her eyes red and humid. In a word, she was now become an object as loathsome to look at as she had before been surpassingly beautiful. The change was so frightful that those who knew her thought it would have been better had the poison killed her. But notwithstanding all this, Richard supplicated the queen to let him take her home with him, for the great love he bore her comprehended not only her body but ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... my life—whose life I had already saved; and about whom I had been raving ever since. But now that she had thus been thrown upon me, with her life, and her honor, it was an utterly impossible thing to see how I could extricate her from this frightful difficulty; though so fervent was my longing to do this, that, if my life could have done it, I would have laid it down for ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... voice was so low-pitched that Robert could not hear what he said. It was like the murderous, meaningless growling of a mad dog; every now and then it seemed to break free—to explode into a shattering roar—and then with a frightful effort to be dragged back, held down, in order that it might leap out again with a redoubled violence. It was punctuated by the sharp, spiteful smack of a fist brought down into ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... now. "Fiend!" he exclaimed, with a look of horror, and started to his feet. The effort, the emotion, were too much. Blood gushed from his lips; a frightful spasm convulsed his features; he fell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... terrible. Is it possible that I have fallen in love with him? I don't know. 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' It is a most frightful tragedy to happen to one, and at my age too. What a long life of loneliness stretches in front of me! For of course he could never care for me. And if this is love—well, it will be once and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Randolph edged forward for a nearer view of the wretched derelict still gently undulating on the towline. The closer he looked the more he was impressed by the idea of some frightful mask that hid a face that refused to be recognized. But his attention became fixed on a man who was giving some advice or orders and examining the body scrutinizingly. Without knowing why, Randolph felt a sudden aversion to him, which was deepened when the man, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... extremely rare for anyone exposed to the disease to escape its onslaught unless previously protected by vaccination or by a former attack of the disease. One is absolutely safe from acquiring smallpox if recently and successfully vaccinated, and thus has one of the most frightful and fatal scourges to which mankind has ever been subject been robbed of its dangers. The contagium is probably derived entirely from the scales and particles of skin escaping from smallpox patients, and in the year 1905-6 the true germ of the disease ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... outside bravery, it was but a poor protection against 'the sword of winter, keen and cold.' We looked at the building through the arch of a broken gateway of the courtyard, in the middle of which it stands. Upon that stormy day it appeared more than desolate; there was something about it even frightful. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... history of Queen Mary, from the incomparable summary of arguments for and against her detention in captivity by Queen Elizabeth, in the two first acts of his noble tragedy of Mary Stuart. The learned Spaniard will find himself transported to the palace of the Escurial, and the frightful tragedies of its bigoted court, in his terrible tragedy of Don Carlos. Schiller rivals Shakspeare himself in the energy with which, by a word or an epithet, he paints the fiercest or tenderest passions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... rags must be found for cheap paper. This deduction is based on facts that came under my knowledge here. The Angouleme paper-makers, the last to use pure linen rags, say that the proportion of cotton in the pulp has increased to a frightful ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... in escaping its attack, and altogether lose sight of it, it foretells that you will soon imagine you are being disobeyed and slighted, and things will go on from bad to worse. Sickness, uneasiness and unkindness will increase to frightful proportions in your mind; but they will adjust themselves to a normal basis, and by the putting aside of imaginary trouble, and masterfully shouldering duties, you will be contented ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... rather surprised, but as the storm was still getting more frightful, she moved her chair, shut the window, and sat in the middle of the room; the two little ones in their fear clinging to her, whilst she put an arm round ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... have such real evils to contend with, regard imaginary ones? This, no doubt, was owing to my disturbed imagination; huddling together wildly all the frightful idea which my aunt's communications and discourse, my letter to Mr. Lovelace, my own uneasiness upon it, and the apprehensions of the dreaded Wednesday, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... whirled. Both men shot from the hip; the reports cracked together. One bullet grazing the fancy button smashed through the gaudy waistcoat: the other, as de Spain's free hand struck at the muzzle of the big man's gun, tore into de Spain's foot. Sandusky, convulsed by the frightful shock, staggered against de Spain's arm, the latter dancing tight against him. Logan, alive to the trick but caught behind his partner, fired over Sandusky's right shoulder at de Spain's head, flattened sidewise against the gasping outlaw's breast. Hugging his shield, de ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... over it! Here!" and he pulled off the antimacassar from the back of a chair and wrapped the board in it. "Now get the keys from my pocket and open the safe. Chuck the other things out. Oh, Lord, it's getting itself into frightful knots! and open it quick!" He threw the thing ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... last March when you brought Burne Holiday from Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me a frightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid; how could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither you nor I are. We are many other things—we're extraordinary, we're clever, we could be said, I suppose, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... despair, are softened, as it were, by the tempering dews of this visionary region, ere they fall upon the heart. Else how could we stand the smothered moan of Desdemona, or the fiendish adjuration of Lady Macbeth,—more frightful even than the after-deed of her husband,—or look upon the agony of the wretched Judas, in the terrible picture of Rembrandt, when he returns the purchase of blood to the impenetrable Sanhedrim? Ay, how could we ever stand these but for that ideal ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... preserve its manly qualities, its virility, and therefore its power. Were this the only way that this could be brought about, it might be well and good; but the price to be paid is a price that is too enormous and too frightful, and the results are too uncertain. We believe that these same ideals can be inculcated, that these same energies can be used along useful, conserving, constructive lines, rather than along lines ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... were, deal with the heathen as some one or other dealt with Og, King of Bashan, and other unlucky persons of a different faith. In reply he received their earnest congratulations upon his escape from the frightful dangers of ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... hill, and about half-past eight the position became most critical. The troops were driven almost entirely off the main plateau and the Boers succeeded in reoccupying some of their trenches. A frightful disaster was narrowly averted. About twenty men in one of the captured trenches abandoned their resistance, threw up their hands, and called out that they would surrender. Colonel Thorneycroft, whose great stature ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... us at once into the horrors of the scene. While one of the hags sprinkles her hell-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin, and killed by a frightful process of slow torture, in order that a love philtre of irresistible power may be concocted from his liver and spleen. The time, the place, the actors are brought before us with singular dramatic power. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... thousand were either slain or captured. This victory over them was followed by another more decisive: on the 21st of June General Lake attacked the fortified position at Vinegar Hill, and carried it with a frightful loss to the insurgents. The rebels, indeed, never rallied again; and though some fearful atrocities were committed by isolated bands of them, they were, in effect, from that time subdued. Soon after, Lord ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... I have used successful to attain this glorious End, I shall take pleasure in the Release of their Souls from that part of Judaism which they have so long indulged. I hope the Difficulties that appear'd frightful and discouraging will be lost, and vanish by a diligent and fair Perusal of what is written; yet those that pay a sacred Reverence to the Inspired Writings, may still find it hard to yield to the Conviction; Scruples and Reliques of an old Opinion ...
— A Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody • Isaac Watts
... disappointed at not being able to publish more of his poems, so the Doctor-in-Law, to console him, allowed him to contribute an article on "Fashions for the Month by Our Paris Model." He made a frightful muddle of it though, not knowing the proper terms in which to describe the various materials and styles. Here is an extract, which will show you better than I can tell, the stupid blunders ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... also a subject for the inquiries of psychology. At the moment the poor man's imaginary sufferings were positively frightful, and he awoke with a gasp. He had always secretly dreaded growing fat, he had always felt a horror of anything like singing or speaking in public, and the only thing in the world he really feared was the possibility ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... grating in the wall, about the height of my head, which opened into the court-yard, and there witnessed a frightful spectacle. The husband, sword in hand, was attacking Ernest with desperate fury. 'Ah! you love her and she loves you!' cried he, in a voice hoarse with passion; 'you love her, do you? and she loves you! Your turn first, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... It made them shudder to hear their cries. The piercing cries, that assailed the ears of Telemachus, at his entrance into the infernal regions, were not more dolorous or fearful. Their eyes were red with weeping; their hands were clasped on the crown of the head; their hair was in frightful disorder, and two channels of tears were plainly seen flowing down over the naked bosom of each of the women. In this manner they passed before the threshold of the hut in two close lines, and were observed to bend the knee to the venerable matron, without ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... from a sick-bed, my dearest Matlida, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... well-looking arrows of the forms of snakes, capable of going at a great height and possessing intense energy. And, O perpetuator of the Kuru race, I could not then see the car of costly metals, for it had vanished, through illusion! I was then filled with wonder! That host of Danavas then, O Bharata, of frightful visages and hair, set up a loud howl while I was waiting for it, in that fierce battle. I then, with the object of destroying them, fixed on my bow-string the weapon capable of piercing the foes if but his sound was inaudible. Upon this, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... must have thought that the Savior of mankind was traveling in mighty queer company, or that He had taken the other fellow along as a frightful example. And what could the Adventist have thought when he saw a message thrown out of the balloon, and went with trembling limbs and beating heart to pick it up, believing that it was a command from on high to sinners, and found that it was nothing ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter, which was at that very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated from the Colonnade. Was I dreaming or under the spell of some frightful hallucination which led me to misread the name on the slip of paper before me? I could not determine. My head, throat and chest seemed bound about with iron, so that I could neither speak nor breathe with freedom, and, suffering thus, I stood staring at this demoniacal bit of paper which in ...
