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More "Astonish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Helen told me that he had decided to study law with Judge Ryder, and that he had asked her how long I expected to stay in Rosville. Nothing eccentric had been discovered in his behavior; but she was convinced that he would astonish us before long. The first Wednesday after our party, I was absent from the elocutionary exercise; but the second came round, and I took my place ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year! How mighty, how majestic, are thy works! With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul That sees astonish'd, and ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... more; and that mankind may be declared unworthy of the enjoyment of those renowned souls, they fright and astonish us with prodigies, monsters, and other foreboding signs that thwart the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the immeasurable in minuteness is an inevitable mental sequence from the facts and phenomena revealed to us by a study of the minute in nature. The practical divisibility of matter disclosed by modern physics may well arrest and astonish us. But biology, the science which investigates the phenomena of all living things, is in this matter no whit behind. The most universally diffused organism in nature, the least in size with which we are definitely acquainted, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... matter of fact," said Rodolphe, "we should not be doing wrong, the thermometer has been inviting us to it for some time past. Let us have some fire and astonish the fireplace." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the sort that will be suggested can be pursued in spare moments, on street cars or elevated trains, in waiting rooms, or in one's room at night. It will astonish many to find how much can be accomplished by consistently utilizing spare moments. Booker T. Washington is said to have written in such spare time practically all ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... am amused by their behaviour; and I continually wish I could see Ned's face on witnessing many equine proceedings here. To see a farmer outspan and turn the team of active little beasts loose on the boundless veld to amuse themselves for an hour or two, sure that they will all be there, would astonish him a little; and then to offer a horse nothing but a roll in the dust to ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... for example, in his grief over Duroc, the favorite general, who fell at Bautzen. But an insatiable appetite for war, and, still more, a conviction, which he sometimes confessed, that he could retain and fortify his authority only by dazzling France, and continuing to astonish mankind by brilliant achievements, drove him forward on a path of aggression and bloodshed. He had an unpitying nature: he was careless of human suffering. Early in his career, in Italy, he ordered a needless and useless ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... astonish her companions she had certainly succeeded. They were wild with curiosity, and fired off questions ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... us that we are meant for a higher and happier life than this, in the fact that sorrow and sin always come upon us as a surprise. Happy days do not astonish us, and the goodness of our beloved ones awakens no amazement. But if a sorrow comes we cry aloud to let our neighbors know something untoward has befallen us; and if one we love has sinned, we feel as if ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... to estimate a man's wealth by the size of his safe. The difference in point of view is well illustrated by the old story of the city chap who was showing his farmer uncle the sights of New York. When he took him to Central Park he tried to astonish him by saying "This land is worth $500,000 an acre." The old farmer dug his toe into the ground, kicked out a clod, broke it open, looked at it, spit on it and squeezed it in his hand and then said, "Don't you believe it; 'tain't worth ten dollars an acre. Mighty poor ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... nearly seven hundred), for whom no places can be found, clearly indicates. Judging from what I learn from the refugees themselves, and from the increasing numbers, now from twenty-five to fifty arriving every day, we predict that the movement to Kansas will soon assume such proportions as to astonish the country, and unless the tide can be turned, or the charity of the North be more readily bestowed, the suffering which the relief committee, although laboring faithfully with the means at their command, has not been entirely sufficient to relieve during ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... lower branches of the Mississippi? Sir, I dislike to pursue this subject. I have utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of national blasts and mildews and pestilence and famine, than hear gentlemen talk about secession. To break up this great government! To dismember this glorious country! To astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; such talk is enough to make the bones of Andrew Jackson turn ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... written, by the persons to whom they are ascribed, and not either some of the many spurious productions, with which it is notorious and acknowledged, the age in which they appeared abounded, calculated to astonish the credulous and superstitious! or else writings of authors who were themselves infected with the grossest superstitious ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English
... years to perfect it, and when they further consider how much better anything can be done which is exclusively followed with the facilities that large manufactories afford, then they may see not only what we do, but how we make better medicines than have been produced before. Their effects need astonish no one, when their history is considered with the fact that each preparation has been elaborated to cure one class of diseases, or, more properly, one disease in its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... degree of strength. The farmers hold it strongly with regard to the city people, the artisans with regard to merchants, bankers, brokers, and manufacturers, and among the latter nearly every man is inclined to it with regard to persons of more means than himself. Moreover, it would probably astonish us if we knew how large was the number of those who fancy that their more well-to-do neighbors, if they do not belong to the category of millionaires, are living beyond their means. Every man whose own means are small, or even moderate, finds himself rather hard put to it to make both ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... if he was as good in the kitchen as by the brookside; but to give me his famous receipt for cooking pickerel. I should like to astonish the family with it. I remember that it has thyme in it, and sweet marjoram and summer savory, not to mention oysters and anchovies, a pound of butter, a bottle of claret and three or four oranges; he gives you your choice about two cloves of garlic, and says you need not have them unless you ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... he put the sheet back; "I think that such a theme, adequately treated, will considerably astonish my learned friends in general, and my esteemed ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... ashore.' He said, but soon corrected his mistake, Found, by the doubtful answers which we make: Amaz'd, he would have shunn'd th' unequal fight; But we, more num'rous, intercept his flight. As when some peasant, in a bushy brake, Has with unwary footing press'd a snake; He starts aside, astonish'd, when he spies His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes; So from our arms surpris'd Androgeos flies. In vain; for him and his we compass'd round, Possess'd with fear, unknowing of the ground, And of their lives an easy conquest ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... experience, is no longer hard and flinty, but plastic and yielding, and takes whatever impress his mind gives it. Facts float through his head like half-pressed grapes in the wine-press, steeped and saturated with meaning, and his expression becomes so round and complete as to astonish ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... window, compelling his nerves to perfect calm and his mood to indifference. The situation had ceased to astonish him; already his keen mind had seen its possibilities, its grimness and its humour, and he was quite prepared to enjoy ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... to me in the evening, did not astonish me in the least; for I have already remarked that when he was compelled to yield to the necessity of sleep, that imperious want of nature, the Emperor took the repose which was so necessary to him when and where he could, like a ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to us, and who deemed it their proudest distinction that they called each other philosophers. The Schoolmen often bewildered themselves in their subtleties, and often delivered dogmas and systems that may astonish the common sense of unsophisticated understandings. But such is man. So great is his persevering labour, his invincible industry, and the resolution with which he sets himself, year after year, and lustre after lustre, to accomplish the task which his judgment and his zeal ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... laughing; "when the master kills the game he must first carry it home. Let us take him and set him up against the bower door there, to astonish the brave knights inside." And stooping down, he attempted to lift the huge carcass; but in vain. At last, with Martin's help, he got it fairly on his shoulders, and the two dragged their burden to the bower ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Italy, except the fragments of antiquity which he loved for their associations, were the paintings of Raphael and Guido Reni. Nor do we find in him any of those new metrical effects, those sublime inventions in prosody, with which the great masters astonish us. Blank verse is a test of poets in this respect, and Shelley's blank verse is limp and characterless. Those triumphs, again, which consist in the beauty of complicated wholes, were never his. He is supreme, indeed, in simple outbursts where there is no question of form, but in efforts ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... I found the honest fellow happy as the day was long; but telling fearfully long and wonderful yarns of his adventures, to the whole country round. My old mate was substantially a man of truth; but he did love to astonish "know-nothings." He appears to have succeeded surprisingly well, for the Dutchmen of that neighbourhood still recount anecdotes, of the achievements and sufferings of Captain Marvel, as they usually call him, though ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... difficult to satisfy all the requirements of rich people, on account of the sparseness of the population; banks, shops, hotels, every sort of artisan, and all sorts of social diversions, do not exist there. In the second place, one of the chief pleasures procured by wealth—vanity, the desire to astonish and outshine other people—is difficult to satisfy in the country; and this, again, on account of the lack of inhabitants. In the country, there is no one to appreciate elegance, no one to be astonished. Whatever adornments in the way of pictures and bronzes the ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... them, ready-money having fled? Wherefore, on the 19th day of December, a paper-money of 'Assignats,' of Bonds secured, or assigned, on that Clerico-National Property, and unquestionable at least in payment of that,—is decreed: the first of a long series of like financial performances, which shall astonish mankind. So that now, while old rags last, there shall be no lack of circulating medium; whether of commodities to circulate thereon is another question. But, after all, does not this Assignat business speak volumes for modern science? Bankruptcy, we may say, was come, as the end ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... dare-devil and athlete, knowing his value. He shrugged his shoulders, put his arms akimbo, talked and laughed louder than any of the rest, and looked as though he were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing so. His mischievous mocking eyes glided over the road, the waggons, and the sky without resting on anything, and seemed looking for someone to kill, just as a pastime, and something ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... vere so astonish, To see him lam de man, Dat dey shvore a holy miracle Vas vork by Breitemann. Says Breitmann, "I'm a heretic, But dis you may pe bound, No chap shall mock relishious dings Vhile I'm ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... "You astonish me!" exclaimed the Judge. "A very remarkable old person! I should delight to converse with him,—to know what his thoughts are in these new times, and what his memories are of the past, which, I suppose, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... touched at a port. But of his internal self they were in total ignorance. This did not, however, prevent them from prophesying that Davies was a "deep one," who, now that he had got the cash, would "blue it" in a way which would astonish them. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... to let you peep simply in order to astonish you. I abominate what are called popular lectures for that very reason. If you can be made to understand the apparent revolution of the heavens, that is better than all speculation. To understand is the great thing, not to gape. Now I assume you know ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... reminds me. There is one little gift that you must have from my own hand. A work of imagination—a work of art. Nobody in the world would care about it but you. A poem, in fact. I have written one or two others, but I tore them up. I sent them to newspapers, hoping to astonish you with them; but when they were rejected I destroyed them. This poem I did not send. Nobody has seen it but myself. Now I give it to you, and I want you to read it aloud to me, that I may hear ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... good place to see everything there is to be seen," suggested Louis, as he looked about him. "The king is taking us to his palace in high style. If he meant to astonish us, he has hit the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the hands of the public when it was noised abroad that Sunderland had been dismissed from all his places. The news of his disgrace seems to have taken the politicians of the coffeehouses by surprise, but did not astonish those who had observed what was passing in the palace. Treason had not been brought home to him by legal, or even by tangible, evidence but there was a strong suspicion among those who watched him closely that, through some channel or other, he was in communication with the enemies of that government ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said, grimacing a half-smile, or what he intended for a smile, though it was but a grim and hurried manifestation. "You nurslings of Protestantism astonish me. You unguarded Englishwomen walk calmly amidst red-hot ploughshares and escape burning. I believe, if some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar's hottest furnace you would issue forth untraversed by the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... said with a chuckle, "you never fail to astonish me. And how do you propose to stick your not-inconsiderable nose into the business now ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... in this artificial court, where no one is what they seem to be; where everyone considers it his duty to say complimentary things; where everyone seems to be gay and happy, but everyone is as much slaves as if they wore chains. I break out sometimes, and astonish them." ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker amicably associated in the composition of a joint poem or pageant within the space of a year from the publication of so violent a retort by the latter to so vehement an attack by the former must amuse if it does not astonish the reader least capable of surprise at the boyish readiness to quarrel and the boyish readiness to shake hands which would seem to be implied in so startling a change of relations. In all the huge, costly, wearisome, barbaric, and pedantic ceremonial which welcomed ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... he got back an answer that appeared to astonish him a good deal, for he sat knitting his brows ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... replied that such articles might be found in every African village, both on the coast and in the interior, and that they were samples of their own ingenuity, without any connexion with Europeans. 'Then,' said the emperor, 'you astonish me—you have given me a new idea of the state of these poor people. I was not aware that they were so advanced in society. The works you have shown me are not the works of brutes—but of men, endued with rational and intellectual powers, ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... Barleycorn! What dangers thou canst mak us scorn! Wi' tippenny, we fear nae evil; Wi' usquebae, we'll face the devil!— The swats sae ream'd in Tammie's noddle, Fair play, he cared na deils a boddle. But Maggie stood right sair astonish'd, Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd, She ventured forward on the light; And, wow! Tam saw an unco sight! Warlocks and witches in a dance; Nae cotillon brent-new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle i' their heels: At winnock-bunker, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... [You amaze me, ladies] To amaze, here, is not to astonish or strike with wonder, but to perplex; to confuse; as, to put ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Mr. Bonflon's revelations of the morning. What a discovery! How the announcement would astonish the world! How the practical fact would overturn the world, upset commerce, and transform the habits and relations of mankind! America, the pioneer in many valuable discoveries and reforms, was still ahead,—still destined to lead the van ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... to have a string of the girls that walk in squads up and down the Fifth Avenue, with short dresses and hair streaming loose down their backs, in a district school-house, with no books but Webster's Spelling-book and the Columbian Reader. Wouldn't I astonish them with science? I guess they would understand the meaning of a spelling-class by the time ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... the depths of the earth. It is in this sense that the earth, in that it was hidden under the waters, was still invisible. However, as light did not yet exist, and as the earth lay in darkness because of the obscurity of the air above it, it should not astonish us that for this reason ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... that what I know about this speech I learned chiefly from the newspapers. His lordship spoke of his family affairs, and spoke of them in a way that might very well astonish the company. ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... as it ought to be. Much evil has been done in India under the British authority. What has been done to redress it? We are no longer surprised at anything. We are above the unlearned and vulgar passion of admiration. But it will astonish posterity, when they read our opinions in our actions, that, after years of inquiry, we have found out that the sole grievance of India consisted in this, that the servants of the Company there had not profited enough ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... less potent than his love, he remained fixed in his resolution; and Killegrew, yielding at length to his importunities, went and offered his cousin, bound hand and foot, to the victorious fair. As he dreaded nothing more than a compliance on her part, so nothing could astonish him more than the contempt with which she received his proposal. The scorn with which she refused him, made him believe that she was sure of Lord Taaffe, and wonder how a girl like her could find out two men who would ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... throng'd, and bold Polydamas, The bravest and the best, who long'd the most To storm the wall, and burn with fire the ships. Yet on the margin of the ditch they paus'd; For, as they sought to cross, a sign from Heav'n Appear'd, to leftward of th' astonish'd crowd; A soaring eagle in his talons bore A dragon, huge of size, of blood-red hue, Alive, and breathing still, nor yet subdued; For twisting backward through the breast he pierc'd His bearer, near the neck; he, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... prey to her already susceptible nature. Sir Thomas," continued her ladyship, with more vehemence in her manner, "you do not seem to weigh matters as I do, or you would certainly see the error you have committed—the great wrong you have done to your child. Were I to disclose the facts, they would astonish you, but if in the future, when too late you make such a discovery, you will have only yourself to blame. That Lady Rosamond has formed an attachment I am certain; of its value I am not prepared to say; but, in honor to Gerald Bereford, ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... minute und he'll astonish you some more," Mr. Schultze put in confidently. "Vere else in der United States haf diamonds been ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... infinitely more moment and less complexity,—truths which are often found to be in accordance with the spiritual instinct called intuition, which children possess more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of our children would often astonish us, if we would only forbear the attempt to make them knowing, and submissively accept instruction from them. Through all the imperfection of their inherited infirmity, we shall ever and anon be conscious of the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelligence, worth more than the smartness ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Guzzy started for the State capital, and Helen Wyett, as people still called her, accompanied him, the people of Bowerton put on countenances of hopeless resignation, and of a mute expectation which nothing could astonish. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... John is coming up the drive; it is he— look!' 'John!' said Mrs. Norton, seeking for her glasses nervously; 'yes, so it is; let's run and meet him. But no; let's take him rather coolly. I believe half his eccentricity is only put on because he wishes to astonish us. We won't ask him any questions—we'll just wait and let him ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... These nests hung in long strings from the tops of the palm-trees, and the birds were very actively employed moving about and chattering round their swinging villages: on seeing which Martin could not help remarking that it would astonish the colony not a little, if the top house were to give way and let all the mansions below come ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivity where they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice where they were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled roots high in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover, and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is one wide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over the valley. The sight even ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... parleyed; on the 14th the place was surrendered. "I am very pleased to send you word that we have recovered Corbie," wrote Voiture to one of his friends, very hostile to the cardinal [OEuvres de Voiture, p. 175]: "the news will astonish you, no doubt, as well as all Europe; nevertheless, we are masters of it. Reflect, I beg you, what has been the end of this expedition which has made so much noise. Spain and Germany had made for the purpose their supremest efforts. The emperor had sent his best captains ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... which are made of the coarser metals, and in all those goods which are commonly known by the name of Birmingham and Sheffield ware, there has been, during the same period, a very great reduction of price, though not altogether so great as in watch-work. It has, however, been sufficient to astonish the workmen of every other part of Europe, who in many cases acknowledge that they can produce no work of equal goodness for double or even for triple the price. There are perhaps no manufactures, in which the division of labour ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of it, so have I read of old Rome; but the sight of Rome, Caesar and the senate would not astonish me more than that of London, the Queen and the Parliament. Both are yet ideal; the imagination has sketched them, but when were its sketches ever true to nature? I have a veneration for both, but, gentle reader, excuse the confessions of an old man, for I have a soft spot ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Assistant-master submajstro. Associate kunulo. Association societo. Assort dece kunmeti. Assuage dolcxigi. Assume supozi. Assurance, self memfido. Assure certigi. Assure (life etc.) asekuri. Asterisk steleto. Asthma malfacila spirado. Astonish mirigi. Astonished, to be miri. Astonishing mira. Astonishment miro. Astound miregi. Astral astra. Astray, to go erarigxi. Astringent kuntira. Astrologer astrologiisto. Astrology astrologio. Astronomer astronomiisto. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... one hears of their dishonesty. Again, and most commonly, they fail, and they are ruined. Guardians thus misappropriate the funds of their wards. Even the funds of churches are thus used by their trustees. The amount of speculation engaged in by clergymen with their own money would astonish a novice. Some prominent divines in the city are well known in Wall street. Their brokers keep their secrets, but the habitues of the street are adepts at putting this and that together, and these reverend ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... tears—grace came out where the. whip smote thee, where the thorns pricked thee, where the nails and spear pierced thee! O blessed Son of God! Here is grace indeed!' Unsearchable riches of grace! Grace to make angels wonder, grace to make sinners happy, grace to astonish devils! And what will become of them that trample under foot this Son ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... aller, a completely gay spirit, in this Christmas-Eve gypsy party in Moscow which was much more "whirling away." For at Dorot the gypsies had been on exhibition; here at Petrovka they were frolicking en famille with a favored guest,—a Romany rye from a far land to astonish and delight,—and he took good care to let them feel that they were achieving a splendid success, for I declared many times that it was butsi shukar, or very beautiful. Then I called for tea and lemon, and after that ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... mean to send in a paper to the Royal Society upon the "Homologies of the Mollusca," which shall astonish them. I want to get done for the Mollusca what Savigny did for the Articulata, namely to show how they all—Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Pteropoda, Heteropoda, etc.—are organised in each. What with this and the book, I shall have enough to do ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... it offended his family pride. No, on reflection he might be unjust to Oro in this particular, since he never told that story; it was only shown in some pictures which very likely were just made up to astonish us. Meanwhile, it was his business to preach to this old sinner down in that hole, and he confessed honestly that he did not like the job. Still, it must be done, so with our leave he would go apart and seek inspiration, which at present seemed ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the Vatican were several centuries in building, and the immense magnitude and extent of the edifice, and the exhaustless wealth of the treasures of art deposited there, astonish every beholder. The buildings are so extensive that they require eight grand staircases and two hundred smaller ones to gain access to the different stories. There are twenty open courts and over four thousand ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... hoping to see other bergs, or, indeed, any ships that should tell me how far we had gone towards the north; but the night fell suddenly, and the negro served dinner, asking me if I had warmth enough? My curt answer seemed to astonish him; but the truth was that I was thinking of the man Paolo's words when sick upon my own ship. He had cried, "Ice, ice," more than once in his delirium; but none of us then had the meaning of his cry. Yet I had it, and with it a notion of the second secret of Captain Black. For ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... blood of youth will mount to your face. While saying that your heart is sealed, you will allow it to escape through that fresh aureole of beauty, each ray of which allures a kiss. How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more! And why should that astonish you? You are a woman; that body, that spotless bosom, you know what they are worth; when you conceal them under your dress you do not believe, as do the virgins, that all are alike, and you know the price of your modesty. How can a woman who has been praised resolve to be praised no ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... de Moncerotti, and others, who came here in that very year as an embassy from Goa to seek various privileges from the Mogul Government, described it over and over again. At this epoch it was one of the greatest cities of the world, whose magnificent streets and luxurious ways used to astonish the most pompous courts of India. It seems almost incredible that in such a short period nothing should remain of this town but the heaps of rubbish, amongst which we could hardly find room enough for our tent. At last we decided to pitch it in ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... cavalry in Holland, and the year that followed was to see a great change in the nature of the war. The efforts of Prince Maurice to improve his army were to bear effect, and with the assistance of his English allies he was to commence an active offensive war, to astonish his foes by the rapidity with which he manoeuvred the new fighting machine he had created, and to commence a new departure in the tactics ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... bare plaster of the shop walls by striking on them with a woolen cap such as we all wore. Then there were all sorts of string, button and ball tricks, and my pockets were full of articles with which to astonish the uninitiated. He, who introduced or invented a new trick or puzzle, was the hero of the shops for a day; and for many days after, as soon as learned, the men and boys were confounding each other by its performance. In those days Signor Blitz was travelling the country, giving his ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... exercise over Aurelian, whose ambition seems now as violently bent upon subduing the world by the displays of taste, grace, and magnificence, as it once was to do it—and is still indeed—by force of arms. Having astonished mankind in one way, he would astonish them again in quite another; and to this later task his whole nature is consecrated with as entire a devotion as ever it was to the other. Livia is in all these things his model and guide; and never did soldier learn to catch, from the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... dwelling, where she found the peddler, with a heavy heart, performing the last sad offices for the dead. A few words sufficed to explain to Katy the nature of her mistake; but Caesar continued to his dying day to astonish the sable inmates of the kitchen with learned dissertations on spooks, and to relate how direful was the appearance of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... remove those trifling and unprofitable custom houses on the frontier, at least for 5 or 6 years; procure us a transit through Sonora to Guaymas, and hasten along the rail-road to California, this will indeed be a prosperous country, and will astonish the world with its production of silver and copper. But with such terrible obstacles as those mentioned above and the great length of transit to transport goods over the roads which we have to take at present, ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... appeared. The Pawnees were getting ready to surround it, when I asked Major North to keep them back to let me show them what I could do. He did as I requested. I knew Buckskin Joe was a good buffalo horse, and, feeling confident that I would astonish the Indians, I galloped in among the herd. I did astonish them. In less than a half-mile run I dropped thirty-six, killing a buffalo at nearly every shot. The dead animals were strung out over the prairie less than fifty feet apart. This manner of killing greatly pleased ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... we read, when announced after his death, will astonish the world more than all the marvels of his life. He has been in England already (1743-17—?); he is a great unknown. Nobody can accuse him of anything dishonest or dishonorable. When he was here before ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... did assure me this night, that he was told this day, by one of the greater Ministers of State in England, and one of the King's Cabinet, that we had little left to agree on between the Dutch and us towards a peace, but only the place of treaty; which do astonish me to hear, but I am glad of it, for I fear the consequence of the war. But he says that the King, having all the money he is like to have, we shall be sure of a peace in ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... die and make orphans of her children. She did not die, however. She left the bed, because it was necessary to unpack things, to look after the household and dress the children prettily so that when they went into the streets they should astonish by their beauty and fine clothes that—as Pani Hannah expressed it, with a gesture of contempt—"rabble." The children were dressed, went out, and in truth they did astonish everyone. It was the first consolation which the unhappy exile from civilisation received in her place of ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... plaster. There are two open plazas or squares in the town, and several streets, some of which are covered ways passing beneath the upper stories of houses. The effect, though not splendid, must be very picturesque, and would doubtless astonish and bewilder visitors unprepared for such a sight. When Coronado's men discovered Zuni in 1540, although that style of building was no longer a novelty to them, they ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... very seldom that a carriage came into this neighbourhood, and yet these narrow wheel-tracks could have been made only by an equipage of that character. The heavy trucks which passed these roads occasionally had much wider wheels. But Amster was to find still more to astonish him. ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... Nicias, who had now put on a perfumed tunic, "do you expect to astonish me by reciting a lot of words jumbled together without skill, which are no more than a vain murmur? Have you forgotten that I am a bit of a philosopher myself? And do you think to satisfy me with some rags, torn by ignorant men from the purple garment ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... Shandy:—Without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friendship, where there is a difference of sex. Let me intreat you to study the pure and sentimental parts of the best French Romances;—it will really, Madam, astonish you to see with what a variety of chaste expressions this delicious sentiment, which I have the honour to speak of, is ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... weight of its wickedness. People were getting rich, and with great riches there always came pride and wickedness. He continued in this strain for nearly an hour, mixing up transcendentalism, rationalism, unitarianism, and a number of other isms, so unartistically as to astonish and confound his audience, and give his hearers something to talk ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... triumph of Sherlock Nobody Holmes! This was the startling discovery with which he would astonish his superiors and win their approbation! It was not Sherlock Nobody Holmes who heard in a sort of daze the whispered words that were next uttered. It was just the captain's mess boy, and he hung his head, not so much in crushing disappointment ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... vessel. In those days, the service was very different from what it is now. The commanders of vessels were also the pursers, and could save a great deal of money by defrauding the crew: and further, the discipline of the service was such as would astonish the modern philanthropist; there was no appeal for subordinates and tyranny and oppression, even amounting to the destruction of life, were practised with impunity. Smollett has given his readers some idea of the state of the service a few ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... going into the house. She presently reappeared with an envelope large enough to contain a brief history of the world on its outside, and together she and Pee-wee made up the detailed address which, in Pee-wee's handwriting, was destined to astonish Postmaster Hiram Hicks, of ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a club before. The statement may astonish, may even meet with incredulity, but it is true. He had left the land of clubs early in life. As for the English clubs in European towns, he was familiar with their exteriors, and with the amiable babble of their supporters at tables d'hote, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... esteem this to be its perfection,—when the orator sees through all masks to the eternal scale of truth, in such sort that he can hold up before the eyes of men the fact of today steadily to that standard, thereby making the great great and the small small,—which is the true way to astonish and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... passages that the English have hitherto excelled. Their dramatic pieces, most of which are barbarous and without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such resplendent flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish. The style is too much inflated, too unnatural, too closely copied from the Hebrew writers, who abound so much with the Asiatic fustian. But then it must be also confessed that the stilts of the figurative style, on ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... not be hurt: Aren't you the Messiah? The angels will protect you! When these people see you do such a marvelous miracle they will all fall down and worship you!'" Jesus paused. "Do you see why this was wrong? The Father does not give me special protection. He did not send me into the world to astonish people with miracles so that they will accept me—he has sent me to tell them his message of life!" The disciples again remembered another thing Jesus had refused to do: he would not perform a miracle for the Pharisees! "No man ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... and at the right moment crush it with such force that it would be a long time before it could raise its head again. Before it was over he hoped to drag in prominent members of the Duma (or the Duma itself) and other revolutionary leaders, and make an end of them. This plan need not astonish us, for this method, in one form or another, had been made use of by the autocracy time and again. Protopopov overreached himself, his scheme miscarried, the soldiers about the capital went back on him, and the little comedy that he had staged in which he was to play the leading part ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... deliver a set speech to a public assembly. He frequently broke down after the first two or three sentences. He prepared what he intended to say with great exactness, and his favorite delusion was that he was about to astonish everybody with a remarkable effort. It never disturbed him that he commonly made a woful failure when he attempted speech-making, but he sat down with such cool serenity if he found that he could not recall what he wished to say, that his audience could not help joining in and smiling with ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... little afraid of his machine—there was excellent reason for every one to be afraid of those clumsy early types—and he never attempted steep descents or very high flying. He also, he records, owned one of those oil-driven motor-bicycles whose clumsy complexity and extravagant filthiness still astonish the visitors to the museum of machinery at South Kensington. He mentions running over a dog and complains of the ruinous price of 'spatchcocks' in Surrey. 'Spatchcocks,' it seems, was a ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... nothing to relate myself," replied the old detective, without even drawing his pipe from his lips, "I am too stupid, that is perfectly understood. But Monsieur Lecoq will tell you something that will astonish you." ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... liked to be doing a great many things at the same time, and to astonish the Tadpoles and Tapers with his energetic versatility, determined to superintend the education of Coningsby. It was a relation which identified him with the noble house of his pupil, or, properly ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... class than that in which she was born; to be of importance in her familiar circle was the most she aimed at. In visiting the theatre, she did not so much care to occupy a superior place—indeed, such a position made her ill at ease—as to astonish her neighbours in the pit by a lavish style of costume, by loud remarks implying a free command of cash, by purchase between the acts of something expensive to eat or drink. Needless to say that she never read anything but police news; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... his clumsy port the wretch has lost His ignorance and harmless manners too. To swear, to game, to drink, to show at home By lewdness, idleness, and Sabbath-breach, The great proficiency he made abroad, To astonish and to grieve his gazing friends, To break some maiden's and his mother's heart, To be a pest where he was useful once, Are his sole aim, and all his glory now! Man in society is like a flower Blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone His faculties ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... would not do, and escaped all their questions, by taking refuge in Mrs. Huzzard's best room, and much of her afternoon was spent there under that lady's surveillance, fashioning a party gown with which to astonish the natives. For Mrs. Huzzard would not consent to her appearing in the savageness of an Indian dress, when the occasion was one of importance—namely, the first dance in the settlement held in the house of ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... filled with passers-by, who were talking, and she heard conversations which did not astonish her, as if she had known the people, for through her dreamy intoxication, she still heard her mother's friends laughing and talking ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... attained the acme of his popularity. Waltz, the comet, whiskers, and the new government, illuminated heaven and earth, in all their glory, much about the same time: of these the comet only has disappeared; the other three continue to astonish ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... now, Tubbs— you can't fool me. Most likely you have been practicing in private, and when you come out on the diamond you will astonish everybody. Well, I am glad to know that Brill College is really to have a first-class pitcher at last. We need it if we are going ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... that he preserve it until the next evening, and then astonish the assembly by reading his extensive notes, the result of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... looking on by way of encouraging the young men. It just came in my way and I killed it, easily, in passing. If I had been really hunting, then indeed," he added, with solemn emphasis, "you would have seen something to astonish you." ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and mince-pies. The demand for them, and the material necessary to manufacture them, was marvellous. I can fancy that if returns could be got at of the flour, plums, currants, and eggs consumed on Christmas-day in the out-of-the-way Crimean peninsula, they would astonish us. One determination appeared to have taken possession of every mind—to spend the festive day with the mirth and jollity which the changed prospect of affairs warranted; and the recollection of a year ago, when ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... forest; and their purple wings flashed out on the great blossoms as, when the caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the snow, where the crafty merchants spread them one by one to astonish the mountaineers of the ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... field of nature or expressed her wonders in terms of science. With his limited knowledge of cause and effect, he saw miracles on every hand,—the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of death in lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the marvelous could astonish him; as that a beast should speak, or the sun stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... always the absurd. The single parallel between the two lies in the fact that all young emperors stand on a peak so lofty that, do they look below, vertigo rises, while from above delirium comes. There is nothing astonishing in that. It would be astonishing were it otherwise. What does astonish is the equilibrium which the kaiser, in spite of his words, his threats and actions, has managed to maintain. Regarded as a firebrand and a menace to the peace of Europe, with the exception of two ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... are glass bubbles! Having taken from the sparrow only his make-up and grimace, you are just a clumsy understudy, a sort of vice-buffoon! And you serve up stale old cynicisms picked up with crumbs in fashionable club-rooms, poor little bird, and think to astonish us with your budget ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... handkerchief of costliest lace, "you see my—that is, the Duchess, is of such a romantic temperament, so enamoured of rural scenes, idyllic meadows, pretty shepherdesses, and the like—all the court makes merry at her foible. She thought to astonish Paris to-night by a lavish display of sweet simplicity—did Monsieur see it? That big dark place back there, behind the glass partition, was arranged as a meadow, with a stream winding through it, and rocks and trees, and what not. She had a flock of sheep washed ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... even Preston was taken aback—and it took a great deal to astonish Preston. Osborne, I could see, was dumbfounded. Jasmine Gastrell was the first to speak, and she addressed me without looking either at Osborne ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... she would do when I'm away, but it doesn't seem to be worrying her much. I never saw a person, old or young, with greater powers of adapting themselves to any circumstances,—any circumstances, mind you,—so you needn't be exercised about her future deportment. She'll astonish ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... written by Abe found their way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot was on the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that his culture was not solely political, and that he was able to astonish the natives of Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared to set, it "was we did the sinking and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... other anecdotes of the ways and customs of their respective countries, and especially the charming dance of zephyr with the flowers on the lawns of Cyprus, which must immediately suggest pictures by Piero di Cosimo and by Botticelli. So far, therefore, there is plenty to enjoy, but nothing to astonish, in the "Ambra." But the Magnificent Lorenzo has had the extraordinary whim of beginning his allegory with a description, twenty-one stanzas long, of the season of floods. A description, full of infinitely delicate minute detail: ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... a bateau full of voyageurs, and the dark echo, and that vild-cat must be astonish. When you not care what become of you, and your head is light and your heart like a stone on the beach, you not mind vild-cats, but sing ...
— The Skeleton On Round Island - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and enlargement, if necessary, appease his wife's wrath at his delay. The workings of the human mind towards selfish ends even in the simplest organization have an art beyond all mechanism, and can astonish the wisest ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... "Does the hat astonish you, M. Gevrol?" he pursued. "Just look at the circle traced in the dust on the marble top of the secretary. Is it because I have mentioned his height that you are surprised? Take the trouble to examine the tops of the wardrobes and you will see that the assassin passed his ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... watermen. I am shown the right way, but from Mantes to Paris they are not Normandy roads; from Mantes southward they gradually deteriorate until they are little or no better than the "sand-papered roads of Boston." Having determined to taboo vin ordinaire altogether I astonish the restaurateur of a village where I take lunch by motioning away the bottle of red wine and calling for " de I'eau," and the glances cast in my direction by the other customers indicate plainly enough that they consider the proceeding as something quite ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... demon. How true an interpreter is Genius to Hell as to Earth! The Fiend comes to Faust, the tired seeker of knowledge; Heaven and Hell stake their cause in the Mortal's temptation. And what does the Fiend to astonish the Mortal? Turn wine into fire, turn love into crime. We need no Mephistopheles to accomplish these marvels ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Di. But make haste with your revelations; for I shall be here to-morrow night and every night now, and astonish her; and it isn't healthy for some people to be astonished. Besides, Di, my orders will be here in a week or two; ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... papyruses there is mention that in old times there were prophets among us who had the gift of suspending themselves in the air; so the desires of Mefres do not astonish priests nowadays. And since, as is known to thee, subordinates among us see whatever pleases superiors, some holy men claim that during prayer Mefres really rises a couple of ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... of time of the different plaintiffs and defendants, the individual anxiety and suffering produced by litigation; add all these together, and I doubt not the result for a single year will somewhat astonish these modern economists. But if all the expenditures of this nature that have been made for the last fifty years, in this individual "war of hate," be added together, we have no doubt a very fruitful text might be obtained for ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... the key. The production of milk is an act of anabolism or building-up, such as we have seen to be characteristic of the female sex, involving the accumulation and storage of quantities of energy so large that if they were stated in the units of the physicist they would astonish us. If we consider what the child achieves in the way of movement and development and growth, and if we realize that at the most rapid period of development and growth, all the energy therefor has been ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... abstraction as the 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' that the French put on their public buildings. I used to have the most wonderful visions of what independence would mean. I thought that when I was absolutely my own master, with my money and my courage and my free mind, I would do things to astonish all mankind. But really the most I achieve is the occasional mild surprise of a German waiter. Even that palls on one after a time. And if you were independent, Edith—if you had any amount of money—what difference do you think it would ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Government, whose Christianity, as a rule, is looked for in vain there where it should be applied, and is found where the same is superfluous and harmful,—this Christian Government acts exactly like the Christian capitalists, a fact that does not astonish him who knows that the Christian Government is but the agent of our Christian capitalists. The Government only with difficulty decides in favor of laws to limit woman-labor to a normal measure, or to wholly forbid child-labor;—on ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... species of the same family, emulate trees in height and beauty. But what our species want in individual magnitude, is far more than compensated by the comparative vastness of the number of individuals. In tropical climates, one plant may be seen here, and another there, which, in their size, astonish an European, when he is told that they belong to the family of the grasses; but there he would search in vain for those swards of grass, and green meadows, with which almost the whole aspect of his own climate is verdant. He might ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... he said, speaking again, for she had touched the spot where she knew he was most sensitive. "France is tenacious of life, and I think she is going to astonish the world by the rapidity of her convalescence. True, she has many elements of corruption. I have not sought to hide them, I have rather, perhaps, exposed them to view. But you greatly misunderstand me if you imagine that I believe in her final dissolution, because I point ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Lincoln, the intimate friend of that lord, was so friendly to turn his back upon him as he came out of the closet—and yet Lord Harcourt and the Bishop have not at all lessened their characters by any part of their behaviour in this transaction. What will astonish you, is the universal aversion that has broke out against Stone: and what heightens the disgusts, is, the intention there has been of making Dr. Johnson, the new Bishop of Gloucester, preceptor. He was master of Westminster ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... cold and cutting sword, which froze while wounding; I saw in his mind a profound irony, from which nothing fine or noble could escape not even his own glory: for he despised the nation whose suffrages he desired; and no spark of enthusiasm mingled with his craving to astonish the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... barricades were assembling points for heroism. The improbable was simple there. These men did not astonish each other. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... She waited the fitting moment, with splendour to astonish, and with grandeur to subdue her lover. To tell the sad truth, she was no longer sure that it would be well to encourage him on the old footing; was she not standing on tiptoe, her skirts in her hand, on the brink of the brook that parted serfdom from gentility, on the point of stepping ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... possibilities baffling even the imagination. The waters which surround it, as we have seen, abound with a variety of fishes, whose bright colors, emulating the tints of precious stones and the prismatic hues of the rainbow, astonish and delight the eye of the stranger. Stately and peculiar trees enliven the picturesque landscape. Throughout the woods and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling colors defy the palette of the artist. Here the loquacious parrot utters his harsh natural notes; ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... know what I think about myself? I think that I shall astonish the world with one of those grand passions which make history worth reading. The girl who gets me ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... even more exciting to astonish us with," laughed Gipsy. "I wish we could have climbed ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... ever see land again. For thirty-six hours we had kept her nose to it, and if the Mary Sinclair had not been as good a seaboat as ever left the Clyde, we could not have gone through. And yet here we were at the end of it with the loss only of our gig and of part of the starboard bulwark. It did not astonish us, however, when the smother had cleared away, to find that others had been less lucky, and that this mutilated brig staggering about upon a blue sea and under a cloudless sky, had been left, like a blinded man after a lightning flash, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strongest lenses find nothing? I have some doubts as to whether ants are really shut out of many flowers by hairs pointing downwards in a fringe and similar contrivances. The ant has a singularly powerful pair of mandibles: put one between your shirt and skin and try; the nip you will get will astonish you. With these they can shear off the legs or even the head of another ant in battle. I cannot see, therefore, why, if they wished, they could not nip off this fringe of hairs, or even sever the stem of the plant. Evidently they do not wish, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... directions that the scientific achievements to astonish our children will probably be achieved. Progress never appears to be uniform in human affairs. There are intricate correlations between department and department. One field must mark time until another can come up to it with results sufficiently ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... inanimate objects, which are supposed by primitive man to be dangerous or taboo, we are met by a fact which will astonish anthropologists, and which I cannot satisfactorily explain. Blood is everywhere in the savage world regarded with suspicion and anxiety; there is something mysterious about it as containing (so they thought) the life, and its colour and smell are also uncanny; horses cannot endure it, and there ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages, and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding together ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... they feel themselves better than George?" asked Fanny. "They don't astonish the world with good looks, or refinement of manners or mind. Their fathers are rich I know, and they have nothing to do but dress, and study etiquette. They can hardly stoop to what they call common people. But I don't envy them at all. They were always disliked at school, and were always at ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... queen of awful night, Dread tyrant say! Why parting throes this lab'ring frame distend, Why dire convulsions rend, And teeming horrors wreck th' astonish'd sight? Why shrinks the trembling soul, Why with amazement full Pines at thy rule, and sickens at thy sway? Why low'r the thunder of thy brow, Why livid angers glow, Mistaken phantom, say? Far hence exert thy awful reign, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... but sought to please by simplicity alone. In this way, through the desire of the operatic composers to avail themselves as far as possible of the technical resources of composition acquired by the learned musicians of the contrapuntal schools, and to please their hearers and to astonish them in various ways, all the different forces in music began to exercise themselves and come to expression in opera; but as yet nothing of the sort had made any great progress in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... if you say so, she and her father. Jimmy Brunell's more than anxious to see you; he wants to make a clean breast of the whole affair—tell all he knows about the case; and I think what he's got to say will astonish you and finish the whole thing—crack that nut you were talking to me about this afternoon, provide the link in the chain, the crevice in the crime ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... said Max, "what advantages you will enjoy over the rest of us, when we get to Eiulo's island, as Johnny is confident we are destined to do, one of these days. You shall then astonish the simple inhabitants, with Pitt's reply to Walpole, or 'Now is the winter of our discontent,' and gain advancement in the state, by your oratorical gifts. Who knows but you may rise to be prime-minister, or chief Rauti, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish the women-folks. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foot and lashed upon a board with one end sharpened for the convenience of the mother. Whenever she grows weary one end of the board is stuck into the ground and the children often are left for a considerable time. The appearance is singular, and would astonish those that had never seen the Indians' manner of treating their children. Indian children are white when born, their eyes very black. Their hair long, straight and black. Their features full and well-shaped with large, Roman ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason
... accompanied by a very kind letter from you, and a beautiful shawl, which will be most useful to me, particularly as a favourite one of mine is growing very old. I wish you could come here, for many reasons, but also to be an eye-witness of my extreme prudence in eating, which would astonish you. The poor sea-gulls are, however, not so happy as you imagine, for they have great enemies in the country-people here, who ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... the varieties of color. I wonder that I have so long been insensible to this charm in the skies, the tints of the different stars are so delicate in their variety. ... What a pity that some of our manufacturers shouldn't be able to steal the secret of dyestuffs from the stars, and astonish the feminine taste by new brilliancy in fashion. [Footnote: ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... their lovers—a complete, even somewhat squeamish, indifference, before every evening dim hopes came to life and stirred within their souls; it was unknown who would choose them, whether something unusual, funny and alluring might not happen, whether a guest would not astonish with his generosity, whether there would not be some miracle which would overturn the whole life...In these presentiments and hopes was something akin to those emotions which the accustomed gamester experiences ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... only restored to me my mother, but has raised me from the lowest rung in the ladder to the very highest, and given me the sweetest, and most—. But enough. Come and see for yourself. Her name is Nellie. But I have more to astonish you with. Not only do I take Nellie back with me to my home in the new world, but I take my mother also, and Natty Grove, and old Nell herself! How we got her to understand what we want her to do, could not be told in less than four hundred pages of small type. Nat did it, by means ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... life—which is not very likely—it will be that I may meet that scoundrel, Napoleon Bonaparte, on dry land. I hear that he is eager to encounter me on the waves, himself commanding a line-of-battle ship. I should send him to the devil in a quarter of an hour. And ashore I could astonish him, I think, a little, if I had a good army to back me up. Remember what I did at Bastia, in the land that produced this monster, and where I was called the Brigadier; and again, upon the coast of Italy, I showed ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that come from the fellowship with the children are a new and a real experience—this is what counts. You will have opportunities of sewing seeds in their minds that will grow into a harvest that will astonish you. Children in the right mood—and they are in the right mood when they are happy, and they are happy out in the open with an interesting companion—are alert, and responsive, and eager to be told "things," and this mood can be put to marvelous ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ground. As we ascended, we passed under enormous monastic porticos, also in granite of rude and primitive style. In truth, these steps and these temple porticos are the only imposing works that this people has created, and they astonish, for ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Catarack we pass, more beeger dan de Soo, She's nearly t'orty mile for sure, it would astonish you, Dat's place t'ree Irishman get drown, wan day we have beeg storm, I s'pose de Queen is feel lak cry, ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond
... life in the hulks than from that of my own father. Then this Indian Colonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see the womanish—he could call it no better, the weak-womanish—way in which I worshipped him. If I were a daughter instead of a son, my caprices would distress and astonish him less. He could have sent me to my mother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle. In a son, from whom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it was painful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want of candour—(my father took a pinch of snuff ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... building-up, such as we have seen to be characteristic of the female sex, involving the accumulation and storage of quantities of energy so large that if they were stated in the units of the physicist they would astonish us. If we consider what the child achieves in the way of movement and development and growth, and if we realize that at the most rapid period of development and growth, all the energy therefor has been gathered, prepared, and is dispensed ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... road to world mastery. Wellington at twenty-eight had not yet found himself. But now on his trip to India he was on the threshold of his career. His deeds there and on other fields were to astonish the world. Did they also astonish ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... cried Lord Connemara, seizing the opportunity with well-affected surprise. 'You really astonish me. He was a Croatian, I believe, or an Illyrian—I forget which—and he studied at Rome under Giulio Romano. Wonderful draughtsman in the nude, and fine colourist; took hints from Raphael and Michael Angelo.' So much he had picked up from Menotti and Cicolari, and, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Daisy Holroyd, 'there's a thing in that ocean that would astonish you if you saw it. ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... had thrown down his basket, and had run off towards Mosul as fast as his legs could carry him." The marvellous fidelity and power with which this, and the colossal human-headed bull are executed, must astonish the most uninstructed observer. For an account of the marvellous labour at the cost of which these colossal Assyrian works were conveyed from Asia Minor to the British Museum, we must refer the reader to Mr. Layard's excellent condensed account of his researches, published by ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... to astonish you greatly. I am the Marquis de Favieres. I do not know you, but I come to you to ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... style as a puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it. But words are, after all, a poor thing without matter. J.K.S.'s emancipation has come somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the world rather considerably. Now, if we may interpret the last poem in his book, he is turning towards ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this country bad not too much, everything very good. But suppose I not tell something little bad, then you say I tell all flattery—therefore I tell most bad thing. I not like such crowd in evening party every night. In cold weather not very good, now hot weather, much too bad. I very much astonish every day now much hot than before, evening parties much crowd than before. Pretty beautiful ladies come sweat, that not very good. I always afraid some old lady in crowd come dead, that not very good, and spoil my happiness. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... which serve the creatures whom He has come to help. Ah, how different He is, this Mighty One, from you and me! When we are talking to some one who knows a little less than ourselves, we talk out all we know to show our knowledge, expanding ourselves as much as we can so as to astonish and make marvel the one to whom we speak; that is because we are so small that we fear our greatness will not be recognised unless we make ourselves as large as we can to astonish, if possible to terrify; but when He comes who is really great, who is mightier than anything which He ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... I'll astonish Professor Tapper with you when I get home," he said; "you are worthy to be ranked with the fur-bearing South Polar pollywog. I will feed you till your feathers shine and you are the envied of all birds. I am the most fortunate ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... dangerous convulsion in her own bowels. The son of the chevalier de St. George, fired with ambition, and animated with the hope of ascending the throne of his ancestors, resolved to make an effort for that purpose, which, though it might not be crowned with success, should at least astonish all Christendom. The Jacobites in England and Scotland had promised, that if he would land in Britain at the head of a regular army, they would supply him with provisions, carriages, and horses, and a great number of them declared they would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... doubting. It is probable that I shall make an admirable old maid. Wisdom has its disadvantages. I might be very happy with Arthur, were I not so wise." She smiled again at the reflection in the mirror. "Now, let us go and astonish the natives." ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... none uninjured;—could the multitudes of such beings, which in the United States alone, (though admitted to be the paradise of the world,) have gone down to infamy through licentiousness, be presented to our view, at once, how would it strike us with horror! Their very numbers would astonish us, but how much more their appearance! I am supposing them to appear as they went to the graves, in their bloated and disfigured faces, their emaciated and tottering frames, bending at thirty years of age under the appearance of three or four score; diseased externally ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... hide him from the murderous King Herod, the parents of Jesus could not allow their son to go out, and he, no doubt, spent all his time in studying the sacred Scriptures, so that his knowledge was sufficiently beyond what would naturally have been expected of a boy of his age to greatly astonish the elders of Israel. He had in his thirteenth year attained an age when, according to Jewish law, the boy becomes an adult, has the right to marry, and incurs obligations for the discharge of the religious duties ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... boat! You astonish me. I thought escape from the Belle Helene was the one wish of your heart ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... on foot and shaken off the ennui which had oppressed her in the morning, Josephine Harris left the house where she had paid so remarkable a first visit, and returned to her own, to astonish her mother with the knowledge of an intended prank somewhat more reckless and outrageous than any upon which she had ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... acceleration. Its development was a part of the mental changes that came to him in the wild excitements of the last four years of his ascent. Towards the climax he was a furious spender; he shopped with large unexpected purchases, he shopped like a mind seeking expression, he shopped to astonish and dismay; shopped crescendo, shopped fortissimo, con molto espressione until the magnificent smash of Crest Hill eroded his shopping for ever. Always it was he who shopped. My aunt did not shine ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and scanty, his nose sharp and narrow. He is a junior partner in the firm of Bannister & Son, and it is his unalterable conviction that, if his father would only give him a chance, he could show Wall Street some high finance that would astonish it. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... seemed to astonish him," said Sam. "Did you hear him ask about the combination on the safe? He must have been wondering whether we suspected his uncle ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... occasionally found himself indirectly soliciting the advice of this gentle, clear-eyed and clear-headed young person, more especially as regarded the difficulties surrounding Sheila; and sometimes a chance remark of hers, uttered in a timid or careless or even mocking fashion, would astonish him by the rapid light it threw on these dark troubles. On this evening—the last evening they were spending in London—it was his own affairs which he proposed to mention to Mrs. Lorraine, and he had no more hesitation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... apartment, since its size permitted to each his own segregated and peculiar employment. A large screen fenced off from interruption my father's erudite settlement; and quite out of sight, behind that impermeable barrier, he was now calmly winding up that eloquent peroration which will astonish the world whenever, by Heaven's special mercy, the printer's devils have done with "The History of Human Error." In another nook my uncle had ensconced himself, stirring his coffee (in the cup my mother had presented to him so many years ago, and which ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one or more of his slaves to whip every Monday morning. He did this to alarm their fears, and strike terror into those who escaped. His plan was to whip for the smallest offences, to prevent the commission of large ones. Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion,—a mistake, accident, or want of power,—are all matters for which a ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... and were executed upon a scale of such grandeur! In future ages, when the science of war shall have changed, how few traces will exist of the labours of Vauban and Coehorn, while this wonderful people's remains will even then continue to interest and astonish posterity! Their fortifications, their aqueducts, their theatres, their fountains, all their public works, bear the grave, solid, and majestic character of their language; while our modern labours, like our modern tongues, seem but constructed out of their ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and if they were not interfered with, and their national customs invaded with road-making, petty-sessions, grand-jury laws, and a stray commission now and then, they are capable of great things, and would astonish the world. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... She meant to astonish her hearers and keep them quiet, and she knew what to sing to gain her end, and how to sing it. Those who have not forgotten the story of her beginnings will remember that she was a thorough musician as well as a great singer, and was one of those very few primadonnas who are able to ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, without observation, the selfsame thing unfurls beautiful wings, and is an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean.[48] Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules,[49] the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... does not count you are very greatly mistaken. We not infrequently see men who have been engaged in one occupation with only very moderate success suddenly leap into fame in an entirely different line. Men who have struggled to be great artists or illustrators like du Maurier astonish the world with a previously concealed literary ability. It is foolish not to recognize the part that talent must play in the careers of artists. Sometimes hard work and patient persistence will stimulate the mind and soul, and reveal talents that were never supposed to exist, but if ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... alternately shocked and inspired; there is a perpetual conflict between our understanding and our feelings. Yet the latter on the whole come off victorious. The Robbers is a tragedy that will long find readers to astonish, and, with all its faults, to move. It stands, in our imagination, like some ancient rugged pile of a barbarous age; irregular, fantastic, useless; but grand in its height and massiveness and black frowning strength. It will long remain a singular monument of the early ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... soul; others were positively delighted at the fact that he was a murderer. It appeared too that he had had a very good education and was indeed a man of considerable culture. No great acquirements were needed, of course, to astonish us. But he could judge also of very interesting everyday affairs, and, what was of the utmost value, he judged of them with remarkable good sense. I must mention as a peculiar fact that almost from the ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... eagerly for his wife, to inform her of his adventure, but was told she was not returned from market. He waited impatiently for her return, when he sprang up to meet her, crying, "Wife, I have done something to-day that will astonish you. I have performed a marvellous exploit!" "Patience!" says his wife. "Perhaps I have done something myself to match it. But hear my story, and then talk of cleverness, if you please." The ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... It may astonish the reader to know that the funambulist or rope-dancer was very expert with the Greeks, as also was the acrobat between knives and swords. Animals were also taught to dance on ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... amused to see the different modes of treating that favourite subject myself.' He is to be allowed L240 a year, but he is determined not to be straitened, nor to encourage the least narrowness, but to draw on his father when necessary. Wilkes had gone to France, but had let him have some franks 'to astonish a few North Britons.' Parting for a time with Temple, whose family was now in straitened circumstances, he assures him that their friendship should be 'an exalted comfort' to him in his distress, and concludes characteristically enough ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... incomes made by chamber-barristers, and of the sums realized by counsel in departments of the profession that do not invite the attention of the general public, would astonish those uninformed persons who estimate the success of a barrister by the frequency with which his name appears in the newspaper reports of trials and suits. The talkers of the bar enjoy more eclat than the barristers ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... that of the Doctor's, I should say that these rabbits flew in PAIRS. Red-nosed, winged rabbits! I had never heard or read of the species; and I naturally grew enthusiastic in the chase, hoping to bring home a choice specimen to astonish our English naturalists. With some difficulty we managed to catch one or two, which had run into their holes instead of flying away. They bit and scratched like tiger-cats, and screamed like parrots; indeed, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... less complexity,—truths which are often found to be in accordance with the spiritual instinct called intuition, which children possess more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of our children would often astonish us, if we would only forbear the attempt to make them knowing, and submissively accept instruction from them. Through all the imperfection of their inherited infirmity, we shall ever and anon be conscious of the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelligence, ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... were filled with passers-by, who were talking, and she heard conversations which did not astonish her, as if she had known the people, for through her dreamy intoxication, she still heard her mother's friends laughing ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... isn't what you think. It isn't what you think." Mr. Franklin looked more apoplectic than ever. "If it comes to that I could astonish you. But it's no use. I myself can hardly . . . You couldn't understand. I hope you won't try to make mischief. There was a time, young fellow, when I would have dared any man—any man, you hear?—to make mischief between me and Captain ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... guilty man, whose life he held in his hands, was enough to astonish him. He had expected a stormy discussion and prayers and tears. He had before him a man convicted of the most heinous of crimes, and the man ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... The favorable side of his character is, that he is good-tempered and good-natured; by no means cruel; and, in a certain way, generous, though rapacious to a high degree. His rapacity, indeed, is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome; but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other Pangerans; and afterward, through Mr. Williamson, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... on his raw wound. Neither of them was like Mrs. Mountstuart, a witty woman, who could be hoodwinked; they were dull women, who steadily kept on their own scent of the fact, and the only way to confound such inveterate forces was to be ahead of them, and seize and transform the expected fact, and astonish them, when they came up to him, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... attending church, which seemed to surprise him a good deal, especially as his absence was attributed by Meldon to shame and a consciousness of guilt, feelings from which Simpkins had never in his life suffered. Then—and this seemed to astonish him still more—he was warmly invited to go for a ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... of the Tagus and the Tiber and the Seine and the Mississippi—and they will all be the river near his home. Then let him travel, and what will he come across? The Seine, if he is from these islands, may not disappoint him or astonish him with a sense of novelty and of ignorance. It will indeed look grander and more majestic, seen from the enormous forest heights above its lower course, than what, perhaps, he had thought possible in a river, but still it will be ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... soon," said the doctor, looking at the corpse before him; "but that ought not to astonish you; Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Meran died as soon. People die very suddenly in ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is one who hungers and thirsts after perfection, not one who dabs flowers upon plates to choke the gullets of diners," declared Telfer, setting himself for one of the long speeches with which he loved to astonish the men of Caxton, and glaring down at those seated upon the stone. "It is the artist who, among all men, has the divine audacity. Does he not hurl himself into a battle in which is engaged against him all of the accumulative ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... heroism, a life which he had employed in iniquity. Without remembering this interval, during which ample time for preparation had been afforded, the hardihood which could sport with the most solemn of all subjects, would shock rather than astonish. In consideration of the conduct of many of our state prisoners on the scaffold, we must recollect how familiarized they had previously become with death, in those gloomy chambers whence they could see many a fellow sufferer issue, to shed his blood on the same scaffold ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... artificial court, where no one is what they seem to be; where everyone considers it his duty to say complimentary things; where everyone seems to be gay and happy, but everyone is as much slaves as if they wore chains. I break out sometimes, and astonish them." ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... would allow France some breathing time. The King was sixty years of age, and had, in his own opinion, acquired all sorts of glory. But scarcely were we at peace, without having had time to taste it, than the pride of the King made him wish to astonish all Europe by the display of a power that it believed prostrated. And truly he did astonish Europe. But at what a cost! The famous camp of Compiegne—for 'tis to that I allude—was one of the most magnificent ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sure of it. When Beauregard opens his batteries upon Sumter, you will see an uprising that will astonish the world. I am sorry to part with you, but you may go. You would no doubt get a letter from your father in a few days any way, so I don't suppose it ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... September 13, the correspondent of a press agency dispatched a telegram to London with the intimation that the great battle at Tel-el-Kebir was practically over. It may possibly astonish not a few of our readers (says a writer in the Echo), to learn that this message reached the metropolis between 7 and 8 o'clock on the same morning; and, in fact, had an unbroken telegraphic wire extended from Kassassin to London, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... to her. Molly was by nature so kind that her first feeling was one of pity for the young man as she hated to hurt his feelings; but she was sure that he did not love her in the least and that her refusal of him would astonish him but not give him a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... of mystical abysses. But such an erratic workman does not deserve the name of artist or master; he has burst convention only to break it, not to create a new convention more in harmony with nature. His originality, though it may astonish for a moment, will in the end be despised and will find no thoroughfare. He will meantime be wretched himself, torn from the roots of his being by that cruel, unmeaning inspiration; or, if too rapt ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... instructive, but useful chiefly as a means to aid in the true artistic reproduction of nature. When the, hospitals are invaded by the novelist, he should learn something from the physician as well as from the patients. Science delineates in monochrome. She never uses high tints and strontian lights to astonish lookers-on. Such scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would be reproduced in their essential characters, but not dressed up in picturesque phrases. That is the first stumbling-block in the way of the reader of such realistic stories ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sheep have pigs' heads; where foxes fly about from tree to tree; where the swans are black; where rats make nests; where the bower-bird opens her reception-rooms to receive visits from her feathered friends; where the birds astonish the imagination by the variety of their notes and their aptness; where one bird serves for a clock, and another makes a sound like a postilion cracking of a whip, and a third imitates a knife-grinder, and a fourth the motion of a pendulum; where one laughs when the sun rises, and another cries when ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... exercise the influence of her gold in all the Cabinets of Europe. Peace must be broken; since it was evident that England was determined to break it. Why not anticipate her? Why allow her to have all the advantages of the first step? We must astonish Europe! We must thwart the policy of the Continent! We must strike a great and unexpected blow. Thus reasoned the First Consul, and every one may judge whether his actions ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... "Well! you astonish me, I freely admit," gasped the baronet. "This is the first time I ever heard of a ship being sunk by filling her with air. And then the cool way in which you talk of our 'sinking to the bottom like a stone!' I undertook this enterprise because I wanted to experience a new ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... crush it with such force that it would be a long time before it could raise its head again. Before it was over he hoped to drag in prominent members of the Duma (or the Duma itself) and other revolutionary leaders, and make an end of them. This plan need not astonish us, for this method, in one form or another, had been made use of by the autocracy time and again. Protopopov overreached himself, his scheme miscarried, the soldiers about the capital went back on ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... Robbers", a drama, the very name of which I had never before heard of:—A Winter midnight—the wind high—and "The Robbers" for the first time!—The readers of Schiller will conceive what I felt. Schiller introduces no supernatural beings; yet his human beings agitate and astonish more than all the goblin rout—even of Shakespeare.' See for another account of the midnight reading of 'The Robbers', Letter to Southey, November [6], 1794, Letters of S. T. C., 1895, i. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... after-effects of supernaturalism. Like children escaped from school, they find their whole happiness in freedom. They are proud of what they have rejected, as if a great wit were required to do so; but they do not know what they want. If you astonish them by demanding what is their positive ideal, further than that there should be a great many people and that they should be all alike, they will say at first that what ought to be is obvious, and later ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... courage enough for anything, and she'll astonish you before the evening's over," prophesied Mac with unabated confidence, for he knew something ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... well understand, my lad. Now you shall come and tell your mother. I have news for you, dame, that will in no small degree astonish you," he said, as, followed by the two lads, he returned to the room where she was sitting. "In the first place, young Master Ormskirk has proved himself a better man than I ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... father's retreat from the room, under pretence of some important despatches to be sent off. She found herself alone with the object of her dislike—and only waited for a beginning to the conversation, that she might astonish his weak mind with the severity of her invectives. In fact, she had determined, according to the vulgar phrase, to tell him a bit of her mind—and a very small bit of it, she was well aware, would be sufficient to satisfy Count Ericson of the condition of all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... French sailors during the war. "Intentionally disregarding subtle evolutions," said the delegate Jean Bon Saint Andree, "perhaps our sailors will think it more appropriate and effective to resort to the boarding tactics in which the French were always victorious, and thus astonish the world by new prodigies of valor." "If they had added to their courage a little training," said the same commissioner after the battle, "the day might ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... But unless you have already heard my story from your Sister, I have much to relate that will astonish you. Follow me, therefore, to my Hotel ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and sent a small army of servants on before her to take possession of it—men and women of divers nations, who contrived to make their mistress notorious by their vagaries before she arrived to astonish the city by her own eccentricities. One day brought two pair of carriage horses, and a pair of Arabs for riding; the next, a train of carriages; a week after came the lady herself; and all Rome—English and American Rome ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... you do astonish me," faintly ejaculated the flushed widow, her comely face crimson to the roots of ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... exerted a pernicious influence on many since, is, we fear, undeniable. He had been taught, by the lives of the "wits," to consider aberration, eccentricity, and "devil-may-careism" as prime badges of genius, and he proceeded accordingly to astonish the natives, many of whom, in their turn, set themselves to copy his faults. But when we subtract some half-dozen pieces, either coarse in language or equivocal in purpose, the influence of his poetry ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Travis,' said Edgar, seeing his blank look, 'we'll give you the honour of giving us a spread. You go on and order it at —'s, and I'll walk this fellow there. Curry soup that will astonish him, and warm the ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... decks three times in order to astonish those confined below by the noise and bustle it made, Neptune introduced his young bride to the captain, and informed him he was in mourning for his last wife, pointing to his skin. "What occasioned her death?" inquired the captain. "She," replied the sea-god, "died of a violent ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged—a fool leaping here and there with every impulse—watching a girl in my set do a silly thing and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human being, near death. You know you saved me from ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... miscellaneous one, made up of tableaux, songs, dialogues and recitations. Some of these reflected great credit upon the pupils and their teachers. I say some of them, because some parts were rendered so excellently as to astonish one who did not expect anything very good from negro scholars. One beautiful scene was, "Winding the May Pole," by twelve little girls dressed in white. Another striking piece was, "What Alcohol ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... perceive that thou didst observe them. The murdered man whom they flung into the water is Francisco Borgia, Duke of Candia; his murderer is his brother, and what thou seest now is only the prelude to actions which will astonish hell itself ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... nothing very wonderful if the story should be on the whole true, and these worthies were in the habit of dressing themselves up, like foolish savages as they were, in the skins of the Aguara dog, with what not of stuffing, and tails, and so forth, in order to astonish the weak minds of the Caribs, just as the Red Indians dress up in their feasts as bears, wolves, and deer, with foxtails, false bustles of bison skin, and so forth. There are plenty of traces of such foolish attempts at playing 'bogy' in the history of savages, even of our ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... You astonish me with the account of your books; and I should have been still more astonished if you had told me you had read a third (shall I say a tenth part?) of them. My reading powers were never very good, and now they are much diminished, especially ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... lend un a flick, if he should refuse me." "Fear not," cries Mrs Western; "the match is too advantageous to be refused." "I don't know that," answered the squire: "Allworthy is a queer b—ch, and money hath no effect o'un." "Brother," said the lady, "your politics astonish me. Are you really to be imposed on by professions? Do you think Mr Allworthy hath more contempt for money than other men because he professes more? Such credulity would better become one of us weak women, than that wise sex which heaven hath ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... at me about that projected grand entrance-hall of hers, which was to be knocked clean through the chimney, from one end of the house to the other, and astonish all guests by its generous amplitude. "But, wife," said I, "the chimney—consider the chimney: if you demolish the foundation, what is to support the superstructure?" "Oh, that will rest on the ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... absolute submission, as a redoubtable warrior endowed with a supernatural strength of soul. To the sound of warlike music, the Cossacks ascended the rivers. They disembarked clad in their finest raiment in order to astonish the inhabitants by their riches. Having thus assured the domination of Russia from Berezoff to Tobol, Iermak, satisfied and tranquil, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... a strange thing and one which might astonish you, but I feel an indescribable horror at the sight of yonder man. Have you ever seen a snake rise up on ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... don't talk so loud, or the cabby will hear you! Of course we're not ruined; but it would never astonish me any day if we came a howler. The pater goes too fast, and—— But we're all right now; and, for goodness' sake, don't say a word to mother; it would upset her dreadfully. It's only for her ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
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