"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... juncture Cuba, whose nose had doubtless been tickled by Australia's apron-string, gave a prodigious sneeze. Europena, feeling that retribution was upon them, fled in terror. The ballast being removed from the chair, the result was inevitable. A crash, a heterogeneous combination of small girl, green paint, and shattered chair, then a series of shrieks ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... proud set to his head, and a way of bending from his hips like a man reared in the saddle. A great martial moustache curled at the corners of his mouth. Dan McBride that was away for twenty years, and mair. He was arrayed in some outlandish soldier rig, with great boots and prodigious spurs. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... Conquering Hero Comes;" the piebald horse increased his speed; the Empress raised a flag in one hand, and a javelin in the other, and began slaying invisible enemies in the empty air, at full (circus) gallop. The result on the audience was prodigious; Mr. Blyth alone sat unmoved. Miss Florinda Beverley was not even a good model to draw legs from, in the estimation ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Bible, his varied and extensive learning was called into successful exercise, and appears in happy combination with sincere piety and a sound judgment. The Editor of the Christian Observer, alluding to this work, in an obituary notice of its author, speaks of it as a work of "prodigious labour and research, at once exhibiting his ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... and of a beautiful yellow color. This spider inhabits the large trees, shrubbery, and hedges, and extends its webs to the neighboring habitations; and the webs are nearly all more than a yard in diameter. The quantity is prodigious. "M. d'Hericourt," says the Report, "like every person who has attempted tissues with spiders' webs or cocoons, has not sufficiently regarded the difficulty of domesticating them, as is done with the silk-worm, in order to multiply them adequately, and provide them with such insects ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... dodge. In skillful hands there is no better leverage for pushing operations than drawing-room music. Every one knows Lady Tweedledum and her amateur concerts. The fuss she makes about them is prodigious. They are a cheap sort of entertainment, but they cost the thrifty patroness of art a vast deal of trouble. She is always organizing practices, arranging rehearsals, drawing up programmes, or scouring London for musical recruits. She has been ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... pair of brawny fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and soliciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble British art of pugilism. There were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextricable knots, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... solemnized with incredible magnificence, and drew together a prodigious concourse of spectators and combatants from all parts, a simple wreath was all the reward of the victors. In the Olympic games, it was composed of wild olive. In the Pythian, of laurel. In the Nemaean, of green parsley;(113) and in the Isthmian, of the same herb dried. The institutors ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... the Filipinos; its virtues are prodigious according to the ignorant natives who wear the leaves in the hat or the "salakod" (rain hat), to prevent "tabardillo" ("burning fever"; tabardillo pintado spotted fever). They use the decoction to bathe convalescents, and for rheumatism they vaporize it ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... "Prodigious! as Dominie Sampson would say. Nay, I am not laughing at you, Clarian," said Mac, pointing to the picture; "there is enough to make me believe in you, though how you achieved it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Universities were thought of. What did he say? What a warning it is, gentlemen. He wrote, in the year 1836:—"At the single town of Hooghly 1,400 boys are learning English. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious.... It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected merely ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... the young bucks who had no visible means of support for their own apparently useless avoirdupois, picked up the local gems before his eyes and had them hired out at interest to supply the new family with bread and butter. And all this in the face of the fact that he was one of the most prodigious admirers of womankind that ever left his footprints on the sands ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... would he? I knew what Flynn was saying to him, what he was warning him against. I had heard the warning often in the bouts at the Manor. Failing in science and skill Clancy would "slug" (Flynn's word, not mine), trusting to the prodigious length of his arms, taking the punishment that came to him, biding his time and the possible lucky blow which would turn the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... He and fear never met. The solitary fear he knew was fear of himself, and lest he might not live for good as the bishop had bidden him; but fear from without had never crossed his path. His was the bravery of conscience. His strength was prodigious, and he scrupled not to use it. Self-sparing was no trait of his character. Like another hero we have read of, he would "gladly spend and be spent" for others, and bankrupt himself, if thereby he might make others rich. There is a physical courage, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... or sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious industry, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free government, the wise and equal laws, the noble literature, of this fortunate island and its majestic empire beyond the seas, and the discretion, valour, and tenacity by which all ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... in a chair and hold a book, pretending to read. He could whirl around, hanging by his tail from a hook in the ceiling. His agility, displayed in springs, curvets and climbing, was something prodigious. ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... prodigious sonority, and overturned a chair with my foot. Then bracing myself for the ordeal, through which I looked to what scant information I possessed and my own mother wit, to bear me successfully, I strode across ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... continually settled. Luther, by his letters, was every where. He commenced the translation of the Scriptures; he wrote endless controversial tracts; his correspondence was unparalleled; his efforts as a preacher were prodigious. But he was equal to it all; was wonderfully adapted ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... from slavery to freedom is represented as a greet revolution, by which a prodigious change was effected in the condition of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... alone were all the elements of the truth. Do and say what he would, Lupin's assertions were so precise, his calculations so accurate, that, worried to the innermost recesses of his being by so prodigious a display of perspicacity, he could not do other than take up the work at the point where his enemy had ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses me and cynicism deeply engages. I positively feel my own flesh sore from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full of people who like him, as they mention, awfully, and with whom his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success. I delight in his nonsense myself; why is it therefore that I grudge these happy folk their artless satisfaction? Mystery of the human heart—abyss of the critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can answer that question, and as my want of gaiety has at last worn out her patience ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... camayeu was? You now sometimes see an imitation of it in door and window curtains. It was a stuff of great fineness, yet resembling not a little the unbleached cotton of to-day, and over which were spread very brilliant designs of prodigious size. For example, Suzanne's petticoat showed bunches of great radishes—not the short kind—surrounded by long, green leaves and tied with a yellow cord; while on mine were roses as big as a baby's head, interlaced with leaves and buds and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... endure for generations—aye, for ages, in spite of the pillory!—the while Little Thunder was roaring petitions to divinity by his bedside, as though to bluster and bully the Almighty into granting his supplications. The patroon glanced from his pensioner to the roll; from the kneeling man to that prodigious list of peccadillos, and then he called for a shilling, a coin still somewhat in use in America. This ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... and shiny riding boots, of which he is grandly conscious. There are introductions. "Mr. Goldstone, meet Mrs. Silverware." They are met. There is a flashing of eyes. Three or four silk hats simultaneously leap into the shining air, are flourished and replaced. The observer is aware of the prodigious gayety and excitement of life. All climb into the car and roll away down Broadway. All save the little man in riding boots. He is left on the sidewalk, gallantly waving his hand. Come, we think, he is going riding. A satiny charger waits somewhere round the corner. We will ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... neglect the Lord Bellamont, and some others who knew what great captures had been made by the Pirates, and what a prodigious wealth must be in their possession, were tempted to fit out a ship at their own private charge, and to give the command of it to Captain Kid; and to give the thing a greater reputation, as well as to keep their seamen under the better command, they ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... she could never perceive the prodigious improbability of the arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhaps she had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenly to say nothing more of it. It was not that ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the old law of the land and subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought him far in his profession; but he had this much in common with some few great spirits: he entertained a prodigious contempt for his own special knowledge, and reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a second pursuit unconnected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his almost exclusive attention. The good man was passionately fond of gardening. He was in correspondence with some of the most celebrated ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... surgeon's office—waiting their turns to be relieved of sundry bayonets, swords, revolvers, and rifles, which have stuck in their throats. A third towel picture represents a Russian diver examining, with a prodigious magnifying-glass, the holes made by torpedoes in the hull of a sunken cruiser. Comic verses or legends, in cursive text, are ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... news communicated, than we saw such prodigious numbers of praws and large boats coming out of the river, as were quite wonderful. The master gave immediate orders to the gunner to get the ordnance in readiness, which was done with all speed. The vast fleet of the infidels came rowing up ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... myself in no 'foolish scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by the wicked ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... been joined in one for the upbuilding of a university combining the ideas of the two kinds of schools. The support insured to these state institutions promises their perpetuity. The amount of work which they have done for the education of the masses in higher learning has been prodigious, and they stand to-day as the greatest and most perfect monument of the culture and learning of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and that they could not hope successfully to cope with her till they could meet and conquer her on her own element. In the mean time, however, they had not a single ship and not a single sailor, while the Mediterranean was covered with Carthaginian ships and seamen. Not at all daunted by this prodigious inequality, the Romans resolved to begin at once the work of creating ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... toward the steps of her coach; while the Mayor, his Adam's apple fairly pumping importance, led a sturdy band of thirsters recruited from among the train passengers across the flat toward a building over the door of which was fixed a pair of horns of prodigious spread. Lest some pilgrim of erring judgment should mistake the horns for short ones, or misapprehend the nature of the business conducted within, the white false front of the building proclaimed in letters of black a foot high: ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Astoria. A severe illness attacked Cooper during its progress; but whatever effect it had upon his physical frame, it certainly did not impair in the slightest his intellectual force. The success of the work was both instantaneous and prodigious. Owing, perhaps, to the novelty of the scenes and characters, it was even greater in Europe than in America. But there was no lack of appreciation in his own land. In the estimation of his countrymen, the novel at once took its ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... prolific of the ancient Greek writers. Diogenes calls him "a most voluminous writer," and estimates the number of works composed by him at no less than three hundred, the principal of which he enumerates.[764] But out of all this prodigious collection, not a single book has reached us in a complete, or at least an independent form. Three letters, which contain some outlines of his philosophy, are preserved by Diogenes, who has also embodied his "Fundamental Maxims"—forty-four propositions, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... regularity, as if carefully arranged so. Blue, red, and yellow uniforms, with the occasional green of the Tyrolean Jager, were mixed together in picturesque confusion along the Verdun road; in fact, the dead and dying were everywhere in such prodigious numbers that the hearts of those seeking ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... eagle circling overhead. I have sat on the mountain-side and watched it sail majestically along in graceful curves and circles, and with perfect ease and poise. Far above the earth it would range, and seemingly without exertion glide easily over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from the height and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be possessed ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... coming war was any thing but agreeable. It had no hopes of gain, and the certainty of prodigious loss. But the Spartans were not then prepared for the contest, and hostilities did not immediately commence. They contented themselves, at first, with sending envoys to Athens to multiply demands and enlarge the grounds of quarrel. The offensive was plainly with ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... testify to the prodigious volume of voice possessed by these animals. According to the writer whom I have just cited, in one of them, the Siamang, "the voice is grave and penetrating, resembling the sounds goek, goek, goek, goek, goek ha ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... festival. A rowing match, fair day, and shew of cattle, were established for ever at Milford, in honour of the victory off the Nile. All the most respectable families twenty miles round, with a prodigious concourse of the humbler classes, came to see their beloved hero. Mr. Bolton, his lordship's brother-in-law, too, determined to be present on the occasion, arrived at Milford, that very morning, from Norfolk. It proved, all together a most interesting ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... perpendicular are the supporting walls that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep—for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... dies, when another generation develops and bears fruit, and a third is beginning to blossom, and he still seems anomalous, it is fair to hold him exceptional in his country's art, rather than characteristic thereof. Together with wonderful endowments of eye and hand, and a prodigious power of work, Turner's earlier works show us an unconscious development and a healthy oblivion of his own personality. But later the fatal modern fever entered his blood, ending in something very like delirium. From ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... for years still go on increasing by an excess of over 1,000 births a day. When we realise that this is merely what goes on in one corner of the world and must be multiplied enormously to represent the whole, we shall find it impossible even to conceive the prodigious flow of excess babies which is being constantly poured over the earth. If we are capable of realising all the problems which thereby arise we must be forced to ask ourselves: Is this state ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... on French models, all tend to the disintegration of comprehensive political organisations and the encouragement of arrangements based on the minor peculiarities of race or dialect." Was there ever in the world such prodigious nonsense? What French sources, what French models? If French models point in any one direction rather than another, it is away from disintegration and straight towards centralisation. Everybody knows that this is one of the most notorious facts of French history from the days of Lewis ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... to Edinburgh and took up his abode on a flat in one of those prodigious houses in the Lawnmarket, which still excite the admiration of tourists; afterwards moving to a house in the Canongate. His sister joined him, adding L30 a year to the common stock; and, in one of his charmingly ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... a paradox to you, but there is nothing more true. We have always been stupidly unjust to misers," went on Florestan, with growing enthusiasm. "The genius and zeal they display in inventing inconceivable, impossible economies is prodigious. Altars should be raised in their honor! Thanks to their wise, obstinate parsimony, they possess a wonderful knack of turning everything into gold; careful saving of matches, picking up stray pins, a centime carefully invested; in fact, the most trifling of economies ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... enthusiasm. Each exclaimed to himself, (at least I did for one) "Can I venture?"—as he contemplated the dismal, and, to all appearance, bottomless gulf, where nothing was visible but the strange figures of our guides at a prodigious distance beneath us, clinging to the wall with one hand, while they brandished their torches with the other. However, there was little space for reflection; and though, by this time, I shrewdly suspect most of the party had pretty well "satisfied the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters.... The abstract of my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had the court and the town in my house for six months.... The Academy, finding that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make it appear that they had emanated from its body." Three academic ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... require our vessels to be ballasted, and that they would wish to take in iron in preference to other unprofitable ballast and without freight, so that it would always arrive among us at an advantageous rate. From the prodigious extent of our uncultivated territory, joined to the ease with which every inhabitant might make himself an independent proprietor of a sufficient portion of it, for the comfortable support of himself and a family, who in their ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... Notwithstanding all his prodigious hospitality, his double official duties as Sheriff and Clerk of Session, the labours and anxieties in which the ill-directed and tottering firm of Ballantyne involved him, the keen interest which he took in every detail of the adornment of the house ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... no hounds, except a fox-terrier who was too fat to run; only our horses and our prodigious enthusiasm. The method of procedure was to assemble the hunt near a likely place and send forward a fatigue-party to dig out the jackal. When he appeared—and he usually did appear in a hurry—we gave him a couple of minutes' start and then tally-ho! and away after him over the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... muse hath with her usual dignity related this prodigious battle, a battle we apprehend never equalled by any poet, romance or life writer whatever, and, having brought it to a conclusion, she ceased; we shall therefore proceed in our ordinary style with ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... about the museum of old machines, and the cause of the apparent retrogression in all arts, sciences, and inventions. I learnt that about four hundred years previously, the state of mechanical knowledge was far beyond our own, and was advancing with prodigious rapidity, until one of the most learned professors of hypothetics wrote an extraordinary book (from which I propose to give extracts later on), proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the great French novelist and dramatist, who here tells the story of his youth, was born on July 24, 1802, and died on December 5, 1870. He was a man of prodigious vitality, virility, and invention; abounding in enjoyment, gaiety, vanity, and kindness; the richness, force, and celerity of his nature was amazing. In regard to this peculiar vivacity of his, it is interesting to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... opposite of this. Never did Marshal of France make more careful dispositions for a battle—albeit once in it he bore himself like any captain of horse—nor ever did Du Mornay himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only from a shallow nature, found when ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... has ever been more in sympathy with the discoverers in Natural History than John Fiske. No man ever knew so much about his work as John Fiske. His knowledge was colossal, his memory prodigious. And in all of the realm of science and philosophy, from microscopy and the germ theory to advanced astronomy and the birth of worlds, his glowing imagination saw the work of a beneficent Creator who stood above and beyond and outside of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... with such prodigious fire and rapidity that nobody was self-possessed enough to stop it in time. It was like a furious gust of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... a stanza." Sachs states, as Walther pauses. "Take careful heed now that the one following must be exactly like it."—"Why exactly alike?" the free-born asks, ready to chafe at the shadow of a restriction. Sachs, indulgent, makes play for this prodigious child's sake of the to him so grave business of song-making: "That one may see that you ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... young man, accompanied by the son of his father's pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far into the jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a beautiful "tank [FN47]" of a prodigious size. It was surrounded by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of cut-stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... worked at the studio unmolested. The French students christened him "l'Enfant Prodigue," which was freely translated, "The Prodigious Infant," "The Kid," "Kid Selby," and "Kidby." But the disease soon ran its course from "Kidby" to "Kidney," and then naturally to "Tidbits," where it was arrested by Clifford's authority ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... seem to be the same kind of exuberance peculiar to the cattle of Hindostan; but in reality it consists in the superior length of the hair only, which, as well as that along the ridge of the back to the setting on of the tail, grows long and erect, but not harsh. The tail is composed of a prodigious quantity of long flowing glossy hair, descending to the hock; and is so extremely well furnished, that not a joint of it is perceptible; but it has much the appearance of a large bunch of hair artificially set on. The shoulders, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... received the astonishment of his life. He pictured to me the whole affair—Bellett, up at the chancel gate, going for the prayer book, and absolutely alone; and then the blow, out of the Void, he described it; and the force prodigious—the old man being driven headlong into the body of the Chapel. Like the kick of a great horse, the Rector said, his benevolent old eyes bright and intense with the effort he had actually witnessed, in defiance of all ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... sides, tempered the character, and developed men. And now note well, Durocher! If France had been centralized formerly as to-day, your dear Revolution never would have occurred—do you understand? Never! because there would have been no men to make it. For may I not ask, whence came that prodigious concourse of intelligences all fully armed, and with heroic hearts, which the great social movement of '78 suddenly brought upon the scene? Please recall to mind the most illustrious men of that era—lawyers, orators, soldiers. How many were from Paris? All came from the provinces, the fruitful ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... clad nastily, and eat meanly (and oftentimes that which is unwholsom) and therefore benefit none; Not because they might not, both for their own, and the Good of others, and the Publick; but because they will not; Custom, and a prodigious [104]Sloth accompanying it; which renders it so far from Penance, and the Mortification pretended, that they know not how to live, or spend their Time otherwise. This, as I have often consider'd, so was I glad to find it ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... our fore-sail and main-top-sail close-reefed: At day-light the next morning, added to them the fore and mizen top-sails. At four o'clock it fell calm; but a prodigious high sea from the N.E., and a complication of the worst of weather, viz. snow, sleet, and rain, continued, together with the calm, till nine o'clock in the evening. Then the weather cleared up, and we got a breeze ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... cravat, hair, &c. Be sure to have your hair brushed all over the forehead, which will give you a very ferocious appearance. If you catch a strange damsel's eyes fixed upon you, take it for granted that you are a fascinating fellow, and cut a prodigious dash. As soon as the first set have finished.dancing, fix your thumbs as before-mentioned, and make a dash through the gaping crowd in pursuit of a partner; if you are likely to be disappointed in obtaining one with whom you are acquainted, select the smallest ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him. "'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it, considering the superior quality of his diet, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to seize upon it. We had a guard of five hundred of them, and I was almost in fears every day to see their insolencies in the poor villages through which we passed.... I was assured that the quantity of wine last vintage was so prodigious that they were forced to dig holes in the earth to put it in. The happiness of this plenty is scarcely perceived by the oppressed people. I saw here [Nissa] a new occasion for my compassion. The wretches that had provided ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... clapped Dick on the shoulder, pushing him half before him down the stony, steppy path, and as he did so he turned his great grey head and gave a most prodigious wink, accompanied by a screw up of the face at Will, a look full of secrecy and scheming, all of which, however, Will fully ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... grounds ostensibly so slender, remains one of the secrets of history. In no case would the impeachment have been pressed upon Parliament by the Opposition, and assented to by ministers, if Burke had not been there with his prodigious industry, his commanding comprehensive vision, his burning zeal, and his power of kindling in men so different from him and from one another as Fox, Sheridan, Windham, Grey, a zeal only less intense than ...
— Burke • John Morley
... a restoration of all places taken during the war. It was at this juncture that tidings arrived of the British repulse at Plattsburg. For a week the British Ministry debated the feasibility of renewing the war; but the complications at the Congress of Vienna, the "prodigious expense" of continued war, the change in public opinion, and the emphatic conviction of Wellington that the Ministry had "no right from the state of the war to demand any cession of territory"—these and many lesser considerations ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... jaded. He floundered, he made desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his losses were prodigious. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... said that "as this disease is communicated very easily and can infect in a very short time a prodigious number of horses by means of the discharges which may be licked up, animals infected ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... jump out of his skin in an ecstasy of astonishment at the noise! was there ever such a foolish freak?" whereupon, taking out his beetle-back snuff-box, and giving it the traditional taps, he helped himself to such a prodigious pinch, by way of consolation, that he was obliged to retire precipitately behind the honeysuckles, and nearly cracked his left wing by a tremendous fit of sneezing. For let me tell you that the pollen, or dust of the snap-dragon, properly dried, ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... meaning as true as a yarn of Allan Quatermain's. Well, my blood was up; no man shall call Allan Quatermain a liar. The fellow was going on with a prodigious palaver about a white feather of Truth, and Mount Sinai, and the Land of Absolute Negation, and I don't know what, but I signified to him that if he did not believe my yarns I did not want his company. "I'm sorry to turn you out," I said, "for there are lions around"—indeed ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... nothing for you, sir, but a halter," to which Fox, by the way, with instant wit and imperturbable good-nature, smilingly responded: "I could not think, my dear sir, of depriving you of such an interesting family relic." [Laughter.] Look back to that time and then see the prodigious advance of liberal ideas in England, the changed political condition of the workingman. Look at the position of that great Commoner, who now regulates the English policy, who equals Fox in his liberal principles and surpasses him in his eloquence—Mr. Gladstone. [Cheers.] ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... that there was something very noble and majestic in her figure after all, and that, though her gait seemed to be a rheumatic hobble, yet she moved with as much grace and dignity as any queen on earth. Her peacock, which had now fluttered down from her shoulder, strutted behind her in prodigious pomp and spread out its magnificent tail on purpose for Jason to ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... constructive power not equalled even by the Italian papal system. They take charge not only of the individual, but regulate society, and show their influence in accomplishing political organizations, commanding our attention from their prodigious extent, and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the juster side, and is always ready for the support of those, who approach so near his own divinity; sacred and anointed heads) could have turned the fortune of the battle to the royal side: it was prodigious to consider the unequal numbers, and the advantage all on the Prince's part; it was miraculous to behold the order on his side, and surprise on the other, which of itself had been sufficient to have confounded ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... remarks, were not calculated to insure a mature or lasting fame. They lay in the lower sphere of genius rather than the higher; in a bright expression, a deportment graceful to such a point that the greatest actors studied from him as he spoke; in a voice clear, mellow, and persuasive; in a memory so prodigious that once after being present at an auction and challenged to repeat the list of sale, he recited the entire catalogue without hesitation, like the sailor the points of his compass, backwards. As a consequence he was never at a loss. Everything suggested itself at the right moment, giving ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a most prodigious Banter upon [mankind], for Men to talk in general of the Immorality of Ridicule and Irony, and of punishing Men for those Matters, when their own Practice is universal Irony and Ridicule of all those who go not with them, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... where-ever they passed. There was no kind of insolence, injustice and barbarity of which they were not guilty. The seven successive crusades drained the wealth of the fairest provinces and caused the loss of a prodigious number of people. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... gives way so seldom, but that it stands so firm; that these hundreds of millions of laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, merchants, bankers, and manufacturers hold so firmly from day to day the countless engagements into which they enter, and that each recurring year the result of the prodigious effort which is now put forth in the civilized world in the work of production should be distributed with so much accuracy and honesty, and, on the whole, with so much wise adjustment to the value of each man's ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... tell you what,' says the Captain, leaning back in his chair, and composing his chest for a prodigious roar. 'I'll give you Lovely Peg right through; and stand by, both on ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... operations hampered in the Archipelago by the predominance of the Sultan's fleet, he determined to seek a wider and less interrupted field for his depredations. Rumours had reached the Levant of the successes of the Moorish pirates; prodigious tales were abroad as to great argosies, laden with the treasures of the New World, passing and repassing the narrow seas between Europe and Africa, and seeming to invite capture; and it was not long (1504) before Captain ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... This prodigious cash-box had seemed to him inexhaustible, and he had drawn on it like a Prince in the Arabian Nights on the treasure ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... number of people in the whole may be judged of; and, indeed, I often wondered that, after the prodigious numbers of people that went away at first, there was yet so great a multitude left as it appeared ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... glance, with the quick observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face - his face, which, like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf - the better to hear what ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... journalism not interfering with the pre-accepted cause of life insurance, the bargain was struck; although Gaudissart demanded an indemnity from the Saint-Simonians for the eight days he was forced to spend in studying the doctrines of their apostle, asserting that a prodigious effort of memory and intellect was necessary to get to the bottom of that "article" and to reason upon it suitably. He asked nothing, however, from the republicans. In the first place, he inclined in republican ideas,—the only ones, according to guadissardian philosophy, which ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... this prodigious subterranean palace, and again put ourselves en route. Once more we wound our way round the brink of the precipice, and this time it was more dangerous for us than before, for we rode on the side next it, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... unwillingness to leave the light, and a natural impulse into the Dominion of darkness, about this time our Hero's, shall I say, sally'd or slunk out of their Lodgings, and steer'd toward the great Palace, whither, before they were arrived, such a prodigious number of Torches were on fire, that the day, by help of these Auxiliary Forces, seem'd to continue its Dominion; the Owls and Bats apprehending their mistake, in counting the hours, retir'd again to a convenient darkness; for Madam Night was no more to be seen than she was ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... order, and levied taxes. Enormous sacrifices were made by the Spanish people to re-establish sovereignty in the island. More than 300,000 troops were sent thither to be cruelly cut down by plague and pestilence. A nation, long on the verge of bankruptcy, incurred uncomplainingly prodigious additional indebtedness to save for its boy king—Alphonso XIII. was at this time but twelve years old—its most precious possession in the west, the Pearl of the Antilles. Queen Isabella of Spain pawned ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... labours, thrilled with the sensation of accomplishment. "One thing at least that I can do," he mused; "never again shall I fear starvation... so long as there's a broom handy." Absorbed he brushed away, raising a prodigious amount of dust and utterly oblivious to the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... was over when the detachment reached the scene of action. Folkmar, governor of Prague, had fallen, Henry had fled, and the Bohemians were routed with prodigious slaughter. The fugitives rallied under the walls of Wartburg. But they were speedily dispersed and pursued, until nightfall saved them from ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... the door, drying his hands on the dangling towel. He was a tall, gaunt-faced boy, big-boned, raw-jointed, the framework for prodigious strength. His shoulders all but filled the narrow doorway, his crown came within an inch of its lintel. His face was glowing from the scrubbing which he had given it with home-made lye soap, his drenched hair fell in heavy ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... well as all of her own. Yet Steve toiled to the limit of his endurance, and each day, at sundown, flung himself upon his blanket, spread beneath the stars, dog-tired, fairly trembling with weariness. But he soon developed a prodigious appetite, and, after the first few weeks, slept each night like a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... crystals likewise; and glasses of divers kinds; and amongst them some of metals vitrificated, and other materials besides those of which you make glass. Also a number of fossils, and imperfect minerals, which you have not. Likewise loadstones of prodigious virtue; and other rare stones, both ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... lawns and along winding paths, following a haphazard course. But, as he wandered thus, he came to the stables and so to a large building beyond, where were many automobiles of various patterns and make; and here, very busy with brushes, sponge, and water, washing a certain car and making a prodigious splashing, was a figure there was no mistaking, and one whom ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... embody his late experience in some imaginative shape; and in the course of the following year he actually addressed himself to the task. But his inspiration flagged, and it was not till the beginning of 1774 that a new experience supplied a fresh impulse constraining him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take his ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... defense of the chief. He snatched up a great spear, a weapon full ten feet long and with a point and blade as keen as a razor. He thrust it past Xingudan and, with all his might, full into the chest of the upreared bear. Strength and a prodigious effort driven on by nervous force sped the blow, and the bear, huge as he was, was fairly impaled. But Will still hung to the lance and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... and moral effects of this brilliant finish to what had been a losing campaign, in which almost each succeeding day ushered in some new misfortune, were prodigious. But neither the importance nor the urgency of this masterly counter-stroke to the American cause can be at all appreciated, or even properly understood, unless what had gone before, what in fact had produced a crisis so dark and threatening, is brought fully into light. ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... to Napoleon as Augustus did to Varus, "Give me back my legions!" The loss on both sides was very great, but it must have been prodigious on the side of the French. The whole Allied Army is in full pursuit. Several friends and acquaintances of mine perished in this battle, viz., Lieut.-General Sir T. Picton, Colonel Sir H. Ellis ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... island,—New Holland (Australia),—which is as large as a continent; and she has been sending forth her fresh shoots over all the archipelagos with which the great ocean is studded. The United States have swollen out to a prodigious extent, in wealth and possessions, over the surface of their ancient domain. They have, moreover, enlarged on all sides the limits of that domain, anciently confined to a narrow stripe along the shores ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... descendants still do, quaint Norman idioms and forms of speech. He was proud of his ancestry. Stories that went back to the days when 'twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings' were passed along from father to son, gaining in terms of prodigious valour as they went. His versatility gained him the friendship and confidence of the Indian, an advantage which his English brother to the south was rarely able ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... second at Sotheby's, where the high quotations were entirely due to the competition of a so-called interloper, who bade, as he thought, on the judgment of the room, and was signally handicapped. Again, something has ere now been carried to a prodigious figure owing to an unlimited commission inadvertently given to two agents. The old Duke of Wellington once gave L105 in this way for a shilling pamphlet, and even then the bidding was only stopped by arrangement. However, of all the miraculous surprises, the most signal on record ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the battle of Lepanto are something so prodigious that imagination boggles at them. It is said that the Christians lost five thousand men and the Turks no less than thirty thousand. Enormous as these numbers are, they represent probably a very conservative estimate of the loss. The Turks lost two ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... The cat, after a prodigious pink yawn, went to sleep. The traveler, although he had never known the experience of voluntary unconsciousness, was tempted to do the same. But he fought against the influence of his host and, robbed of vision with the closing of ...
— The Inhabited • Richard Wilson
... it was not pure good-nature that caused Mrs. Carriswood to ask Fitzmaurice to her house. He was known as a rising young man, One met him at the best houses; yet he was a prodigious worker, and had made his mark in committees, before the celebrated speech that sent him into all the newspaper columns, or that stubborn and infinitely versatile fight against odds which inspired ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... was displaying prodigious musical activity, so much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no form of composition he did not essay, none by which he made a shilling. Once he felt himself the prey of a splendid ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... Elizabeth drily; "Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to Mr. Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... names — Ch'iu and Chung-ni. But the cripple, Mang-p'i, had previous been styled Po-ni. There was some reason, previous to Confucius's birth, for using the term ni in the family. As might be expected, the birth of the sage is surrounded with many prodigious occurrences. One account is, that the husband and wife prayed together for a son in a dell of mount Ni. As Chang-tsai went up the hill, the leaves of the trees and plants all erected themselves, and ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... that from Romulus first took her name, Had her walls water'd with a Crimson showr Drain'd from a Brothers heart: nor was she rais'd To this prodigious height, that overlooks Three full parts of the Earth, that pay her tribute, But by enlarging of her [n]arrow bounds By the Sack of Neighbour Cities, not made hers Till they were Cemented with the Blood of those That did possess 'em: Caesar, Ptolomy, (Now I am steel'd) to me are ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Flatter poor enemies, entreat their servants, Stoop, court, and catch at the benevolence Of creatures, unto whom, within this hour, I would not have vouchsafed a quarter-look, Or piece of face! By you that fools call gods, Hang all the sky with your prodigious signs, Fill earth with monsters, drop the scorpion down, Out of the zodiac, or the fiercer lion, Shake off the loosen'd globe from her long hinge, Roll all the world in darkness, and let loose The enraged winds to turn up groves and towns! When I do fear again, let ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the best way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, to this personal accent—the moral equivalent of her dimple—that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational success. It was her art of transposing second-hand ideas into first-hand emotions that so endeared her to her ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... purposes to which Eloquence may be made subservient, we at once perceive its prodigious import ance to the best interests of mankind. The greatest masters of the art have concurred, upon the greatest occasions of its display, in pronouncing that its estimation depends on the virtuous and rational ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