— A Difficult Problem - 1900 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... like a stone, his senses reeling under that frightful impact and yet half conscious of the fact that some one must have come up behind him in the darkness and struck ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... was far more awful. Only the throat of a human being could emit that chilling cry. It rose in shrill crescendo, to die away in a sobbing wail that lifted the hair on the listener's head. Again and again it came—a moan born of the frightful torture ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... sheer wall of rock. Down he dashed, faster and faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a deep spongy turf and was not hurt. After witnessing this reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises on a former occasion. He had doubtless fallen a long way down a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones. But the lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits and foxes went he ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... in the ear of her patron. "It's not my business to knock the trade, Kate—but honestly, that sign up there, that says 'Hair Dyed at Your Own Risk' ought to say, 'to your own sorrow.' If you start, you've got to keep it up or it looks simply frightful. And if you keep it up it just ruins your hair. You have such nice hair, Kate!" She picked up a sterilized brush and began stroking Kate's hair soothingly. It was not such nice hair. It was very ordinary hair of a somewhat nondescript color; but ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... childhood. With all its frequent callousness and inhumanity, Greek sentiment abhors any brutality to young children. Herodotus the historian tells of the falling of a roof, whereby one hundred and twenty school children perished, as being a frightful calamity,[*] although recounting cold-blooded massacres of thousands of adults with never a qualm; and Herodotus is a very good spokesman ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... knew and was helpless. A frightful thing had been launched and there could be no turning; nothing now but the constant fear, the trap without end, the perilous thing above all their heads ... ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissention, which, in different ages and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... marquise went to him. But now her face showed signs of the liveliest anxiety, and it was for M. d'Aubray to try to reassure her about himself! He thought it was only a trifling indisposition, and was not willing that a doctor should be disturbed. But then he was seized by a frightful vomiting, followed by such unendurable pain that he yielded to his daughter's entreaty that she should send for help. A doctor arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning, but by that time all that could have helped a scientific inquiry had been disposed of: the doctor saw nothing, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... for some time not observed; and when it was, the British ships that came to her aid had time only to remove part of her survivors. In their report of the event the latter said: "Scarcely had the boats pulled clear of the sides, when the most frightful spectacle was offered to our gaze. Those of our comrades who remained on board the Vengeur du Peuple, with hands raised to heaven, implored, with lamentable cries, the help for which they could no longer hope. Soon disappeared the ship and the unhappy victims it contained. In the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... witnessed this ruthless, shocking spectacle, to the end, his heart beating as if it would leap out of his breast; and when the boa had finished his frightful meal, the poor little fellow observed that the monster was so gorged, he could scarcely move, and that in a few moments more ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... me work—let me work, Gilbert," she entreated feverishly. "While I'm working I don't think so much. If I'm idle I imagine everything—rest is only torture for me. My two boys are on the frightful Somme front—and Shirley pores day and night over aviation literature and says nothing. But I see the purpose growing in his eyes. No, I cannot rest—don't ask it of ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... their purposed destination. I was amazed as I read. That the spirit of Rashleigh walked around me, and conjured up these doubts and difficulties by which I was surrounded, I could not doubt for one instant; yet it was frightful to conceive the extent of combined villany and power which he must have employed in the perpetration of his designs. Let me do myself justice in one respect. The evil of parting from Miss Vernon, however distressing it might in other respects ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Sidsel, flung his arms around her, and they danced a whirling dance. Sophie laughed aloud at it, but Sidsel directed her extraordinary glance maliciously and piercingly toward her. Otto saw it, and the girl was doubly revolting and frightful in his eyes. With the increasing darkness the assembly became more animated; the two parties of dancers were resolved into one. At length, when it was grown quite dark, the ale barrels become empty, the tankard again filled and once more emptied, the company withdrew ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... methods of pacification, the trocha and the concentration camp, developed to their fullest extent. Under the rule of the Butcher several trochas were constructed at selected points, and he carried to its logical conclusion the policy of concentration, with results sufficiently frightful to shock the world and to satisfy even Weyler's monstrous appetite for cruelty. Although his trochas hindered the free movement of Cuban troops and his prison camps decimated the peaceful population of several provinces, the Spanish cause gained little. Both trenches and prison camps ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... spring back, fingers upon the triggers, while nearer the invisible comes. "Halt," rang out in the midnight air; "halt," once more, but still the steady tread keeps approaching. When the third "halt" was given it was accompanied by the crack of their rifles. A deafening report and frightful squeal, as an old female porker went charging through the underbrush like mad. The crack of the rifles alarmed the sleeping companions in reserve, who rushed to arms and awaited the attack. But after much good humored badgering of the two frightened ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... native homeliness it could never arrive: and being come thither, it with especial advantage may impress good advice, making an offender more clearly to see, and more deeply to feel his miscarriage; being represented to his fancy in a strain somewhat rare and remarkable, yet not so fierce and frightful. The severity of reproof is tempered, and the reprover's anger disguised thereby. The guilty person cannot but observe that he who thus reprehends him is not disturbed or out of humour, and that he rather pitieth than hateth him; which breedeth ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... anything more than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father, there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned forward a little ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... Casas's suggestion, which was only one of many enumerated in his scheme. Had the project as he framed it been accepted in its entirety and loyally carried out, no increased injustice would have been done to the negroes, for it was the frightful mortality amongst the cruelly driven Indians that rapidly reduced the numbers of labourers and made gaps which could only be filled by the importation of others from elsewhere. Under a more humane system, the Indians might ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... said the doctor, "may he be enabled to bear his frightful calamity! I have taken away his razors from him, and Sambo, my man, never lets him out of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... had a nobler object in his expedition into Germany—to arrest the fierce and merciless persecution of the Jews, which was preparing, under the monk Radulph, to renew the frightful scenes which had preceded the first crusade, in the flourishing cities on the banks of the Rhine. The Jews acknowledge the Christian intervention of St. Bernard. See the curious extract from the History of Joseph ben Meir. Wilken, vol. iii. p. 1. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then climax the thing with "holding his breath"—that frightful specialty of the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and kickings in the effort to get its breath, while ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... apothecary's shop had been boiled down into that one glass. The second tumbler was, if possible, even worse than the first; but this time I noticed a white froth on the top, such as I had never seen upon any tea before. A frightful suspicion suddenly occurred to me. I emptied out my camp-kettle, and discovered—with what emotion I need not say—that the supposed chocolate was nothing less than ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... so than Bengal, uttering a frightful roar, whirled. The force of the jerk as the brute turned hurled Phil Forrest against the bars of the cage with a crash, and Bengal's sharp-clawed feet made a vicious sweep for the body of the lad pressed so tightly against ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... frightful sweep of his blade he disemboweled a sofa cushion; the second blow clove his typewriting machine clean to the tattoo marks upon its breast; the third decapitated a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the love of Heaven, before you go!' exclaimed Eugene. 'Is there any mode, any means whereby Edouard may be rescued from this frightful, this unmerited calamity—this ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... darkness; the horror of his situation struck him at once, and for a moment he was indeed almost qualified for an inmate of that dreadful mansion. He felt his way to the door, shook it with desperate strength, and uttered the most frightful cries, mixed with expostulations and commands. His cries were in a moment echoed by a hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar malignity, accompanied by an extraordinary acuteness of some of the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the earth, face to face with the mud, and I can no longer move. The frightful searching of the shells alights around me. The hoarse hurricane which does not know me is yet trying to find ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... canvassed only in one style by a couple of steady, sensible women, whose judgements had to work on ascertained events; and it was perfectly decided that it had been the consequence of much thoughtlessness and much imprudence; that its effects were most alarming, and that it was frightful to think, how long Miss Musgrove's recovery might yet be doubtful, and how liable she would still remain to suffer from the concussion hereafter! The Admiral wound ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... If it were true that Virginia had been simply one vast arsenal where every inhabitant had unfailingly done his part in making war, it was also true that she had furnished many of its greatest battlefields—and at what a frightful cost. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... a sign from her that she saw our signal of distress. Now she crowded all the sail she could venture to carry in the increasing breeze. Her captain was evidently a humane man anxious to relieve his fellow-creatures, though he could scarcely have guessed at our frightful condition. There was no mistake now, and on she came, and proved to be a large barque, as ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... San Francisco, for the force of the law was wholly insufficient to restrain the reckless and desperate men who congregated in the towns, and who thought no more of taking life than eating a meal. To put a stop to the frightful state of things prevailing, the more peaceful of the San Francisco citizens had also been obliged to organise a Vigilance Committee to carry out what was called Lynch law, a rough and ready method of justice subject to grave abuses under other circumstances, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... shoulder and a harsh voice in his ear. The room was light with the light of morning, but dark with the shadow of coming doom. There came upon him a strange and great calmness when he found himself in the operating-room. There were all the frightful preparations,—the water, the sponges, the cloths and bandages, the Doctor with his case of instruments before him, and looking more like a murderer than a surgeon. Almost his heart misgave him as he looked around, and remembered Jenny and the little ones at home; but the carriage that was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... out, and for three days all went well. But on the fourth a storm burst upon them, the frightful roar of wild beasts resounded at a distance, and they soon perceived in the forest glaring eyes that could only belong to devils or tigers. Fire destroyed their provisions, and they would have starved had not two dwarfs, who dwelt as hermits on the top of some rocks, received divine intimation ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... Should not the goal, at least, Present to us a cheerful face? Why that, which we in constant view, Must, while we live, forever bear, Sole comfort in our hour of need, Thus dress in weeds of woe, And gird with shadows so, And make the friendly port to us appear More frightful than ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... share? what burthens can it lighten? Oh, 'tis a fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared together! But what if there be no bread in the cupboard? The innocent prattle of his children takes out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least frightful features in that condition, that there is no childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sensible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their children; they drag them up. The little careless darling of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed betimes into a premature reflecting ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... calling up crowds of hideous dreams. The blood-vessels of the eye are charged with bilious particles, and these intruding specks give rise to fearful, exaggerated images of things that never yet were seen on sea or land. Grim faces leer at the dreamer and make mock of him; frightful animals pass in procession before him; and hosts of incoherent words are jabbered in his ear by unholy voices. He wakes, limp, exhausted, trembling, nauseated, and he feels as if he must choose between suicide and—more drink. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... security of our modern life in times of peace makes it hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination, the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that was usual in these weak ancient communities. They were in fear of wild beasts; they were helpless against floods, helpless against pestilences. Their food depended on the crops of one tiny plot of ground; and if the Saviour was not reborn with the spring, they ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... This frightful termination to the rebellion, followed as it was by severe and persistent measures against Christians everywhere, was apparently the death-blow to the church in the empire. No further efforts were made, either ...
— Japan • David Murray
... accounted for two score killed and many wounded, only a few escaping to the hills. And this carnival of bloodshed was witnessed by an American trader, Abe Farwell, who, being alone, was helpless to prevent, but who testified as to the frightful occurrence. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... of the march of any mysterious form of death that has ever appeared in bygone ages, suddenly starting up and striding over the earth—"the land as a garden of Eden before him, and behind him a desolate wilderness?" We have most of us read of such frightful visitations in Thucydides, in Ovid, in Virgil, in Lucretius, not to mention the moderns; but if any of us were to write down the sum and substance of his knowledge, and attempt to discover from any trustworthy evidence the nature, the course, and the intensity ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... head!—Savitri, dear, This pain is frightful. Let me lie Here on the turf." Her voice was clear And very calm was her reply, As if her heart had banished fear: "Lean, love, thy head upon my breast," And as she helped him, added—"here, So shall thou better breathe and rest." "Ah me, this pain,—'tis ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... frightful, terrific; Selkirk dares not contemplate it, lest his reason should give way. He must have a sail; a mast! He has his spare sail; for the mast, his only resource is to detach one of the timbers which compose the frame-work of his raft. Perhaps this ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... The women went to the limit in childbearing, and the burden of rearing their large families was awful. The art of cooking was little understood. They had no stoves or table forks. The food was served in a very unsavory fashion, and was very indigestible. The people therefore had frightful dreams, and dyspepsia was very prevalent. No carpet was seen here for a hundred years after the settlement. Communication with the outer world was slow, difficult and rare. On several occasions, owing to the failure of their crops and the ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... God and your God'; the God of mercies, and father of all comfort. Your poor father is, I hope, almost senseless of the calamity; the unconscious instrument of Divine Providence knows it not, and your mother is in heaven. It is sweet to be roused from a frightful dream by the song of birds, and the gladsome rays of the morning. Ah, how infinitely more sweet to be awakened from the blackness and amazement of a sudden horror by the glories of God manifest and the hallelujahs ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... glanced down at the words; and I felt like falling at her feet, she looked so miserable. I am told that I must keep to fact, and must not express my feelings, or those of others. I will try to remember this; but it is hard for a sister, relating such a frightful scene. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... but roll down large pieces of rock in the narrow passes, and rush out from the small recesses of the rocks, leading God knows where, which abound in every part. They never spare any one, and cut and hack about the bodies of their victims in the most frightful manner. With all this they are the greatest cowards possible; a few determined men would be a match for the greatest odds; but the very name of Kauker seems to convey terror in it to a traveller. I saw the head of one of these rascals lying about at Dadur, and it was the ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... a cattle-track "across lots," for the greater space in which to exercise with his Indian club as he walked. Like any other novice in the practice, he could not divest his mind of the impression, that the frightful thumps he continually received, in twirling the merciless thing around and behind his devoted head, were due to some kind of crowding influence from the boundaries on either side the way, and it was to gain relief from such damaging contraction of area that he left the highway for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... utmost agonies they were called on to portray, they contented themselves with saying it equalled all that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the terrible. Sir Joshua Reynolds has exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in his works ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... impossibility of deciding upon the outward and superficial expression of Chinese mirth. Of its inner and deeper existence I have some private doubts. An audience that will view with a serious aspect the hero, after a frightful and agonizing death, get up and quietly walk off the stage, can not be said to have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... fate of other quarters of the globe in ages yet to come, that their rocks must crumble and their mountains be levelled, until the waters shall again cover the face of the earth, unless new mountains shall be thrown up by eruptions of internal fire. They told me in Volterra, that this frightful region had once been productive and under cultivation, but that after a plague which, four or five hundred years since, had depopulated the country, it was abandoned and neglected, and the rains had reduced it to its ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... into a posture of amazed intentness and was pointing upward at the overhanging boughs of a tree above their heads. A squirrel was poised thereon, gazing down motionless. Then, suddenly—a frightful thing happened. The creature seemed to speak. A strange falsetto voice, such as might befit so eerie a chance, sounded on the air—loud, distinct, heard far up the slope, and electrifying the assemblage near at hand that was gathering ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... him. They said, quoting some old religious orator: "When we abandon ourselves to irregularities of conduct, even to those regarded as least culpable in the opinion of the world, we render ourselves liable to commit the most reprehensible actions. We perceive, from the most frightful examples, that voluptuousness ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... the "Five Fingers," and here the steamer must be hauled up the falls through a narrow passage blasted out of a submerged rock. A steel hawser attached to a windlass above the falls is used to tow the vessel up the watery incline, and were the cable to snap, a frightful disaster would certainly ensue. At this spot, the billows and surf raging madly round our tiny craft, the dark, jagged rocks threatening her on every side, and the deafening roar of foam and breakers ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... curiosity. Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in anywise what was not a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... with the earth, the same would not apply, so thought Ptolemy, to any object suspended in the air. So long as a bird was perched on a tree, he might very well be carried onward by the moving earth, but the moment he took wing, the ground would slip from under him at a frightful pace, so that when he dropped down again he would find himself at a distance perhaps ten times as great as that which a carrier-pigeon or a swallow could have traversed in the same time. Some vague ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... a few lines to-morrow, and direct here. I send you another florin. Do not neglect your bathing; continue well, and guard against illness. Spend your money on good objects alone. Be my dear son! What a frightful discord would it be, were you to prove false to me, as many persons maintain that you already are! May ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... and the President has passed the tremendous subject of Forefathers' Day, like a Rugby ball, into my hands—after making elegant play with it himself—and, frightful as the responsibility is, I realize that I've got to do something with it—and