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More "Impressive" Quotes from Famous Books



... the engraver's hand. "But you must know for the future," he added in a friendly but impressive way, "that I never take anything but money when I am dealing with these fellows. Ho, you!" he went on, turning to the company, "some one go to uncle's and get cash for this watch; tell him to pay conscientiously at least two thirds of what it is worth; it is a good watch. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... prose, not of that high-strung sensibility which compels the true poet into verse. This must not be said without exception. The Threnody, written after the death of a deeply loved child, is a beautiful and impressive lament. Pieces like Musquetaquid, the Adirondacs, the Snowstorm, The Humble-Bee, are pretty and pleasant bits of pastoral. In all we feel the pure breath of ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... nothing much to it," the colonel said. "He showed us a lot of impressive-looking stuff in his laboratory, but it didn't mean a thing. He had this suitcase, as I told you. There were a couple of thick copper electrodes coming out of the side of it, and he claimed that ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)

... that has been made ready in thine honour!" And again there is a crash of drums. After that he smites the skull yet again and prays saying, "Guard me! Guard my people! Guard my children!" And every prayer of the litany is followed by the solemn roll of the drums. When these impressive invocations to the spirit of the dead chief are over, the feasting begins. The skull is ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... his belt is his club, similar to those carried by American policemen, and jangling in one hand is usually a pair of steel handcuffs. In passing white men he often raises his hand in a formal military salute that would be worthy of a major general. Altogether he is a most impressive personage and, with such examples constantly before them, it would seem incredible that the citizens should ever cause a-disturbance. An interesting contrast was seen in a group of men, sitting idly in the shade and watching eight little Chinese women stagger by with a huge ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... in her master, and administered her favorite medicine, Fan, with increasing frequency. As the neurasthenic believes in strange drugs, expensive cures, impressive doctors, she believed in the healing powers of the exceedingly young. Nor was Fan doubtful of her own magical properties. She supposed that her intense interest in herself and the affairs of her life was fully shared by Heath. Her confidences to him in respect of Masterman ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... the abashed Billiard, glancing uneasily about for some means of escape, but Tabitha had delivered her ultimatum, and now swept grandly into the house, satisfied that she had displayed her authority in a very impressive manner. ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... stood there. Where was it now? Where were the busy gossips? A wild-cat sprang over the briar-laced walls, and made off into the forest. An owl flew sluggishly up from the crumbling cupola, and hovered around our heads, uttering its doleful "woo-hoo-a," that rendered the desolation of the scene more impressive. As we rode through the ruin, a dead stillness surrounded us, broken only by the hooting of the night-bird, and the "cranch-cranch" of our horses' feet upon the fragments of pottery that covered the ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... looking about him steadily, and, seeing me, moved towards me. But for his manner I should scarcely have recognised him. A dance was beginning; but many eyes were turned curiously, and even admiringly, to him; for he looked singular and impressive and his face was given fulness by a beard and flesh paints. I motioned him aside where there was shadow, and said: "Well, you have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the impressive, gravelike silence that had fallen upon the world. No longer was there a lapping of waters upon the rocks. No breath of wind murmured through the trees. There was a silence so complete, so absolute that Charley declared ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The embassador, overwhelmed by his reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself, in ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... the many nights I have watched the Southern Cross, I remember no two occasions when the spectacle interested me exactly in the same way, nor any one upon which I did not discover the result to be somewhat different, and always more impressive, than what I ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... grew broader as my speech proceeded and stirred up the rancour in the hearts of those august gentlemen. The Keeper of the Seals went white and red by turns, and when I paused there was an impressive silence that lasted for some moments. At last the President leant over to confer in a whisper with Chatellerault. Then, in a voice forcedly calm—like the calm of Nature when thunder is brewing—he asked me, "Who do you insist that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... right to consider her as his betrothed bride, for after a brief farewell and a few kisses of the hand flung to him from the threshold, she had escaped to the little bow-windowed room and thereby also evaded from the departing lover an impressive, well-prepared speech concerning the duties of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to admit that Stonehenge looked far more impressive when apparently deserted, than with one or two tourists, however genial and guileless, in a high holiday humour in the foreground. At the same time, as we walked back to the car, I felt that I owed it to myself to lodge a grave protest against the indecent and involving methods ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... fairly well; and if she were not in the battle she was of it. Glimpses she had of the battle—stretchers going up and down in the slow elevator; sheeted figures on their way to the operating room; the clang of the ambulance bell in the courtyard; the occasional cry of a new life ushered in; the impressive silence of an old life going out. She surveyed ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and Willich and other romantic middle-class men held sway there. Karl would say to me: 'Bah! It's all froth, Hans, every bit of it is froth. They cry out for revolution because the words seem big and impressive, but they mustn't be regarded ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo

... and utilized all he got. He used information as good business men use money. He made every idea bear interest; and now setting the music of his soul to the words he acquired, he soon earned a reputation as a gifted conversationalist and an impressive orator. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Rear-Admiral Tyrwhitt of the British Navy, thirty miles off Harwich, England. Within the following week more than eighty other German submarines and a number of Austrian craft were also surrendered to the British. The spectacle of the surrender was most impressive. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... moment the four of us stood in silence, as though under the influence of a strange spell. It was indeed an impressive and a thoughtful sight, this array of boxes and trunks, chests and cases, of all sizes and all kinds. Could these mute witnesses only have spoken! As we stared at them we wondered what had been the fate of their owners—of the daring men, young and old, who had gone forth years ago into the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... place for Huguenot meetings—in the old quarry, about three miles from the town. There were about twenty thousand persons present, ranged, as in an amphitheatre, along the sides of the quarry. It was a most impressive sight. Peasants and gentlemen mixed together. Even the "beau monde" of Nismes was present. Everybody thought that there was now ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles

... calm and very white, was brought in next, and faced the impressive coroner and his jury. He corroborated Hogan's statement as to Ray's language about the pistol; said that he had gone to bed up-stairs at eleven o'clock, leaving Ray reading in the room below, and knew nothing more of the affair until called by Hogan, when ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called "Mind Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will tell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you may pronounce to yourself, to convince ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... I'd been gone from Mrs Dinkman's threequarters of an hour. I had left a small group excited at the free show consequent upon the too successful beautification of a local eyesore; I returned to a sizable crowd viewing an impressive phenomenon. The homely levity had vanished; no one shouted jovial advice. Opinions and comments passed in whispers accompanied by furtive glances toward the lawn, as though it were sentient and might be offended by rude speculation. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... dead is one of the most impressive and affecting things connected with the separate state of the soul. We hear the voice of a dying friend, in some last wish, or charge, or prayer, or farewell, or in some exclamation of joy or hope; and ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... Wordsworth (1770-1850), is placed here out of respect to a boy of eleven years who liked the poem well enough to recite it frequently. The scene is laid on Helvellyn, to me the most impressive mountain of the Lake District of England. Wordsworth is a part of this country. I once heard John Burroughs say: "I went to the Lake District to see what kind of a country it could be that ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... he did not spare the whip; for you will always observe, that a meditative gentleman in a gig is peculiarly impressive on his horse's shoulder. The grey trotted along, or burst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... the old lady in her most impressive manner, "is that you should obey your elders, learn your psalms, get up early, shut the door after you, tell the truth, and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... once been my ideal. She wore a broad straw hat, with artificial roses which made it hang down on one side, and, as she had been working in our garden, she wore huge gloves and carried a trowel in one hand. As she entered, my grandfather rose hastily from his chair and presented us with impressive courtesy. "Royal," he said, "this is your cousin, Beatrice Endicott." If he had not been present, I think we would have shaken hands without restraint. But he made our meeting something of a ceremony. I brought my heels together and bowed as I have been taught to do at the Academy, and ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... been more gracious than Kitty's reception of him, or more effusive than his response. He took his seat beside her, a solid and impressive figure, no less closely observed by such of the habitual guests of the political country-houses as happened to be present, than by the sprinkling of local clergy and country neighbors to whom Kitty was giving tea. Lord Parham, though now in the fourth year of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and disgust were increased by the pity which Edith's pale face aroused. The guests of the night before gave their version of what had happened, omitting none of the impressive details; and a legend formed straightway around the fair-haired Englishwoman, a legend that assumed a really tragic character, owing to the popular story of ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... of a full five minutes or more Phil and Dick stood facing the cacique, while a profound and impressive silence fell upon that vast crowd of Indians, broken only by the rustle of the wind in the tree-tops, and a faint rumble caused by the movement of the naked feet of the assembled multitude, who were in the grip of an excitement so intense that they apparently found it impossible to stand ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... the young man's mind that there was but one true Church, and that of Rome being the most ancient and most powerful, and holding out unspeakably greater advantages to its followers, must be that true one. Still, Alfred was neither very impressive not communicative; the Jesuit priest could draw no positive conclusion as to the effect his remarks had produced, though he felt sure that, could he obtain time to play the fish he had hooked, he should ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... on a beautiful June day, and was as imposing a function in its line as Boston had ever seen. Trinity was crowded to overflowing, and if the ceremony was less imposing than would have been the induction of a Catholic bishop, it was impressive and dignified. The sunlight filtering through the windows of stained glass splashed fantastic colors over the long surpliced train which wound through the aisles down to the chancel, singing processionals of joyous hope; the air was full of the sense ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... in this period that West Point saw the development of one of its greatest field generals. There was nothing impressive in the physical appearance of little H. L. Hyatt. A reasonably good man, ball in hand, his greatest value lay in his head work. As the West Point trainer said one day: "I've got him all bandaged up like ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... coat, with a white cravat and a cocked hat, entered. The dead silence that ensued was not necessary to assure me that he was one in authority,—the look of command his bold, stern features presented; the sharp, piercing eye, the compressed lip, the impressive expression of the whole face, told plainly that he was one who held equally himself ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Luke himself was a gentile (Col. 4:10) and that he was a companion of Paul (Col. 4:14) and the "we" section of Acts. The book does not, therefore, claim to be a complete account of the labors of the early apostles. But it does give in a simple, definite and impressive manner an account of how the religion of Jesus was propagated after his death and of how it was received by those to whom it ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... even that the most transparent and pure may not be capable of infamy, distracted with that horror of personal degradation which is involved in family disgrace, cruel in the intensity of his pride and fear of shame! He has been revealed to us in many lands, always one of the most impressive of human pictures, with no trust of love in him but an overwhelming faith in every vicious possibility. If there is no evidence to prove that, even at the moment when Jeanne was supreme, when he was induced to go to Rheims ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... threatened the destruction of all our buildings. Clarence and myself went into a flurry, and did a great many stupid things, so excited that we did not know what we were about. Father stopped in the midst of the danger to reprove us, and gave us such a solemn and impressive lesson on the necessity of keeping cool, that I never forgot it. Then he told us to harness the horses to the plough. Clarence struck a furrow along the imperilled side of the house; my father mowed a wide swath through the tall grass, ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... his death, striking great awe to the hearts of those to whom the predictions were made. The special prophecy in respect to Grange was softened by the announcement that "God assures me there is mercy for his soul." And it is at once pathetic and impressive to read of the consolation which this assurance gave to the chivalrous Kirkaldy on the verge of the scaffold; and the awe-inspiring spectacle presented to the believers, who after his execution saw his body slowly turn and hang against the western sun, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... plainly," said Evelina, with an affectation of grandeur deeply impressive to her sister. "We have ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... indeed! in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is such, that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her rather ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would think her pretty! but her manners are simple, ardent, impressive. In every motion, her most innocent soul outbeams so brightly, that ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... who, as the head of his house, took a leading part in the ceremonies of the day, there was a devout effort to complete this impressive outward silence by that inward tacitness of mind, esteemed so important by religious Romans in the performance of these sacred functions. To him the sustained stillness without seemed really but to be waiting upon that interior, mental condition of preparation or expectancy, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... And the Local Secretary of the Fund had the key. The model was despatched to him by special messenger to open and to empty, and in the meantime Simeon used his sou'-wester as a collecting-box. This contretemps was impressive. At night Denry received twelve pounds odd at the hands of Simeon Edwards. He showered the odd in largesse on his heroic crew, who had also received many tips. By the evening post the fatal ring arrived from Ruth, as he anticipated. He was just about to throw it ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... Mr. Smith on the death of the persecuting Patriarch, are just and impressive. "What a lesson," he says, "does that event, in such circumstances, teach us! After having martyred that faithful witness Asaad Shidiak, caused the Bible often to be burned, had missionaries insulted and stoned, and boasted that he had at last ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... voice was a feminine one, low and sweet, but clearly distinct, and vibrant with joyous confidence, on through one after another of the ever familiar, but ever impressive phrases of the service that gives into the hands of one man and of one woman the future happiness, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... deepest interest. In him they recognized a man superior to the clamor of vulgar gratification; his indifference to gain, to luxury, and every form of display, his constant preference of the spiritual over the sensual, was always an impressive example to them. The indigent student took fresh courage as he saw in him to what a narrow compass exterior wants might be reduced; the man of fashion and the fop stood abashed before the simplicity of his dress and daily life. And wherever the spirit of classic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... stairs, at intervals, officers armed and in armor were stationed, and keeping their positions faced inwardly, they seemed like statues. Other armed men were in the galleries. The silence was impressive. Coming presently to an arched door, the Prince glanced into a deep chamber, and at the further end of it beheld the Emperor seated in a chair of state on a dais curtained and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... close by is that of St. Guenole, both situated near the sea. The countryman who showed us the church, knelt reverently down at the threshold and put up a short prayer before he entered the sacred building. The general devoutness and strong faith of the Bretons is most impressive and genuine, mixed, no doubt, with great superstition; but, as Wesley says, "Heaven makes allowance for invincible ignorance, and blesses the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... 17th centuries; it was an adaptation of classical circular-arch form to modern requirements. In Rome it conformed most to ancient types; in Venice it assumed its most graceful form. It was more suitable to domestic than to ecclesiastical work; but the dome is an impressive feature, and St. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilderness. If we had not been there, no mortal had heard it. When we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered,— "Tree fall." There is something singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night like this, as if the agencies which overthrow it did not need to be excited, but worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively then than even in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... profound silence reigned. Neither of the two men seemed to know what to do next, or where to go. Then both of them heard the sound of drumming. It was slow, emphatic, and impressive, a long way off and not loud, but against the background of quietness, very marked. It appeared to come from some point out of sight, to the left of where they were standing, but on the same rock shelf. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... the vision of the heavens above continued, while Oowikapun, awed and subdued in spirit, felt thankful that he was only a spectator upon such scenes of ghostly carnage and blood. But impressive and glorious as what had already been revealed, the auroras had yet in reserve the climax of their display, and when it came it nearly froze his blood in his veins, and threw him trembling and terrified on his face upon the ground. Suddenly did the change come. With, the rapidity of a lightning ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... every man, shining in the paths that lead to righteousness and life. There is a moral leadership of God in history; revelation is the record of that leadership. It is by no means confined to words; its most impressive disclosures are in the field of action. "Thus did the Lord," as Dr. Bruce has said, is a more perfect formula of revelation than "Thus said the Lord." It is in that great historical movement of which the Bible is the record ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... in due time at the railroad. He said good-by to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a cigarette while he waited ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... his air of vast leisure; Welton, the lumberman, red-faced, jolly, popular and ungrammatical. The women guarded baskets. All greeted the Ordes with various degrees of hilarity. When the noise had died down, a massive and impressive lady, heretofore unnamed, stepped forward. She held a jewelled arm straight before her, the hand drooping slightly, so that, although she was in reality of but medium stature, she gave the impression of ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... curtain-wise round what is within—the god and goddess decked with jewels and smothered in flowers. Round and round the barge is poled, and in the coloured light all that is gaudy and tawdry is toned, and becomes only oriental and impressive; and the white shrine in the centre reflected in the calm coloured water appears in its alternating dimness, and shining more like a fairy ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... Salvation Army. "Did you ever go to one of their meetings?" asked one. "I sure did!" answered a big fine fellow—a college man, by the way, from one of the well known New England universities. "I sure did!—and it was the most impressive service I ever attended. It was down in an old wine cellar, and the house over it wasn't because it had been blown away. The meeting was led by a little Swede, and he gave a very impressive address, and followed it by a wonderful ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... not attend the lectures when I did, but I often heard him mentioned in society where he attracted attention by his rendering of Delsarte's "Stanzas to Eternity," Pierre Dupont's "Hundred Louis d'or," and many other impressive or dramatic pieces. I know the master considered him possessed of much aptitude ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... tell how 't was, he said he agreed with the Edgewood folks that Jabe was lazier 'n Aaron. 'Well, I snum, I don't see how you make that out,' says the Pleasant River boys; 'for Aaron walked down, 'n' Jabe run a piece o' the way.' 'If Jabe Slocum run,' says the elder, as impressive as if he was preachin',—'if Jabe Slocum ever run, then 't was because he was too doggoned lazy to hold back! 'an' that settled it!... (No, I couldn't eat another mossel, Miss Cummins; I've made out a splendid supper.) ... You can't git such pie 'n' doughnuts anywhere else in the village, ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... be no use,' said the even, determined voice. 'I will write to Dr. Howson from London. And I do hope'—for the first time, the kindly nurse perceived some agitation in this impressive stranger—'I do hope that nobody will write to my sister—to Mrs. Sarratt. She is very delicate. Excitement and disappointment might just kill her. That's ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... inward miraculous transformation of character by the profoundest of personal experiences. In all socialistic or Catholic churches—whether heathen, ethnic, or Christian—young people are admitted to membership after a definite period of training and an initiation by means of an impressive ritual. In all Protestant churches, initiation takes place as the result of personal experiences and mature convictions, and is therefore usually deferred until adult life ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... beaver anew, left the office by the side door, carrying under his arm a mahogany box about two feet long and one foot wide, partially covered with a large linen cloth. His beaver hat was cocked on the side of his head, with an air supposed to be impressive. He wore the Major's coat and flowered velvet waistcoat respecting which he had won so signal a victory in the morning, and he flaunted a large bandanna handkerchief, the ownership of which he had transferred still ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... and roared;—do you remember? There was always something impressive to me in the descriptions, in the old story, of the changes in the sea, and of the tempest that rose up, more and more fearful, as the fisherman's wife grew more ambitious and more and more grasping in her desires, each time that the fisherman went down to the sea-shore. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... father, or such he appeared to Morris, but of the daughter what could be said? Without doubt she was a woman of strange and impressive power. At this very moment her sweet voice, touched with that continual note of pleading, still echoed in his brain. And the dark, quiet eyes that now slept, and now shone large, as her thoughts fled through them, like some mysterious sky at night in which the summer lightning pulses intermittently! ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard

... height of two hundred and eighteen feet. It covered an area of two acres, three roods, and twenty-one poles, or about that of an ordinary London square. The cubic contents amounted to above nine million feet of solid masonry, and are calculated to have weighed 702,460 tons. The height was not very impressive. Two hundred and twenty feet is an altitude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid of the Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass was immense, the masonry was excellent, and ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... ignorant debased savage. I thought he must have sunk exhausted from the effort he made to speak, but the spirit which animated him gave him strength which seemed, not his own. The sun went down, darkness came on rapidly, still he continued speaking. How solemnly impressive ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... the runaway. So we promised him, each on his word of honor, that we would do this; and he insisted that we should shake hands with him as a pledge and as a token of mutual confidence, which we accordingly did. Altogether it was quite an impressive little ceremonial—and rather dramatic, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... appropriate to his genius, and complete absorption of it into his being; that is how the epic poet works. Allegory is a beautiful way of inculcating and asserting some special significance in life; but epic has a severer task, and a more impressive one. It has not to say, Life in the world ought to mean this or that; it has to show life unmistakably being significant. It does not gloss or interpret the fact of life, but re-creates it and charges the fact itself with the poet's own sense of ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... in his cell, with a thick and richly-clasped volume before him, a single lamp on his table, on the wall a crucifix, plain but decent furniture, with his bald head, and pale, impressive face, would have made a fine study for a painter. By such men, the embers of learning and of science were nursed into a faint but steady flame, burning through the long, gloomy night of the dark ages, unseen by profane eyes, like the vestal fire ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... rather impressive. It's like looking up suddenly from some nocturnal fete—all Japanese lanterns and fireworks—and seeing the moon gazing down serenely and unseeingly upon one; it startles and sobers one ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... more excellent method. I admit that their language sometimes enables them to take what, in words at least, is a sublimer position than mine. Kant's famous phrase, "Thou must, therefore thou canst," is impressive. And yet, it seems to me to involve an obvious piece of logical juggling. It is quite true that whenever it is my duty to act in a certain way, it must be a possibility; but that is only because an impossibility cannot be a duty. It is not my duty to fly, because I have not wings; ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... to him. The leaders issued a powerful manifesto to the workers of Denmark; pointing to the abyss from which they had climbed and to the pinnacles of light toward which they were striving upward; and warning them, in impressive phrases, to stand firm and to hold together. A statement as to the origin of the lock-out and the intention which lay behind it was printed and distributed throughout the country, with appeal for assistance ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... missis,' and instead of overwhelming me as usual with petitions and complaints, they rose silently and quietly, in a manner that would have become the most orderly of Christian congregations accustomed to all the impressive decorum of civilised church privileges. Poor people! They are said to have what a very irreligious young English clergyman once informed me I had—a 'turn for religion.' They seem to me to have a 'turn' for instinctive ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... promise from her: only for himself, he was her bound lover while he breathed; would keep himself free to claim her, when he came back in five years, or ten, or twenty, if she had not chosen better. He would not bind her; but I can imagine how impressive his dark, bitter face must have made this renunciation to the little girl with the violet eyes; how tenderly she repudiated her freedom. She went out as a governess, and sat down to wait. And absence only rivetted faster the chain of her affection: ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... with vermin. The men carried short bows and arrows, one of them, who appeared to be the chief, having a lynx's skin for a quiver. A few had fishing tackle, but the bystanders said that they lived almost entirely upon grasshoppers. They were a most impressive incongruity in the midst of the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... ELINOR MORDAUNT, has collected into the volume that she calls Before Midnight (CASSELL) a series of short stories of a psychic (though not always ghostly) character, which, while not very eerie, or on the same high level, are at their best both original and impressive. The first of them, which affords excuse for a highly-intriguing cover-picture, is at once the most spooksome and the least satisfactory. That is to say that, though it opens with a genuine and quite horrible thrill, the "explanation" is obscure and tame. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism anything grand or impressive about it—anything that "intends greatly" and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... to the fortress and wandered through its gloomy, impressive galleries, seeing little of the armament because visitors are barred from the real fortifications. The fortress did not seem especially impregnable and was, taken altogether, a distinct disappointment to them; but the ride through the town ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... the principal organizations which Booker T. Washington founded for the purpose of helping his people to help themselves tells a story of constructive achievement more impressive than any amount ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... Alda is a very beautiful and human piece. Alda was Roland's bethrothed and the music aims at suggesting her loveliness and her mourning for her lover. There are passages of intensely impressive melancholy in the Fragment and its human feeling is typical of MacDowell. Altogether the two pieces are music on a high plane and worth attention for their own intrinsic value, quite apart from their connection with the symphony ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... presented itself, his people must come to him for information. His dignified manner would have done credit to a great statesman. Facing the deputation, with Paul standing at his right, he began a harangue in the Sioux tongue, using gestures that were at once impressive and graceful. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... costumes, was the pursuit of specialists. But Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Salisbury Cathedral, and York Minster, ruins such as Melrose and Fountain Abbeys, Crichton Castle, and a hundred others were impressive witnesses for the civilization that had built them and must, sooner or later, demand respectful attention. Hence it is not strange that the Gothic revival went hand in hand with the romantic movement in literature, if indeed it did not give it ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the happenings of the previous night, the Tuppy-Angela situation seemed more or less to have slipped a cog. With every desire to look for the silver lining, I could not but feel that the rift between these two haughty spirits had now reached such impressive proportions that the task of bridging same would be ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... quote his exact language: there was too much of it, but he made an impressive showing of the amount of literature that could be had at a very low price per pound. Mr. Dixon was a hypnotist. He fixed me with his glittering eye, and he talked so fast, and his ideas upon the subject were so original that he held me spellbound. At first I was inclined ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... is impressive, but reason did lead to some bizarre—in the light of present-day medical knowledge—conclusions. Aware of the value to the scientist of close observation and of the necessity to reason about these observations, Clayton was in the finest seventeenth-century scientific tradition. Observing a ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... Baron Muench- Bellinghausen—for Friederich Halm is a pseudonym—are much less known in this country than they deserve to be. He is one of the most gifted of the minor poets of Germany, a master of vivid style and of impressive, varied, and beautiful thought. Griselda first appeared at Vienna in 1835. It was enthusiastically received and soon ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... especially on the mountains, but also far and wide in the lowlands, and we are told that in the darkness and stillness of night the moving groups, lit up by the flickering glow of the flames, presented an impressive spectacle. In some places the people shewed their sense of the sanctity of the fires by using for fuel the trees past which the gay procession had defiled, with fluttering banners, on Corpus Christi Day. In others the children ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... themselves within the communion rail; and the choir seats were occupied by men in khaki, for the most part deplorably travel-stained and tattered. Soldiers sat on the pulpit stairs; and into the very pulpit khaki intruded, for I was there and of course in uniform. It was a most impressive sight, this coming together into the House of God of comrades in arms fresh from many a hard fought conflict ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... consulted aside with the judge, and then in an authoritative tone, made the more impressive by the decided way with which he hitched up his ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... knew the sayings he had heard were but the outriders of a mighty army; that, in fact, this man had treated him as if he were a child. Who could he be? And whence came the great storehouse of wisdom which lay behind that impressive brow? From whence came the influence with which he spoke? His voice was low, but every word struck home and flashed forth strong conviction. Was he a god in disguise? Was he one of the gods come down to witness the festivities of the great ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... moved to use the story in the. "Contributors' Club," and warned Clemens against letting it get into the newspapers. He declared he thought it one of the most impressive things he had ever read. But Clemens seems never to have allowed it to be used in any form. In its entirety, therefore, it is quite ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sad and impressive was the funeral of Colonel Stopford, who was shot early in the fight the day before. His grave was made in a peaceful spot beside one of the gardens of the village, and garlands gathered by his men of the 2nd Coldstream Guards were placed all ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... to whom, in all probability, I shall never preach again, and therefore I feel that I must exert my utmost power in that last chance." And in this, even if this were all, one sees why each of his sermons is so impressive, and why his energy never lags. Always, with him, is the feeling that he is in the world to do all the good he can possibly do; not a moment, not an ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... festoons and trianguloids and drapings throughout its entire length and breadth, its atmosphere vocal with the strains of martial music. Everywhere were women dressed with elegance and taste. The Tory ladies, gowned in the height of fashion, were to Marjorie a revelation at once amazing and impressive. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... not to forget before your journey, to perform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit. I have my reasons for this. Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but in the most impressive and tender manner,—the most tender; and, oh,—but I need not be in such anxiety. I beg my compliments to Roxalana, who is to drink tea this evening with the Sultan. All sorts of pretty speeches to Madlle Mizerl; she must not doubt my love. I have her constantly before my eyes in her fascinating ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... financial system. If in this particular instance our predicament is at all influenced by a recent insistence upon the position we should occupy in our relation to certain questions concerning our foreign policy, this furnishes a signal and impressive warning that even the patriotic sentiment of our people is not an adequate substitute ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... "This isn't a joking matter, sir. Our newspaper will have plenty of special features, and Beth's suggestion is a good one. It sounds impressive. You see, Arthur, we've got to use you as a figurehead, but so you won't loaf on your job I've decided to appoint you ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... paused a moment, and then proceeded in an impressive voice: "But Mrs. Stiles's injuries, gentlemen, are not slight; she does not ask you for a mere nominal sum in compensation of them, nor, in view of the facts, will any sum that you do give her seem excessive. I shall show you, gentlemen, that Mrs. Stiles, a widow, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... crew at that time was made up, in part, of the lowest characters in society. What, then, must be the strength and excellence of that moral feeling in England, which can display itself thus nobly where it would be the least expected! The fact conveys an impressive lesson; for if the intelligence, decision, and kindness, which, with few exceptions, characterize our sea-officers, can effect such happy results where they operate on the most unpromising materials, it is clear, that whatever faults the lower ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... found an impressive scene in the gloom of the big cellar. The man who personated the inspector (he was no stranger to the part) was speaking harshly, and giving bogus orders to his bogus subordinates for the removal of his prisoners. Evidently nothing enlightening ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... and disorder we cannot suffer to continue, of women ill trained for motherhood and worked beyond care for cleanliness, of a vast amount of preventable suffering? And these figures of filth and bad clothing are paralleled by others at least equally impressive, displaying emaciation, under-nutrition, anaemia and every other painful and wretched consequence of neglect and insufficiency. These underfed, under-clothed, undersized children are also the backward children; they grow up through a darkened, joyless childhood ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... next day in the afternoon Sam received an order to report at once at the headquarters of General Laughter. He hastened to obey, and was ushered into the presence of that distinguished officer in the palace. It was an impressive sight that met his eyes. The general was believed to weigh some three hundred pounds, but he looked as if he weighed nearer five hundred. He was dressed in a white duck suit with brass buttons, the jacket unbuttoned in front and showing his underclothes. He was suffering a good deal from ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... neatly (as he described it) with riband;—the subject of the discourse being the "Abuse of Riches." Having read it over and corrected some theological errors, (such as "it is easier for a camel, as Moses says," &c.) he delivered the sermon in his most impressive style, much to the delight of his own party, and to the satisfaction, as he unsuspectingly flattered himself, of all the rest of the congregation, among whom was Mr. Sheridan's wealthy ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... boys and masters alike were there; and all by the same sudden impulse stopped where they were standing when first they saw the hearse, and stood still without a word. The scene was the more strangely impressive because it was accidental and spontaneous. Meanwhile, the coffin was carried downstairs, and placed in the hearse, which moved off slowly across the court between the line of bareheaded and motionless mourners. It was thus that Daubeny left Saint Winifred's, and passed under the Norman ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... however, a grave impressive voice was dwelling at length on a topic remote from the event of the evening. Lady Peach considered that all social gatherings, of whatever nature, were intended for the recital of minor domestic tragedies. She lost ...
— When William Came • Saki

... had fits. The town was exceedingly filthy—the remains of the crocodile they had been eating the week before last, and piles of fish offal, and remains of an elephant, hippo or manatee—I really can't say which, decomposition was too far advanced—united to form a most impressive stench. The bark huts are, as usual in a Fan town, in unbroken rows; but there are three or four streets here, not one only, as in most cases. The palaver house is in the innermost street, and there we went, and noticed that the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... when called upon to reply: "I disclaim, with all the sincerity of my soul, any special praise for anything I have done. I have simply tried to maintain the integrity of my soul before God, and to do my duty." In Edinburgh, the "freedom of the city" was conferred upon him with impressive ceremonies—he being the third American ever thus honored. In Paris he was also received with distinction, his special mission to that city being to attend the International Anti-slavery Convention, in the capacity of a delegate ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... tall man, as an Imperial Guardsman had to be, with a finely-shaped head and dark hair that was shot through with a single streak of gray from an old burn wound. In an officer's uniform, he looked impressive, but in civilian dress he ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett

... stood, kingly and impressive; its fair white sides inscribed with many names; cradled in three shepherds' crooks; and on the top, as if to guard the Cup's contents, an exquisitely carved collie's head. The Shepherds' Trophy, the goal of his life's race, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... the body of water he climbed another ridge, upon whose crest the growth of wood was slight, and took a sweeping survey of the surrounding country. The scenery was magnificent and impressive. Far to the northward rose a towering range of mountains, whose snowy peaks pierced the sky and suggested enormous white clouds piled against the horizon. To the west rose another range, one of whose summits was loftier than any within ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... of the most finished artists in words that literature has produced. But how true George Sand's criticism is! "Chez Obermann la sensibilite est active, l'intelligence est paresseuse ou insuffisante." He has a certain antique power of making the truisms of life splendid and impressive. No one can write more poetical exercises than he on the old text of pulvis et umbra sumus, but beyond this his philosophical power fails him. As soon as he leaves the region of romantic description how wearisome ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... interment was short, and of the simplest. The committing of the dead to final rest in the earth, is always impressive. Man's innate egotism always invests the final hiding away of the remains of one of his race in perpetual oblivion, with solemnity and awe. One of the lords has departed; let man and nature observe and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... daughter struck me as having one of the most intelligent and impressive countenances I ever looked upon, and I spoke of her as such to Mrs. Wordsworth, Miss Fenwick, and to others. The indications which I saw in her of a somewhat alarming state of health, I could not but mention to you, when you ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... The most impressive thing to me about the religion of the soldiers was its wholesomeness. "Over there" a man dared to be natural. The mask of pretense was torn off. Men were not hypocrites in the face of death. They were free; and that freedom showed itself in their religion as well as in their pleasures. ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... interested and attentive. The words were not familiar to the company, so that none could join, and the deep monotone of the woman, at first low, and by degrees becoming louder and more animated, made every word distinct and impressive. ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... feeling too conscious of the inadequacy of our analysis. We see human beings possessed by different impulses, and working out a pre-ordained result, as the subtle forces drive each along the path marked out for him; and history becomes the more impressive to us ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... stairs, I affect surprise and remark in a casual way that I did not know that it was circus day until I heard the elephants. This produces mouse-like stillness at once. Really, I know no other devices except being very impressive and putting quietness on the ground of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... climb heaven-ward the Manmoda hills. On the right, with its ruined mosque and conning-tower grey in the morning light, the massive pile of Shivner frowns over the valley, like some dismasted battleship, hurled upwards into sudden petrifaction by the hands of Titans. It is an impressive scene—the pre-Christian monastery behind you; the relics of Musulman and Maratha sovereignty in front; and below, bathed in a sea of morning-mist which Surya is hastening to disperse, Junner, the town of ancient memories, in her latest avatar of a British Taluka ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... requested me to send him some seed. He said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise as an appropriation for the St. Domingo business. The playful bean seemed also to please him; and he said he had never seen such impressive corn and potatoes at this time of year; that it was to him an unexpected pleasure, and one of the choicest memories that he should take away with him of his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... from the sun with which she was clothed stand out in marked contrast with the later description given of her flight into and seclusion in the wilderness. The latter stage of her experience I shall describe further on, but a brief allusion to it will make her first appearance more impressive. The wilderness describes the apostasy which was to envelop the woman and thus obscure her light. Therefore her first appearance as in the planetary heavens presents a sublime description of her dignity and excellence in the morning time of the gospel era. Her light shone upon all and her glory ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... is said to have been filled with pauses due to a certain slowness of speech, but the pauses are "lit by the lightning flash of a flying eyebrow, and the impressive nodding of ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... a great cheer rose from all parts of the plain: the Royalists were descending the craggy side of Condorcanqui. Between the infantry of each division appeared the cavalry, the riders leading their horses and advancing with difficulty. It was an impressive scene, and we stood ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... general that I can only echo it. We have seen it to the greatest advantage both from Calton Hill and Arthur's Seat, and our lodgings in Princess Street allow us a fine view of the Castle, always impressive, but peculiarly so in the moonlit evenings of our first week here, when a veil of mist added to its apparent size, and at the same time gave it the air with which Martin, in his illustrations of "Paradise Lost," has invested the palace which "rose ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... and holy passion, young man," said I, somewhat startled by his impressive manner, "however presumptuous, as far as social considerations are concerned, it might be, by which you affect to be inspired, is utterly inconsistent with the cruel, dastardly crime of which such damning evidence has an ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... the star grew upon my vision, until, in time, it shone as brightly as had the planet Jupiter, in the old-earth days. With increased size, its color became more impressive; reminding me of a huge emerald, scintillating rays of fire across ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... Robison, Watt's intimate friend of youth in Glasgow, was understood to have been deeply impressive, and to have had a decisive effect upon ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... considering the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight. It was a remarkable face,—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of &c. adj.; feel, perceive. render sensible &c. adj.; sharpen, cultivate, tutor. cause sensation, impress; excite an impression, produce an impression. Adj. sensible, sensitive, sensuous; aesthetic, perceptive, sentient; conscious &c. (aware) 490. acute, sharp, keen, vivid, lively, impressive, thin-skinned. Adv. to the quick. Phr. "the touch'd needle trembles ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... goes to hell for ten years to save her husband, and stays there another ten, having been granted permission to carry away as many souls as could cling to her skirt. L'eo Lesp'es may have added a few details, but I have no doubt of the essential antiquity of what seems to me the most impressive form of one of the supreme parables of the world. The parable came to the Greeks in the sacrifice of Alcestis, but her sacrifice was less overwhelming, less apparently irremediable. L'eo Lesp'es tells ...
— The Countess Cathleen • William Butler Yeats

... them. It is not enough to hope (or fear?) the rising of new forms; we have also to investigate the possibility of upholding the forms and ideals which have hitherto been the bases of human life. Darwin has here given his age the most earnest and most impressive lesson. This side of Darwin's theory is of peculiar interest to some special philosophical problems to which I ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... Prussia—visiting the Universities, and storing his mind with German literature. From the walls of a convent he commanded a view of part of the field of Hohenlinden during that sanguinary contest, and proceeded afterwards in the track of Moreau's army over the scene of combat. This impressive sight produced the Battle of Hohenlinden—an ode which is as original as it is spirited, and stands by itself in British literature. The poet tells a story of the phlegm of a German postilion at this time, who was driving him post by a place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various

... comet-like streamers into which the whole ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet below the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close range while cut off from all the world beside, is terribly impressive. A less nerve-trying view may be obtained from a fissured portion of the edge of the cliff about forty yards to the eastward of the fall. Seen from this point towards noon, in the spring, the rainbow on its brow seems to be ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... and keeping them so. What this rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will appreciate, none can be very good. But to gain that rule, what may be called the impressive elements of a polity are incomparably more important than its useful elements. How to get the obedience of men is the hard problem; what you do with ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... it, he guessed it must be the Episcopal ritual for horseback exercise. My vocal cords, while tuning for my lowly part in life's orchestra, for a day at a time would seem to stick to a decent tenor or drop to an impressive bass which would have fitted me to be a preacher, but a sudden attack of mumps, with measles complicating, pulled them to one side and burned the bridge. They afterward drew tight down on the sounding board, so that now when I talk the rickety buzz is like that of a horse-fiddle played ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... had achieved in words of energetic simplicity, more impressive than all the tinsel of rhetoric. [Footnote: Witness the following. He speaks of himself in the third person. "To acquit himself of the commission with which he was charged, he has neglected all his private affairs, because they were alien to his enterprise; he has omitted nothing ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... slight titter at this sly reference to the magnitude of the lies that would have to be taken in, but Ujarak's vanity rendered him invulnerable to such light shafts. After glaring round with impressive solemnity, so as to deepen the silence and intensify ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... walked down Fifth Avenue the other day (In the languid summertime everybody strolls down Fifth Avenue); And I passed women, dainty in their filmy frocks, And much bespatted men with canes. And great green busses lumbered past me, And impressive limousines, ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... impregnate and to elevate the mind. —And if the vulgar joy by its own weight Wearied itself out of the memory, The scenes which were a witness of that joy Remained in their substantial lineaments 600 Depicted on the brain, and to the eye Were visible, a daily sight; and thus By the impressive discipline of fear, By pleasure and repeated happiness, So frequently repeated, and by force 605 Of obscure feelings representative Of things forgotten, these same scenes so bright, So beautiful, so majestic in themselves, Though yet the day was distant, did become Habitually ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... by the committee appointed at the first session. We do not know now why the change was made, though there must have been some little discussion, as it was only made by a vote of 6 to 5. We can only imagine now how much more beautiful and impressive the buildings of the future University might have been, lining the brows of the hills overlooking the Huron Valley, rather than spreading over the flat rough clearing of the Rumsey farm that by that time had lost the attraction which the original forest trees must once ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... sees a tendency to gloat over the ghastly exhibits. The pictures portray gallows with a large number of natives hanging side by side. In some, soldiers are drawn up in hollow square, one side of it open to the civil population, and there is little doubt that these are punitive and impressive official executions, carried out under "proper judicial conditions" as conceived by Germans. But what offends one's taste so much are the photographs of German officers and men standing with self-conscious and self-satisfied expressions beside the grim gallows on which their victims ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... all other nations revolved. His mind was polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... 4: Benjamin Franklin's visit to the University of Goettingen is described in the Goettingische Anzeigen for Sept. 13, 1766, which states that the session of the Royal Society of Sciences held on the 19th of the preceding July was more impressive than usual. "The two famous English scholars, the royal physician, Mr. Pringle, and Mr. Benjamin Franklin, from Pennsylvania, who happened to be at that time in Goettingen on a trip through Germany, took their seats as members of ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... in the collected courage of a brave man more impressive than any menace; and courage is a thing which acts upon all natures, however vile. Strongly moved by the calm audacity of the magistrate the ruffian, who had seized the knife with menacing vivacity, now set it down upon the table, and with a faltering voice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... impressive in his commands upon these points, and the chief pledged his faith upon them, delighted beyond measure by the promise of an ample supply of powder, blankets, and provisions for his tribe, while the Intendant added an abundance of all such delicacies as could be forwarded, for the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... of astonishment when remonstrated with for what appeared a most dare-devil performance. The only person, of course, that could remonstrate with telling effect was our captain, himself a man of dare-devil tradition; and really, for me, who knew under whom I was serving, those were impressive scenes. Captain S- had a great name for sailor-like qualities—the sort of name that compelled my youthful admiration. To this day I preserve his memory, for, indeed, it was he in a sense who completed my training. It was often a stormy process, but let that pass. I am sure he meant well, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... his "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," prints the poem, with the title of "The Soul's Errand," and he also gives it to Sylvester, "as the now generally received author of an impressive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... Bible, and, turning towards the man, whose bright eyes were fixed earnestly upon him, read, in a low impressive voice, several of those passages in which a free salvation to the chief of sinners is offered through Jesus Christ. He did not utter a word of comment; but he read with deep solemnity, and paused ever and anon to look in the face of the sick man as he read the blessed words of comfort. The man ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... Warrior, the Negro Servitor, the Mongolian Warrior. On they come to join the Nations of the West in the great Court of the Universe. This group is as fine as any group ever seen at an exposition. It rises in its impressive pyramidal height to a climax in the Spirit of the East - a fitting pivot on which to ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... eighteen feet. It covered an area of two acres, three roods, and twenty-one poles, or about that of an ordinary London square. The cubic contents amounted to above nine million feet of solid masonry, and are calculated to have weighed 702,460 tons. The height was not very impressive. Two hundred and twenty feet is an altitude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid of the Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass was immense, the masonry was excellent, and the ingenuity shown in the construction was great. Sunk in the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... in an impressive diminuendo, and the young man turned toward her. His eyes were languishing, his voice gentle, persuasive, as though it had but been the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... could not understand why Mr. Mathews should underrate it as he did. Longfellow showed us a book given him by Charles Sumner. In it was an old engraving (from a painting by Giulio Clovio) of the moon, in which Dante is walking with his companion. He said it was a most impressive picture to him. He knew it in the original; also there is a very good copy in the Cambridge Library among the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... his speech without smoking the pipe or shaking hands, which was a breach of etiquette; and, above all, he was the chief of a tribe that had inflicted upon them an injury, for which blood alone could atone. Under these discouraging circumstances, Keokuk proceeded, in his forcible, persuasive and impressive manner. Such was the touching character of his appeal, such the power of his eloquence, that the features of his enemies gradually relaxed; they listened; they assented; and when he concluded by remarking, proudly, but in a conciliating tone, "I came here to say that I am sorry for the imprudence ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... A rather impressive example of possession may be selected from Livingstone's 'Missionary Travels' (p. 86). The adventurous Sebituane was harried by the Matabele in a new land of his choice. He thought of descending the Zambesi till he was in touch with white men; but Tlapane, 'who held intercourse ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... its strength and in its weakness; brilliant in passages, faulty in architechtonic, and uneven in execution. Its supernatural machinery—Byron said that it had more "gramarye" than grammar—is not impressive, if due exception be made of the opening of Michael ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... contemporary with each generation. For while the mediaeval frame-work upon which Dante constructed the "Divine Comedy" becomes obsolete, the fundamental thought of the poet about human souls and the identity of the deed and its result not only remains true to experience but has received the most impressive confirmation from subsequent history ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... delightful to the ear. They are the outcome of a discontent with prose, not of that high-strung sensibility which compels the true poet into verse. This must not be said without exception. The Threnody, written after the death of a deeply loved child, is a beautiful and impressive lament. Pieces like Musquetaquid, the Adirondacs, the Snowstorm, The Humble-Bee, are pretty and pleasant bits of pastoral. In all we feel the pure ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley

... pots, or cut freshly and set in crystal vases, were grouped together with the greatest taste and artistic selection of delicate colouring, forming, as it seemed, a kind of blossom-wreathed shrine, above which, against the carved chimney itself, hung a wonderfully impressive picture of the Virgin and Child. Placed below this, and slightly towarde the centre of the room, was the Bishop's table-desk and chair, arranged so that whenever he raised his head from his work, the serene soft ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... liquor-case, and having polished up his old beaver anew, left the office by the side door, carrying under his arm a mahogany box about two feet long and one foot wide, partially covered with a large linen cloth. His beaver hat was cocked on the side of his head, with an air supposed to be impressive. He wore the Major's coat and flowered velvet waistcoat respecting which he had won so signal a victory in the morning, and he flaunted a large bandanna handkerchief, the ownership of which he had transferred still ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... words suggest more than they reveal. Cooper was not a writer of this kind. He belonged to that class of literary artists who convey their precise meaning by exactness and fullness of (p. 051) detail. The vagueness and indefiniteness with which this story abounds is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible and absurd. In all of Cooper's novels, it is a fault that the characters are often represented as acting without sufficient ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... general poverty of the country, and the scarcity of clocks and watches, must have given rise to the adoption of the hour sand-glass, a simple instrument, but yet elegant and impressive, for the measurement of a brief portion ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various

... "The last we heard of him he was in the Maine lumber woods. But that was three years ago. I don't know where he is now, and," added Peter deliberately, taking his gum from his mouth to make his statement more impressive, "I don't care." ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... swing as the ocean itself. Particular attention should be called to the fugue in the Messiah "And by His stripes we were healed [Transcriber's Note: And with His stripes we are healed]." One of the most impressive fugues in modern literature is the a capella chorus Urbs Syon Unica from H.W. Parker's Hora Novissima. From among the organ works of Bach everyone should know the Fugues in G minor, in A minor, in D major[38] ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... cannot be broken into any steady habits of industry, but where by wise kindness the black fellow has been kept from the vices of civilization he is a most engaging savage. Tall, thin, muscular, with fine black beard and hair and a curiously wide and impressive forehead, he is not at all unhandsome. He is capable of great devotion to a white master, and is very plucky by daylight, though his courage usually goes with the fall of night. He takes to a horse naturally, and some of the finest riders ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox

... may be best suited to their respective capacities: in conjunction with the most approved course of common school-education. Particular attention is likewise paid to the elevation of their moral character, so likely to be permanently influenced by means of impressive friendly admonition, the frequent inculcation and daily observance of religious duties, and the exciting hope of reward for good behaviour in a mitigation of their sentence: in short, by the most encouraging and kind treatment, as far as is compatible with the strictness ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... of the girl was singularly compelling; there was something vividly impressive about her just now, though her pallid, prematurely mature face and the thin figure in the regulation black dress and white apron showed ordinarily only insignificant. "Tell me now," she repeated, with a monotonous emphasis that somehow moved Sarah to obedience against ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... and the stately dome Which, ovaled by the slow but tireless hand Of eons of disintegrating time, Still with impressive aspect rears its brow ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... "Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... mysterious. The connexion of the mail with the state and the executive government—a connexion obvious, but yet not strictly defined—gave to the whole mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive were those terrors because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates: with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... been in a generous mood when she had endowed Mrs. Pennypoker, for she had given her a massive frame and constitution of bronze, which made her thoroughly intolerant of those unfortunates who were not similarly blessed. But, impressive as Mrs. Pennypoker was in most respects, there was yet one undignified peculiarity which marred the otherwise perfect majesty of her appearance. Like Samson, her vulnerable point lay in her hair; or, more properly speaking, in her lack of it. The ravages ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... observing. There is action enough in the plot, energy enough in the dialogue, and abundance of individual beauties in both; but there is throughout a certain air of stiffness and effort, which abstracts from the theatrical illusion. The language, in general impressive and magnificent, is now and then inflated into bombast. The characters do not, as it were, verify their human nature, by those thousand little touches and nameless turns, which distinguish the genius essentially dramatic from the genius merely poetical; the Proteus ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... rolled out magnificently over the awed gathering, and the minister flattened his chin and rolled his eyes up at the people in his most impressive way. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... itself among the pleasant fruits of the tree of knowledge. See, then, that you love in the spirit, and not in the flesh. If you love in the spirit, and if you meet with one who seeks the same God, you should love that seeker; and should he be only——" here her words became very impressive—"should he be only a distant seeker, yes, even a wanderer, who but dimly catches a glimpse of the light, and who follows it but feebly, and be his appearance, conversation, and natural mind ever so doubtful, you should love him for ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... a fine person, which perhaps was even more impressive at fifty-seven than it had been earlier in life. There were no distinctively clerical lines in the face, no tricks of starchiness or of affected ease: in his Inverness cape he could not have been identified except as a gentleman with handsome dark features, a nose ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of nothing impressive being said, and I ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... let us consider Boris Godounof, for there is a historical drama suited to its music. I saw Boris Godounof with considerable interest. I heard pleasant and impressive passages, and others less so. In one scene I saw an insignificant friar who suddenly becomes the Emperor in the next scene. One entire act is made up of processions, the ringing of bells, popular songs, and dazzling costumes. In ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... and directed their course through the woods. On this occasion, Mr. Park says, "the stillness of the air, the howling of the wild beasts, and the deep solitude of the forest, made the scene solemn and impressive. Not a word was uttered by any of us, but in a whisper; all were attentive, and every one anxious to show his sagacity, by pointing out to me the wolves and hyenas, as they glided, like shadows, from one thicket to another." The following afternoon they arrived ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... simple but impressive ceremonies were held in the public square at the rear of Independence Hall. On temporary platforms sat 5,000 distinguished guests, and a chorus of 1,200 singers. The square and the neighboring streets were filled with a dense throng. Richard Henry Lee, grandson of the mover of the Declaration of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... wait till he comes," said the old lady, with a sort of tender confidence that was impressive and almost solemn. Mrs. Barclay's thoughts made a few quick gyrations; and then the door opened, and Lois, who had left the room, came in again, followed by one of her sisters bearing a plate ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... most of the land had been confiscated; and now, shrunken like the papal power at Rome, the temple claimed, in land, only those acres bounded by its own hedges and stone temple walls. There were the main building itself, silent, impressive in towering majesty; subordinate chapels and dwellings for priests, a huge smoke-stained refectory, the low nunnery in its spreading gardens and, down the northern slope of the hill, the cemetery, a lichen-growth, as it were, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... fact, it is idle to say that, being unaccustomed to the grand scale on which law costs present themselves on occasion, he was unspeakably shocked and he grew very pale and silent on hearing these impressive sentences. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... in the new town-hall, With sundry farmers from the region round. The Squire presided, dignified and tall, His air impressive and his reasoning sound; Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small; Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found, But enemies enough, who every one Charged them with all the crimes beneath ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... reached the cemetery impressive services, according to the ritual of the order, were conducted by Commander Ben Richards of Artesian Tent, Knights of the Maccabees, a final prayer was offered by Rev. Crouch and the body of Tom Davis was lowered to rest. The floral tributes were beautiful. Friends brought ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... attending as children any other than the regular Sabbath services; but we were not neglected in this respect at home, so far as it lay in our parents' ability to help us. We regularly gathered around our mother's knee, reading the impressive little stories found in such illustrated booklets as the Teacher's Offering, the Child's Companion, the Children's Missionary Record (Church of Scotland), the Tract Magazine, and Watts' Divine Songs for Children. These readings were always accompanied ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn't know why he was so tired, he had felt quite "bobbish" all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... the ancient edifice, one impressed me in the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,— centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse of a living past, like the graffiti of Pompeii. I find it is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention and takes hold of my memory. This is a tendency of which I suppose I ought to be ashamed, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... the whole camp was astir, when the Arabs went down on their knees looking towards Mecca to say their prayers, an impressive sight, for every man seemed in earnest. Soon afterwards the Sheik approached and inquired whether Stephen and Roger ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers, or what awfully dull people, they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly unaccountable. Here I expected to doze all the way across the desert, while in fact I 've grudged my eyes time ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... Helen and the others look coarse and slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing with the world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come from the humming oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so firmly but so loosely; he made the others appear like old ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... an established Frohman star. After "Heartsease" had had several successful road seasons, Frohman presented Miller in "The Only Way," an impressive dramatization of Charles Dickens's great story, "A Tale of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... and splendour of Athens, this institution rose into celebrity and magnificence, until it appears to have become the most impressive spectacle of the heathen world. It is evident that a people so imitative would reject no innovations or additions that could increase the interest or the solemnity of exhibition; and still less such as might come (through whatsoever ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... influenced by pity. And it will be desirable to produce that effect by common topics, such as those by which the power of fortune over all men is shown, and the weakness of men too is displayed, and if such an argument is argued with dignity and with impressive language, then the minds of men are greatly softened, and prepared to feel pity, while they consider their own weakness in the contemplation of the misfortunes ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... streamers into which the whole ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet below the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close range while cut off from all the world beside, is terribly impressive. A less nerve-trying view may be obtained from a fissured portion of the edge of the cliff about forty yards to the eastward of the fall. Seen from this point towards noon, in the spring, the rainbow on its brow seems to be broken up and mingled ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... that Miss RHODA BROUGHTON has not thought fit to publish her total fictional tonnage (if without disrespect I may employ a metaphor of the moment) on the title-page of her latest volume. Certainly the tale of her output must by this time reach impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that A Thorn in the Flesh (STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... the gardens, leading the way under the impression that the stranger is following him. The majestic one, however, comes straight into the room to the end of the table, where, with impressive deliberation, he takes off the false nose and then the domino, rolling up the nose into the domino and throwing the bundle on the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasized ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... to obtain, at first sight, the most impressive view of the Cathedral Church of St. Alban, should alight at the London and North-Western Station, at which all the trains from Euston and many of those from King's Cross arrive. This station is about half a mile south of the city, and from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... had brought the dead to life? They only laughed when such things were related. Why did He not do something now? Just one miracle, and we should be saved. Perhaps He is intentionally letting things come to the worst, so that His power may appear the more impressive. They will take Him and put Him in chains, lead Him out amid the joyful cries of the mob, and suddenly a troop of angels with fiery swords will come down from heaven, destroy the enemy, and the Messiah revealed will ascend the throne. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... outside the cathedral, we saw an English ecclesiastic in a stringed, sub-shovel hat. He had a young lady with him, presumably a daughter or niece. He eyed us with much the same incurious curiosity as that with which we eyed him. We passed them and went inside the duomo. How far less impressive is the interior (indeed I had almost said also the exterior) than that of San Domenico! Nothing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... imposing hills around the Vale of Blackmore. To most who travel in search of the picturesque and the beautiful, the Dorset coast and the country immediately in the rear, will make the greatest appeal. The line of undulating cliffs, often towering in bold, impressive shapes, that commences almost as soon as Dorset is entered and continues without a dull mile to the eastern extremity of Weymouth, is to some minds the finest stretch of England's shore outside Cornwall, a ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... gravity— the reflection, as it were, of the sombre countenance of the austere and relentless Grand Master. The lower part of the hall was filled with guards and others whom curiosity had drawn together to witness the important and impressive ceremony. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... regular army, three of foot and two of dragoons, under the command of Lacy, Lawless, Wogan, O'Reilly, and O'Gara. But it was in France that the Irish served in the greatest number, and made the most impressive history for themselves ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... The impressive dignity of the occasion was such that there was little need of the admonition of the Chief Justice to abstention from conversation on the part of the audience during the proceeding. No one there present, whether ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... his feet; young girls strewed flowers in his path, the choir chanted. Then, the Anabaptists having deposed the Elector Princes, were to take their places. The Prophet was anointed with holy oil, a great and impressive ceremony took place, and all the city rang with the cries that proclaimed him king. Faith and Bertha could not see the new king, but they were in the crowd, and they cursed this Prophet again—none so vigorously as Bertha, while Faith hailed her as a new Judith. After a time, all being prostrate ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning man may have when fighting his desperate fight with the salty waves. But more impressive than that was the frequent outer resemblance. The waves of the ocean rise up and reach out and batter against the rocks and battlements of the shore, retreating again and ever returning to the assault, covering the obstacles thrown in the way of their progress with thin sheets ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... by the happy nests of the young were like spirits of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living, yet who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the feast, the impressive acolytes by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was far more impressive. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... utter; and presently the train carried them out into the gas-sprinkled darkness, with an ever-growing speed that soon left the city lamps far behind. It is a phenomenon whose commonness alone prevents it from being most impressive, that departure of the night-express. The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The draw bridges that gape upon the way, the trains that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... sectors. On the downside, the government must deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially is 21%, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. Long-term prospects are overshadowed by the prospects of a leveling off in ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... his maker and the saints of heaven, that he was guiltless of the death of his brother. He had no sooner concluded than all eyes were turned upon the Cid, who, in deep, solemn tones, and with the most impressive earnestness of manner, imprecated on the head of his king every curse that heaven or hell could inflict, if, in taking that oath, he had committed perjury. The awed assembly then broke up. Rodrigo, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... very curious, and the authenticity of its facts has been confirmed to me by various testimonies, but the author is too clever for his position; I mean too full of flash and wit. There's an air of levity, and of effective writing, without which the book would have been more impressive and convincing; don't you think so? And here we get to the heart of most of the difficulties of the subject. Why do we make no quicker advances, do you say? Why are our communications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial, and don't bring serious souls and concentrated ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... An impressive sight! The making of a fist of the left hand is a great addition of power, and should be followed in modern practice. The gentle sullation of the front fingers, with the clenched fist behind them, says as plainly as possible, Put suaviter ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... it would be frightfully crude, and it is. And yet, Wiggie, it's impressive, in its way... nobody can miss the ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair

... retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight. It was a remarkable face,—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal; ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... forced to recognise facts that he deplored, and would have preferred to leave untouched—things he personally would rather have treated with ridicule if possible. It made his words peculiarly dignified and impressive, and I listened with an increasing uneasiness as to the sort of help the doctor would look to me for later. It seemed as though I were a spectator of some drama of mystery in which any moment I might be summoned to ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... this, so much the more positive was their association of the THUNDER-STORM as that which brings both warmth and rain with the renewed vernal life of vegetation. The impressive phenomena which characterize it, the prodigious noise, the awful flash, the portentous gloom, the blast, the rain, have left a profound impression on the myths of every land. Fire from water, warmth and moisture from the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... a house was visible, nothing but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide expanse—Stonehenge and the barrows, which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few hay ricks. On the top of a mountain the old temple would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It looked as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded by the veneration of the British race to the old egg out of which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... till he had done abusing her, and then politely explained my errand. After much beating about the bush, he gave me the information that I wanted, and then, to the astonishment of his servant, went downstairs with me and put me into my cab with the most impressive politeness. Just as I left he told me he had allowed me to break his rule and spoil his lunch because I was ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... Honey descended from a throne of faded wine-colored velvet, and addressed the Princess with her most impressive and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things. It hadn't been "Europe" at Liverpool no—not even in the dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before—to the extent his present companion made it so. She hadn't yet done that so much as when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to wonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best have put on gloves she almost pulled him up ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... House,—for he had quite got the ear of the House,—a certain impressive good sense, a habit of saying nothing that was not necessary to the occasion, had chiefly made for him the high character he enjoyed; but in the law courts it was perhaps his complaisance, his peculiar courtesy, of which they who praised him talked the most. His aptitude to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... Midi is more impressive from the hotel, don't you think?" she remarked, "than it ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... lenses of television cameras were focused on Him from every part of the balcony at the rear of the hall. The microphones were ready. Weaver walked forward as the congregation knelt, and waited an impressive moment before He spread His hands in the gesture that meant, "Rise, my children." Simon, previously coached, translated. The congregation rose again, ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight

... Warr reached "James Citty" and made his landing. He entered the fort through the south gate, and, with his colors flying, went on to the church where Reverend Richard Buck delivered an impressive sermon. Then his ensign, Anthony Scott, read his commission, and Gates formally delivered to him his own authority as governor. De La Warr's arrival had given the settlement new life and new hope. Lean times lay ahead, yet the most difficult ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch

... inven-tions. The first of them, Alexander Bell, had invented a system for the correction of stammering and similar defects of speech. The second, Alexander Melville Bell, was the dean of British elocutionists, a man of creative brain and a most impressive facility of rhetoric. He was the author of a dozen text-books on the art of speaking correctly, and also of a most ingenious sign-language which he called "Visible Speech." Every letter in the alphabet of this language represented ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... noble type of our race. He was of massive, compact form, a face of strong intelligence and glowing with masculine beauty, in his prime. His portraits, though imposing, by no means do justice to the impressive and vivacious presence of the man. This pen picture is by one who knew the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips

... length, but space must yet be found for the last three, the surviving members of the brilliant quartette who produced 'New Numbers'. Mr. Drinkwater wrote as follows: "There can have been no man of his years in England who had at once so impressive a personality and so inevitable an appeal to the affection of every one who knew him, while there has not been, I think, so grievous a loss to poetry since the death of Shelley. Some of us who knew him may live to be old men, but life is not likely to give us any richer memory than ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke

... puppies, Ruby and Remus, who had unaccountably developed a virulent form of mange, were immediately taken in hand by the all-accomplished tinker, and anointed with a mixture whose very noisomeness was to Patsey Crimmeen a sufficient guarantee of its efficacy, and was impressive even to the Master, fresh from much ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost him a protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because it was the first time she had looked him full in the face since the night at Nettleton, and nothing in his grave and impressive demeanour revealed a trace of the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... distinguished by the favor of those who then held the government, fenced round by the superstitious reverence of millions, was hanged in broad day before many thousands of people. Everything that could make the warning impressive, dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found in this case. The helpless rage and vain struggles of the Council made the triumph more signal. From that moment the conviction of every native was that it was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... jurisprudence. I defy you, sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you were saying and doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man we may possibly see him as he is; the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... is that we have a continent, with a hundred million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually starving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way strange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice—such a man can find followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere, Persia or Patagonia, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle are broken into hills of romantic form, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... there was a deep stillness in the climbing forest which the roar of the river emphasized. Those trees were vast of girth, and they were very cold. In spite of whirling snow, and gale, and frost, they had grown slowly to an impressive stateliness. In Nature, as he recognized, all was conflict, and it was the fine adjustment of opposing forces that made for the perfection of grace, and strength, and beauty. Then it seemed to him that his companion was like the forest—still, and strong, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... believed the Lady Isabella's union with Lord John Comyn was one of choice, not of necessity, nor did his visit to her after the battle of Falkirk recall any former feeling. His mind had been under the heavy pressure of that self-reproach which the impressive words of Wallace had first awakened; the wretched state of his country, the tyranny of Edward, occupied the mind of the man in which the emotions of the boy had merged. He was, too, a husband and a father; and he was, as his fond wife so trustingly believed, too nobly ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... would be either there in perfect accordance with the principles admitted to be just in his conference with the Secretary of State by the Mexican minister himself, or were already withdrawn in consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... class, there was no great intimacy with the law as a science, and its higher philosophy was beyond their reach. Like Mathews, however, he had always lived in sea-ports, and as he studied his cases well, he was always very impressive with the jury, and was heard with great respect by the court; and when he had reached the zenith, a slow shake of the head or even of his finger at an argument that was too hard for him, went a great way even with the court, and almost ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... the two illustrations shown in this plate is surely a very impressive testimony to the value of the knowledge given by the theosophical teaching. Undoubtedly this knowledge of the truth takes away all fear of death, and makes life easier to live because we understand its object and its end, and we realise ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... must have looked just the same when the Romans marched through it as it looks now. No trees could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the English climate can generate no available soil. I do not know that I have seen anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. The notch of the White Mountains, as I remember it in my youthful days, is more wonderful and richly picturesque, but of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... various points along the river witness the ceremony which closes the festivities of Yule-tide. At Petrograd a dome is erected in front of the Winter Palace, where in the presence of a vast concourse of people the Czar and the high church officials in a grand and impressive manner perform the ceremony. In other places it is customary for the district priest to officiate. Clothed in vestments he leads a procession of clergy and villagers, who carry icons and banners and chant as they proceed to the river. They usually leave an open space in their ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... the captain, with his peculiarly gentle but impressive voice, "you know my project of going to the Pole; I want to get your opinion of the undertaking. What do ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... them, or ladies in modern, often extravagant, toilets singing the parts of the grand, imposing figures of the Old and New Testaments has always disturbed me to such a degree that I could never attain to pure enjoyment. Involuntarily I felt and thought how much grander, more impressive, vivid, and true would be all that I had experienced in the concert-room if represented on the stage with costumes, decorations, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... on the stage, he would ring it ferociously, and everything would come to a stop, until Mrs. Kean, who always sat on the stage, had set right what was wrong. She was more formidable than beautiful to look at, but her wonderful fire and genius were none the less impressive because she wore a white handkerchief round her head and had a very beaky nose! How I admired and loved and feared her! Later on the fear was replaced by gratitude, for no woman ever gave herself more trouble to train a young actress than did Mrs. Kean. The love and admiration, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially was 23.8% in 2004, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the second highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. An expected leveling off in diamond ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... lectures on ritual, and contains the macte esto which I was then at pains to explain. Augustus prayed for the safety and prosperity of the State in every way, and also for himself, his house, and his familia.[941] The scene on the bank of the Tiber, illuminated by torches, must have been most impressive. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... of the autumn leaves as they fell from the chestnuts around the Perkins Institution and the elms that darkened the sombre, deserted castle of Harris's Folly. With this sense of strangeness though, comes a sense still more striking and impressive of the turbulent, active, and brilliant period through which John Gilbert has lived. Byron had been dead but four years [1828] and Scott and Wordsworth were still writing when he began to act. Goethe was still living. The works of Thackeray and Dickens were yet to be created. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... feature of the entire service is always the sermon, after which comes a hymn and the benediction. The evening service followed the order of that of the morning. Of elaborate liturgies there has been no hint, yet the service has ever been both impressive and interesting. People explained it at first by the peculiar power of the man who occupied the pulpit, yet this can hardly account for its continuance to the present day in its original form. The ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... visited them. His son Gaetano had been educated and brought up with Aminta, and a close friendship had been the consequence. Gaetano was twenty years of age, and his features bore the imprint of masculine and impressive Neapolitan beauty, deficient neither in the dark locks nor black though somewhat glassy eye, which is as it were the ordinary seal of the countenances of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... are raised about their heads, forming a nimbus to each. The other two wings are depressed. These mighty angels were formerly whitened and partially gilt, and the effect of the great figures looming out of the dark vault is most impressive. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... when an extraordinary, unheard of, unprecedented event took place in the magistrate's office. Constant, the serious, impressive, immovable, deaf and dumb Constant, rose from his ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The embassador, overwhelmed by his reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... them. You see, I was only eight years old. I couldn't make my own life. After Saidee was married and taken to Algiers, my stepmother began to imagine herself in love with an American from Indiana, whom she met in Paris. He had an impressive sort of manner, and made her think him rich and important. He was in business, and had come over to rest, so he couldn't stay long abroad; and he urged Mrs. Ray to go back to America on the same ship with him. Of course ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... material; not invention, but selection of existing material appropriate to his genius, and complete absorption of it into his being; that is how the epic poet works. Allegory is a beautiful way of inculcating and asserting some special significance in life; but epic has a severer task, and a more impressive one. It has not to say, Life in the world ought to mean this or that; it has to show life unmistakably being significant. It does not gloss or interpret the fact of life, but re-creates it and charges the fact itself with the poet's own sense of ultimate values. ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... and blushing like a girl. "Not less'n it happened sence last We'n'sday, an' that hain't noways likely," replied the other, with more interest than he had yet shown. Woodward's embarrassment was more impressive than his words. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... from the Burial Service from Corinthians. Perhaps it has never been read in a more magnificent cathedral and under more impressive circumstances—for it is a grave which kings must envy. Then some prayers from the Burial Service: and there with the floor-cloth under them and the tent above we buried them in their sleeping-bags—and surely their work has not been ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... him the right to consider her as his betrothed bride, for after a brief farewell and a few kisses of the hand flung to him from the threshold, she had escaped to the little bow-windowed room and thereby also evaded from the departing lover an impressive, well-prepared speech concerning the duties of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... animated by the frequent passage of the merchant vessel plowing its way toward the port of Quebec, or hurrying upon the descending tide to the Gulf; while, from the summit of the hill upon which Tadoussac stands, the sublime and impressive scenery of the Saguenay rises to view."—Picturesque Tourist, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... even the leprous corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pass into absolute nothingness: on the contrary, its constituents take new forms, and subserve a re-growth of life, as in the flowers which bedeck the grave. From this single and impressive instance the poet passes to the general and unfailing law—No material object of which we have cognizance really dies: all such objects are in a perpetual cycle of change. This conception has been finely developed in a brace of early poems of Lord ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... meekness which makes the good man wronged so impressive a spectacle, Ashe produced ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... fitting that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that unspeakable crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. Now I knew how ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... not linger on the intervening time. The doctor who attended us usually, came in next day "by accident," and we had a long conversation. On the following day a very impressive yet genial gentleman from town lunched with us,—a friend of my father's, Dr. Something; but the introduction was hurried, and I did not catch his name. He, too, had a long talk with me afterwards, my father being called away to speak to some ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... head-light as the locomotives use would cost several hundred dollars, although I could have made one nearly as good for much less. Such a thing in the center of a man's forehead, and the whistle at the end of his nose, would give him quite an impressive appearance.' ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... if the full meaning of the Roman Catholic faith was borne upon him for the first time. With a tremendous influence upon his emotions, its intimate relation with the soul and the sentiment of the human hearts gathered there quickened the utmost depths of his nature. Having thus witnessed that impressive service, it was impossible for him to feel that he was not one with it, and of it; and all differences of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace. The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of erudition and gentility to the pair that was quite impressive, while their unquestionably good descent was a source of social capital to all of humbler origin who were fortunate enough to draw them to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... hopes and fears and the joys and sorrows that are the perdurable stuff of existence, the inexhaustible and unchanging principles of activity in man. Now it is only to the few that reduced to their simplest expression the 'eternal verities' are engaging and impressive. To touch the many they must be conveyed in human terms; they must be presented not as impersonal abstractions, not as matter for the higher intelligence and the higher emotions, but as living, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... It was an impressive sight to see this procession of fine-blooded stock arrive at the farm, and the eyes of both Bob and his aunt were glistening when they looked at each other as the procession came up the ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... my temper. I had an edge on the fellow on account of the high-powered voice he owned, so when he suggested that I had been dreaming, I climbed to my feet so that I could make my words more impressive when I started to tell him my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer

... laboring man's protest against the tyranny of that militarism which terrorizes Europe.[2] And since military tyranny is heaviest in Germany, Socialism has there risen to its greatest strength. The increase of the Socialist vote in German elections became perhaps the most impressive political phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1912 this vote was more than one-third of the total vote of the Empire, and the Socialists were the largest single party in Germany. The Socialists of France are almost equally ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... whole plantation, however, has been so miserably storm-stricken that the poor stunted trees are not even worth the trouble of cutting them down for fuel, and so they continue to disfigure the spot. In all other respects this impressive monument of former times is carefully preserved; the soil within the enclosure is not broken, a path from the road is left, and in latter times a stepping-stile has been placed to accommodate Lakers with an easier access than by striding ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... tower and some crumbling tombs. As we walked along the curving road, we caught glimpses now and then of the venerable tower; and gradually it emerged as out of the shadows of the past, and we stood facing it. Silently we gazed at the ancient pile, the most impressive ruin of English colonization. A hollow shaft of brick, with two high arched openings, a crumbling top, and a hold on the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... Not the least impressive feature of the scene was the profound silence which marked it. The shout that first arrested the attention of Ashman and his companion, must have been some kind of a signal, probably announcing the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... either prohibitory or permissive; which means that it can say what shall not be done, or else that which may be done according to law, all other acts being forbidden. Your lawyer must decide which form is best. For my part, I greatly prefer the prohibitive form, as being the stronger and more impressive of the two. I think it is the province of the law to forbid the destruction of wild life and forests, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... afterwards recalled with much clearness the thoughts and reflections which passed through his mind during that delirium of more than two hours. He even remembered the senseless bray of laughter which, to the sympathetic mind, is not the least impressive feature of that iniquitous trial. His overwrought nerves being temporarily relieved by the cachinnation, he regained for a few minutes some measure of composure and sanity. With the return of reason came a returning sense of injustice and oppression. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible. Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest. Honora sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that Mrs. Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the floor and leaned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... an impressive pause. The women were too dumfounded to comment. Never in the history of Monterey had such a ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... craned forward; people in the gallery leaned over, looking eagerly down; a loud murmur and a wide hiss of whispering emphasized the life in the court. The tall, loose-limbed figure of Esme Darlington, looking to-day singularly dignified and almost impressive, pushed slowly forward, followed by the woman whose social fate was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... This noble beast's impressive form is seen 'Mong the possessions of a king or queen. Hard-favored, yet so valuable is he, He's ever kept beneath a lock and key. And, since his temper can't find vent in speech, He stamps and punches ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells

... well-proportioned, the picturesque costume of the 129th Bobtails could add but little to the effect already produced by so martial a figure. His face was whiskerless; his eyes gray; his cheek-bones a little higher than the average; his hair auburn; his nose not Grecian—or Roman—but still impressive: his air one of quiet dignity, mingled with youthful joyance and mirthfulness. Try—O reader!—to bring before you ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... continued, in an impressive, awestruck whisper. "He had to come out of his bed at night—Santissima Maria!—and it was the ghosts of all the people buried in San Marcuolo who dragged him and kicked him to teach him better, because he wanted to make believe the dead stayed in their graves! So where was ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... face, from the point of his full white beard to his fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressed all the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such an affair; but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have to intervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... threats have something in them and this be the warning bell of which he spoke? Surely it is impossible. Yet his manner was indescribably impressive. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the abbey church itself is as plain as almost any similar edifice I remember, its great extent, and the noble windows and doors, rendered it to me deeply impressive. On the other hand, the chapel is an exquisite specimen of the most elaborated ornaments of the style. All sorts of monstrosities have, at one period or another, been pressed into the service of ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... hands together. That day he was not in the solemn, raven-hued finery in which he had visited Ravensdene Court; instead he wore a suit of grey tweed, in which, I thought, he looked rather younger and less impressive than in black. But he was certainly no ordinary man, and as he stood there smiling at Miss Raven's eager face, I felt conscious that he was the sort of somewhat mysterious, rather elusive figure in which women would naturally ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... was Luck, arriving in due time at the railroad. He said good-by to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a cigarette while he ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... She recognized in the well-groomed figure which stepped out, case in hand, one of the city surgeons with whom her husband was often closely associated in his hospital work, Dr. Van Horn. He was a decade older than Red, possessed a strikingly impressive personality, and looked, to the last detail, like a man ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... seen so many people or so much traffic before. The crowd of workmen pouring out of the shipyards in Belfast was more impressive than this London crowd, but not so perturbing, for that was a definite crowd, having a beginning and an end and a meaning: it was composed entirely of men engaged in a common enterprise; but this crowd had no beginning and no end and no meaning: there was no common enterprise. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... eminent criminologists ... but I believed the man was sincere in his repentance and accepted him as a sort of text for other sinners to point a way toward regeneration.... The higher Rasputin rose, the greater his fame became, the more impressive would be his textual example to other aspiring souls,—even a criminal should not be denied the consolation of hope where crime is the result of ignorance or misdirected patriotism.... If I sinned in pardoning a sinner then sin must be an unpardonable crime!... ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... his actual necessities will permit. Nothing so strongly encourages this spirit in the Negro as a savings bank operated in his community by persons of his own race. The powerful influence exerted in this direction by such institutions may be shown by some impressive figures which have been secured from reliable sources: Atlanta, with no such institution to stimulate its colored population to save, has only 1,000 colored depositors in the associated banks of that city out of a total colored population of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... resources of the country will permit, to exonerate it of the principal itself." Many subjects relative to the interior government were succinctly and briefly mentioned; and the speech concluded with the following impressive and admonitory sentiment. "In pursuing the various and weighty business of the present session, I indulge the fullest persuasion that your consultations will be marked with wisdom, and animated by the love of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... arouse the public conscience. Do the long columns of figures, the impressive statistics, wake men to activity? It is rather the keen, bright thrust of the satirist that saves the day. Once in a New England town meeting there was a movement for a much-needed new schoolhouse. By the installation of ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall

... revolved. His mind was polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings of this superintending ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day. There is no reasonable ground for believing that the oldest remains yet obtained carry us even near the beginnings of life. The impressive warnings of Lyell against hasty speculations, based upon negative evidence, have been fully justified; time after time, highly organised types have been discovered in formations of an age in which the existence of such forms of life had been confidently declared to be impossible. The ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley

... good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of your—er—well-wishers persuaded him to take you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... Cu Sith) was heard howling on stormy nights. He was "big as a stirk," one informant has declared The "fearsome tail" appears to have been not the least impressive thing about it. The MacCodrums were brave and fearless, and were supposed to be descended from Seals, which were believed to be ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... intuition, especially one that becomes intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the growing time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked upon by the impressive experience of a change of country that I was more than commonly alive to impressions, which are the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... experience, which confirms this solemn truth. The soul can repose only on the certitudes of heaven; those who are joined together by the gospel feel alike the misery of the fall and the glory of the restoration. The impressive earnestness which overpowers the mind when eternal and momentous truths are the subjects of discourse binds people together with a force of sympathy which cannot be produced by the sublimity of a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... immense parallel masses of dense clouds stretched across the entire horizon; the upper limb of the planet, of a deep crimson, was alone visible betwixt them, and shed a sombre light over the waste. He thought he had seldom seen any thing so impressive; combined with the low moaning of the night-breeze, which rose and sank at intervals, with a wild and wailing murmur. The light was so indistinct that he could discover nothing of his horse, and in the lawless state ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... almost boyishly blunt and direct; in a word, one of those miraculous New York girls whom abstractly one may disapprove of, but in the concrete must abjectly adore. This easy predominance of the masculine heart over the masculine reason in the presence of an impressive woman, has been the motif of a thousand tragedies in times past, and will inspire a thousand ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... cares for and not myself; and he wanted to take me away, not to his own house, but to some man who would be the physician of my soul, he said. I am generally ready enough to laugh, but what he said was so impressive and solemn, and so wonderfully earnest and startling that I could not jest over it. At last I was more angry at his daring to speak to me in such a way than any of you ever thought I could be, and that drove him half mad. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... a man with thin, iron-grey hair and a stubby, pugnacious moustache. He sat at a desk at the end of a long, narrow room, down both sides of which were rows of cases filled with impressive-looking books. He did not raise his eyes when Grant entered, but continued poring over a file ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... beautifully and placid, with all the glory of a mild night, in a latitude as low as that they were in. They who have never seen the ocean under such circumstances, know little of its charms in its moments of rest. The term of sleeping is well applied to its impressive stillness, for the long sluggish swells on which the ship rose and fell, hardly disturbed its surface. The moon did not rise until midnight, and Eve, accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville and most of her male companions, walked the deck by the bright starlight, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... brightness of my Lord's presence every mystery that now troubles me shall be made clear. Dear Lord, I await Thine own time. Do what seemeth good in Thine own eyes;" and she meekly folded her hands and bowed her head. For a moment or two there was the same impressive silence that fell upon us before she spoke. Then a louder and nearer peal of thunder awakened Zillah, who raised her head from her mother's lap and looked wonderingly around, as if some ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... buried the poor lady on the evening of that day, in a particularly lovely and peaceful spot, some distance up the valley, which had been a favourite resort of her daughter. The ceremony was singularly moving and impressive, every negro on the place following the body to the grave, and Don Hermoso himself, in the absence of a priest, reading the funeral service over his departed wife. But although the loss of the lady was deeply felt by all, there can be little doubt ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... nearly all of us eat and drink too much. Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier animals and more capable of sustained thought. The word animal in this connection is coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a crushing reply to Dr. McQueen's assertion that the editor drinks. In the school-room I have frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from classwork, and I hastily ascribed it to sitting up during ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... "a good deal like his own style of oratory—impressive and energetic, but not very polished." We question the last; but, be this as it may, polish is only desirable so long as it does not impair truth and utility. Plain-speaking has been the best rule of conduct for public men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various

... dining-room, at a long table in the centre of which sat about twenty officers in full uniform, wearing their gold- and silver-handled swords, the ribbons and crosses of Imperial decorations. All rose politely as I entered, and made a place for me beside the Colonel, a large, impressive man with a grizzled beard. Orderlies were deftly serving dinner. The atmosphere was that of any officers' mess in Europe. Where ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed









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