"Perilous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we have met numerous obstacles—the apathy of the people, the inherited and depraved appetites of drunkards, and the perilous social customs of the day, which are indorsed by the practice of many otherwise excellent people. Worse than all these combined is the influence of the licensed dram-shop. We can arouse the indifferent ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... the winter campaign which witnessed the second siege and fall of Badajoz, Mr. Smith, in the zealous exercise of his perilous vocation, entered that city in his usual disguise of a Spanish countryman, with strict orders to keep his eyes and ears wide open, and to report as speedily as possible upon various military details, which it was desirable the British general should be made acquainted with. Mr. Smith, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the queen, "all I have done, this perilous aggression, this public defiance of one of the greatest nobles in the kingdom, and my conduct being exposed to the test of public ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... she must have rest after her fearful pilgrimage through that dark, empty house. She sank upon her satin lounge, and abandoned herself to the joy and security of the hour. She had just come to the end of a perilous journey. Night and danger were behind, the rosy morning of safety was about to dawn. She was so full of joyous emotion, that scarcely knowing what she did, her lips began to move in ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the Princess Charlotte, which threw the mind of England into such distress, had just been made known at St Helena. Napoleon spoke of it as reminding him of the perilous child-birth of Marie Louise. "Had it not been for me," said he, "she would have lost her life, like this poor Princess Charlotte. What a misfortune! young and beautiful, destined to the throne of a great nation, and to die ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... father take a second plateful of goose, with the deadly stuffing thereof—Darius simply could not resist it, like most dyspeptics he was somewhat greedy—he foresaw an indisposed and perilous father for the morrow. Which prevision was supported by Clara's pantomimic antics, and even by Maggie's grave and restrained sigh. Still, he had sworn to write and send the letter, and he should do so. A career, a lifetime, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... squealing throngs of her kindred which crowded the Lindley kraal. Long since, Weldon had discovered that the thoroughbred Nig was an ornament; but that Piggie was a necessity. Again and yet again, her flying feet and gritty temper had brought him, unscathed, through perilous plights. She read his mind as by instinct; left unguided, she guided herself with exceeding discretion; and, upon more than one occasion, she had endured the nervous strain of feeling a human body dangling limply above the saddle bow, held in ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... illiterate, and to suspect that they jumped from premises to conclusions with a celerity very different from the careful ratiocination of mechanical science, had still, in the citations and references wherewith they abounded, lured him on to philosophers more specious and more perilous. Out of the tinker's bag he had drawn a translation of Condorcet's "Progress of Man" and another of Rousseau's "Social Contract." Works so eloquent had induced him to select from the tracts in the tinker's miscellany those which abounded most ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Do you think, after all, that Mrs. A. is much of a lady?" She replied so firmly as to crush me for the time, "One is either a lady or she is not a lady." I supposed she was right, and that there were no stages on the perilous upward path which led to being a lady. I have changed my mind now. I think each of us may have some virtues without having all the virtues. I think with Emerson that in a society of gentlemen and ladies we shall find no complete ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... a perilous business, a course he had no right to pursue. And Lanyard knew it. None ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... thankful to have her assistance in a case with which he would have found it difficult to deal if he had been left to, his unaided judgment, and between them the young girl was safely piloted through the perilous straits in which she ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... outbreak into the domain of unlimited inquiry, unless he take heed of the needfully-cautious prudentialities of mundane observance, there infallibly attends him a fatal Mephistophelean influence, of which the malign tendency, from every conclusion of eventuality, is to plunge him into perilous vast cloud-waves of the dream-inhabited vague. Let, then, the young student of infinity ——, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... months in Sicily, exploring with some thoroughness the ruins, and making several perilous inland trips, for the country was infested by banditti. One journey from Syracuse through the center of the island revealed more wretchedness than Irving supposed existed in the world. The half-starved peasants lived in wretched cabins and often in caverns, amid filth and vermin. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... gave my word as a business man. I am under great obligations to him." He told briefly the details of the transaction; even the hypothecation of the Parsons bonds. For once in his life he made a clean breast of his bosom's perilous stuff. He was ready to bear the consequences of his plight rather than be false to his man's standard of honor, and yet his wife's opposition had fascinated as well as startled him. He set forth his case—the case which meant his political checkmate, then waited. Selma had risen and stood with ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... you will admit that if he is not the greatest of all discoverers, he must be a dangerous quack. His process might kill you or make you insane. It must be very perilous." ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... not call it suggestion, too, if the individual even tremblingly accepts the risks of perilous deals, because he feels obliged to grasp for an unusually high income in order to live up to the style of his set? Of course there is no objective standard of living if we abstract from that where the income simply secures the needs of bare existence. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... "It is a perilous one, certainly, Reuben," the merchant replied, after a long silence. "There is the risk of the loss of the ship and all her freight, and there is the risk of the loss of your life and of those of the crew; and I would rather lose even the Swan, Reuben, than ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... out of the way, and perilous to traverse. There are difficulties in connection with the roads; but those who know how to manage such difficulties and wish to proceed should bring with them money and various articles, and give ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... Turenne has lent him to me for the campaign, and indeed I feel grateful to him for so doing. When I say, gentlemen, that it was he who saved the citadel of Turin to our arms, by undertaking and carrying out the perilous work of passing through the city and the Spanish lines to carry word to the half starved garrison that succour would arrive in a fortnight's time, and so prevented their surrendering, you will admit that Turenne has not spoken too highly of his courage and ability. I have heard the ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Mr. Mackinder, who said the barque of British trade had to steer a perilous course between the scylla of the front Opposition bench and the charybodies as represented by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... to Lascelles Wraxall I sent, when finished, "The House of Elmore," the reader may very easily guess. Wraxall had stepped so much out of his groove—for the busy literary man that he was—to take me by the hand, and point the way along "the perilous road"; he had given me so many kind words, that I wrote my hardest to complete my new story before I should fade wholly from his recollection. The book was finished in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be—whether Wraxall ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on the next day to run her into Halifax. From the windward side of the otherwise clear heavens a dark cloud showed itself on the horizon, and in a short time afterwards the ship was enveloped in one of those dense fogs, which make a voyage along these coasts so perilous, during the greater part of the year. They had now come within that space of the ocean in which it was usual to hold a ship's course in sailing from England to the West Indies; torrents of rain increased the thickness of the fog, and fearful ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... who stood nearest were astonished, when they perceived their flanks were exposed by the departure of their allies; then a horseman at full gallop announced to the king that the Albans were moving off. Tullus, in this perilous juncture, vowed twelve Salii and temples to Paleness and Panic. Rebuking the horseman in a loud voice, so that the enemy might hear him plainly, he ordered him to return to the ranks, that there was no occasion for alarm; that it was by his order that the Alban army ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world." ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... a perilous journey. The wind blew and the rope swayed more and more as it was let down, and sometimes he was dashed against the rocky sides of the precipice; but still he descended, and at last stood on the rock and clasped ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... condescended to tell Harry what he meant to do, even at the sacrifice of his dignity as commander of the expedition. An appearance at least of good feeling was restored, and after breakfasting on their bread and cheese, they embarked again, on what promised to be a perilous voyage. ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... raised her eyes, her cheeks flushed. She looked him full in the face, her head up. Her heart thundered in her breast. She felt as though she were at the beginning of some tremendous adventure—an adventure enthralling, magnificent—and perilous. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Having seen, he had grasped and never let go. "Land-poor," they had called him in the mid-settler period. But that had been in the days when the placers petered out, when there were no wagon roads nor tugs to draw in sailing vessels across the perilous bar, and when his lonely grist mill had been run under armed guards to keep the marauding Klamaths off while wheat was ground. Like father, like son, and what Isaac Travers had grasped, Frederick Travers had held. It had been the same tenacity of hold. Both had been far-visioned. Both ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... writes Lord Byron in his memoranda, in 1814, "tells me that it is said that I am 'much out of spirits.' I wonder if I am really or not? I have certainly enough of 'that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart' and it is better they should believe it to be the result of these attacks than that they should guess the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... are coming!" At the same moment Reginald caught sight of a large body of horsemen, whom he at once recognised as those who had accompanied Captain Burnett, galloping down the ravine on the left. From the heights above, they had apparently observed the perilous position of their friends; and on they came like an avalanche, at headlong speed, throwing themselves impetuously on the mountaineers, who gave way as the surface of the ocean recedes before the bows of a gallant ship impelled by the gale. Before they ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... Capt. Kotzebue of a marine serpent which pursued him off Behring's island: it was red and enormously long, the head resembling that of the sea-lion, at the same time two disproportionately large eyes gave it a frightful appearance. Mr. Kriukof's situation seems to have been almost as perilous above the surface of the sea, as Lieutenant Hardy's Spanish diver's was, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... happiness which he predicted would result from my adoption of such a course. Piety itself took part in these suggestions. 'I shall lead a holy and a Christian life,' said I; 'I shall divide my time between study and religion, which will allow me no leisure for the perilous pleasures of love. I shall despise that which men ordinarily admire; and as I am conscious that my heart will desire nothing but what it can esteem, my cares will not be greater or more numerous ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... of "Hoch! Hoch!" resounded through the apartment with the grinding roll of heavy-bottomed beer-glasses, and the consul, tremulous with emotion and a reserve verb in his pocket, rose to reply. Fully embarked upon this perilous voyage, and steering wide and clear of any treacherous shore of intelligence or fancied harbor of understanding and rest, he kept boldly out at sea. He said that, while his loving adversary in this battle of compliment had disarmed him and left ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... failure, Kapitan Schwalbe went aft and descended into his cabin. He was hardly conscious of the presence of his two involuntary guests as he passed. He was thinking of the fate that had consigned him to a perilous and uncongenial task. Without doubt the vessel he had been pursuing was equipped with wireless, and by this time a number of those dreaded hornets would be tearing towards the spot. To add to his discomfiture ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... "Petes," "Jacks," or "Jims" hanging around Hays City to take my communication. Cody learning of the strait I was in, manfully came to the rescue, and proposed to make the trip to Dodge, though he had just finished his long and perilous ride from Larned. I gratefully accepted his offer, and after four or five hours' rest he mounted a fresh horse and hastened on his journey, halting but once to rest on the way, and then only for an hour, the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... everything to save Mme. Acquet. They knew that her husband's denunciations made her the chief culprit, and that the accusation would rest almost entirely on her. They determined to appeal to Chauveau-Lagarde, whom the perilous honour of defending Marie-Antoinette before the Revolutionary tribunal had rendered illustrious. The great advocate undertook the defence of Mme. Acquet and sent a young secretary named Ducolombier, who usually lived with him, to Rouen ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... examine the bottoms of the boats. Jules Fontaine liked the business of diving. When the two men found themselves in a strange land, without any occupations, Captain Jules joined his fortunes with the pearl divers and for many years followed their perilous trade. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... confirmed by the senate the next day, March 6th. Of the variety of the selection he said, "I need them all. They enjoy the confidence of their several states and sections, and they will strengthen the administration. The times are too grave and perilous for ambitious schemes and rivalries." To all who were associated with him in the government, he said, "Let us forget ourselves and join hands, like brothers, to save the republic. If we succeed, there will be glory enough for all." ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... some lazar-house. Life-long study of perspective in its application to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the productions of a master so original and so accomplished, all we can say is that ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... the stove discoursing of mighty deeds that we had done; of struggling up the Alps and forcing our way to summits then unwon; of fights with lions and hyenas, of facing grim and ghostly shapes, of dodging bailiffs and subpoenas, and many perilous escapes. ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... endure to see them grieved and disappointed. And should I marry her to some stranger the three Princes my sons will be sore distressed and saddened in soul; nay, who knoweth that they may not slay themselves or go forth and betake them to some far and foreign land? The matter is a troublous and a perilous; so it behoveth me their sire to take action on such wise that if one of them espouse her, the other two be not displeased thereat." Long time the Sultan revolved the matter in his mind; and at length he devised a device; and, sending ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... be the reason for this perilous journey? Did Zarlah not realize the danger to which she was exposed, rushing thus madly into the wilds of the North—the region of the Repelling ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... of wild and perilous thoughts Hast thou stirred up within my tranquil breast? The darkest musings of my bosom thou Hast dragged to light, and placed them full before me, And what I scarce dared harbor e'en in thought, Thou speakest plainly out, with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... trees, the song of birds, the mirror of the fountain, the murmur of the stream, the many charms for eye and ear, fearing lest their souls should grow soft amid luxury and abundance of riches, and lest their virtue should thereby be defiled. For it is perilous to turn your eyes often to those things whereby you may some day be made captive, or to attempt the possession of that which it would go hard with you to do without. Thus the Pythagoreans shunned ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... at this moment may be thus summed up: Either our frontier had to be defended on the spot under conditions which the British retreat rendered extremely perilous, or we had to execute a strategic retirement which, while delivering up to the enemy a part of the national soil, would permit us, on the other hand, to resume the offensive at our own time with a favorable disposition of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... when the troops of Sennacherib landed far in their rear, there were no forces in the neighborhood to resist them. However, the departure of the Assyrians on an expedition regarded as extremely perilous, was the signal for a general revolt of the Babylonians, who once more set up a native king in the person of Susub, and collected an army with which they made ready to give the Assyrians battle on their return. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... nothing would happen on a large scale until the arrival of the free labourers and the troops, which it was said the Government was sending. Harry the Blower talked darkly of marauding bands, ambushed foes and perilous encounters on his road, all of which waxed in number and blood-thirstiness after the manner of Falstaff's men in buckram. But nobody ever took Harry the Blower's yarns ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... get this perilous stuff off my chest, and in a brighter frame of mind, sailed for Anzac on the destroyer Lewis. We took biscuits and bully beef with us but the hospitable sailors insisted on regaling us with a hot meal. Sat in cabin all the way as usual writing ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... growth when it burst upon the world, and the ninety years which have since elapsed have witnessed no development of the original idea. The balloon of to-day—the balloon in which Coxwell and Glaisher have made their perilous trips into the remote regions of the air—is in almost every respect the same as the balloon with which "the physician Charles," following in the footsteps of the Montgolfiers, astonished Paris in 1783. There are few more tantalising stories in the annals of invention than this. ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... once more moving in a way to justify her name; and, although Ford was no sailor, he could see that her only chance to penetrate that perilous barrier of broken water was to "take it nose on," as Dick Lee ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... lady," replied the supplicant, "that I will act by the agency of others, and do not myself design to mingle in any enterprise in which my appearance might be either perilous ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... beautiful moth, sailing serenely along, and now and then blundering into things, but never learning by experience the dangers of such blunders. One day, in the course of her inconsequent path through life, she would probably flutter too near the attractive blaze of some perilous fire, just as a moth flies against the flame of a candle and singes its frail, soft ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... will carry me no farther. I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which approves and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail—cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the illusion and the darkness ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... threw himself on his horse's back, without placing a foot in the stirrup—passed me in the perilous ascent, against which he pressed his steed as if the animal had had the footing of a wild cat. The water and mud splashed from his heels in his reckless course, and a few bounds placed him on the top of the bank, where I presently joined ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... When he looked down his hope fled. At one time there had been a lean-to shed running along that side of the building. By the roof of it he could have got to the ground unseen. Now he remembered that it had been torn down the year before; there was a straight and perilous drop beneath the window. As for the stairs, they led almost to the front door of the building. Sinclair would be sure to see him if he ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... operating; and we shall have need to be armed with the whole armour of God. If we have in our personal history so investigated the evidences of our faith, as to feel that we have a well-grounded hope, unassailable by these doubts, we may be thankful: if we have gone safely through the perilous test of a careful examination of them, sometimes staggering perhaps in our faith, yet struggling after truth in prayerful trust that the Lord would himself be our teacher, until we now are able to feel that we have our faith grounded on a Rock,—a faith ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was no obstacle to the existence of friendship between myself and Louis de l'Estorade. Having renounced all idea of finding in marriage those transports of love on which our minds used so often, and with such perilous rapture, to dwell, I found a gentle calm settling over me. "If debarred from love, why not seek for happiness?" I said to myself. "Moreover, I am loved, and the love offered me I shall accept. My married life will be no slavery, but rather a perpetual ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... which was very rich and plenteous. And while they sojoumed, there happened a misadventure fell and grievous. For a great part of those who wished to break up the host, and had aforetime been hostile to it, spoke together and said that the adventure to be undertaken seemed very long and very perilous, and that they, for their part, would remain in the island, suffering the host to depart, and that-when the host had so departed-they would, through the people of Corfu, send to Count Walter of Brienne, who then held Brandis, so that he might send ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... several still attached to the protruding poles, that have broken as their bodies fell crashing across them. Fragments of leather straps and cast gearing tell of others that have torn loose, and scoured off from the perilous spot. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... snapping in their beaks the aromatic woods of the Indies. The gambols of the monkeys, balancing themselves on the garlands of passion vines, or springing from tree to tree, did not even bring a smile to his lips. Completely absorbed, he had strength only to contemplate the end of his perilous journey. He thought only of Blue ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... mendicant orders,—ever the most effective arm in the missionary service of the Latin Church,—and, a little later, the founding of the Society of Jesus, with its immense potency for good and for evil. At the same time the court of Rome, sobered in some measure, by the perilous crisis that confronted it, from its long orgy of simony, nepotism, and sensuality, began to find time and thought for spiritual duties. The establishment of the "congregations" or administrative boards, and especially of the Congregatio de Propaganda ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... deal with the climbing of dangerous peaks, or the descent (as here) of some fourteen hundred miles of water both mysterious and ferocious, the well-told tale of a perilous journey, planned with head and carried through with dauntless persistence, always holds the attention of its readers and gives them many a thrill. This tale is very well told. Though it is the third of its kind, it differs from its predecessors more than enough ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... silk, clustering in the nape of her neck; when David and Blair saw these things—it was about the time their voices were showing amazing and ludicrous register—something below the artless brutalities of the boys' sense of humor was touched. They took abruptly their first perilous step out of boyhood. Of course they did not know it.... The significant moment came one afternoon when they all went out to the toll-house for ice-cream. There was a little delay at the gate, while the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... a spirited horse, she was raced down the steep slope of a rocky ravine in the Far West. Alone in a foul den of the underworld she held at bay a dozen villainous Asiatics. Down the fire escape of a great New York hotel she made a perilous way. From the shrouds of a tossing ship she was about to plunge to a watery release from the persecutor who was almost upon her. Upon the roof of the Fifth Avenue mansion of her scoundrelly guardian in the great city of New York she was gaining the friendly projection ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... and it did not satisfy him. At last a change came. He suddenly awoke to consciousness of how far he had strayed from that good of which Beatrice was the type; how basely he had deserted the true ideals of his youth; how perilous was the life of the world; how near he was to the loss of the hope of salvation. We know not fully how this change was wrought. All we know concerning it is to be gathered from passages in his later works, in which, as in the 'Convito,' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... out to the lift, bent over and secured the desired end, and raised himself erect, with the intention to make a run in, on the top of the yard. Captain Truck and the second mate had both commanded him to desist in vain, for impunity from harm had rendered him fool-hardy. In this perilous position he even paused to give a cheer. The cry was scarcely ended when he sprang off the yard several feet upwards and fell perpendicularly towards the sea, carrying the rope in his hand. At first, most on board believed the man had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... army, England the greater fleet. For an expedition to Rio Janeiro or the Philippines, England has the greater power. For a war on the Po or the Danube, France has the greater power. But neither has power sufficient to keep the other in quiet subjection for a month. Invasion would be very perilous; the idea of complete conquest on either side utterly ridiculous. This is the manly and sensible way of discussing such questions. The ergo, or rather the argal, of Mr Mill cannot impose on a child. Yet we ought scarcely to say this; for we remember to have heard ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perilous situation we came off surprisingly well, but lost Robert Bell, of Winchester, Virginia. He was struck by a large piece of shell, which passed through his body. During the hour he survived, his companions who could leave their posts went to say good-by. He was a brave soldier and a ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... along by the outer Boulevards, as he had felt inclined to. A fanciful hope, on the contrary, urged him to follow the perilous itinerary of central Paris. Rodolphe thought that on a day when millions were going about the thoroughfares in the money-cases of bank messengers, it might happen that a thousand franc note, abandoned ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... found them not, or saw but a few of the commonest kinds. It was only too easy to account for this rarity. The bitter north-east wind had blown every day and all day long during those weeks when birds are coming, and when nearing the end of their journey, at its most perilous stage, the wind had been dead against them; its coldness and force was too much for these delicate travellers, and doubtless they were beaten down in thousands into the grey waters of a bitter sea. The stronger-winged wheatear was more fortunate, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... in the Northeast—settled by the Ashburton Treaty in 1842—Oregon, with its extensive territory and magnificent natural wealth was treated as unworthy of controversy. But for the patriot missionary, Marcus Whitman, who in the winter of 1842-43 made a perilous journey from his mission post in Oregon to Washington, to stir up the American Government to a sense of its duty, and of the imminent danger of the seizure of Oregon by the British, that valuable region would in all probability have passed under British dominion. "All I ask," said ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... philosophy then a basis for a large humanitarianism, dangerous perhaps in its implications. And yet it could hardly have been more perilous than the Roman orthodox religion which insisted only upon formal correctness, seldom upon ethical decorum, or than Stoicism with its categorical imperative, which could restrain only those who were already convinced. The Stoic ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... ship. He would have to come hand-over-hand along the rope, through the waters that boiled over the deadly rocks, and through the thundering seas that beat the shore. And hand-over-hand he came, past the reef on which the ship lay, across the wild stretch of deep water, over the second and more perilous reef, and into the middle of the breakers of the beach. There he lost his hold, but Tahuna dashed into the surf, and seized him. The chief could now give no attention to his own safety, but his wife and Amiria hauled on the life-line, and prevented ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... on the first act of the Autumn Drama. But you've given it to me—you and our friends out there!" She waved the dry little glittering hand. "And you can talk in cold blood of marching out—and leaving the hive—and all the honey you might have had out of it. Sweet danger, perilous sport, the great Game of War—played as a man like you knows how to play it in this little sandy world-arena, with all the Powers and Dominions looking on. Preserve us! Oh, to be in your shoes this minute, if only for one week! But as I can't, it's you I hope to see ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... wonderful unknown land. Some of them were men of wealth, who were eager to add to their riches, but the most of them had little beyond their love of adventure and their thirst for gold to carry them across the seas, needy but bold soldiers and cavaliers who were ready for any enterprise, however perilous, that might promise them reward. The stories of many of these men are full of romantic interest, and this is especially the case with one of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... things God suffers to wander through His world. Accursed be the Fauns of the woodland, and accursed be the singers of the sea! I have heard them at night-time, and they have sought to lure me from my beads. They tap at the window, and laugh. They whisper into my ears the tale of their perilous joys. They tempt me with temptations, and when I would pray they make mouths at me. They are lost, I tell thee, they are lost. For them there is no heaven nor hell, and in neither shall ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... their best preparations to receive the enemy. And still my pen trembles in my hand; even after this long lapse of time, it trembles with wonder and delight, to tell of that immortal fire, which in those perilous days, glowed in the bosoms of the Charleston FAIR. Instead of gloomy sadness and tears, for the dark cloud that threatened their city, they wore the most enlivening looks — constantly talked the boldest language of patriotism — animated their husbands, brothers, and lovers to fight bravely ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the perilous task of remonstrating with his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... stalked the oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and the trout in the Thames; he may have made topping averages in first-rate matches of cricket; or have made long and perilous marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain, or glacier; he may have successfully attended many breakfast-parties, within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded by all the fairyland of pomp, and beauty, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... nearly a week from home, and yet not an additional word or line had arrived from her lover. It was fortunate, however, that in her present perilous condition she had one in whom she could confide, and whom she knew sympathised with her. This was a solace to her, as it enabled her from time to time, to ease her burdened heart of the heavy load that pressed upon it, and converse ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... do, I felt an interest in my theory which, in its way, was rather philosophical than superstitious. And I can sincerely say that I was in as tranquil a temper for observation as any practical experimentalist could be in awaiting the effects of some rare, though perhaps perilous, chemical combination. Of course, the more I kept my mind detached from fancy, the more the temper fitted for observation would be obtained; and I therefore riveted eye and thought on the strong daylight sense in the page ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... in the very menace of new and perilous relations—of a new intimacy, imminent, threatening, she withdrew her hands from the shoulders of this man who had been a boy but an instant ago. And the next moment he caught ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... Virginia to the Cherokee towns on the lower Tennessee, not far from the present city of Chattanooga. He would, however, turn aside at the Tellico and visit Echota, which was the home of the principal chiefs. While he is pursuing his perilous way, it may be as well to glance for a moment at the people among whom he is going at so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... proceeded to Crisso, and rode on to Delphi, ascending the mountain on horseback, by a steep, craggy path towards the north-east. After scaling the side of Parnassus for about an hour, they saw vast masses of rock, and fragments of stone, piled in a perilous manner above them, with niches and sepulchres, and relics, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... unpleasant reflection occurred to my mind, that possibly the books and the people might be wrong, and that mere courage might not enable me to dispense with acquired skill. [Footnote: The doctrine that courage is enough is most mischievous and perilous nonsense. I have become a good swimmer since those days, and have taught my sons: but we had to learn it as an art, just as one learns to skate.] But I put away this idea as too disagreeable to be dwelt upon. Unfortunately the disagreeable idea that we set aside is often ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... (of a former condition): r sna wear edhwyrft eorlum, sian inne fealh Grendles mdor (i.e. after Grendel's mother had penetrated into the hall, the former perilous condition, of the time of the visits of Grendel, returned to ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... had been allowed two counsel, who, perilous as was the duty imposed upon them, cheerfully accepted it as an honor; but it was not intended that their assistance should be more than nominal. She had only known their names on the evening preceding the trial; but when she addressed a letter to the President ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... and three other knights climbed to the foot of the tower. During the rather perilous ascent Max and Fario noticed that no damage to the embankment, nor even trace of the passage of the barrow, could be seen. Fario began to imagine witchcraft, and lost his head. When they reached the top and examined into the matter, ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... special devotion for the Osiris of Abydos and his associates, Horus and Anubis, to establish themselves in this territory. Beyond Heracleopolis, he entered the domains of the Memphite gods, the "land of Sokaris," and this probably was the most perilous moment of his journey. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... other day, pondering over the possible fate of the Dutch colony of the Mannahattoes, supposing that the Mayflower had made (as was purposed) the Highlands of Neversink instead of Shankpainter Hill at the end of Cape Cod. It was a perilous meditation, for we found our belief in Plutarch's Lives, the Charter Oak, and the existence of the Maelstrm all sliding away from under us. "Think," we said, "if New York had been Boston, how it would have fared with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... those who read the records of many distinguished, nay, many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd may gloss it over in Lamb, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... hall door; and he just stopped himself in time, as he was about to ask for Miss Champion. This perilous approach to a slip reminded him how carefully he must guard words and actions in this house, where Jane had successfully steered her intricate course. He would never forgive himself if he gave ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... much tact and judgment, and exercising to some purpose that amiable taste for "doing good" that marks the virtuous lady of station in every age. This, however, was a woman who took risks with her eyes open, and steered herself cleverly in perilous situations, and guided others with a firm hand also, and in other ways made good her claim to be a ruler. The consent and the will of her people were her great strength; by them she dethroned her niece and ascended ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... disappearance, a blast rushed out with an old hat, which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard than in stemming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended to the guide's cottage, and received, I presume, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... misleading," she pointed out, to her scoffing brothers. "One would suppose that marrying was the simplest thing in the world—nothing perilous, nothing to object to about it. A man proposes to you as if he were asking you for the sixth waltz, only his manner is perfervid. And my belief is that half the girls who accept don't realize that they are agreeing ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... sandy desert of the north, Herodotus seems to have made his way. The "region of the wild beasts" must have been truly perilous, "for this is the tract," he says, "in which huge serpents are found, and the lions, the elephants, the bears, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... he kept repeating, seeming unable to understand that it was himself who had, as it were, driven Maxence on to the fatal road which he was pursuing, forgetting that the absurd severities of the father prepared the way for the perilous indulgence of the mother, unwilling to own that the head of a family has other duties besides providing food and shelter for his wife and children, and that a father has but little right to complain who has not known ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... well-regulated famine or pestilence, or of a well-regulated earthquake or tornado. And even the few banks that are claimed to be well managed, have no appreciable effect on the system. It is the system that knows no uniformity or security, and never can have, as now organized. That a system so perilous and explosive, should have even partially succeeded is proof only of the intelligence and integrity, generally, of the bank officers and directors, but no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... unable to secure a position to his liking and was anxious to return to the States. After a few days of good fellowship, and finding him of the right material, I made my plans known to him. He at once fell in with them, and a week later we embarked on our perilous journey. We started at full moon drifting with a comparatively strong current using paddles to guide our roughly constructed craft. We made nightly rides of about fifty miles, and at dawn would land on one of the small islands of the river, conceal ourselves and the boat in the tall ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... will have to chance my perilous question.... I presume one can't help being true to the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... future time, when I am mingled with the dust, and the arm of my infant son has been nerved for deeds of manhood, the storm of war should burst upon your city, I feel that, relying upon his inheriting the instincts of his ancestors and mine, I may pledge him in that perilous hour to stand by your side in the defence of your hearth stones, and in maintaining the honor of a flag whose constellation though torn and smoked in many a battle, by sea and land, has never been stained with dishonor, and will I trust forever fly ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... at once went to the point and said M. and Madame du Maine must at once be arrested and put where they could cause no apprehension. I supported this opinion, and showed the perilous annoyances that might arise if this step were not instantly taken; as much for the purpose of striking terror into the conspirators, as for disconcerting their schemes. I added that there was not a moment to lose, and that it was better ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... acting as captain in my absence, insisted that it was plainly the duty of every member of the company to do whatsoever he might in our behalf, and the result was that the lad had been in Cherry Valley no more than half an hour before every member of the company was armed and outfitted for the perilous venture. ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... them from combining their efforts, and obtaining that unity of action which alone could ensure for them, if not a definite triumph, at least preservation from complete extinction and an opportunity of maintaining their liberty; the importance of the position, however, rendered it particularly perilous to hold, and the Assyrians succeeded in so doing only by strongly fortifying it. Walls were built round ten cities, five on the Urartian frontier, three on that of Mushki, and two on the north, and the country which they protected was made ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... evils denounced by the journalist. Nor did he know that he was standing at the parting of two distinct ways, between two systems, represented by the brotherhood upon one hand, and journalism upon the other. The first way was long, honorable, and sure; the second beset with hidden dangers, a perilous path, among muddy channels where conscience is inevitably bespattered. The bent of Lucien's character determined for the shorter way, and the apparently pleasanter way, and to snatch at the quickest and promptest means. At this moment he saw no difference between d'Arthez's noble friendship and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... then part of an army corps, again under an admiral, and finally back to military regime—the life of the Royal Naval Division, which startled an Empire by their valour on the Ancre, has been one full of thrills, sorrows, threats of extinction, brave deeds, and perilous journeys. They are proud of their naval origin, and are also tenacious of their naval customs, despite the fact that all their fighting has been done ashore and few sailors ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... that first morning he was indeed ashamed to let her see the proportion between his pastoral visits and his theological reading; but the newspapers (he had two or three weekly ones) had a curious facility of expansion, and there was a perilous sound in "I'll just see where the meet is,"—not that he had the most distant idea of repairing thither; it was pure filial interest in learning where his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... part more particularly, is a delightful story of adventure. As usual there are startling incidents, perilous situations, and hairbreadth escapes enough to furnish sufficient materials for a dozen ordinary fictions. Yet the probabilities are better preserved than in many of Cooper's novels where the events are far fewer, as well as far less striking. But it is interesting, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... It seemed cruel and unfair that any beggar, any coolie in the fields, any convict could have this sleep that was denied him. How he tried to fix his mind on quiet scenes with the sound of falling water, or the sound of falling breakers fringing the rocks of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn! But sleep would not come; the panorama of the world spun from scene to scene all the faster as he tossed limply and wearily. Custos, quid de nocte? How slowly passes the night, and night sleepless merges into sleepless day, and for ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... into Charley Chaplin's class. I am sure that "Sunkist" cannot be far behind the "Twins," for no single word could possibly suggest a more luscious, delectable, and desirable fruit than that. It would even take the curse off being a lemon to be a "Sunkist" lemon. It contains no hint of the perilous early life of an orange. Truly that life is more chancey than an aviator's. They say that in the good old days there were no frosts, but that irrigation is gradually changing the climate of Southern California. We would not dare to express ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... undaunted; they paraded at M'Conkey's Ferry at dusk, expecting to reach Trenton by midnight; but so slow and perilous was the crossing that it was nearly four o'clock when at last they mustered ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... sole protector. Young Anthony knew his stepfather grudged him the broad acres of his patrimony, and guessed whose influence had sent the press-gang one night, and hurried him off, without even a good-bye to his mother, to the nearest seaport town, and there embarked him for a perilous ocean-journey, to fight against ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Duke's order, then wrapping the lace as before about her head turned to Rallywood. He accompanied her through the guard-room and some little way along the passage. It seemed as if he could not let her go forth on this perilous enterprise. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... yet how swift! What perilous efforts to leap across the foaming stream at its narrowest points; what escapes from quagmires and possible quicksands; what stealthy creeping through the grass to the edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of the line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting for a bite, until the restless ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... not yet risen, the night was dark, and for some time we met with nothing more diverting than a stumble over a dead dog, a word with a forward wench, or a narrow escape from one of those liquid douches that render the streets perilous for common folk and do not spare the greatest. Naturally, I began to tire, and wished myself with all my heart back at the Arsenal; but Henry, whose spirits a spice of danger never failed to raise, found ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... once a year, or at least the next year, to settle what yet remained to be agreed, or if but to nourish love."[32] But his suggestion was voted down, for the Synod of 1637 was considered by some to be "a perilous deflection from the theory of Congregationalism."