do it mighty quick. [Laughter.] This is a festive hour, and even a preacher mustn't be any more edifying in his remarks, I suppose, than he can help. And I promise accordingly to use my conscientious endeavors to-night ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... anything. Father was calmer. Father's own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart for the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. Oh, my vacation pathway hasn't been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear. But—I've won out and I've ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... its left eye; but the one wielded by the man was too bendable, and sagged so much that it struck the stern-post of the boat, the knife blade snapping off short. Yet it mattered not; for the wound inflicted by the bo'sun's weapon was so frightful, that the giant cuttlefish released the boat, and slid back into deep water, churning it ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... stairs and waited, Lena silent, Feuerstein pacing the room and rehearsing, now aloud, now to himself, the scene he would enact with his father-in-law. Peter was in a frightful humor that evening. His only boy, who spent his mornings in sleep, his afternoons in speeding horses and his evenings in carousal, had come down upon him for ten thousand dollars to settle a gambling debt. Peter was willing that his son should be a gentleman and should conduct himself like one. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... of death, and the bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the frightful memory of kings." ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... horrible! That's frightful! That far exceeds my worst fears! And so my eyes have been opened.—My dear sir, I have had eight children, of whom Erich seemed our fairest hope and his next-oldest sister our heaviest trial. And now, it seems, the same accursed city has demanded them both ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Why truly this is pretty stuff indeed, as his Ingenuity has put it together—but I hope every one will own, that each of these singly, when they are tagg'd to their sensible phrases, may be proper enough in Farce or Low Comedy; but as he has modell'd 'em, 'tis true they are very frightful—And if I had nothing to sing or say to divert Ladies better than this, I should think my self so despicable, that I would e'en get into the next Plot, amongst his Brother Grumblers—then despairing, do some doughty ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... may be the situation of some now known to us.—O frightful thought! O horrible image! Forbid it, O Father of mercy! If it be possible, let no creature of thine ever be the object of that wrath, against which the strength of thy whole creation united, would stand but as the moth against the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in slimy wetness, that lashed searchingly in all directions, as the monster gave vent to its fury at Thorpe's attack. There were screaming human figures grasped in many of the jaws, and the man was glad with a great thankfulness that the girl's stupor could save her from the frightful sight. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... another in their self-appointed task; and while the Germans stood aloof, protesting and aghast, our ships ravaged the Samoan coast, burning, bombarding, and destroying with indiscriminate fury. In this savage conflict, so unjust in its inception, so frightful in its effects on an unoffending people, the Samoans showed an extraordinary spirit in defending what all men hold most dear. Driven from the shore by our guns, they massed their warriors behind Apia, and on ground ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... frightful loss at Franklin, Hood followed the enemy to Nashville, and took position south of the place, where he remained ten days or more. It is difficult to imagine what objects he had in view. The town was open to the north, whence the Federal commander, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... was considerable, embracing as it did the better, braver sort of statesmen, soldiers, sailors, clergy, authors, journalists, sociologists, and the whole brotherhood of earnest thinkers. But the din and confusion was frightful, the pace at which the million lived was terrific; and, after all, the cries of the reformers all meant the same thing, the one thing the great, sweating public was determined not to hear, and not to act on. They ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... form, has placed this country on a mine far more dangerous and destructive than that upon which he thinks Europe was placed by the colossal power of Russia. There is another point I have to touch upon. To me it was really frightful to hear the noble Lord the Member for London (Lord John Russell) tell the House that we are not lighting for ourselves, but for Germany. I recollect one passage among many in the noble Lord's speeches upon this point; and, in looking over what has been said by ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... was not his, except as a desert out of human sight. For he had in his pocket a letter from his publishers, received that dreary morning, announcing a great many copies gone gratis, six sold to the trade at a frightful discount, and six to the enterprising public. All these facts combined to make him feel uncommonly sad ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... to a wood retired; To live concealed was what the youth desired; Lorn silence reigned, except from birds that sang, And dells that oft with sweetest echo rang. There HAPPINESS and frightful MIS'RY lay, Quite undistinguished: classed with beasts of prey; That growling prowled in search of food around: There Atis consolation never found. LOVE thither followed, and, however viewed, 'Twas vain to hope his passion ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... for me to imagine such a monster, or to account for such an inhuman human being. How a man could deprive a human being of sight, except where some religious question is involved, is beyond my comprehension. We know that for many centuries frightful punishments were inflicted, and inflicted by the pious, by the theologians, by the spiritual minded, and by those who "loved their neighbors as themselves." We read the accounts of how the lids of men's eyes were cut off and then ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the conduct of affairs rested mainly with Lebrun and his envoy Chauvelin. It is only fair to remember that they were thirty and twenty-seven years of age respectively, and had had just four months and eight months of official experience. In such a case pity must blend with censure. The frightful loss of experienced men and the giddy preference for new-comers were among the most fatal characteristics of the revolutionary movement. Needing natures that were able, yet self-restrained, bold, but cautiously bold, it now found as leaders calculating fanatics ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ignorance? Oh, the horror of the descent—the horror of the rude snatching away of the golden aureole! "Father, father, how could you do it? How could you hurt us so?" she muttered. Then, up before her rose his face with that frightful look in the eyes. "But how doing it made him suffer!" she thought. And the memory of those hours on hours she had spent with him, buried alive, flooded over her. "Doing it killed him!" ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... end of September last those whom we in Macedonia had come to regard as our deadly enemies became our would-be friends with a suddenness which was almost painful. Kultur is a leavening influence, and our spurious local Hun in Bulgaria is every bit as frightful in war and as oily in defeat as the genuine article ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... all his cruelty was a blessing that came none too soon. No matter how low the type of Christianity which replaced the murderous devotion of these idolaters, any change, it would seem, must have been for the better. The frightful barbarity of the Aztecs is apparently shown by the records of Spanish priests concerning the sacrificial stone, now preserved in the museum at the national capital, upon which the victims were bound, their hearts cut out and laid reverentially thereon, while their bodies were cast down ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Menomonie, or Wild-rice Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173} who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... That frightful journey—no nightmare was ever half so awful! But it came to an end at last—there was the Bryngelly Station. Geoffrey sprang from the train, and gave his ticket to the porter, glancing in his face as he did so. Surely if there had been a tragedy ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... at the thought of heaping back those tons of earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert matter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soul hovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his garments with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... hill, up which he urged his startled horse. When he gained the top he found that it stood out of the water like an island, completely surrounded; the water was seething and swirling round the hill in a frightful manner, but no vestige could he see ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven, after making the whole day frightful, was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looking out, seeing nothing, but still gazing ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... this speech, Pro Domo Sua, Cicero devotes himself to a matter which has no bearing on his house. Concomitant with Cicero's return there had come a famine in Rome. Such a calamity was of frequent occurrence, though I doubt whether their famines ever led to mortality so frightful as that which desolated Ireland just before the repeal of the Corn Laws. No records, as far as I am aware, have reached us of men perishing in the streets; but scarcity was not uncommon, and on such occasions complaints would ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Island. The next year Cartier came again and ascended the great river many miles, visiting Stadacone (Quebec) and Hochelaga (Montreal). At Quebec he encamped with his men, and, after a winter rendered frightful by the cold and the ravages of the scurvy, he returned in the ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... lose your temper," Chia Yuen protested, "but listen and let me tell you what happened!" After which, he went on to tell Ni Erh the whole affair with Pu Shih-jen. As soon as Ni Erh heard him, he got into a frightful rage; "Were he not," he shouted, a "relative of yours, master Secundus, I would readily give him a bit of my mind! Really resentment will stifle my breath! but never mind! you needn't however distress yourself. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... dead, never once stirring. I also slept fairly well, as, indeed, I needed to do, but my sleep was full of dreams of all the horrors and wonders I had undergone. Chiefly, however, I was haunted by that frightful piece of diablerie by which Ayesha left her finger-marks upon her rival's hair. There was something so terrible about her swift, snake-like movement, and the instantaneous blanching of that threefold line, that, if the results ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... performed: its requirements were unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of the age! In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed, literally fed, to wild beasts in the arena—Gauls, Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the greed of railroad ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the south. It occurs most often and more severely in the colder months, probably because at such times people are more closely crowded together under more insanitary conditions. When introduced among a people who have never suffered from it before, its ravages are frightful, as in the case of the inhabitants of certain of the Fiji Islands, who, upon being exposed to the infection, fell ill and died by thousands, so that it is estimated that 20,000 deaths occurred in four months. ...
— Measles • W. C. Rucker
... woman, with mad eyes, that came Into our camp, ill-favored, hardly cast In mortal mould? By her, be sure, was wrought This direful sorcery. Demon or witch, Yakshi or Rakshasi, or gliding ghost, Or something frightful, was she. Hers this deed Of midnight murders; doubt there can be none. Ah, if we could espy that hateful one, The ruin of our march, the woe-maker, With stones, clods, canes, or clubs, nay, with clenched ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... so far as these events are yet developed. But we have reason to suppose, that they have not reached their ultimate termination. There is still an awful void between the present, and what is to be the last chapter of that history; and I fear it is to be filled with abominations, as frightful as those which have already disgraced it. That nation is too high-minded, has too much innate force, intelligence, and elasticity, to remain quiet under its present compression. Samson will arise in his strength, and probably will ere long burst asunder ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... hay-wagons and weddings may lead. It's a terrible strain, though, to see people married. I always tremble like a leaf—I weigh only a hundred and ninety-eight now, and these things affect me. It's so frightful to think what might happen if they should trip up on ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... thy Tick doleru, or however you spell it, is vanished, for I have frightful impressions of that Tick, and do altogether hate it, as an unpaid score, or the Tick of a Death Watch. I take it to be a species of Vitus's dance (I omit the Sanctity, writing to "one of the men called Friends"). I knew a young ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... in its odd blend of moon and shadows. However hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep through long grass, like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile sentinel. And every German in the "Pocket" had been under frightful mental and physical stress, for ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and Sir Benjamin—those poor snakes that live but in the sunshine of your mirth—must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. Candour—O! frightful!—become a hooded serpent. Oh! who that remembers Parsons and Dodd—the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal—in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentle woman as distinguished from the fine lady of comedy, in the latter part—would forego the true ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... he was so haunted with rats, he replied, "What do you say, that you are so haunted with Reitc yeq?" The first day, as he was brought to his trial, a woman looked into the coach, and said, "You ugly old dog, don't you think that you will have that frightful head cut off?" He replied, You ugly old -, I believe I shall." At his trial he affected great weakness and infirmities, but often broke into passions; particularly at the first witness, who was his vassal: he asked him how he dared to come thither! The man replied, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... have made him dissatisfied with his labours and acts of goodness, however comparatively great; so that the unavoidable consciousness of his superiority was, in that respect, a cause of disquiet. He suffered so much from this, and from the gloom which perpetually haunted him, and made solitude frightful, that it may be said of him, 'If in this life only he had hope, he was of all men most miserable[1294].' He loved praise, when it was brought to him; but was too proud to seek for it. He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. As he was general and unconfined in his studies, he cannot be considered ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... try and obtain it for her, but there seems generally a great objection to the visits of slaves from neighbouring plantations, and, I have no doubt, not without sufficient reason. The more I see of this frightful and perilous social system, the more I feel that those who live in the midst of it must make their whole existence one constant precaution against danger of some ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... said the captive sullenly. Then his gaze fell upon the gaunt figure of Anderson Crow. A frightful scowl transfigured his face. Mr. Crow involuntarily drew back a step and reversed the pistol in his hand, so that its muzzle was pointing at the enemy instead of at himself. Between imprecations the prisoner managed to convey the fact that he realized for the first time that it was a human ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... place we had landed on, were rugged rocks sloping gradually down to the sea. A thick fringe of kelp, a slippery sort of sea-weed, added somewhat to the difficulties of our landing. As we advanced, we were assailed by the most frightful gabbling, and screeching, and quacking I ever heard, from thousands and thousands of wild-fowls, chiefly penguins of various species. The whole hillside was literally covered with them and their eggs in dense masses. Nothing daunted at our appearance, when they ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... princes, with their mother, disguised as Brahmans, spent several years wandering through the forests, having many strange adventures and slaying many demons. While visiting Ekachakra, which city they freed from a frightful rakshasa, they were informed by the sage Vyasa that Draupadi, the lovely daughter of the Raja Draupada of Panchala, was going to hold a Svayamvara in order to select a husband. The suitors of a princess frequently attended a meeting of this sort and took part ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... I sprang from my horse and scrambled down one of the cypresses. Your mother and sister stretched their arms to me, crying for help. The danger was frightful, for the sides of the carriage had been so shattered by the fall, that they threatened every moment to give way, in which case those inside it must inevitably have fallen into the black, unfathomable abyss which looked like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a breast heaves with the breath; swelling slightly, as if in an effort to be more, to attract attention, to gain in significance. Pale things became livid, holding apparently some under-brightness which partly penetrated its envelope, but a brightness that was white and almost frightful. Black things seemed to glow with blackness. The air quivered. Its silence surely thrilled with sound—with sound that ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... in its agony vented its rage upon everything around. And as it continued its struggles, moment by moment it approached nearer to the blazing fire, till all stood waiting in horror for the moment when one of its folds would touch the burning embers and the struggles come to a frightful end. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... care, all my desire, all my joy; I speak of nothing but her, think of nothing but her, dream of nothing but her. I live but for her; my heart beats but for her; and, behold the reward of so much devotion! I am two whole days without seeing her, two days which seem to me centuries of frightful length; I meet her by accident, my heart at the sight of her feels transported; joy sparkles in my face. I fly to her with delight, and the faithless one turns away her eyes, and passes by me hastily, as if she had never seen me before in ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... frightful sound Which even the best can hardly bear, He took the summons void of fear; And unconcern'dly cast his eyes around; As if to find and dare the grisly challenger. What death could do he lately tried, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... almost miraculous, virtue that lay in the coca leaf—with a bountiful supply of which they had been careful to provide themselves—otherwise even their indomitable hardihood and courage must have succumbed to the frightful toil, privation, and exposure which they were obliged to undergo. A detailed description of that five days' journey over the mountains would of itself suffice to fill a book, for it would be a record of continuous adventure and ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... so that in his childhood he had seen much that was sad and degrading. He had plied all sorts of trades and had traveled much in France. He had an admirable desire for education, and had taught himself with frightful toil and labor: he read everything: history, philosophy, decadent poets: he was up-to-date in everything: theaters, exhibitions, concerts: he had a touching veneration for art, literature, and middle-class ideas: they fascinated him. He had imbibed the vague and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... beneath their feet, and the water came boiling from the pumps. Then the vessel was towed into a depth of five fathoms, to be scuttled and sunk. I watched her go down. Early impressions from "Peter Parley" had portrayed the sinking of a vessel as a frightful plunge, endangering all around, like a maelstrom. The actual process was merely a subsidence so calm and gentle that a child might have stood upon the deck till it sank beneath him, and then might have floated away. Instead of a convulsion, it was something stately ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... represented there, and the temptation presented in absolute monarchies to unscrupulous ambition; you may say, like Doctor Slop, these things could not have happened under a constitutional government: or, again, you may take up your parable against superstition; you may dilate on the frightful consequences of a belief in witches, and reflect on the superior advantages of an age of schools and newspapers. If the bare facts of the story had come down to us from a chronicler, and an ordinary writer of the nineteenth ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... greatly alarmed: surely they would not cross in such frightful weather? Monsieur ventured to think it was not so very bad. Then the little French lady glanced out at the window, and threw up her hands, and ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which the aigrette was secured. There was no challenging the actual facts as shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and the starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's accusations. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... do, except to show him Betsy's portrait once more. So he started to raise the picture from the ground, where it still lay face downward. And the moment Dusty Moth saw what he was about he gave a frightful scream—and flew off into ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... twenty. Said Lewis, about two years ago, he shot a free man, and the man died about two hours afterwards; for this offence he was not even imprisoned. Lynch also tried to cut the throat of John Waters, and succeeded in making a frightful gash on his left shoulder (mark shown), which mark he will carry with him to the grave; for this he was not even sued. Lewis left five children in bondage, Horace, John, Georgiana, Louisa and Louis, Jr., owned ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... proclaimed. To me that dishonor would have brought no additional pang. I had suffered all that I could. More were impossible; but as it was my shame was not made public—and so, above all—above all—my boy was saved. The frightful scandal did not arise to crush my ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille |
