"Thunderbolt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colorless and commonplace picture of rural Western life, it is because I have felt an instinctive reluctance to recount the startling and most improbable incident which fell one night upon this quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt out of blue sky. The story I must tell will be flatly denied and easily refuted. It is absurd and fantastic, but, unless human evidence is to go for nothing when it testifies of things ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... to bed, and waited for the next thing to happen. I found my thunderbolt waiting for me when I woke up. I didn't know what it was going to be, but when I felt a ring through the envelope of that note I knew what it was. I mind-read that note ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a moment's dread silence. The thunderbolt had fallen. The festival felicity of two households trembled in the balance. Michael muttered impatiently and went ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... upon the footman a glance which would have shivered him like a thunderbolt if he had not been a man of stone. But being a man of stone, the thunderbolt harmlessly glanced off from him. With a peculiar smile, he assisted the enraged counsellor in putting on his cloak, handed him his hat with a polite bow, and then hastened to the door in order ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... terror of the situation is in the fluctuations of the flooring. How fight an inclined plane subject to caprices? The ship has, so to speak, in its belly, an imprisoned thunderstorm, striving to escape; something like a thunderbolt rumbling above an earthquake. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... lion, according to the programme, springs upon the proprietor, whose only defense is his whip. This simple weapon in his hands (according to the programme) will change itself into a fiery sword and shield. The end of this whip will sting as a rattlesnake, flash as lightning, shoot as a thunderbolt, and keep at a proper distance the enraged monster, who vainly roars and tries to jump on the artist. This is not the end yet: sixteen-year-old Orso, an "American Hercules," born of a white father and Indian mother, will carry around ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... would feel shame; for which they would experience remorse. In short, the ministers of superstition furnish to the most profligate men the power of indulging their inflamed passions, and then hold forth to them means of diverting from their own heads the thunderbolt that should strike their crimes, by spreading before them fresh incentives to intolerant persecution, with the promise of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... by a little army—so perfect in its appointments as to make resistance hopeless, and by that very hopelessness (as reconciling the most insubordinate to a necessity) making irritation impossible. Last month we warned Mr O'Connell of "the uplifted thunderbolt" suspended in the Jovian hands of the Wellesley, but ready to descend when the "dignus vindice nodus" should announce itself. And this, by the way, must have been the "thunderbolt," this military demonstration, which, in our blind spirit of prophecy doubtless, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... After this thunderbolt had fallen an ominous quiet reigned for thirteen years. Nothing more was heard of the Mongols—but a comet blazing in the sky awoke vague fears. Suddenly an army of five hundred thousand Asiatics returned, led by Batui, nephew of the ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... sail; the bunt gasket parted; and a dark form dropped through the air. Lighting upon the top-rim, it rolled off; and the next instant, with a horrid crash of all his bones, Baldy came, like a thunderbolt, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... she replied. "Oh, if only Joan would come to her senses. It seems like a thunderbolt always hanging over us. I believe that if she were to see us together ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... and Abidan, Medad fall back on Ithamar. Scherirah must guard the capital. Honain, you are Regent. And so farewell. I shall set off to-night. Courage, brave companions. 'Tis a storm, but many a cedar survives the thunderbolt.' ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... sprang down beside him, and drew away her hand and looked back to the summit they had left. "Still, tell me this," she said with a swift breathlessness. "If it had been David Weatherbee's wife up there with you when the thunderbolt struck, would it have made a difference? I mean, would you have left her to escape—or ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... more speedily accomplished. All along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the mighty thunderbolt had been forged. Thousands of heavy guns were here planted in position, and millions of shells conveyed thither under cover of night. Countless trains carried war materials, tents, pontoons, cattle, provisions, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... was the end of all this? Just what you would have supposed. She had led a life of simple, unbounded love and trust,—a buoyant, elastic gladness,—a dream of sunshine. No gray cloud had ever lowered in her sky, no thunderbolt smitten her joys, no winter rain chilled her warmth. Only the white fleeciness of morning mist had flitted sometimes over her summer-sky, deepening the blue. Little cooling drops had fluttered down through the leafiness, only to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the calamity were little understood, portents were plentifully noted. The previous winter had been mild. A thunderbolt fell in the autumn. There was a blight on the gooseberries, and Master Salter had a calf with two heads. As to the painter, a screech-owl had been heard to cry from his chimney- top, not three weeks before ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... uncaring. Two years ago it would have made her fear. She would have trembled over it; her heart would have leapt as at a thunderbolt; she would have run to her glass and reckoned with the sallowness of her face, the little lines about her eyes, each representing little anxieties about little things; her chapped hands and her dull wits. She ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... dilettantism which could treat a long heroic poem in such a way. The Metamorphoses were finished before 7 A.D.; the Fasti were only advanced to the end of the sixth book, when all further prosecution of them was stopped by the terrible news, which struck the poet like a thunderbolt, that he was ordered to leave Rome forever. The cause of his exile has been much debated. The ostensible ground was the immorality of his writings, and especially of the Art of Love, but it has generally been taken for granted that a deeper and more personal ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... a thunderbolt upon the old warrior, already embittered by his reverses: he was heart-broken that such storm-clouds should tarnish the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... o'clock in the morning of the Fourth of July when the thunderbolt struck Fort Ryan. It was not very loud; it damaged no building; but it struck the very souls of men. A thousand thunder claps, a year's tornadoes in an hour, could not have been more staggering; and yet it was only four words of one poor, wheezing ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and sense- organs. Analogously, mantras and arthavdas, which are complementary to injunctions of works, contain unmistakeable references to the corporeal nature of the gods ('Indra holding in his hand the thunderbolt'; 'Indra lifted the thunderbolt', &c.); and as the latter is not contradicted by any other means of proof it must be accepted on the authority stated. Nor can it be said that those mantras and arthavdas are really meant ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... works of Nature are but images, then woe betide him if a sudden noise strikes sharply on his senses and calls his errant soul back to its prison-house of flesh and bones. The shock of the reunion of these two powers, body and mind,—one of which partakes of the unseen qualities of a thunderbolt, while the other shares with sentient nature that soft resistant force which deifies destruction,—this shock, this struggle, or, rather let us say, this painful meeting and co-mingling, gives rise to frightful sufferings. The body receives ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... immensity, a being too vast and undetermined to be clearly represented. We should also mention Ushas, the dawn, a goddess whom the sun-god is daily chasing; the Asvins or two heavenly charioteers, who daily make the circuit of the heavens; Tvashtri, the smith who made the thunderbolt of Indra; the Ribhus, artificers who were once men and have been admitted to the society of the gods. Yama is the god of the dead, he first traversed the road to the country beyond, and now he rules over it, and comforts ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... profound sorrow. Just at that moment I saw a man hurrying up the path which led into the village from the valley below. Almost breathless with exertion, he uttered a few words to the first he met. His communication flew like lightning among the crowd. They scattered in every direction, as if a thunderbolt had fallen among them. Masks were torn off and hastily concealed, dresses were changed, and the block and axe, and all the things connected with the representation, were carried away, while the people ran along the streets, and shut themselves ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... personified by a warrior armed with thunderbolts and lightning and setting forth to destroy the mountain. Then came the Angry Heavens, the Benignant Moon, Mars and Mercury ready to avenge the outrages done to God; Jove grasping a thunderbolt and about to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the Four Seasons threaten ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... current that leaps, jump after jump, over that foaming bed, our inclinations and our courage rose together to go down the formidable pass; and having full faith in the long-tried pilotage of our guide, Tom Shaw, down we went, rushing at times like a thunderbolt, then turned by a dab of the pole of our guide, on a rock, shooting off in eschelon, and then careering down another schute, or water bolt, till we thus dodged every rock, and came out below with a ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in the development not merely of religious beliefs, temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs. The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely connected with the matters I have ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Norfolk, Wrexhall Pogis, that had been let for years, and there was quite a pleasant little place in town, 3 Southwick Crescent—yes, she would probably prefer to go, even had he not meant to marry Mary. The announcement of that little affair would be something in the nature of a thunderbolt. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Gallery, he cannot afford to spend it all in one corridor; and as California is one great picture gallery, filled with the masterpieces of Him who paints with sunshine and dew and fire, and sculptures with chisel of hurricane and thunderbolt, we cannot afford to pass more than once ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... endeavoured to rally the men. At that moment a bold idea flashed upon Will Osten. He suddenly put spurs to his horse, galloped round to the lowest part of the barricade, leaped over it, and, drawing his sword, charged the leader of the rebels like a thunderbolt. The man faced him, and raised his sword, to defend himself, but Will's first cut was so powerful that it broke down his guard, cleft his helmet, and tumbled him ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... points to draw off lightning now filled his mind. "Could the lightning be controlled?" he began to ask. "Could the power of the thunderbolt ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... lulled into incaution by this seeming calm. Other people besides his mother had intimated to him that there were expectations current of his "settling in life." He lived not in false security, but wise trembling, never knowing what hour the thunderbolt might ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... forget those who have shed much blood, and sooner or later the dark-robed Deities of the Curse consign the evil-doer to impassable, hopeless gloom. Away with the dazzling success that attracts the thunderbolt! be mine the moderate lot that neither causes nor ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... attempt to interrupt her or defend themselves until she had finished her scolding. Then her nephew let his thunderbolt fall. ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... davits, would not clear the ship's side, but turned over on her bilge, dipping in the water, and was rendered ineffective when most wanted. This defect in the davits was afterwards remedied by the substitution of other and longer ones, which had formerly belonged to H.M. steam vessel Thunderbolt, wrecked at Algoa Bay a short ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... without compare, Which from the devil's bookcase start, Albums magnificent which scare The fashionable rhymester's heart! Yea! although rendered beauteous By Tolstoy's pencil marvellous, Though Baratynski verses penned,(45) The thunderbolt on you descend! Whene'er a brilliant courtly dame Presents her quarto amiably, Despair and anger seize on me, And a malicious epigram Trembles upon my lips from spite,— And madrigals ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... avenged the father; it bloomed, it thrived,—it waxed strong in the light of life. But still it seemed haunted and preserved by some other being than her own. In its sleep there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,—NOT FOR HER; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... forehead. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable brute—this incarnate thunderbolt—this monster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams of conquest and glory. It was with a view to summoning it forth to the field of honor that I suspended its ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... of the clear sky like a thunderbolt, not from an enemy, not from any clique or crowd he had fought, but from the government itself, during the last days of Congress came a law creating a Department of Commerce and Labour at Washington, a law giving federal inspectors the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... however Botha was thus sullenly retreating eastward, he secretly despatched a strong detachment round our left wing to the north-west of Pretoria under the leadership of Delarey, who on the 11th flung himself like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky on a weak post at Nitral's Nek, and there captured two guns with 200 prisoners. On July 16th, Botha himself once more attacked our forces, but was again driven off by Generals Pole Carew and Hutton; and the ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... the New York Warehouse Company, in connection with the failure of Francis Skiddy & Co, and another old-established mercantile house similarly situated, had not died out when the suspension of Kenyon Cox & Co., involving that, also, of the Chicago and Canada Southern Railway Company, fell like a thunderbolt on Wall street. This failure derived its importance from the fact of Daniel Drew being a general partner in the house, although originally he had gone into it as a special partner with $300,000 capital, and from its being the financial agent of this new but important ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... sound of the coming tempest? Do you not behold the clouds open, and destruction lurid and dire pour down on the blasted earth? See you not the thunderbolt fall, and are deafened by the shout of heaven that follows its descent? Feel you not the earth quake and open with agonizing groans, while the air is pregnant with shrieks and wailings,— all announcing the last days of man? No! none of these things accompanied ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... replied he. "In one life a man can die but once. Besides, in my belly is a thunderbolt; if you eat me, you will never be able to digest it; this will tear your inwards into little bits, and kill you: so we shall both perish. That is why I fear nothing." (By this, the Bodhisatta meant the weapon of knowledge which he ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... lump came like a thunderbolt, and the wind of it took the bloody smuggler's hat and sent it swooping into the darkness like ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... they will have a better opinion of our music in heaven than I have down here," he says in his notes. "If they don't, a thunderbolt will knock this vessel endways." It is perhaps worthy of mention that on the night of the 27th of July he records having seen another "splendidly colored, lunar rainbow." That he regarded this as an indication of future good-fortune is not surprising, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... stricken by a thunderbolt. She heard the triumphant laugh of her rival; she saw her led forth, all smiles and beauty and triumph, by the king to the dance, and she covered her face in agony. While she was in this state, a deep voice breathed in her ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... It was a thunderbolt in our midst Noel behaving like this. It made Oswald feel a sick inside feeling that perhaps Dora had been right. She sometimes ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... he noted the restlessness of the princes under the thunderbolt denunciations contained in his master's words. So, he selected for his concluding ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... only the albatross moving athwart the sky, no longer slow sailing as before, but with the swift-cutting flight of a falcon pouncing down upon its prey. It seemed descending not in a straight line, but in an acute parabolic curve, like a thunderbolt or some aerolite projected toward the surface of the sea. But the bird, with a whirr like the sound of running spindles, was going in a definite direction, the point evidently aimed at being the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... course open to a man of honor. I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever. He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense. You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... together. A single pair of wings was divided between the two outermost of the three beings, while snakes' heads, growing out of the human bodies, rendered the aspect of the group still more portentous. The center of the pediment was probably occupied by a figure of Zeus, hurling his thunderbolt at this strange enemy. We have therefore here a scene from one of the favorite subjects of Greek art at all periods—the gigantomachy, or battle of gods and giants. Fig. 81 gives a better idea of the nearest of the three heads. [Footnote: ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... had come like a thunderbolt. At night the stockade was broke, and the family woke from sleep to hear the war-whoop and see by the light of their blazing byres a band of painted savages. It seems that no resistance was possible, and they were ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... but weighty in character, was of course a painful shock to the hitherto unbroken unity of the church and clergy of Connecticut. But it was not quite like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. It had been immediately preceded by not a little conference and correspondence with Connecticut pastors on the one hand, and on the other hand with representatives of the powerful and wealthy Propagation Society, on ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... farther back into the shadow of the corner. He demanded that they stand forth and tear Bull limb from limb. He disinherited them for cowardice. He threatened Bull with a vengeance compared with which the thunderbolt would be a feeble flare of light. He swore that he was entirely capable of taking care of himself, that he would step down into his grave sooner than be nursed and petted by any ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... stood stark still. Some of them, in the vehemence of their song, had risen and formed a little compact group. And again they sang the verse, the words THAT'S YOU pouring out of the throat of Pee-wee Harris like a thunderbolt. Hervey blinked. His eyes glistened. Through their haze he could see the lanky figure of the tall fellow, Brent Gaylong, sitting upon the fence, his feet propped up on the lower rail, a pair of shell spectacles ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... in light, has been the great marvel of all times. The word electricity itself comes from the thunderbolt of the ancient God Zeus, which is known to be synonymous with ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... thunderbolt fallen at her feet, or the earth yawned beneath her, not more pale or transfixed would Caroline have stood than she did as those unexpected words fell clear and shrill as a trumpet-blast upon her tortured ear. Amid all her conjectures as to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... while it is careering through space, or even a screw get loose and cause a momentary stoppage of the motor, it is abundantly evident that escape from total and swift destruction would be "miraculous" indeed, for the whole affair would come to the ground like a thunderbolt, and "leave not a ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... my gallant troopers and I launched ourselves at the enemy, upon whom we fell like a thunderbolt. The two Cossacks had, however, raised the alarm. The gunners, sleeping beside their guns, grabbed their slow matches, and fourteen canons belched grapeshot at the regiment. Thirty-seven men, of whom nineteen belonged to the lite company, were killed outright. The brave Captain Courteau was ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, I happened ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... yell, rather than a human expression of terror, the Landgrave fell, as if shot by a thunderbolt, stretched at his full length upon the ground, lifeless apparently, and bereft of consciousness or sensation. A sympathetic cry of horror arose from the spectators. All rushed towards The Masque. The young cavaliers, who had first ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... be the tallest mountain on the globe, but its supremacy has been supplanted by Mount Everest in Asia, and Aconcagua in Chile.[72] In mountain gloom and glory, however, it still stands unrivaled. The Alps have the avalanche, "the thunderbolt of snow," and the glaciers, those icy Niagaras so beautiful and grand. Here they are wanting.[73] The monarch of the Andes sits motionless in calm serenity and unbroken silence. The silence is absolute and actually oppressive. The road from ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... was absolutely amazing by its comprehension of details, the solution of vexed questions, the mastery of formidable difficulties, wonder was it his word sometimes cut like a sharp, quick blow, or that the stroke of his pen was sometimes like a thunderbolt. It was not the time for hesitation, or doubt, or even argument. He meant his imperiled country should be saved, and whatever by half-loyalty or self-seeking seemed to stand in the way only attracted the lightning of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... fulfilled shall be, For, in daylight or in dark, My thunderbolt has eyes to see His way home to ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, with being guilty of overstepping the frontier, and on November 9 informed them where this frontier was. It is a pity that Mr. Lloyd George should have launched such a thunderbolt, the French Government not being consulted.[99] But the most probable explanation of this lack of courtesy towards the Serbs, and lack of the most elementary justice, is that the Prime Minister, with his numerous preoccupations, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... I propose. Let the "Belle-Amelie" sail without you; come back here like a thunderbolt; I'll arrange a duel for you with Vandenesse in which you shall have the first shot, and you can wing him like a pigeon. In France the husband who shoots his rival becomes at once respectable and respected. No one ever cavils at him again. Fear, my dear fellow, is a valuable ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... adversaries), thou goest from battle to battle, and destroyest by thy might city after city: with thy foe-prostrating associate, (the thunderbolt,) thou, Indra, didst slay afar off the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... a thunderbolt fell the counter-attack. Stalwart Punjaubi Mohammedans, led by Dermot, swept down upon them, and with bomb and bayonet drove them out. The survivors turned and staggered up the hills again, withering away under the steady fire of the sepoys, who adjusted their ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... head from which the hat had dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt from each, and Red Reckless had done what any man must do before such a thunderbolt. He was flung backward, went down, and the two big bodies struck hard upon the bare floor. And above the crash of the falling bodies there were two other sounds, Big Bill's grunt, and the laughter of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... What a thunderbolt! All at once Bernhard's flushed countenance became livid, his eyes glared savagely, and there suddenly spread a choking, suffocating expression on his large handsome face. The noise and clamour of hoarse angry voices became almost stupefying, but in the end the Teutons were compelled to accept ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... forth in the third volume of Lenglet's "History of the Hermetic Philosophy." The alchymists asserted, that Heaven itself conspired to bring to light these extraordinary works; and that the pillar in which they were enclosed was miraculously shattered by a thunderbolt; and that, as soon as the manuscripts were liberated, the pillar closed up again of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... a terrible moment. She looked ghastly and terrible, with her mask-like face and her stony eyes and her bluish lips. Some fearful thunderbolt seemed to fall. James withered, and was still. There was silence for ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... had known of the disappearance of the will, except the lawyer and the secretary, it came as a thunderbolt. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... this class especially that anarchy was forging its thunderbolt. The freedom of the press and freedom of speech gave the socialist and anarchist the opportunity to promulgate their seditious doctrines, and they looked to the ignorant and depraved portions of the community ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... was as a thunderbolt falling in the midst of them, and the poor woman perceived this instinctively. Her son's impatience had been the spark which set the smouldering fire in her alight, but even he was astounded by ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... thought of what that amazing revelation must have been to the homely, rustic soul, her companion, communicated as they went along the common road in the common daylight. "She said to the witness that she must go to France to the Dauphin, to make him to be crowned King." It must have been as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known in every development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him her secret purpose and determination. All her simple excellence the good man knew, and that she was no fantastic chatterer, but truly une bonne douce ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... hamlet, village, and town—swept like a thrill of electric fire throughout the land. News was news in those days! You didn't get it at all till you got it altogether, and then you got it like a thunderbolt. There was no dribbling of advance telegrams; no daily papers to spread the news (or lies), and contradict 'em next day, in the same columns with commentaries or prophetic remarks on what might or should have been, but wasn't, until news got muddled up into a hopeless entanglement, so that ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... it was sweet to burn and melt. I gave myself up to all my passing sensations, and cheated myself, turning away from memories, and shutting my eyes to what I foreboded before me.... This weakness would not most likely have lasted long in any case ... a thunderbolt cut it all short in a moment, and flung me into ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... mercy, notwithstanding one crime. And when the helm was in his hands, and a fair future before him, fell, not ignominiously indeed, yet uselessly, a noble life thrown away, leaving once more chaos behind him. He was only twenty-nine when the thunderbolt thus falling from a clear sky destroyed all the hopes of Scotland; yet had reigned long, for twenty-three years of trouble, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... servant will murmur against Thee and curse Thy name." And God gave up the just man He loved so, to the devil. And the devil smote his children and his cattle and scattered his wealth, all of a sudden like a thunderbolt from heaven. And Job rent his mantle and fell down upon the ground and cried aloud, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return into the earth; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... convulsions of nature, which are chiefly brought about by the two great agencies of fire and water. The former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who drove his father's horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places, ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... seized with a mortal malady and died almost in Hawthorne's arms, before the latter could notify his family in Boston that he was ill. What a severe ordeal for a man who was strong and well, but to a person in Hawthorne's condition it was like a thunderbolt. Ticknor's son came to him at once, and together they performed the necessary duties of the occasion, and made their melancholy way homeward. Nothing, perhaps, except a death in his own family, could have had so unfavorable ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... their allies of their movements. Of course, the Jesuits feared nothing from the king of Spain. But when his measures were completed, an edict was suddenly declared, decreeing the suppression of the order in the land of Inquisitions. The decree came like a thunderbolt, but was instantly executed. "On the same day, 2d April, 1767, and at the same hour, in Spain, in Africa, in Asia, in America, and in all the islands belonging to the Spanish monarchy, the alcaldes of the towns opened their despatches from Madrid, by which they ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... fashion of English sportsmen, and his dog—a fine gray bloodhound—is stretched on the hearthrug near him. He looks a reckless, desperate character, and has an adventurous history.[D] In battle he is said to be a thunderbolt,—lightning harnessed and inspired with the will of a devil. He is just the character to lead the dark, desperate expedition on which they are entered. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the Societies) of this politico-religious agitation was more or less the same in other parts of the Connexion. The publication of the "impressions" was (to those who had for years been in a state of chronic war with the powers that be) like the falling of the thunderbolt of Jove out of a cloudless sky. It unexpectedly precipitated a crisis in provincial affairs. It brought men face to face with a new issue. An issue too which they had not thought of; or, if it had presented itself to their minds, was regarded ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... passed away. It is the portion of my life which I look back upon with the most pleasure. I did my utmost to atone for a wasted youth, and in some measure I succeeded. My fears had grown fainter and fainter, and when the blow came it was like a thunderbolt falling from a clear sky. One morning I received a letter in Irene's writing, a little fainter and less firm than of old, but still familiar to me. It contained only a few lines. She had told her son all, and he elected to ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hand—my own and that of the officer who had surrendered to me, and, as the reader may imagine, in no bad humour with myself or with the brave fellows about me, when a brother officer stepping forward abruptly told the tale. It came me upon me like a thunderbolt; and casting aside my trophy, thought only of the loss which I had sustained. Regardless of every other matter I ran to the rear, and found Grey lying behind the dung-heap, motionless and cold. A little pool of blood which had coagulated under his head, pointed out the spot where the ball had entered, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Augustus entered the hippodrome and went as far as the senators' seats, but at that point they stopped and refused to proceed farther. And the event which one might most readily conjecture to have taken place through divine means was that a thunderbolt descended upon his dinner and consumed it all as it was being brought to him, like some tremendous harpy ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... Cromwell's nose wears the dominical letter, compared to Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day. This, this is the man of God, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the archangel giving ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... that governest everything, that gods and men attempt, And with thy fearful thunderbolt their doings dost prevent, What hath thy daughter so deserved? what doth she, silly dame, Before ye thus to be abused with undeserved blame? Surely, but that my[68] duty commands me now to speak, For such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... not marry for two years? My granddaughter would then be twenty-five and you thirty, and many wise philosophers think that such are the relative ages at which man and woman should marry. Then the Iron King cast a thunderbolt. He said: ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... meant to try a final expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a brief ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the fish, shining in the sun like a bar of silver. King Eagle's wings half closed and he shot down like a thunderbolt. Just before the fish reached the water King Eagle struck it with his great claws, checked himself by spreading his broad wings and tail, and then in triumph flew over to the very tree towards which Plunger had started when he had caught the fish. There he leisurely made his breakfast, ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... If a thunderbolt had ruined Hanley before her eyes at that moment, it would not have appeared to her of such importance as this theft of her evening's pleasure. It was with difficulty that she saved herself from saying straight out that she was going to the ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... A thunderbolt falling upon the castle of Blois would not have astonished Madame de Saint-Remy more than the last sentence ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... oath. A figure dressed in black, with a mask! That was circumstantial enough, the Monk had been busy—launching a thunderbolt of wrath, presumably! Simon's lip curled; Ocky's familiar of the Spanish Inquisition was a pretty scurvy knave if he would stoop to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... "rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the whole school." Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated? Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed been at much pains to create it at all? It came. It was her [Greek]. She did not probably know that she had done what the greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an hour before he could even ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... in Peggy's mind. The Golden Butterfly was hardly an airship any longer. It was a thunderbolt—a flying arrow. Before Peggy's eyes there was nothing now but the tall red and white "pylon" that marked the winning post. Could she make it ahead of her rival? Close behind her she could hear the roar of the other motor, but she ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... Candida). He was to have spoken for them tonight. They've taken the large hall in Mare Street and spent a lot of money on posters. Morell's telegram was to say he couldn't come. It came on them like a thunderbolt. ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... iron-work. Up and down the gallery there are models of classic temples; and about midway in its extent stands a brass statue of Earl Pembroke, who was Chancellor of the University in James I's time; not in scholarly garb, however, but in plate and mail, looking indeed like a thunderbolt of war. I rapped him with my knuckles, and he seemed to be solid metal, though, I should imagine, hollow at heart. A thing which interested me very much was the lantern of Guy Fawkes. It was once tinned, no doubt, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... when the great thunderbolt fell that destroyed Lone and banished the ducal family, there were not wanting "guid neebors" who taunted Rose Cameron with ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... which Zoheir ruled over, was at war with that of Tex, on account of the carrying off of Anima, daughter of the chief of the Tex, a man known as "The Drinker of Blood." Animated by the desire to take vengeance and recover his daughter, this chief and his army fell upon the Absians like a thunderbolt. The Absians were defeated, and their women, among whom was Ibla, taken prisoners. All pride was then, in this time of need, laid aside, and to their assistance Antar was summoned. But before acting Antar laid down his conditions, and stipulated ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... with burning torches and was hurled into Tartarus by a thunderbolt from Jupiter.—Hyginus, "Fab." "Vidi et crudelis dantem Salmonea poenas Dum flammas louis et sonitus imitatur Olympi." VIRG., Aen., vi, 585. And see the Excursus of Heyne ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... on the top of the Alpes: not aboue the cloudes, windes and stormes: but rather at the deuotion of lightnings, and tempests, and whatsoeuer else horrible, and dangerous is engendred, and conceiued in the aire: which most commonly taketh pleasure to thunderbolt and dash into pouder that proude height of theirs. It may be herein you will agree with me, by reason of the examples wherewith both histories, and mens memories are full. But say you, such at least whome nature hath sent into the ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... waiting a signal for the invasion of France, Napoleon, who was supposed to be at Paris entirely engrossed with diplomatic ceremonies, at the head of his guard, which had been but recently reformed in the capital, fell like a thunderbolt upon Charleroi and Bluecher's quarters, his columns arriving from all points of the compass, with rare punctuality, on the 14th of June, in the plains of Beaumont and upon the banks of the Sambre. (Napoleon did not leave Paris until ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... to sleep and enchanted by the magicians. And Tibullus says that he has seen the enchantress bring down the stars from heaven, and turn aside the thunderbolt ready to fall upon the earth—and that she has opened the ground and made the dead ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship's side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; I saw a great flash of ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man appeared, inside the circle of the dome. He had an angry, brutal face, and he wore a black tunic piped with silver, and black breeches, and polished black boots, and there was an insignia, composed of a cross and thunderbolt, on his cap. He held an automatic pistol in ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... the cowman were seen gleaming under his hat-rim as he looked steadily at the couple, against whom his horse would dash himself the next minute, like a thunderbolt, unless checked. ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... within by himself, as the jaws are stirred by the tongue? You shake the sky, as if on the search for food; you are invoked by many, like the solar horse of the day. Where, O Maruts, is the top, where the bottom of the mighty sky where you came? When you throw down with the thunderbolt what is strong, like brittle things, you fly across the terrible sea! As your conquest is violent, splendid, terrible, full and crushing, so, O Maruts, is your gift delightful, like the largess of a liberal worshipper, wide-spreading, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... an esquire wearing the arms of Rohan, fell upon the assailants like a thunderbolt, and killed two of them, crying, "God save the Bastarnays!" The third man-at-arms, who had already seized old Bastarnay, was so hard pressed by this squire, that he was obliged to leave the elder ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... disclosed, the grand old work, which seems hackneyed to so many, would acquire amazing freshness, eloquence, and power. Then should we be privileged to note that there is ample variety in the voice of the old master, of whom a greater than he said that when he wished, he could strike like a thunderbolt. Then should we hear the tones of amazed ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... that Galilean?" Like a thunderbolt the question struck Peter. He stiffened with terror and cursed himself for having dared to come near the fire. "Of course not!" he answered gruffly, and backed away. The man who had seen him strike Malchus with his sword had not heard the question. Peter sighed. His luck could ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... Dwivida and Mainda named, For beauty like their sires were famed, Varun(121) was father of Sushen, Of Sarabh, he who sends the rain,(122) Hanuman, best of monkey kind, Was son of him who breathes the wind: Like thunderbolt in frame was he, And swift as Garud's(123) self could flee. These thousands did the Gods create Endowed with might that none could mate, In monkey forms that changed at will; So strong their wish the fiend to kill. In mountain size, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... his arm in Morton's, and hurried him on several paces in spite of his struggles; but just as the words Vive la joie left his lips, he stood still and mute, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet; and Morton felt that heavy arm shiver and tremble like a leaf. He looked up, and just at the entrance of that part of the Palais Royal in which are situated the restaurants of Verey and Vefour, he saw two men standing but a few paces before them, and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fell like a thunderbolt upon the men. With a start they brought themselves up, and stared—only to see a little white-robed figure, with its astonished eyes uplifted with childlike, earnest gaze, as she ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Anselmus spoke largely of his often-acknowledged perfection in this art, of his fine Chinese ink, and most select crow-quills. But Archivarius Lindhorst handed him the English sheet, and said: "Be judge yourself!" Anselmus felt as if struck by a thunderbolt, to see his handwriting look so: it was miserable, beyond measure. There was no rounding in the turns, no hair-stroke where it should be; no proportion between the capital and single letters; nay, villainous school-boy pot-hooks often spoiled the best lines. "And then," continued Archivarius ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... cowering on his throne in the sky and twiddling his thunderbolt with trembling hand as he wondered what the fates held in store for him, and saw on earth the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... before the Sahib's arrival, an incident occurred which proves alike the utter fearlessness and the marvellous knowledge of the game of the Somali. Suddenly out of the shadows of the thicket sprang one of the lions and launched himself like a thunderbolt upon one of the pony men, bearing horse and rider to the ground. Losing his spear in the fall and held fast by one leg beneath his horse, the rider was defenceless. However, he seized a thorny stick and began beating the lion across the face, while the lion tore at the pony's flank ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Death, not safety, behind!'—and he spurs to the centre once more, Lion-like leaps on the standard and Harold: but Gyrth is before! 'Down! He is down!' is the shout: 'On with the axes! Out, Out!' —He rises again; the mace circles its stroke; Then falls as the thunderbolt falls ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... idea of a God infinite in power, as in wisdom and goodness? Are we to think that the Almighty has just for once set a universe in motion, and forever withdrawn Himself from all meddling with its affairs? He permits us to control the electric power: but is never permitted to direct a thunderbolt upon the guilty, or to turn one aside from any path it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bishop Wernher's disposal the income of the abbey of Saint-Stephen of which he was the patron. With these funds, which the bishop increased by means of a new levy of taxes and by indulgences, he was preparing to restore his Cathedral, when in 1007 a thunderbolt achieved its destruction. ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... book might make Mr. Jacks memorable as a satirist. It brings philosophy down from the air, like a peaceful thunderbolt, to shatter the vain illusions we entertain of our material success and our civilised strides forward. The fact that when you have begun to read the book you may experience some difficulty in knowing how to take it is in the book's ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... rumour. Affonso Henriques heard of it without perturbation. His conscience at ease in the absolution which he had wrung from Mother Church after his own fashion, he was entirely absorbed in preparations for a campaign against the Moors which was to widen his dominions. Therefore when at length the thunderbolt descended, it fell—so far as he was concerned—from a sky ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini |
