"Overwhelming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which have taxed the physical resources, and the ability of the Faculties. Happily the increase in income granted in 1919 is an augury of a better era, if the growth for the next few years is not too overwhelming. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... which is sheltered from invaders by mountains and seas, so as by a small degree of art to render it impregnable; their desolating earthquakes, which yet seem but to renovate fertility; their volcanos, sending forth volumes of flame and rivers of fire, and overwhelming cities which though they have buried they have not utterly destroyed; these and a thousand other particulars, which I can neither enumerate nor remember, apparently speak them a race the most favoured of heaven, and announce Italy to be a country ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... chastisement of their betrayer. With malicious skill, Disraeli touched one after another the weak points in a character that was superficially vulnerable. Finally the point before the House became Peel's general conduct. He was beaten by an overwhelming majority, and to the hand that dethroned him descended the task of building up the ruins of the Conservative party. Disraeli's best friends felt this a welcome necessity. There is no example of a rise so sudden ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... preservation of the house of Austria, my lords, ought to engage the closest attention of the British nation, is freely confessed. It is evident that by no other means our commerce, our liberty, or our religion can be secured, or the house of Bourbon restrained from overwhelming the universe. It is allowed that the queen of Hungary has a claim to our assistance by other ties than those of interest; that it was promised upon the faith of treaties, and it is demanded by the loudest calls of honour, justice and compassion. And did it not appear too juvenile and romantick, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... silence to the end, his chalky face of a sick clown meeting undaunted the overwhelming odds against him, Stull was set upon by the apaches and stabbed and stabbed until his clothing was a heap of ribbons and the watch and packet of French bank-notes which the assassins tore from his body were ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... fell, face downward; and the Americans crushed the little band of insurgents. Gregorio Del Pilar was dead. His death in the great hills, after a most courageous battle against an overwhelming force, brought to an end a life that would have been worth much to the islands in after years. In his pockets were found valuable papers, letters and keepsakes. The letters were from his sweetheart, Dolores Jose, who lived at Dagupan, ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... kept repeating, standing back still further and further front him, while strange, overwhelming thoughts passed like lightning through her mind as she marked the pallid face, where was written since the morning more than one line of suffering, and saw in the brown eyes a look such as they were not wont to wear. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... dumb, and flutter about in dismay on the ground; myriads of insects seek shelter under leaves and trunks of trees. The wild Mammalia are tamed, and suspend their work of war and carnage; the cold-blooded Amphibia alone rejoice in the overwhelming deluge, and millions of snakes and frogs, which swarm in the flooded meadows, raise a chorus of hissing and croaking. Streams of muddy water flow through the narrow paths of the forests into the river, or pour into the cracks ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... young American who could not only dream, but make his dreams come true. No idler he! And he had no use for idlers. He had dared to come to this far country, establish himself on a ranch, and seek to win out in the face of overwhelming odds. ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... conglomerate rock, 1000 feet broad and 100 feet thick, detached itself from the face of the mountain (Rossberg or Rufiberg, near Goldau, south of Lake Zug), and slipped down into the valley below, overwhelming the villages of Goldau, Busingen, and Rothen, and part of Lowertz. More than four hundred and fifty human beings perished, and whole herds of cattle were swept away. Five minutes sufficed to complete the work of destruction. The inhabitants were first roused by a loud ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... hands of M. de Sairmeuse and Martial, overwhelming them with compliments uttered in a thin, rather nasal voice, which, issuing from his immense body, was as astonishing as the sound of a flute issuing from the pipes of an ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... "Till" grow out of each other quite as do the themes of a Beethoven symphony or of "Tristan" or of "Parsifal." Indeed, Strauss has done for the symphonic poem something of what Wagner did for the opera. And not an overwhelming number of classical symphonies contain music more eloquent than, say, the "sunrise" in "Also Sprach Zarathustra," or the final variation of "Don Quixote" with its piercing, shattering trumpets of defeat, or the terrifying opening passage of "Tod und Verklaerung." For Strauss was able to unloose ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... to explode directly ahead. A blinding flare swept the ground, a hissing crackle was drowned in an overwhelming roar of thunder. Bob dodged, and his horse whirled. When he had mastered both his animal and himself he spurred back. California John had reined in his mount. Not twenty feet ahead of him the bolt had struck. California John glanced quizzically over ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the ship struck, so unlike the presence of mind and calm deportment which we have recorded on similar occasions. But every allowance is to be made for the panic which followed a catastrophe so sudden and so overwhelming. The night was dark and tempestuous, the sea was running high, and all the elements were in a state of uproar. The paralyzing effect of this accumulation of horrors appears in the fact, that even after the small party of eight had so far secured their preservation as to be in possession of the cutter, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... getting less rural by the year. With population pressures and industry and pollution and looming water deficits, they have more and more in common with the Washington metropolis, and more need for "big government" programs. In the long run, an overwhelming majority of the Basin's future population will probably be city-dwellers, with a consequent effect on general attitudes toward Basin planning and projects—though exactly what effect is ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... know. As near as I can find out it is an overwhelming, unquenchable gladness for everything that has happened or is going to happen. At any rate, her quaint speeches are constantly being repeated to me, and, as near as I can make out, 'just being glad' is the tenor of most of them. All is," he added, with another whimsical smile, as ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... still another main consideration in this question of conduct. It is a very great factor in the lives of many people, and in some cases its force and influence are overwhelming. And it is totally different in its very essence and tendency from the other ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... patronage of the Italian faction, especially to serve as a thorn in the side of Handel. His first opera, "Ariadne," was a great success; but when he had the audacity to challenge the great German in the field of oratorio, his defeat was so overwhelming that he candidly admitted his rival's superiority. But he believed that no operas in the world were equal to his own, and he composed fifty of them during his life, extending to the days of Haydn, whom he had the honor of teaching, while the father of the symphony, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... been faithful likewise to Torfrida, and loved her with an overwhelming adoration, as all true men love. And for that very reason he was the more aware that his feeling for Alftruda was strangely like his feeling for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... runs is enormous. Even so, under ordinary climatic conditions its maintenance does not offer very exceptional difficulties, as much of it is blasted out of rock; but during extraordinarily heavy storms the danger of destruction by overwhelming ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... wife, then in France, where she had gone to plead his cause, La Tour received the unwelcome news that his enemy was on his return to Acadia with an overwhelming force. Thereupon he presented himself again in Boston, and appealed to the authorities for further assistance, but they would not do more than send a remonstrance to D'Aunay and ask explanations of ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... this cheerfulness give you the idea that he never had any trouble. But few men have so serious and overwhelming a life struggle. He went out into the world without means, and with no educational opportunity, save that which was afforded him in the winter months, in an old, dilapidated school-house, from instructors whose chief work was to collect their own salary. Instead of postponing the marriage relation, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... cut down with scarce any resistance, while the mercenary cavalry had been defeated with the greatest ease. Thus, among the brigade of the Irish horse there were but few fallen friends to mourn, and nothing to mar the pride that every man felt, in the behaviour of the Irish troops against such overwhelming odds. That the king had fled, everyone knew, but the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... guess what sort of a watching it had been, and it was a comfort to think that Johnny had it. But then as she looked out into the clear still starlight, something brought up the question, what if Johnny should die?—It was overwhelming to Faith for a minute; her little scholar's loveliness had got fast hold of her heart; and she loved him for deep and far-back associations too. She could not bear to think that it might be. Yet she ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was alone when it happened. The reaction after their day of joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely frightened. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... poor weeping, disconsolate one, "The Master calleth for thee." Thee individually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in a vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded heart—to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort in the bitter cup—to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee to hopes full of immortality. Go and learn what ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... has been compared with Dumas' famous 'Monte Christo.' The extraordinary character of its adventures, indeed, would render it dramatic and powerful as fiction; as human truth, it is simply overwhelming. No one can read this book unmoved. From every conceivable standpoint, physiological, sociological, and literary, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... golden circlet proclaimed the identity of one, and the proud bearing and rich dress of both confirmed their station. Somehow, the Duke thought, these two presented a far more imposing appearance than his vassal, the Baron Bel Menstal, despite that Baron's overwhelming personality. ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... Example is a powerful agent in making our footsteps quick and true. But it has its dangers, and may be a means of terrifying unless we feel that even in our low estate there are capacities allying us with our exemplar. The first vision of excellence is overwhelming. We draw back, knowing that we do not look like that, and we cannot bear to behold what is so superior. But by degrees, feeling our kinship with excellence, ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... his boyhood, the panorama of his young manhood, pictures of his battle for success against overwhelming forces in the great city. These pictures returned again and again, vivid in their relief. He saw again the death of his wife and the spirit of darkness that had then come to walk beside him, taunting him that now he was of necessity ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... to him for the creating of opportunities where none exist, gives him courage for anything, and kindles ever afresh his enthusiasm and determination. There is no obstacle so great that it will not dissolve and vanish away into thin air in the heat of such an overwhelming desire ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... four birds, whose names have lost their signification, represent doubtless the four winds, or the four rivers, which, as in so many legends, are the active agents in overwhelming the world ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... all the weary time. No laughter and clatter and wordy argument of the mess-room had been his. He had eaten silently, almost morosely, his silence emulated by the noiseless Asiatic who had served him. It came to him suddenly, the overwhelming realization of the loneliness of those two years and more. All his vexations and anxieties had been his own. He had shared them with no one. His two young officers were too young and flighty, the mate too stupid. There was no consulting with them. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... were over, the young men gave what news they could—stupefying news of the advance of the enemy in overwhelming numbers, and of the flight and confusion of what ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... gallant band, is like a lion at bay with the hunters closing in an ever-narrowing circle around him. Apollonius has been vanquished, Seron defeated by our hero; but now Nicanor and Giorgias, with the forces of Ptolemy, upwards of forty thousand men, are combining to crush him by their overwhelming numbers! What can the devotion of our patriots avail but to swell the band of martyrs who have already laid down their lives in defence of our faith and our laws! Alas! theirs will be a stern keeping of the holy feast; other blood will flow besides that of the Paschal lamb! ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... as that of his prototype, but it is less profoundly despairing. He satirizes evil rather by exposing it and contrasting it with good, than by vehemently denouncing it. The colours of the pictures are sombre, and the gloom is almost overwhelming, but still it is illumined from time to time with the hope of coming amendment, when the great reformer Piers the Plowman, by which is typified Christ,[5] should appear, who was to remedy all abuses and restore the world to a right ...
— English Satires • Various
... of course, kills the true idea and fun of sport. Take away its knightliness of bearing, spirit of self-sacrifice, exhibition of pluck though defeat is certain, and what have you left to sport about? It merely becomes a question of brute force—overwhelming force. You have cruelty left as a net result. And that's a large part of German conduct—cruelty to underlings or to those who are feebler or caught at an unfair disadvantage. Having no leaven of sports ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... election came off, and Dave was elected by an overwhelming majority. But the high eminence of military distinction enthralled him. He seemed to live in an atmosphere of greatness and glory, and was looking eagerly forward to the time when he would command armies. He had begun to climb the ladder of glory under most favorable and auspicious circumstances. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... Luther's words and exhortations, he found it difficult, nevertheless, to initiate at once so vast an undertaking as was imposed upon him. Luther was well aware, as he himself told John, that matters of importance might easily be delayed at court, 'through the overwhelming press of business;' and that princely households had much to do, and it was necessary to importune them perseveringly. He knew his prince—that with the best will possible, he was not energetic enough with those about him; and among ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... reply: the evidence of guilt had evidently been overwhelming. Then, obeying a sign from Renine, she answered ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... 120 Jewish families settled about the great rubber-works. The workings of a trust shut it down after 40 years' successful operation, causing loss of wages and much suffering to 1500 hands. The Christian employees, who must have been in overwhelming majority, probably took it out in denouncing trusts. I didn't hear that they did much else, except go away, I suppose, in search of another job. The Jews did not go away. Perhaps they couldn't. They cast about for some concern to supply ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... either not believed or looked upon as a traitor. Meanwhile enthusiasm was dying out. The burghers lay in their lagers or went home, trusting to the few willing ones, who ultimately proved not strong enough to withstand the overwhelming force that Buller brought to bear upon one point of our positions when he was obliged to force his way through ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... Berlin itself led to a hurried concentration of the Prussians. Frederick from Silesia checked the Austrian main army and hastened towards Dresden. But before he had arrived, Leopold, no longer in observation, had decided the war by his overwhelming victory of Kesselsdorf (December 14, 1745). It was his habit to pray before battle, for he was a devout Lutheran. On this last field his words were, "O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days. Or if Thou wilt not help me, do not help these scoundrels, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... at once his overwhelming admiration gave him a hot flow of language. Beginning the old cumbrous facetiousness about her correspondence, he blurted out the true thoughts that he had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... "Hence your overwhelming sense of the necessity of feminine companionship for weary men. I guess she is a very jolly companion ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... out-stretched like a blind man who stumbles painfully along. After a time he was nearly worn out with cold and weariness, but he dared not sit down anywhere; the darkness was so intense that it frightened him, and the overwhelming, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... harsh. Even the mysterious fall of a tree in the jungle—not an unusual occurrence on still days during the wet season—is unaccompanied by thud and shock. Encompassing vines and creepers, colossal in strength and overwhelming in weight, which have strained the tree to breaking point, ease their burden down, muffling its descent, though now and again the primal rupture of trunk or branch rings out a sharp protest, and following the fall is silence—that varying, elusive sensation ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... weapons, that fierce bowman of immeasurable energy, that cruel and terrible hero, that great resister of enemies, viz., Dhananjaya. The immeasurable Ocean, that lord of all waters, rusheth with fierce impetuosity for overwhelming innumerable creatures. The continent, however, holds and checks him. Today, in this world, I will resist in fight the son of Kunti, that foremost of all drawers of the bow-string, while he will be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... enjoys himself, and then enjoys his enemies. In this sense he loves his enemy, and by a kind of exaggeration of Christianity he loves his enemy the more the more he becomes an enemy. He has a sort of overwhelming and aggressive happiness in his assertion of anger; his curse is as human as a benediction. Of this type of satire the great example is Rabelais. This is the first typical example of satire, the satire which is voluble, which is violent, which is indecent, but ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... strange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to the thrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score of destiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along the shining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by the overwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not some pre monitions of our own unfathomed greatness also stir within us? Yes: "the sense of Existence, the ideas of Right and Duty, awful intuitions of God and immortality, these, the grand facts ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in the twenty-third chapter, of the overwhelming way in which the heroine cook had answered an insult by dignified silence, said not a word in reply, but took the note, and slammed the door in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... surprise either at Giovanni's appeal or at her aunt's response. She knew very well what he would say, and she had long been trying to make up her mind what her answer should be. Yet no sooner had the portieres closed than an unaccountable dread took possession of her, and she had an overwhelming desire ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... was readily forthcoming. Had not the English dogs fortified their settlement without his permission? Had they not afforded shelter to some victim flying from his omnivorous rapacity? These were pretexts good enough to serve the insane brain of Surajah Dowlah. He attacked Fort William with an overwhelming force; the English traders, unwarlike, timorous, and deserted by their leaders, made little or no resistance; the madman had Fort William in his power, and used his power like a madman. The memory of the Blackhole of Calcutta still ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... uphill task; they had worked untiringly in the cause of naval aeronautics, to achieve progress in the new art, and to get recognition for it from the Sea Lords. The recognition, when it came at last, was overwhelming. The navy claimed the Royal Naval Air Service as its own, and absorbed it into itself. The immediate motive for this was disciplinary, but the thing was a compliment, none the less, to the work of the air service. In the summer of 1915 ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... was excited, and the Queen, whose life had been menaced, was more popular than ever. They say that her first visit to the opera after this shocking attempt was a most memorable occasion. Her reception was something almost overwhelming. The audience were all on their feet, cheering and shouting, and waving handkerchiefs and hats, and there was no quieting them till the National Anthem was sung—and even then, they broke in with wild cheers at the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... struggle which the Happy Family was making to preserve the shrunken range of the Flying U, and to hold back the sweeping tide of immigration, one might logically look for some big, overwhelming element to turn the tide one way or the other. With the Homeseekers' Syndicate backing the natural animosity of the settlers, who had filed upon semiarid land because the Happy Family had taken all of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... messieurs, but sometimes sudden happiness is more overwhelming than misfortune. I am ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... produced the sensation of sexual connection. 'For the first time I went to bed and was not alone. As soon as I felt that touch, I heard the words: "Fear not, it is I." I was lost in Him whom I loved. For many days I was cradled in a world of pleasure; I saw Him everywhere, overwhelming me with His chaste caresses.' On the following day at mass she seemed to see Calvary before her. 'Jesus was naked and surrounded by a thousand voluptuous imaginations; His arms were loosened from the cross, and he said to me: "Come!" I longed to fly to Him with my body, but ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... innocence to put against the overwhelming mass of evidence in favour of the prisoner's guilt. The opinions of all were pretty well divided, some being in favour and others against, when suddenly an event happened which surprised everyone. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... were vainly attempting to stem the onset of the column dashed against us, better success was secured elsewhere. Another column swept down the other road, upon which there was only an outlying picket. This had to come back on the run before the overwhelming numbers, and the Rebels galloped straight for the three-inch Rodman. Company M was the first to get saddled and mounted, and now came up at a steady, swinging gallop, in two platoons, saber and revolver in hand, and led by two Sergeants-Key and McWright,—printer boys from Bloomington, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... exploits, experiences, pranks and adventures, through all of which you follow him with an absorbing interest that never flags, stopping only when convulsions of laughter and aching sides force the mirth-swept body to take an involuntary respite from a feast of fun, stupendous and overwhelming. ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... days before authentic news came in from the Niobrara, where Hatton's little command had been "corralled." Just as at first reported, the Indians in overwhelming numbers had suddenly charged down upon the detachment from behind a ridge that lay full half a mile to the east of the road; while others, crouching in a dry watercourse, had picked off the leading soldiers,—the two men thrown out to the front to scout the trail ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... was simply sprinkled with gold. Gold—gold everywhere; large nuggets of it, as big as one's fist! Not embedded in rock, not scattered through sand, but lying loose upon the surface of that unbelievable orange snow! It was overwhelming. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... never slow to declare that he was brought thither by the overwhelming ardour of his passion. His love for Clara was so old a story, and had been told so often, that the repeating of it required no circumlocution. Had he chanced to meet her in the High Street on a Sunday morning, he would have begun with it at once. "Clara," ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... the words of Mezeray, thus "dishonouring his mother and his brother," and depriving them of the very means of subsistence, he was overwhelming the Cardinal de Richelieu alike with honours and with riches. The estate whence he derived his name was erected into a duchy-peerage, and he was thenceforward distinguished by the title of the Cardinal-Duke; while the government of Brittany having ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... dictated notes to me from his diary, or descriptive letters to his wife and son. The impression one gets out there of earth sculpture in process is one of the chief attractions of the region, and Mr. Burroughs never tired of studying the physiognomy of the land, and the overwhelming evidences of time and change, and of contrasting these with our still older, maturer ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Roosevelt, and others of the same type, Frohman had an extraordinary quality of unconscious hypnotism. Men who came to him in anger went away in satisfied peace. They succumbed to what was an overwhelming ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... life in Ferrara. Twice the murder of her young husband Alfonso must have come back to her in all its horror—once on the death of her father and again on that of her terrible brother. If her grief was not inspired by the overwhelming memories of former times, the sight of Lucretia weeping for Caesar Borgia is a beautiful example of sisterly love—the purest and most noble ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... struggle made by their monarch for the recovery of Naples. Few military expeditions have commenced under more brilliant and imposing auspices; few have been conducted in so ill-advised a manner through their whole progress; and none attended in their close with more indiscriminate and overwhelming ruin. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... less an assertion of knowledge than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which must long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source of perpetual confusion.' At the same time, when I look with strenuous gaze into the whole problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to me from the ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and the way he had brandished his whip had evidently made an overwhelming impression on the whole party. Everyone looked grave. The man on horseback, cast down at the anger of the great man, remained stationary, with his hat off, and the rein loose by the foremost waggon; he was silent, and seemed unable to grasp that the ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... broke forth Marion, suddenly, an overwhelming sense coming over her, of the new relations that they four would henceforth bear to each other. "Why, girls, what would they say up there at the stand, if they could know what has come to each of us! I almost feel like going back and telling them all. Just think what a delight it would be to ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Her first, overwhelming emotional feeling was a patriotic nationalistic devotion to Russia and a mystic devotion to the Emperor and the Russian Orthodox Church. Then her next emotional feelings embraced the devotion and loyalty for her family and ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... Fourth of July; and with the fading of the landscape those fervid hours had faded, too. She could no longer believe that she was the being who had lived them; she was someone to whom something irreparable and overwhelming had happened, but the traces of the steps leading up to it had ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... answer. A new and overwhelming complication had been added to the difficulties of ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... as before. King John, who had just come to the throne, hastily gathered an army and marched to his country's relief. On the night named, the Black Prince, marching briskly forward with his small force of about eight thousand men, found himself suddenly in face of an overwhelming array of not less than sixty thousand of the best fighting blood ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and his determination, little short of monomania, to return to its service. He and everybody knew that his conviction was an act of legal violence. There was no prospect of rescue through the machinery of the law from an overwhelming disaster which demonstrated law to be without a conscience or sense of responsibility. As soon as the law with its automatic violence had possession of his case, he felt himself held in a grasp not to be ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... out back is the stronghold of Australian democracy; it was the out-back vote and influence that brought about "One Man One Vote," "Payment of Members," and most of the democratic legislation of late years, and from out back came the overwhelming vote in favour of Australian ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... concurrently with nations as fierce and semi-humanized as themselves, besides that they were stung into threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride and military abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish Sultan. The forces, and more especially the artillery, of Russia, were far too overwhelming to permit the thought of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even with a less dilapidated state of their resources than they could reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In their speed lay their only hope—in strength of foot, as before, and not in strength ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... of the overwhelming majority of anti-slavery settlers in the state, Kansas was not admitted to the Union until after ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the implacable destroyer, there came a sudden flare of light in the salon, and the great crystal candelabra that hung over the end of the gallery where the man and the girl were seated watching became a dazzling sparkle of overwhelming light. ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... of these heroic peasants by any detachment of regular troops. On the retirement of Lefebre, they issued from their hills and wasted the neighbouring territory of Bavaria; but the general issue of the campaign left them at the mercy of Napoleon, who suppressed the insurrection, finally, by overwhelming numbers, and avenged it by massacring Hofer and all who had taken a prominent part in the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head, that this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk had been lectured by Mr. Siegers, the father. Mr. Siegers' (the son's) overwhelming voice, in brassy blasts, as though he had been trying to articulate his words through a trombone, was expressing his great regret at a conduct characterised by a very marked want of discretion... As I lived I was being lectured too! His deafening gibberish was difficult to ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... no question that most of it is an expression of real feeling. All through the voyage these good people have been in great force, relating numberless yarns of their past experiences, more or less truthful in detail. But now their self-importance is overwhelming and superior to all considerations. Every headland, bay, or island that we pass is expatiated upon, and its especial story told, in which, I note, the narrator generally seems to have been the most ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... known their intent, to proceed northwards with their army against Earl Hakon in Throndhjem. When Earl Hakon heard this news, he also collected men, and fitted out ships; and when he heard what an overwhelming force Gunhild's sons had with them, he steered south with his fleet to More, pillaging wherever he came, and killing many people. He then sent the whole of the bonde army back to Throndhjem; but he himself, with his men-at-arms, proceeded ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... sometimes of deep emotion, when relief came to some Indian-besieged detachment of the old regiment. Once, far to the south in the wild, romantic park country of Colorado, a strong detachment had been corralled for days by an overwhelming force of Utes. Their commander,—a dozen of their best men,—all the horses killed and many troopers sorely wounded. They had been rescued at last by their skilled and gallant colonel, after a long and most scientific march ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the Irish had held at the battle of the Boyne, and whereas, on that occasion, they had been very inferior in numbers to their assailants, they were now superior by some regiments in number. In the point of artillery the English had here, as at the Boyne, an overwhelming superiority. ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... overwhelming fear, she flung open the door. Tony was standing beside an old mahogany bureau, one drawer of which had been pulled open. His arm was half-raised. In his hand he gripped a revolver. Ann could see the light from the rose-shaded burners run redly along its barrel like a thin stream ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... very forward little boy," she was about to say, but the words faltered on her lips, and she merely turned away, overwhelming ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... now what he would so gladly have done, and spring over those twenty-four hours intervening to the day which history has not yet judged, and see what happened in various parts of Paris, where the events we are about to relate produced an overwhelming sensation. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... life chiefly in attacking the various heterodox systems which then prevailed, such as the extreme altruistic system of Mo Ti and the extreme egoistic system of Yang Chu; and it is urged—in my opinion with overwhelming force—that if the Tao-Te-Ching had existed in the days of Mencius, it must necessarily have been recognised and treated as a mischievous work, likely to alienate men's minds from the ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... words, the desire actually to kill her was so overwhelming that he moved precipitately away, and, in order not to see her, pressed his smarting hand to his eyes. But in the greater clearness of thought this shutting off of externals brought with it, the ultimate meaning of what she had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... whom they served faithfully would recoup them, here in their native city, with present prosperity, with health, riches, power, glory, and a numerous offspring, for the offerings of their devotion; while, if they irritated the deities by their shortcomings, they had nothing to expect but overwhelming calamities and sufferings. The gods would "cut them down like a reed," and their "names would be annihilated, their seed destroyed;—they would end their days in affliction and hunger,—their dead bodies would be at the mercy ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... days, there was perseverance and completeness in all his undertakings. Nothing was left half done, or done in a hurried and slovenly manner. The habit of mind thus cultivated continued through life; so that however complicated his tasks and overwhelming his cares, in the arduous and hazardous situations in which he was often placed, he found time to do everything, and to do it well. He had acquired the magic of method, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... with a spirit of lofty patriotism, Morse never failed, even in the midst of overwhelming cares, to give voice to warnings which he considered necessary. Replying to an invitation to be present at a public dinner ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... for the extras she refused to eat. In time, Mavis got used to the food supplied by "Dawes'"; she did not swallow everything that was put upon her plate, indeed, she did not eat with good appetite at three consecutive meals; but she could sit at the table in the feeding-room without overwhelming feelings of repulsion, and, by shutting her eyes to the unconcealed mastication of the girl opposite, could often pick enough to satisfy her immediate needs. The evening was the time when she was most hungry; after the walk which she made a point of taking in all weathers, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... And then, shattering the overwhelming tension of the moment, shrilled, suddenly, a horrible, prolonged, piercing shriek ending in a gasp and the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor! What, in God's name, had happened to the old man? And that yell was enough to awaken the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... not sit down to fit in this thing and that thing from a commonplace book. Many novelists there are who know their art better than Charlotte Bronte, but she, like Byron—and there are more points of resemblance between them than might at first be supposed—is imperishable because she speaks under overwhelming pressure, self-annihilated, we may say, while the spirit breathes through her. The Byron "vogue" will never pass so long as men and women are men and women. Mr. Arnold and the critics may remind us of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... The overwhelming triumph of Spain entailed still another consequence. It brought home to all Italians, even to the Venetians, the sense of the individual's helplessness before organized power—a sense which, as we have seen, the early Renaissance, ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... might be with Jean alone in the forest. Three days before Philip would not have thought so much of this. Now it hurt. Josephine had given him her love, yet in spite of that she was placing greater confidence in the half-breed than in him. This was what hurt—at first. In the next breath his overwhelming faith in her returned to HIM. There was some tremendous reason for her being here with Jean. What was it? He stepped out from behind the tree ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... laws of physics; this is, I think, one of the chief reasons why an attempt is made to reject them. I shall try to show in Lecture VIII that the purely empirical reasons for accepting images are overwhelming. But we cannot be nearly so certain that they will not ultimately be brought under the laws of physics. Even if this should happen, however, they would still be distinguishable from sensations by their proximate causal laws, as ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the clerk at the Eagle Pharmacy was an unexpected complication. His surprise was lost in anxiety. But Lily, entering the room a moment later, rather pale and unsmiling, found him facing the door, his manner easy, his head well up, and drawn to his full and rather overwhelming height. She found her poise entirely gone, and it was he who ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the overwhelming, the irresistible attraction which St. Francis exercised is to be found in his matchless simplicity, in his sublime self-surrender. He removed mountains because he believed intensely in the infinite power of mere goodness. While from the writhing ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... that person taught. The titles, taken by themselves, are therefore compatible with the theory that the first three Gospels were perhaps written by friends or disciples of the men whose names they bear. But we shall afterwards see that there is overwhelming evidence to show that the connection between each book and the specified person is much closer than ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... life. They had, with submissive humility, repressed all discontent and disaffection, all envyings and enmities; they chatted and laughed, while every one knew or suspected that they were standing on a volcano, whose overwhelming eruptions might be expected at any moment, and yet every one feigned the most perfect innocence and unconstraint. The ladies scrutinized each other's magnificent and costly toilets, jesting and exchanging ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... mountain of marble. It matters not which. The accumulated weight of the one is as great as that of the other. And I wish to lay upon the consciences of all that are listening to me now this thought, that an overwhelming weight of guilt results from the accumulation of little sins. Dear friends! I do not desire to preach a gospel of fear, but I cannot help feeling that, very largely, in this day, the ministration of the Christian Church is defective in that it does not give sufficient, though sad and sympathetic, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... brightest Colossuses of her future glory. The Irish hierarchy is plased to look upon me as a luminary of almost superhuman brilliancy and coruscation: my talents she pronounces to be of the first magnitude; my eloquence classical and overwhelming, and my learning only adorned by that poor insignificant attribute ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... consented to be introduced to the Duchesse de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from overwhelming him with questions and compliments. She received him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies that he possesses something of that tact which makes women quick to read ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The apostle of affliction, he who threw Enchantment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words, like sunbeams, dazzling as they passed The eyes, which o'er them shed tears feelingly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... eyes had never closed, and yet, strange as it may seem, he could take in no more of the future than what lay before him on this one night. The sudden prospect now of being turned out into the street was overwhelming. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... be taken into our confidence when we require you.' And she resumed her foreign air in a most elaborate and overwhelming bow. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... into the appearance of Rappelkopf. He pushes Hans before him overwhelming him with a volley of abuse. The real Rappelkopf, coming forward to greet his {448} brother-in-law, is received no better. When Rappelkopf mentions Sabine, Astragalus speaks of her exactly in the same ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... difficult to manage. Reaching her mother's side, she poked her coaxingly with her wet little muzzle. Meeting no response, she poked her impatiently, and even butted her. When even this brought no response, a sudden overwhelming terror chilled her heart, and her weak knees almost gave way. She had an impulse to run from this thing that looked like her mother and smelled like her mother, and yet was evidently, after all, not her mother. She was afraid to stay there. But she was also afraid to go ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... white hands with the face of a negro. The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme's overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the Old-World forces? What miracle had been wrought to keep this soulless giant in life through so many years of darkness and of silence? Constans felt his head spinning; the consciousness of a fact so tremendous was overwhelming; to save himself he turned away from the dynamo proper and began looking about for the source of its mechanical energy. He found it in an odd-appearing motor, to which the dynamo was connected by the ordinary means of a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... were exhausted, and the stoutest hearts entertained the most gloomy forebodings as to the final issue, Catholic France stepped gallantly forth to the rescue of our infant freedom, almost crushed by an overwhelming English tyranny! Catholic Spain also subsequently lent us her aid against England. Many of our most sagacious statesmen have believed that, but for this timely aid, our Declaration of Independence could scarcely have been ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... position at the head of the street, as the baggage, the wounded, and the followers defiled over the bridge. As soon as the enemy perceived that it was an unsupported rearguard, it was assailed by overwhelming numbers, but continued firmly to hold its own. In this unequal struggle, which lasted nearly three hours, its ammunition was more than once exhausted ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Turks entered the war it was obvious that unaided they could never realise the Kaiser's hope of cutting the Suez Canal communications of the British Empire. The German commitments in Europe were too overwhelming to permit of their rendering the Turks adequate support for a renewed effort against Egypt after the failure of the attack on the Canal in February 1915. There was an attempt by the Turks in August 1916, but it was crushed by Anzac horse and British infantry at Romani,[1] a score of miles ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... force working in the direction of the curve has the same effect as, in Exp. IV., the direction of the line. The exceptions noted, especially numerous choices of O, seem governed by some fixed law. The evidence would seem to be overwhelming that the reversals of the mechanical balance occur only where the lines would be crowded together in the center or would leave an empty gap there. The remaining exceptions—the symmetrical choices ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... from face to face, and his mind from personality to personality. It was like the unrolling of a scroll; a panorama of a world he had half forgotten. He had no time for reflection, but one impression came to him, swift and overwhelming. Once he had lived in this world and taken it as a matter of course. He had known these people, gone about with them; they had seemed friendly, obliging, a good sort of people on the whole. And now, what a change! They ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... His overwhelming conceit suddenly woke the wish in his heart to know if she still cared, or if she had forgotten him, and a little flush crossed his face and his eyes grew tender as they met the tragedy of ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the one is made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming pressure of preternatural agency urges on the tide of human passion with redoubled force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm: he reels to and fro like a drunken man; he staggers under the weight of his own purposes and the suggestions ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... solemn gleeful satisfaction the overwhelming grandeur of the disaster that had happened to her father. The active old man, a continual figure of the streets, had been cut off in a moment from the world and condemned for life to a mattress. She sincerely ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... nothing in it that could be made laughable. It was short to say, and above all it had the advantage of being uncommon; as it was, so many mothers had desired the honour of naming their daughters after the rector's wife, that the number of "Annies" was overwhelming, but there certainly would not be two "Lilac Whites" in the village. In short, as Mrs White told Jem that evening, Mrs Leigh was "that set" on the name that she had to give in to her. And so it was settled; and wonderfully soon afterwards it was rumoured in the village that Mrs James White on ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... still. He moved restlessly to and fro on their narrow patch, and glanced into the depths on every side. Was there nothing to be done? Must they wait idly here until their enemies were strong enough to rush them in overwhelming force? ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... collection of letters purporting to have been written by that Phalaris who governed Agrigentum more than 500 years before the Christian era. The evidence, both internal and external, against the genuineness of these letters is overwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in company with much that was far more valuable, from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by Politian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... comers were the instruments of that more overwhelming destruction for which the Goths had but prepared the way. To resist Alaric, the Roman legions had been withdrawn from all the western frontiers, and thus more distant and far more savage tribes of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... body; I am called Narayana, and I am bearer of the conch-shell, the discus and the mace. O regenerate Rishi, for a period measured by a thousand times the length of the Yugas, I who am the Universal Soul sleep overwhelming all creatures in insensibility. And, O best of regenerate Rishis, I stay here thus for all time, in the form of a boy though I am old, until Brahma waketh up. O foremost of Brahmanas, gratified with thee, I who ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