[33] Even the fortnightly meeting of ministers who resided near each other, and which it had become a custom to call for friendly conference, was ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... in his leap, and found himself seated astride upon the barrier, with a desperate woman tugging at his tail, and trying to pull him back into the arena. Nothing, we believe, has ever exceeded the ludicrous misery displayed in his Excellency's visage on finding himself in this perilous situation. But seeing the private secretary and a mob of clerks, with their pens in their hands, hastening to his rescue, he made a desperate effort, and cast himself off on the other side; and finally succeeded in rushing ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... Further, Augustine says (ad Valerium, Ep. xxi): "Let thy religious prudence observe that in this life, and especially at these times, there is nothing so difficult, so onerous, so perilous as the office of bishop, priest, or deacon; while in God's sight there is no greater blessing, if one engage in the fight as ordered by our Commander-in-chief." Therefore religious are not more ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... laid down their own necks.' We do not know to what Paul is referring: perhaps to that tumult in Ephesus, where he certainly was in danger. But the language seems rather more emphatic than such danger would warrant. Probably it was at some perilous juncture of which we know nothing (for we know very little, after all, of the details of the Apostle's life), in which Aquila and Priscilla had said, 'Take us and let him go. He can do a great deal more for God than we can do. We will put our heads on the block, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... was obliged to wait some hours for the tide to go down, being in a terrible state of suspense all the time for fear that Philip should come down upon him in the rear, in which case his situation would have been perilous in the extreme. ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... house left without its head—houses great and small. And if the peril of it were more generally foreseen at this date it would be less perilous than it is." ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... breathing his last, to inquire for Wing and to speak a word of cheer to his fair and devoted nurses. Not one murmur of complaint or dread has fallen from their lips, though they know their father to have ridden on perilous quest and into possible ambush; though they know their brother to be lying at the ruined ranch, perhaps seriously wounded; though their own fate may be capture, with indescribable suffering, shame, and death. Fanny Harvey has ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... to be well nourished, and was quite as vigorous as any child of that age who could have been pitted against her. Her surroundings cowed her, he judged. To Dryhope she was a stranger, a foreigner; to her Dryhope and the Dryhopedale folk were perilous matter. Her general appearance was that of a child who had never had anything but ill-usage; she flinched at every sudden movement, and followed one about with her great unintelligent eyes, as if she was trying to comprehend what they showed her. Her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... dinner—" And Doris went for pen and paper. When she returned she found that Pete had stacked the dishes in a perilous pyramid on the floor, that the bed-tray might serve as a ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... bad by land," quoth the venerable king; "and they are terribly infested with robbers and monsters. A mere lad, like Theseus, is not fit to be trusted on such a perilous journey, all by himself. No, no; let ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bamboo poles about 10 meters long. Numerous deadly bamboo caltrops bristled out of the ground underneath the precarious bamboo bridge that led to a platform whence the house could be reached only by climbing the usual notched pole. Whosoever ventured to cross this perilous bridge, would certainly meet death from one source or another, either from the hurtling shower of arrows from above or from ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... storm, felt their hearts, for the first time perhaps, sinking with fear, as the thunder crashed above their heads and the lightning flashed about the masts, while the foaming seas dashed up and round them on every side. The position of the "Lennox" was indeed perilous in the extreme, and little comfort could her crew gain by watching the fate of others. A large ship lay within sight—she was the "Mary"—with Rear-Admiral Beaumont's flag flying on board. Sea after sea came dashing and breaking over her. Now those whose eyes were turned in that direction ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... may be only the child's horoscope, or some old wife's charm that is here sewn up, and these marks may be naught but some sailor's freak; but, on the other hand, they may be concerned with perilous matter, so the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and England were plunged into war together; and fearful as the plunge was, out of that raging torrent the three nations have struggled to shore, refreshed and invigorated by the struggle. England seems now to be entering on another career, more perilous than the exigencies of war—a moral and intellectual conflict, in which popular passions and rational principles will be ranged on opposite sides; and the question may involve the final shape which government shall assume in the British empire, or, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Last, the voice of old age, and authority and matured experience, and divine illumination, old age encompassed by much doubt and weariness and human infirmity, a solemn, pondering voice, which, with God somewhere in the clear-obscure, goes sounding on a dim and perilous way, until in a moment this voice of the anxious explorer for truth changes to the voice of the unalterable justicer, the armed doomsman ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... little closer to Lesley's bosom. "Oh, why must he go—without me—without me?" she cried. And then she burst out suddenly into bitter weeping, and with Lesley's arms about her she wept away some of the "perilous stuff" of misery which had seemed likely to destroy the balance of her brain. When those tears came her reason was saved, and Lesley was wise enough to be reassured and ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... small depth, and the meeting of the north and south currents occasion continual rough seas. The bottom also of the Straits of Magellan is rocky, affording no good anchorage; and the flows of winds from the mountains on both sides are apt to endanger all ships that endeavour to pass through these perilous straits. Having now a fair wind, they continued their course to the south for the Straits of Le Maire, seeing on their way abundance of whales and other large fish of that kind. Among the rest, they were followed for a whole month by that kind of fish which is called the Sea Devil ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... street was shining in the sun and the gentlest waves were lapping the wooden jetty—Oh, this dear town! These houses, these cobbles—all the smells and colours of the place—he was leaving it all so easily on so perilous an adventure. Poor Peter was moved by so many things that he could only gulp the tears back and hurry home. There was at any rate work to be done there about which there ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... son in his perilous upward flight, and, for the first time in her life, prayed that Heaven would forgive her misdeeds. By some inborn instinct she assumed that it was this prayer she must pray in order to obtain that desire of her eyes, his safety. When he reached the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... ingenious Moldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance to those of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical with reflections of Metternich's not then published, went on to enlighten the German Governments as to the best means of rescuing their subjects from their perilous condition. Certain fiscal and administrative changes were briefly suggested, but the main reform urged was exactly that propounded by Metternich, the enforcement of a better discipline and of a more rigidly-prescribed course of study at the Universities, along with the supervision ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... got up. In his rough walking tweeds he looked over-big—and heavy—and perilous. For two seconds Nigel Anstruthers would not have been surprised if he had without warning slapped his face, or knocked him over, or whirled him out of his chair and kicked him. He would not have liked it, but—for two seconds—it would have been no surprise. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had ordered out his coach, Sunday though it were, to pay his respects to my Lady's son, and carry him and his hosts back to sup at the Deanery. It was an age of adulation, but Betty was thankful that perilous conversations ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... abrupt and perilous rocks, The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recall'd the Name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remember'd, too, the very day On which ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... present adversities, had travelled far and wide at some foregone period of his life—in Syria, and Persia; in northernmost Tartary and the Siberian steppes; in Egypt and the Nubian desert, and among the perilous wilds of central Arabia. He spoke and wrote with facility some ten or twelve languages. He drew admirably, and had a profound knowledge of the Italian schools of art; and his memory was a rich storehouse of adventure ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... off first. As to F. A. S., I believe I am no sound authority; I alternate between a stiff disregard and a kind of horror. In neither mood can a man judge at all. I know the thing to be terribly perilous, I fear it to be now altogether hopeless. Luck has failed; the weather has not been favourable; and in her true heart, the mother hopes no more. But - well, I feel a great deal, that I either cannot or will not say, as you well know. It has helped to make me more conscious of the wolverine on ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deeper for that. As the form faded from the silver halo, and passed more and more into mythology, it seemed, indeed, as if she had never lived for him at all, save in dreams, or on another star. Still, his memory held by those great shells, and he had come at last to the fabled country on the perilous quest—who of us dare venture such a one to-day?—of a 'lost saint.' Enquiry of his friends that evening, cautious as of one on some half-suspected diplomacy, told him that one with the name of his ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... supported by the first. Hence the first must somehow be in our consciousness. At least in every important scene we must remember those situations of the preceding act which can throw light on the new developments. We see the young missionary in his adventures on his perilous journey and we remember how in the preceding act we saw him in his peaceful cottage surrounded by the love of his parents and sisters and how they mourned when he left them behind. The more exciting the dangers he passes through in the far distant land, the more strongly ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... clenched hands and rigid face, and great beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, for that passive indifference towards what had become a matter of life and death to him was the fruit of a victory that had to be won again and again each time his perilous position was assailed by ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... feminine charms by her simple proximity. He had been very happy when so placed. Had it been possible he would have escaped the danger now, but the reminiscence of past delights in some sort reconciled him to the performance of this perilous duty. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... had been lights aboard the "Merry Maid," if early in her perilous voyage cries for help had sounded from her deck, the little boat would soon have been rescued. But with no lights and no sounds aboard, the houseboat passed on her way, and purely by chance her course did not cross the line ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... trembling in sympathy with the kindred chandeliers. She belonged to an obscure branch of a house that culminated in an obscure baronetcy; penniless and ambitious, she had to thank her imposing physique for rescue at a perilous age, and though despising Mr. Luke Widdowson for his plebeian tastes, she shrewdly retained the good-will of a husband who seemed no candidate for length of years. The money-maker died much sooner than she could reasonably have hoped, and left her an income of four thousand pounds. ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... is, which rolls in lazy flow Its coal-black waters from Oblivion's fount: The vapour-poison'd Birds, that fly too low, Fall with dead swoop, and to the bottom go. Escaped that heavy stream on pinion fleet 15 Beneath the Mountain's lofty-frowning brow, Ere aught of perilous ascent you meet, A mead of mildest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... great number of musket-shots were fired from the house in front, and a ball passed through the coffee-pot which he was holding in his hand. Without calling in question the bravery of any person, do you not think, Gentlemen, that if diplomatists were usually placed in equally perilous positions, the public would have less reason to complain of their ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... breakwater perfectly shelters the shipping from the "calemas," or perilous breakers on the seaward side, and the surface is dotted with huts and groves, gardens and palm orchards. At the Ponta do Norte once stood a fort appropriately called Na. Sa. Flor de Rosa; it has wholly disappeared, but lately, when digging near the sea, heaps of building ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... ago. Having a small property of his own, some fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him. I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... worst city in Korea. Here they had been stoned and abused. When the Chinese Army came to Pyeng-yang, and the country was devastated in the great and decisive battle between the Chinese and Japanese, these two men stayed by the Koreans in their darkest and most perilous hours. Koreans still tell how "Moksa" Moffett put on the dress of a Korean mourner and went freely around despite the Chinese, who would have almost certainly devised a specially lingering death for him, had they discovered ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... out so long against the prevailing blasts—of disheartening misunderstanding and misrepresentation, of Puritan suspicion and opposition, of artistic isolation, of commercial seduction? There is something downright heroic in the way the man has held his narrow and perilous ground, disdaining all compromise, unmoved by the cheap success that lies so inviting around the corner. He has faced, in his day, almost every form of attack that a serious artist can conceivably ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... one was turned into stone, and stopping in it more than a second was out of the question. After breakfast and a SIESTA, we sallied out to try and explore the head of the cataract above us. After rather a perilous ascent over loose moss and mould, and clutching at roots of shrubs and trees, we were brought to a stand by a huge mass of perpendicular rock, which effectually barred us from the spot through which ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... February, 1919, was about as perilous to some of them as the war had been. It was a period of unusually rough weather. The north Atlantic, never very smooth during the winter months, put on some extra touches for the returning Negro soldiers. An experience ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as carefully hidden as a conspirator would a bomb under his cloak. It had grown to be as necessary to her ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... salient it is, too! A huge curve, as outlined by the lights, needing only a little more to be an encirclement. Something caught the rope as it closed, and that something was the British soldier. But it is a perilous place still by day and by night. Never shall I forget the impression of ceaseless, malignant activity which was borne in upon me by the white, winking lights, the red sudden glares, and the horrible thudding noises in that ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle |
