"Terrifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... especially young people, are unacquainted with the effects produced by hearing or reading ghost-stories. You have spent the evening, let us say, at a friend's house, listening to terrifying tales of apparitions. At a late hour you leave the fireside circle to make your way home. The states of fear imaged before your mind have realised themselves in your Unconscious. You tread gingerly in the dark places, hurry past the churchyard and feel ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... week Coupeau's life hung on a thread. His family and his friends expected to see him die from one hour to another. The physician, an experienced physician whose every visit cost five francs, talked of a lesion, and that word was in itself very terrifying to all but Gervaise, who, pale from her vigils but calm and resolute, shrugged her shoulders and would not allow herself to be discouraged. Her man's leg was broken; that she knew very well, "but he need not die for that!" And she watched at his side night and day, forgetting her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... unknown to the Romans. They made no distinction between military and civil duties. I think that the military air dates from the time that the profession of arms became a private profession, from the time of the bravos, the Italian condottieri, who were more terrifying to civilians than to the enemy. When the Romans said "cedant arma togae," they did not refer to civil officials and soldiers; the civil officials were then soldiers in their turn; professional soldiers did not exist. They meant "might ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... and the smallest noise made the citizens tremble in the bosom of their families; where the enemy, from time to time, ran to arms to sustain the impression of terror by which the inhabitants had been stricken through the recent massacre; from Madrid a prison, where the gaolers took pleasure in terrifying the prisoners by alarms to keep them quiet; from Madrid thus tortured and troubled by a relentless Tyrant, to fit it for the slow and interminable evils of Slavery;'—when he returned, and was able to compare the oppressed and degraded state of the inhabitants of that metropolis ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... many Christians had only enraged instead of terrifying the others; and a Greek prince named Mavrocordato brought an army together, which took several cities, but unhappily was as cruel as the Turks themselves in their treatment of the conquered. However, they now held Argos, met there, and made ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... irritated nerves and brain. Two may gently and kindly hold the patient, while a third presses on the cooling cloths. In about half-an-hour the fit should be overcome. A difficulty in treating such cases is the terrifying effect of the violent movements, or unconsciousness; but these should not create fear. As a rule, a little patience and treatment as above remove all distress. Where there is a hysterical tendency, give abundance of good food, and let the patient ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... cattle had been trampled to death in the stampede, and the bodies lay within a few miles of the mountains. It was inevitable that bears would come out to eat the carcasses. On the night of the day of terrifying memory no one felt equal to the exertion of another ten mile ride and the subsequent battle with a possible herd of bears. But at eight o'clock on the following night Don Tiburcio, Padre Osuna, the boys, some ten of the caballeros, and as many vaqueros mounted ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... the cabin that had been built around the dream of her, picked up "The Wind in the Willows," and tried to read. But it was difficult. Life, indeed, was difficult—but interesting, in spite of everything. Francis was nice in places, after all, if only he wouldn't have those terrifying times of being too much in earnest, and over her. It was embarrassing, as she had said. She rose up and walked through the place again. It was so dainty and so friendly and so clean, so everything that she ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... the cruel rain; the trees are swaying to and fro in the fresh morning breeze, thousands of glittering drops brightening the air, as they swing themselves from side to side. All things speak of a new birth, a resurrection, a joyful waking from a terrifying past. The grass looks greener for its bath, all dust is laid quite low, the very lichens on the walls as they drive past them look washed ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... that night Booth past awake; and, if during the residue he might be said to sleep, he could scarce be said to enjoy repose; his eyes were no sooner closed, that he was pursued and haunted by the most frightful and terrifying dreams, which threw him into so restless a condition, that he soon disturbed his Amelia, and greatly alarmed her with apprehensions that he had been seized by some dreadful disease, though he had not the least symptoms ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... parents, and be sure that all harshness and cruelty to your children, all terrifying of them, all over-working of them, body or mind, all making them unhappy by requiring of them more than the plain law of God requires; or by teaching them to dread, not to love, their Father in heaven—All these ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... was daring, eccentric, temperamental, the apotheosis of brilliancy—genius. The sudden dart up, the terrifying drop down seemed her main accomplishment. The wonder of it was that the men could never tell where she would land. Did it seem that she was aiming near, a sudden swoop would bring her to rest on a far-away spot. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... if Hallgerd cares about it: Yet she may kindle to it ere my heart quickens. I tell you, women, we have no duty here: Let us get gone to-night while there is time, And find new harbouring ere the laggard dawn, For death is making narrowing passages About this hushed and terrifying house. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... mysteries—trees which sang, stones from which blood flowed, cross-roads where it was necessary to say three "Paters" and three "Aves," if you did not wish to meet the seven-horned beast who carried maidens off to perdition. And what a wealth of terrifying stories there was! Hundreds of stories, so that there was no finishing on the evenings when somebody started them. First came the wehrwolf adventures, the tales of the unhappy men whom the demon forced to enter into the bodies of dogs, the great white dogs of the mountains. If you fire a gun ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... do so now," I said. "You must come home with me as quickly as you can;" for I was feverishly anxious to escape from this house—from this man with this horrible, terrifying power. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... snore, and—Say, I've seen service in France, I've slept in barracks with scores of tired soldiers, I've walked through camps where thousands of able-bodied men were snoring their heads off,—but never have I heard anything so terrifying as the racket that lasts from nine to five in the land of my forefathers. Gad, it sometimes seems to me you're all trying to make my forefathers turn over in their graves up there on ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... of firearms the prejudices of the natives have been needlessly offended. Shooting game is not generally allowed to the people, yet foreigners here often been reckless in the pursuit of sport, regardless where they sought it, and terrifying the people. Again, riding on horseback is allowed only to the nobles, and it is a source of provocation to all classes to witness the equestrian performances of foreigners of every station in life, whose amusement at times consists in making pedestrians scatter as they gallop ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs with the fresh vigor of a juvenile activity. It walks abroad, it continues its ravages, whilst you are gibbeting the carcass or demolishing the tomb. You are terrifying yourselves with ghosts and apparitions, whilst your house is the haunt of robbers. It is thus with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his body, and so he constructed drums and cymbals and gongs; and by means of these, too, he communicated his needs and stimulated himself to rage and excitement—and his enemy to fear—in war dance and battle rush. And in doing this he was imitating nature, whose noises, exciting and terrifying, he had long known: the clap of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of the waves, the crackling of burning wood, the crash of fallen ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... steadying effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... deliberately assume a frightful, terrifying or grotesque appearance. This they do by inflating their bodies, by erecting hair, skin, or folds, or by unusual poses. Darwin speaks of the hissing of certain snakes, the rattle of the rattle-snake, the grating of the scales of the echis, each of which ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... at the sight of him; he looked terrifying in the light of the grey dawn, on the white coverlet of snow, with his anguished face, wide-open eyes, and drooping tongue on which the teeth had closed firmly. There were blue patches on his skin, and he was covered with ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... outlook was, indeed, becoming terrifying. He was glad there was nobody to question him, for he did not care to face the facts. Peter's threat of becoming a regular visitor had been nullified by his father despatching him to Germany to buy up some more Teutonic patents. "Wonderful are the ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... quarter that bunch in the old wing, but Lord bless my soul, I reckon they'd be willing to go out to the paddock. But mind, you girls, not one whisper of it to those boys, until I give the word, or it will be the brig for every mother's daughter of you," and with this terrifying threat he strode ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... blowing the dust about furiously. The trees swayed and creaked, lashing their branches about in a very terrifying way. The thunder growled and muttered, while sharp flashes of lightning zigzagged across the ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... it occurred to me that this was a railway accident—one of those things that one reads of in the papers with so much calmness. I wondered if I was hurt, and why I could hear no sound; the silence was absolute—terrifying. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... think that the surroundings of this violent imagination, with its bias towards the capricious and the terrifying, were loneliness, sorrow, enforced companionship with degradation; a life so bitter, for a long time, and made so bitter through another's fault, that Emily welcomed her fancies, even the gloomiest, as ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... he had loved her as a sister. Her beauty had always fascinated and charmed him. To see her now, cast adrift on this troubled sea of love and fear, was a bitter, almost a terrifying sight. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... only by an occasional shuddering sigh from Katie; not a tear in her eyes, and her cheeks as scarlet as they had been white a few moments before. The look on her face was terrifying. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that patient sheep her husband; her eyes were like sloes, the fingers of her hands were like tobacco-pipe shanks, her mouth shut tight like a trap; and even when she was the most serious, and still more when she was angry, there hung about her face the terrifying semblance of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what seemed to the imprisoned children like a year of darkness and dread, and of strange, terrifying noises of all kinds, the sound of horses' hoofs and marching feet died away in the distance, and Jan ventured to push open the door of the cavern a crack, just intending to peep out. Immediately there was a crash of falling tinware. Jan ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... charming comedies, stirring melodramas, spirited harlequinades and moving divertissement. But it is in tragedy his constructive ability is especially apparent, and his characters, tripping along unsuspectingly in the sunny byways, are suddenly confronted by the terrifying mask and realize life is not all pleasant pastime and that the Greek philosophy of retribution is nature's law, preserving the unities. When the time comes, the Master of events, adjusting them in prescribed lines, reaches by stern ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... beyond the sea. It now knew gods wrapped in the ecstatic contemplation of Nirvana, with smiling mouth and half-closed eyes, revealing mystic symbols in a broad and apostolic gesture. It had more life-like figures, attendants, benign and malignant, terrifying demons. Before these impassive gods, in a fervor of devotion it bent the figures of donors, men and women, sometimes veritable portraits. With even greater breadth it portrayed the disciples of Sakyamuni, those ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... with all the circumstances that can create either attention or horror. The mind of the reader is wonderfully prepared for his reception by the discourses that precede it. His dumb behaviour at his first entrance strikes the imagination very strongly; but every time he enters he is still more terrifying. Who can read the speech with which young ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... myth-makers' idea of the world was poetic because, with very incomplete knowledge, they could not imagine how anything could be done unless it was done as they did things. When the black clouds gather on a summer afternoon and roll up the sky in great, terrifying masses, and the lightning flashes from them and the crash of the thunder fills the air and the rain beats down the crops, we feel as if we were in the laboratory of nature seeing a wonderful experiment made; when our ancestors saw the same spectacle they were ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... pass some wire through the pistol-grip. The old man disappears, but he returns with three grave-diggers, who brandish their spades in terrifying manner. "Ha!" I think, "I must fly away." I fly my wings (did I tell you I had wings?) and rise above the church tower. Archie has evidently opened fire, for I hear a near-by wouff. I try to dodge, but it is too late. A shell fragment strikes my nose. Much to my surprise I find I can ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... It was a terrifying sight as he plunged toward the lad with lowered head and glowering front, for the deer was an exceptionally large and powerful one, and he meant to kill the individual that had sent the bullet into his side, and from which the red ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... thoughts of London, and masters, and strangers, and the fancy our style of living would be so different in the metropolis to what it was in Oakwood, and that I should not see nearly as much of mamma, all chose to come, like terrifying spectres, to scare ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... his knees so near my father, that, not knowing what he might do, I rushed between them, and hastily pushed back the arm-chair to the wall. Then the monk, speaking in a mournful tone, which was rendered still more terrifying by the approach of night, began to pour out some lamentable rigmarole of a confession, and ended by asking pardon for his crimes, and declaring that he was already covered by the black veil which parricides wear when they go to ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... To find her friend and playfellow suddenly dropped away from her into the middle of a fairy-tale was rather terrifying, but it was also thrilling. She slipped down ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... sleep last night—did I wake? I could not say. Through my brain, like thick dark shadows, flitted terrifying thoughts, insupportable images of torment; and my heart gave sudden throbs and bounds, and I would find myself staring wide-eyed into the darkness, not knowing whether I had just awakened from a dream or whether I had never been asleep at all. And this state of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... busy at this moment with an old acquaintance of Jack's,—the very woman who had taken so much pleasure in terrifying him when he was little. Bowed, as nearly all the peasantry are by their daily labor, burned by the sun, and powdered by the dust, old Sale yet retained a little life in her sharp eyes. She spoke of her good man, who had been sick for months,—who could not work, and yet had to eat. She ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... from where they clung could see the great black mountains of water rushing upon them, each wave a most terrifying spectacle. Then again the whole dark, seething ocean seemed to be below them and they were flying to the clouds. The breath of relief died instantly, for again the helpless ship sank into the trough and the foaming mountains towered about her. Grace hid her eyes and ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... his game; the water gleaming in the fierce light, and the dark ranks of the cedars all around. And then, in the tenth of a second, it was all over, and the Buck was bumping against trees, and stumbling and floundering over roots, in his dazed haste to get away from this terrifying mystery. He heard one horrified shout from the hunter, but nothing from the photographer—and the woods ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... Sally gets the viola in place for a start, and asks is her friend ready? Waiting, it seems; so she merely adds, "Yes, I should say conveyed it to him." And off they go with the new piece of music in B flat, and are soon involved in terrifying complications which have to be done all over again. At the end, they are ungrateful to B flat, and say they don't care much for it; it will be better when they can play it, however. Then Laetitia schemes to wind Sally up ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... scarcely keep their feet. "And now," says Von Tschudi, "there followed during two or three minutes a terrible scene. The swaying motion which had hitherto prevailed changed into fierce vertical upheaval. The subterranean roaring increased in the most terrifying manner; then were heard the heart-piercing shrieks of the wretched people, the bursting of walls, the crashing fall of houses and churches, while over all rolled thick clouds of a yellowish-black dust, which, had they been poured forth many minutes longer, would have suffocated ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... mountainous seas in which they were laboring and the violence of the storm, this was a terrifying ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... large room and the decorations, although equally well executed as those in the room they had just left, were actually terrifying. Flying dragons and serpents done in bronze hung from the ceiling, while on a raised dais at the farther end of the room was an enormous squatting figure of the seven-handed god. Before it, in braziers, fire gleamed, giving off a heavy, pungent odor that ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... it became terrifying. Bob had dropped flat, and cowered there, almost holding his breath with awe. Not so Frank, in whose care ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... until she came down. In this state did J. find me on his return from England. His family was up in Aaleih, and he used to ride over occasionally to see P. and prescribe some new medicine for him, but his skill was baffled with this terrifying disease, and poor P. remained in this agonizing state of suffering for five whole months without leaving his bed. He was carried down on a litter to Beirut, where he has been since. He took a little room by himself, and gives lessons ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... Scotty intoned, "the marvels of the universe! See the living proof of the science of parapsychology! Mystifying, terrifying, a scientific phenomenon without parallel that has baffled the leading minds of the world!" Scotty's quick mind also had caught the ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... Satan himself, whose delight it was to appear in person ensnaring or terrifying every one he met. With this object, he assumed various forms. One day he would visit the earth as a black dog, on another day as a raven, on still another day he would be heard in the distance roaring like a ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... been concerned in the whole matter, came in, and the Bishop bade him go and tell me that if I did not bring the vase at once, he would make mincemeat of me; [2] but if I brought it, he would pay its price down. These threats were so far from terrifying me, that I sent him word I was going immediately to lay my ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... a deep heart-terrifying voice, Exclaim'd the Spectre, "Welcome to these realms, These regions of DESPAIR! O thou whose steps By GRIEF conducted to these sad abodes Have pierced; welcome, welcome to this gloom Eternal, to this everlasting night, Where never morning ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... intense. Every night the tipsy gaolers, their watch-dogs at their heels, would march from cell to cell, delivering acts of accusation, howling out names they mutilated, waking the prisoners and for twenty victims marked on their list terrifying two hundred. Along these corridors, reeking with bloody memories, passed every day, without a murmur, twenty, thirty, fifty condemned prisoners, old men, women, young men and maidens, so widely different in rank and character and opinion that the question rose involuntarily ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the water which contained the moccasins, and Dick was sure he could feel their tongues touch his face as the reptiles searched for a soft place to strike. Then the snarling from a tree beside him would have been less terrifying if he had known that instead of being, as he supposed, two wildcats quarreling for the first bite at him, it was merely a friendly family ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... transmitter. But it was infinitely more than that. The device was a thought generator capable of hypnotizing every thinking creature on the face of the earth. The power of infinite goodness or evil which the machine embodied was terrifying to consider. ...
— Rex Ex Machina • Frederic Max
... the roystering Williams? The jolly good fellow? I wanted to laugh, a little hysterically, because of the worry after great fatigue. Was his wife such a terrifying virago? "A good woman," Williams insisted. I turned my eyes to Sebright, who looked ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... German pilots decided to take a chance and release his bombs. Their reverberating detonations were terrifying enough, but aside from the ugly holes they made in the open field, some five hundred yards away from the 'drome, they accomplished nothing in the balance of warfare. The other planes, finding the welcome a bit too warm, took up a zig-zag course toward the Fatherland, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... exclaimed. We circled old Xiphius, and when about fifty yards distant he lifted himself clear out—a most terrifying and magnificent fish. He would have weighed four hundred. His colors shone—blazed—purple blue, pale green, iridescent copper, and flaming silver. Then he made a long, low lunge away from us. I ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... no doubt constant, and were not greatly regarded; but from time to time some tribe or chieftain bolder than the rest made a deeper inroad and a more sustained attack than usual, spreading consternation around, and terrifying the court for its safety. Such an attack seems to have occurred towards the autumn of A.D. 350. The invading horde is said to have consisted of Massagatae; but we can hardly be mistaken in regarding them as, in the main, of Tatar, or Turkoman ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... consequently, disaster would have come at the beginning of the enterprise. Jethro wrought as though such a thing as danger was not within a hundred miles, and that, too, when he had recently passed through some terrifying incidents. ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... terrifying his parent by the energy with which he sprang to his feet. "I'm jolly ill, and you'd be awfully sorry if I had a fit of coughing and brought up blood, wouldn't you? Well, I shall if you call Jeff a person again. Where is Jeff, I say? I want Jeff. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... lifted her head. She looked at him through her fingers. Her face was a garden of blush-roses. She pretended to roar but the result was not terrifying; then she obediently held ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... to great distances, but never to any successful purpose; and his flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the peaks and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the most terrifying ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... it?" shrieked Zoie, trying to get her small ear close enough to the receiver to catch a bit of the obviously terrifying message. ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... straight for the group of roisterers, who scattered away, men swearing, women screaming. Throwing back his weight against the reins, he brought the stallion to a plunging, snorting, wheeling halt in the midst of men and women—a terrifying monster blowing clouds of mist out of his nostrils! As they ran he let the brute rear—pulled him over— rolled from under him, and lay still, with goat's blood from the broken bottle splashed ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... best manner he could for his own advantage, he should come to his trial, but still with a body of men sufficient for his security on his journey, yet so that he should not come with so great a force as might look like terrifying Hyrcanus, but still such a one as might not expose him naked and unguarded [to his enemies.] However, Sextus Caesar, president of Syria, wrote to Hyrcanus, and desired him to clear Herod, and dismiss him at his trial, and threatened him beforehand if he did not do it. Which ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... terrifying experiences connected with these first schooldays grew out of crimes committed by the keeper of a low lodging-house in Edinburgh, who allowed poor homeless wretches to sleep on benches or the floor for a penny or so a night, and, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... to be as terrifying as Huns and unblushingly gloried in this profession. Has he agreed or has he silently disagreed? Has he too wished this or has he been unwilling? Is he essentially a Hun, are his family essentially Huns, or are they in reality ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... steep ascent, Father Jose sometimes picked up fragments of scoria, which spake to his imagination of direful volcanoes and impending earthquakes. To the less scientific mind of the muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying significance; and he once or twice snuffed the air suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of sulphur. So the first day of their journey wore away, and at night they encamped without having met a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... must adore her; Oh! that cursed, cursed house! But for the women of that!—Then their d——d potions! But for those, had her unimpaired intellects, and the majesty of her virtue, saved her, as once it did by her humble eloquence,* another time by her terrifying menaces against her ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... pit. The colours were fading from the brilliant sides as the sun sank lower, and the inky clouds that seemed to heave far down in its mysterious depths fought their way slowly upward as the invading sunbeams were driven out. It became more terrifying as ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... and did not worry herself about it, for Aunt Prudence and her terrifying eye were gone, and she was left sole mistress. So time passed on, and Cherry's master was so kind to her that the days flew by like hours, and very soon a whole year ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... watched, as the surface of her mind reflected these sights and was caught in the maze of fresh impressions, the back of that mind was forever at work on her own terrifying problem. She thought confidently of escape, not able to plan it but waiting intently upon opportunity, upon the passing of a boat perhaps, or the moment of ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and strength, tenderness and energy. When he yielded to the eloquent petulance of his inspirations he soared to enthusiasm. His conversation revealed the rudiments of an excellent early education and much natural intelligence. That which was so terrifying in him was his tone of heedless gayety, which contrasted so horribly with his position. For the rest, he was unanimously conceded to be kind, generous, humane, lenient toward the weak, while with the strong he loved to display a vigor truly athletic which ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... penetrated even thus far, and of those who had, a considerable proportion had turned back at the giant pit three miles above. One look at the towering barrier had been enough for them. The Chilkoot was more than a mountain, more than an obstacle of nature; it was a Presence, a tremendous and a terrifying Personality which overshadowed the minds of men and could neither be ignored at the time nor forgotten later. No wonder, then, that Sheep Camp, which was a part of the Chilkoot, represented, a sort of acid test; no wonder that those who had moved their outfits ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting. Thunder could scarce ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... startled. Unasked, unsought, a thought had entered her mind; a terrifying thought, but a big and vital thought. HER WORD WOULD BE HIS LAW. Her influence would be upon him.... And he was master of thousands of her class. He would be master of more thousands.... If she were his wife—if her word might become his law—how would those laboring men be affected? Would ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... want to leave you," said John, a strange, terrifying, rapid-speaking John; "I hate it. I hate war, I hate fighting, I hate leaving you—oh, my God, how I hate leaving you, my darling! I've prayed to God all day to stop the war before I have to go, but ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... that are recognised in England, asks 'whether it be right that not merely believing, but knowing a statement to be true, he should do all that can be done by sophistry, by rhetoric, by solemn asseveration, by indignant exclamation, by gesture, by play of features, by terrifying one honest witness, by perplexing another, to cause a jury to think that statement false.' Bentham denounced in even stronger language the habitual method of 'the hireling lawyer' in cross-examining an honest but adverse ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... o'clock, we heard four shots in rapid succession fired from the wreck. Knowing that something was wrong, I called a couple of hands, and in a few minutes was pulled on board, where I found the old carpenter lying writhing in agony, his features presenting a truly shocking and terrifying appearance. His revolver lay on the deck near him—he had fired it to bring assistance. I need not here describe the peculiarly drastic remedies adopted by the natives to save the man's life. They at first thought the case was a hopeless one, but by daylight the ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the long, empty days at sea, the monotonous Irish coast, the sluggish passage up the Mersey, the flash of the boat train through the summer country. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the feeling of rapid motion and to swift, terrifying thoughts. He was sitting so, his face shaded by his hand, when the Boston lawyer saw him from the siding at White ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... to a place which is, in the warm season, an alp; that is, a slope of grass, very steep but not terrifying; having here and there sharp little precipices of rock breaking it into steps, but by no means (in summer) a matter to make one draw back. Now, however, when everything was still Arctic it was a very different matter. A sheer steep of snow whose downward plunge ran into the driving storm ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... just presented us with a wholly plausible if highly terrifying view of a reasonably near future. Such things could, conceivably, come to pass. And prophecy, from the time of Jules Verne to the present, has long been one of the several spinal columns of science fiction. Yet is it possible for anyone to predict an unvisited future? ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... or, as was most generally the case, the mother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed and repassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris, sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place of comparative safety until the ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... she had thereafter protested, with tears of indecision, torn this way and that until her heart ached beyond endurance, that she was not sure of her love for either, but felt that she loved both, nor could tell whom she loved the most, if either at all. In this agony of confusion, terrifying for a maid, she had fled beyond her mother's arms, to her grandmother's cottage at Grace Harbor, there to deliberate and decide, as she said; and she had promised to speed her conclusion with all the determination she could command, and to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... torture, and the priest was shot for having given absolution to an assassin, and for having concealed his knowledge of the plot an hour after he was acquainted with it. Even Salmatoris had some difficulty to avoid being disgraced for having written a terrifying note, which had exposed the Emperor's weakness, and shown that his life was dearer to him at the head of Empires than when only ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... up white as ever; and, crossing the intervening sward, the steward fancifully placed his mouth against the stone. Restless and self-reproachful as he was, he could not resist a smile as he thought of the terrifying oath of compact, sealed by a kiss upon the stones of a Pagan temple. But he had kept his word, rather as a promise than as a formal vow, with much worldly advantage to himself, though not much happiness; till increase of years had bred ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... think that I have fascinated you by what opportunities I have, even by what power and passion and talents I have, and filled you with a hunger for me—when really you do not realize at all what I am, or what I must be, and when what I have to do will terrify you. I write in the thought of terrifying you now, and making you give up this red-hot iron that you are trying to hold on to; or else to show you my life so plainly that never afterwards can you blame me, or shrink back except by ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... son gave voice to his own wishes. He longed to take the warpath, to glide through the forest, to spy upon the strangers who had dared make a place for themselves in his dominion, and then to fall upon them, terrifying them with his awful war-cry as he had terrified so many of his enemies. Yet he dared not do this yet: he was not only a great war chief, but a leader of his people in peace. Okee had not yet spoken. Perchance the men with strange faces and strange ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... Of the Hercynian forest, [V] Yet, hail to you 215 Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales, Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice, [W] Powers of my native region! Ye that seize The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds, 220 That howl so dismally for him who treads Companionless your awful solitudes! There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long To wait upon the storms: of their approach Sagacious, into sheltering ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... a lift to the Outside. It had been fifteen years ago, while their youngest son was a baby, that they had taken a weekend motor trip to the great scar that had been Manhattan. He remembered the vastness and the rawness of the uncontrolled atmosphere. It had been beautiful but also a bit terrifying. It was a ten ...
— Second Sight • Basil Eugene Wells
... arrangement upon which I much felicitate myself. I made it at Heidelberg. It has saved me a vast deal of small annoyance. I consign to its embraces the friends who bore, and the visitors who exasperate, me. But it is never so useful as when terrifying some tradesman with an insignificant account. Hence the pet name which I have facetiously given it. They are invariably too glad to purchase release at the price of a bill receipted. Do you well apprehend ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... that this man had been sent with a view of working from her a confession, and terrifying from her some money; the confession, indeed, in conscience and honesty she could not wholly elude, but she had suffered too often by a facility in parting with money ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the face of the man who had paused before their table, as one might look into the face of unexpected death. He remained perfectly still, but the slight colour seemed slowly to be drawn from his cheeks. Yet the newcomer himself seemed in no way terrifying. He was tall and largely built, clean-shaven, and with the humourous mouth of an Irishman or an American. Neither was there anything threatening ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... undone by love and ambition, those powerful conquerors of the young——pity, oh pity a youth that dies, and will ere long no more complain upon your rigours. Yes, my lord, he dies without the force of a terrifying sentence, without the grim reproaches of an angry judge, without the soon consulted arbitrary——guilty of a severe and hasty jury, without the ceremony of the scaffold, axe, and hangman, and the clamours of inconsidering crowds; all which melancholy ceremonies render death so ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... youth, for the sweetest slumbers are more apt to seek out those who by day have some rest, than those who are worn out by fatigue, and evening after evening Selene was one of these. Every night she had dreams, but tonight they were almost exclusively sad in character, and so terrifying that she woke herself repeatedly with her own groaning, or disturbed Arsinoe's peaceful sleep by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fire was blazing, lighting up the interior of the crater. The boys found themselves in a circular opening of almost terrifying roughness and something like a quarter of a mile across. Here, in ages past, the forces of Nature had been at work with fearful earnestness. Weird shadows, mysterious shapes, somewhat resembling moving figures, were thrown by the flickering blaze of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... much it meant to him, who would really care. Had Sister Anne lived, she would have understood; and he would have laid himself and his new position at her feet and begged her to accept them—begged her to run away with him to this tremendous and terrifying capital of the world, and start the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... sends out starving peasants to massacre Jews than in the Athena of Phidias. Yet, once we have rid our minds of trivial mythology, there is religion in Athena also. Athena is an ideal, an ideal and a mystery; the ideal of wisdom, of incessant labour, of almost terrifying purity, seen through the light of some mystic and spiritual devotion like, but transcending, the love of man for woman. Or, if the way of Athena is too hard for us common men, it is not hard to find a true religious ideal in such a figure as Persephone. In ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... prayers and public harangues, without being ever construed as a reality in calculating consequences and determining practical measures. Accordingly, they drew from the mutilation of the Hermae the inference, not less natural than terrifying, that heavy public misfortune was impending over the city, and that the political constitution to which they were attached was in imminent danger ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... His dangerous and terrifying presence seemed to dominate, for the young Poins, even the dusty archway of the Calais gate—and, even though he saw the flat, green and sunny levels of the French marshland, with the town of Ardres rising grey and turreted six miles away, the young Poins felt that he was ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... no childish games, could not enter into childish nonsense, was entirely incapable of making believe, never seemed to be thinking of what she was about, and had big serious eyes that oppressed the little one with a sense of awe not conducive to love, and of which she dreamed with terrifying adjuncts when she had had too much cake too late at night. What there was of sterling in Leam had no charm for, because no point of contact with, Fina. Thus, all her efforts went astray, and the child loved her no better for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... brace of very distinguished civil servants, one representing the Foreign Office and the other the Home Office, came across Whitehall by appointment and with long faces, and the four of us sat solemnly round a table—they, Colonel MacEwen, and I. It appeared that we had been guilty of terrifying violations of international law. We had seized numbers of German reservists and German males of military age on board ships in British ports, and had consigned some of them to quarters designed for the accommodation of malefactors. This sort of thing would never do. Such steps ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... he prepared to turn his face toward the open room, there came to his ears the most terrifying sound. Distinctly, plainly he heard a chuckle, almost at the bedside. A chuckle, hollow, sepulchral, mirthless. The hair on Hawkins's head stood straight on end. The impulse to hide beneath the covers was conquered by the irresistible desire to ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... torments. Some represent a great stone as hanging over his head, which he apprehended to be continually falling, and was ever in motion to avoid it. Others describe him as afflicted with constant thirst and hunger, though the most delicious banquets were exposed to his view; one of the Furies terrifying him with her torch whenever he approached towards them. Some exhibit him standing to the chin in water, and whenever he stooped to quench his thirst, the water as constantly eluding his lip. Others, with fruits luxuriously growing around him, which he no sooner advanced to touch, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... destruction, withheld until this moment—there followed the terrifying snap of steel from above. An entire section of roof literally was popped from place, the result of false stresses in the beams created by the explosion. Upon the heads of the unlucky group in the center of the ballroom set came a perfect hailstorm ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... and such as finds small favour in the practical world of to-day. She lived a recluse for twenty years with the Sisters of the Congregation, and practised, till death relieved her, mortifications most terrifying to the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... might at any time be attacked by a German armed ship. "I would rather die on a British cruiser to-night," my wife retorted, "than be a prisoner in Germany," an opinion we all endorsed. The weather alone was sufficiently terrifying to the landsmen amongst us; the prospect of having to take to the lifeboats at any moment if the Germans took it in into their heads to sink the ship if she were sighted by an enemy ship added to the fears of all of us. None of ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... the man not in uniform entered the room. "Mr. Guffey!" cried the policeman. "See this!" The man took the paper, and glanced at it, and Peter, watching with bewildered and fascinated eyes, saw a most terrifying sight. It was as if the man went suddenly out of his mind. He glared at Peter, and under his black eyebrows the big staring eyes seemed ready to jump out of ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... alleviations and glories intrinsically belonging to the scene, and paint it in the most horrible hues, and set it in a frame of midnight. Thus, instead of calmly seeking to elicit and recommend truth, they strive, by terrifying the fancy and shocking the prejudices, to make people accept their dogma because frightened at the seeming consequences of rejecting it. It is necessary to expose the fearful fallacies which have been employed in this way, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... months, and in that moment I was master of all the resources of my being. Yes, I was as calm, as clear of purpose, as my adversary was the reverse. He was not accustomed to live, like his accomplice, in the daily habits of studied dissimulation. The name, "Rochdale," the terrifying likeness, the unlooked-for arrival! I had not been mistaken in my calculation. With the amazing rapidity of thought that accompanies action I perceived the necessity of following up this first shock of moral terror by a shock of physical terror. Otherwise, the man would hurl ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... awoke from a terrifying dream; and still, as she dreamed again, she saw a lash descending on a child's naked back, leaving at each stroke the mark of a cross interwoven with a strange and delicate pattern; and at each stroke heard a girl's voice which screamed, "It is ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... kind as well as in force as those that set delirious the savage hordes from the German forests when they first poured down over the Alps and beheld the jewels and marbles and round, smooth, soft women of Italy's ancient civilization. But at the same time he had the unmistakable, the terrifying feeling of dare-devil sacrilege. What were his coarse hands doing, dabbling in silks and cobweb laces and embroideries? Silk fascinated him; but, while he did not like calico so well, he felt at home ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... was an eye of them all so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose as the very eye at which he was looking; it was not, madam, a rolling eye, a romping, or a wanton one; nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, of high claims and terrifying expectations, which would have curdled at once that milk of human nature, of which my uncle Toby was made up; but 'twas an eye full of gentle salutations and soft responses, speaking, not like the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... and ten feet round the body." The giant lay with his head pillowed on a book, as if asleep, and there was a prodigious sword alongside him, proportioned to the hand that was to use it. This sight was so terrifying that the explorer made the best of his way back to the first house, where the servant told him that if he had knocked at the giant's door he would have had company enough, but would have never returned. He desired to know what place it was, but was told, "These things are not to be revealed." ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... absolutely different title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggled about in the most incomprehensible manner. Sometimes lines and stanzas not his own were substituted for his. He could not believe that a sane editor ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St. Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly thing. He ordered money to be paid to the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... roared Dr. Rankin, beating the table, "that's just what I've been trying to tell you. You ought not to care so much for punishing as for deterring. Don't you know that it's a commonplace that it isn't the terrifying quality of the penalty that acts as a deterrent to crime, but it's the certainty of the penalty! If a horse thief knows that there's merely a chance the community will get mad enough to hang him, he'll take that chance in hopes this may not be the time. If, on the other hand, he ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... unaware of the terrific figure behind him, had sauntered from the shadows into the path of light, curious, half-blinded by the glare he faced. As he reached the middle of the road the most terrifying of all cries issued from one of ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Ogla-Moga—of how he imprisoned three estimable old ladies in the elevator, and before they were released had frightened them into hysterics; of how he at first took the milkman to be a brother Indian, and regularly for a time answered his morning howl with a terrifying war-whoop; of how he kept the house in turmoil by ringing an electric bell wherever he could find one, in doing which he took a childish delight—there is no need to speak here. Happily for Miss Slopham, it so came about that Ogla-Moga was rescued from all his scrapes without ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... there is nothing more terrifying than the avowed hostility of a mass of men, and no law grimmer than lynch-law. Yet he held up his head with a sort of pride in his danger—some touch of that subtle sense of personal distinction which seems to reach the heart ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... you 're perfectly awful! Why, Zillah Forsyth! Don't you ever say a thing like that again! You can joke all you want to about the flirty young Internes. They're nothing but fellows. But it isn't—it isn't respectful—for you to talk like that about the Senior Surgeon. He's too—too terrifying!" she finished in an ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... to me now half so terrifying as did the old bogey of not getting a raise. I suppose for one thing this was because we neither of us felt so keenly the responsibility of the boy. In the old days we had both thought that he was doomed if we didn't save enough to send ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... this rapid succession of events—the marvels of a few minutes—passed before Vetranio and Marcus as visions beheld by their eyes, but neither contained nor comprehended by their minds. Stolid in their obstinate recklessness, stupefied by the spectacle of the startling perils—menacing yet harmless, terrifying though transitory—which surrounded them, neither of the senators moved a muscle or uttered a word, from the period when Thascius had fallen beneath the hunchback's attack, to the period when the last blow against the palace railings, and the last sound of voices from ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... coming. It was like one of those dreams he'd had where he was unable to move, his muscles frozen, as some unknown horror stalked him. It could only end in a terrifying fall through cold space towards a tremendous lurch against the bedsprings that brought little comfort until his pounding heart came back to normal. But this was no dream; it was a known horror that stalked him, and it could not end as a dream ends. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... her, but failed: when I quickened my pace she quickened hers, and kept easily ahead of me. At length I did begin to grow a little afraid. Why was she so careful not to be seen? Extraordinary ugliness would account for it: she might fear terrifying me! Horror of an inconceivable monstrosity began to assail me: was I following through the dark an unheard of hideousness? Almost I repented ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... to have been mutually drawn to each other by a sudden and superficial attraction, for the sake of repulsing each other later on with all the force of inexpressible sorrow and boredom." Illness had embittered Chopin's character. George Sand used to say that "when he was angry he was terrifying." He was very intelligent, too, and delighted in quizzing people for whom he did not care. Solange and Maurice were now older, and this made the situation somewhat delicate. Chopin, too, had a mania for meddling with family matters. He quarrelled ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... at a figure of positively terrifying aspect. Upon a skeleton body of extraordinary height was set a head bare of any hair. Scalp, forehead and cheeks were of one dull, ivory hue like an eastern carving. Upon the smooth, dead surface of the right cheek sprawled ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... well-meaning men, who came to ask for money. Before she spoke again she was startled by the sound of several rifle shots fired in the street outside her house. She was not much startled, not at all alarmed. A rifle fired in the open air at some distance does not make a very terrifying sound. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... point from which they could see the stream, a terrifying sight met their eyes. A girl was struggling in the shallow but swift water. She had evidently stepped on the sloping bank and fallen in. Her young companions were running alongside the rivulet, stretching ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... studio, with its permanent odor of tobacco smoke, with the cloud, impenetrable to her, in which artistic discussions and ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The blague was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments, gallantries a la Dorat she was unable to understand it, and was dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... colour glowed in the sides, as if it were the blue-green blood of the glacier. A tiny wind from the north, keen as a knife blade, blew in my face as I stood there, out of the calm blue sky, and seemed to whisper to me of the terrifying nights of storm, of the deadly wind before which all life goes down like a straw, that raged here in the winter. On every side, as far as the eyes could reach, wide white plains of undulating ice and snow, broken here and there by patches of barren rock, that seemed now by some optical ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... unhappy fates than the grim and terrible jungle presents to Monsieur Tarzan. At least his conscience will be free from remorse. And there are moments of quiet and restfulness by day, and vistas of exquisite beauty. You may find it strange that I should say it, who experienced such terrifying experiences in that frightful forest, yet at times I long to return, for I cannot but feel that the happiest moments of ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who was at once informed of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he had any business to settle. Several parties spoke to him on the subject; but to all such inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful position. He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his dear wife. The unfortunate lady referred to, between whom and Slade there existed a warm affection, was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... looking at the stranger with a half-comprehending gaze. She had been less than an hour beside the bushes, but it had seemed to her like many hours. And the terrifying certainty of a night alone on the prairie made the sudden presence of a human being ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Borneo, the Celebes, and Java, the mere fact that we had come from British North Borneo caused the health officers to view us with grave suspicion. When we were in Sandakan the town was undergoing a periodic visitation of that deadliest and most terrifying of all Oriental diseases, bubonic plague. As it is transmitted by the fleas on plague-infested rats, we took the precaution, when we went ashore, of wearing boots and breeches or of tying the bottoms of our trousers about our ankles with ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... mouth of the creek a surf-topped wave rose against them, sharp and concave, as it rushed on its way to the reefs. We held our breath. It was a terrifying but magnificent sight. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... simple affair it looked. The bucket bobbed about on the surface of the water. Once he forgot the necessity of keeping a stout grip on the pole, and the next instant the pail came up to the sunlight with a suddenness that was terrifying. Only an equally sudden backward jump on Yates' part saved his head. Miss Bartlett was pleased to look upon this incident as funny. Yates was so startled by the unexpected revolt of the pail that his native courtesy did not get a chance to prevent Kitty from drawing up the water herself. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... motionless figure of the Woman, covered as with a pall, by the drifting snow, and in the shadowy string of dogs faintly seen, from time to time, when a rare lull cleared the air to a dim and misty grayness. Something terrifying in the cruel sting of the bitter wind that cut into the flesh like whip-lashes, and shrieked and howled in its unspent rage over that ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... raised Mus decumanus to a beast of immense importance in my mind. Soon he became even more important in an unpleasant way when it was discovered that rats were abundant indoors as well as out. The various noises they made at night were terrifying; they would run over our beds and sometimes we would wake up to find that one had got in between the sheets and was trying frantically to get out. Then we would yell, and half the house would be roused and imagine some dreadful thing. But when they found out the cause, they would only laugh ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... what right do you deprive beasts of a soul, which you attribute to man, though you know nothing at all about it? Because the souls of beasts would embarrass our theologians, who are satisfied with the power of terrifying and damning the immaterial souls of men, and are not so much interested in damning those of beasts. Such are the puerile solutions, which philosophy, always in the leading strings of theology, was obliged to invent, in order ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... just pledged themselves with inarticulate oaths and most terrifying psalmody to march in Malcolmson's army, their enthusiasm for the King was striking. They sang the National Anthem quite as whole-heartedly as they had sung the hymn. They are a very curious people, these ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham |
