"Electrify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing else would tempt her to leave her cottage. It was delightful to hear her talk of the old actors, many of whom she had known. She loved to describe John Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neill, and Edmund Kean, as they were wont to electrify the town. Elliston was a great favorite, and she had as many good things to tell of him as Elia ever had. One autumn afternoon she related all the circumstances attending the "first play" she ever saw,—which, by the way, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the happiness I experienced at that moment. After twenty-years of exile, I touched again the sacred soil of my country. I found myself with Frenchmen whom the recollection of the Empire was again to electrify. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... a feeling," Cleopatra was saying, "that I don't love Denis sufficiently to go mad about him. You know what I mean: he may be the best specimen of manhood who has ever crossed this threshold, but he does not electrify me." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... clerk cleared his throat. When he spoke, there was a trace of disappointment in his tone. To have been able to electrify his audience with the news of some startling discovery would have been pure joy ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Piso at our elbow has been importuning us with whispered specimens of his very rickety elegiacs, and trying to settle an early appointment for us to hear him read the first six books of the great Epic with which he means to electrify the literary circles. We reach the Fabrician bridge, meditating as we go the repartees with which we might have turned the tables on those scurrilous followers of the great man, but did not. Suddenly we run up against a gentleman, who, raising his cloak over his head, is on ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... every day now brought nearer the possibility of word from her father, she stayed at home. The next morning about nine o'clock, while she was at her father's desk, the telephone-bell rang. It did that many times every morning, but this ring seemed to electrify Lenore. She answered the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... not," replied Morton, in a determined tone, while his boldness seemed to electrify all around him. "I will know whether I am in lawful custody, and before a civil magistrate, ere the charter of my country shall be forfeited in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... actors! What enthusiasm in the spectators! And, carrying the idea a little further, if, instead of an assembly or an audience, we should oxygenize towns, cities, a whole country—what activity would be infused into the whole people! What new life would electrify a stagnant community! Out of an old used-up nation we could perhaps make a bran-new one, and, for my part, I know more than one state in old Europe where this oxygen experiment might be attended with a decided advantage, or where, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... though rustic companion, a tall negro fellow, with a long good-humored face, and the profile of a horse, which stood out from beneath a narrow-rimmed straw hat, stuck on the back of his head. The explosions of laughter of these two varlets on meeting and exchanging compliments were enough to electrify the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... thought of triumphing. She never dreamed of what it would be to electrify her former mistress with the announcement that she whom she had since served had died, and left her, Glory McWhirk, the life use of more than half her estate. That she dwelt now, as proprietress, where she had been a servant. Her humbleness and her faithfulness ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... shock which seemed to electrify all on board, the keel struck upon a rock, there was a crushing grating sound, a roar of waters, a wave leaped in, deluging all afresh, and the gig rose high in the air, and then plunged down as if into the depths of the ocean ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... thoughts, Red Jacket comes to this council gathering. Its bearing on his nation and race, he deeply scans, and treasures up those burning thoughts, with which he is to electrify, and set on fire ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... one; come like a thunder clap, burst like a thunderclap, thunder bolt; take by surprise, catch by surprise, catch unawares, catch napping; yach [obs3][S. Africa]. pounce upon, spring a mine upon. surprise, startle, take aback, electrify, stun, stagger, take away one's breath, throw off one's guard; astonish, dumbfound &c. (strike with wonder) 870. Adj. nonexpectant[obs3]; surprised &c. v.; unwarned, unaware; off one's guard; inattentive 458. unexpected, unanticipated, unpredicted[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of a battle, he would electrify his soldiers by a motion of his sword. He would climb the walls of a citadel with a knotted rope, at night, rocked by the storm, while sparks of fire clung to his cuirass, and molten lead and boiling tar poured ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... essential element to success—novelty; but M. Chopin has proved satisfactorily that it is not easy to estimate the capabilities of the instrument he handles with so much grace and ingenuity, or limit the skill and power whose magic touch makes it pour forth its sublime strains to electrify and delight anew the astonished listener. M. Chopin's treatment of the pianoforte is peculiar to himself, and his style blends in beautiful harmony and perfection the elegant, the picturesque, and the humorous. We cannot at present descend to practical illustrations in proof of these observations, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... at Winchester Cathedral. ''Might as well try to electrify a haystack. And to think that the World would take three columns and ask for more—with ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed poor in products, and looked as if it were involved in a constant struggle between droughts and floods. They would have judged it to be poor in capability also, if, on further experience, a vitality had not appeared which seemed to electrify the soil on the touch of colonisation. Imported animals, trees, and plants lived and flourished among the dingy forests, which barely yielded food enough for a ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... to make possible the costly organization and maintenance of strikes. And the strike is the beginning of the social war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, while still within the limits of legality.[T] Strikes are a valuable weapon in this twofold connection; first, because they electrify the masses, give fresh impetus to their moral energy, and awaken in their hearts the profound antagonism which exists between their interests and those of the bourgeoisie, by showing them ever clearer the abyss which from this time irrevocably separates them from that class; ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... this did not electrify me. I did not believe it. But at the end of that half-hour the tuna came clear to the surface, about one hundred feet from us, and there he rode the swells. Doubt folded his sable wings! Bronze and blue and green and silver flashes ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... evening. Mr. Alvord, Squire Bartley, and the minister also happened in, and all were soon chatting around Mr. Clifford's ruddy hearth. The pastor of this country parish was a sensible man, who, if he did not electrify his flock of a Sunday morning, honestly tried to guide it along safe paths, and led those whom he asked to follow. His power lay chiefly in the homes of his people, where his genial presence was ever welcomed. He did not regard those to whom he ministered as so many souls and subjects ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... he said, "why it was necessary to keep Hartoo absolutely hidden. In a month's time my papers will be ready. Then I shall electrify the world. I shall write not a new page but a new volume across the history ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... found another and apparently much more effectual mode of clearing air than this. We do it by discharging electricity into it. It is easily possible to electrify air by means of a point or flame, and an electrified body has this curious property, that the dust near it at once aggregates together into larger particles. It is not difficult to understand why this happens; each of the particles becomes polarized by induction, and they then cling ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... and floundered; seemed to make assertions without proof and phrases without point; when suddenly he would utter a statement so pregnant as to clear up a whole policy, or a sentence so audacious as to paralyze a whole line of his opponents, or a phrase so vivid as to run through the nation and electrify it. Then, perhaps after more rumbling and rambling, came a clean, clear, historical illustration carrying conviction; then, very likely, a simple and strong argument, not infrequently ended by some heavy missile in the shape of an accusation or taunt hurled into the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... His words seemed to electrify everyone on board, and the men watched the lights on shore with intense eagerness, seeing prize-money in them, as they did in every boat sent from the cutter; while, to test the lights ashore as to whether they really formed a signal, or were only an accidental arrangement ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... electric action ever takes place in curved lines. This once proved, it would follow that the action is carried on by means of a medium surrounding the electrified bodies. His experiments in 1837 reduced, in his opinion, this point of demonstration. He then found that he could electrify, by induction, an insulated sphere placed completely in the shadow of a body which screened it from direct action. He pictured the lines of electric force bending round the edges of the screen, and reuniting on the ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... adverse criticism can be but petty and fruitless which confines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity of thought. Moreover, what seemed to electrify and scandalise those who were most bitter in their criticism was not so much the language as the spirit of the Wagnerian operas—that is to say, his whole manner of feeling and suffering. It were well to wait until these very critics have acquired another spirit themselves; they will then ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... summoned all the heroism of his soul into his countenance, and, with one arm akimbo, the hand resting on the pommel of his sword, rode into the great metropolis of the league, Antony sounding his trumpet before him in a manner to electrify the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... that precise spice of initiative which we, only we in the world, can lend them. Advice, cash, munitions aren't enough; our palpable presence is the point. The arrival of Birdwood, Hunter-Weston and Gouraud at Odessa would electrify the whole of ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... the general should do every thing to electrify his own soldiers, and to impart to them the same enthusiasm which he endeavors to repress in his adversaries. All armies are alike susceptible of this spirit: the springs of action and means, only, vary with the national character. Military eloquence is one means, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... we had come under a noble teacher. Some of us who loved the languages that he taught, and also had become acquainted with the best of the upper classes, carried with us none other than very high anticipations of a most profitable and pleasant term of study. And so it proved. How he used to electrify us at times by repeating something that had just been recited, as at the close of the Agricola of Tacitus, his strongly marked face all lighted up, new significance and something like inspiration being given us, when with his ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the word without fear. Let us not be misled by assuming a wrong explanation of these words, or by adopting the Middle Age traditions which made St. Paul convert some of the immediate favourites of the Emperor, and electrify with his eloquence an admiring Senate. The word here rendered "palace" [44] may indeed have that meaning, for we know that among the early converts were "they of Caesar's household;" [45] but these were in all probability—if not certainly—Jews of the lowest rank, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... faces flushed, their eyes filled with tears ... that sight maddened me!... I have been in many fights before, I have lain beside the dead in Flanders and among the Balkan highlands, I have seen blood flowing by me like a river,—and the thought of all these seemed to electrify my soul and fill my veins with steel.... I tore madly right and left.... I never struck such herculean ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Cashell tells me, they're trying to signal from here to Poole, and they're using stronger batteries than ever. But, you see, he being the guvnor's nephew and all that (and it will be in the papers too), it doesn't matter how they electrify things in this house. Are you going ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... me no thanks, Herr Count. When a woman tries to prevent a quarrel between two men, she does so, believe me, out of pure self-love. The emotions which electrify your nerves torment ours. I could not have continued to live here had a tragic occurrence made the place memorable. That is why I prevented an encounter between you and the colonel; so you need not thank me. However, the evening before the regiment took its departure ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... acted all through this business, from the first, under a strong sense of duty. I do not regret anything I have done, and I believe that the course which I have opened is only commenced. The Roman," he continued in one of those bursts of eloquence, with which he used to electrify men, stretching forth his clenched hand and arm, "the Roman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant, promised that three hundred should follow out his enterprise. Can I not promise for one, for two, for three, aye ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... entanglement, he probed the barbed wire carefully with his wand, watching for an ensuing spark. For the Germans more than once had been known to electrify their wires, with fatal results to ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... Damon's home in Waterfield, Tom got quickly to work on the little job he had come to do for his old friend. Of course, Tom might have sent two of his mechanics from the works down here to electrify the barbed wire entanglements that Mr. Damon had erected around his chicken run. But the young inventor knew that his eccentric friend would not consider the job done right unless Tom ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... of Christ is the glory of the Church. Jesus is the Fountain-Head of life, love, law, government, and authority. Are we maintaining this exalted truth with the courage of our ancestors? The zeal of our fathers, if revived in these days, would electrify the world. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... of it. There's no chance of my being able to marry for long enough to come. Now, can you give me any advice? I've quite made up my mind to leave Tootle. The position isn't worthy of a gentleman; I'm losing my self-respect. The she-Tootle gets worse and worse. If I don't electrify her, one of these days, with an outburst of ferocious indignation, she will only have my patience to thank. Let her beware how she drives ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... humanity two grand primary and universal principles of being—the masculine and feminine. They bear such a relation to each other that the one is essential to the action of the other. They mutually electrify and empower each other. It is in this mysterious relation that Infinite Wisdom has laid the springs of animate being. If any one mystery of our existence is deeper than any other, it is that which lies in the solemn depths of this relation. We ought to approach it wrapt in ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think. But he was a thinking man, and a plain man at the same time. All his wonderful successes, that looked like conjuring, had been gained by plodding logic, by clear and commonplace French thought. The French electrify the world not by starting any paradox, they electrify it by carrying out a truism. They carry a truism so far—as in the French Revolution. But exactly because Valentin understood reason, he understood the limits of reason. Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... to preach on his return to the old home for vacation, he selected the somewhat startling text "and the dumb ass opened his mouth and spake." On this elevating theme he wrote a sensational sermon and committed it to memory in order that he might electrify his audience with eye power as well as by verbal flow of soul. The awful day arrived, but when the young apostle arose to preach, stage fright banished from his mind all but ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... office. The "three-men-in-a-difficulty" scene went as well as ever, though, on the whole, played far too slowly, and with so much "suppressed force," that the celebrated "Monsieur! a vos ordres!" when Orloff suddenly breaks out into "the language of diplomacy," did not electrify the house. On the contrary, the audience took it very quietly, awaiting with some curiosity the interference of Henry Beauclerc. And it was at this point that the services of Mr. JOHN HARE in this character were invaluable. Never had his crisp incisive style produced more marked ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... moments of clear sight. He is the declared enemy of all living by reflex action, of all that is done betwixt sleep and waking, of all the pleasureless pleasurings and imaginary duties in which we coin away our hearts and fritter invaluable years. He has to electrify his readers into an instant unflagging activity, founded on a wide and eager observation of the world, and make them direct their ways by a superior prudence, which has little or nothing in common with the maxims of the copy-book. That many of us lead such lives as they would heartily disown ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... elasteco. Elbow kubuto. Elder (tree) sambuko. Elder pliagxa. Eldest (first born) unuanaskito. Elect (choose) elekti. Elect (by ballot) baloti. Election elekto. Elector elektanto. Electric elektra. Electricity elektro. Electrify elektrigi. Elegance eleganteco. Elegant eleganta. Elegy elegio. Element elemento. Elementary elementa. Elephant elefanto. Elevate altigi. Elevation (height) altajxo. Elf koboldo, feino. Elicit eltiri. Elide elizii. Eligible elektebla. Eligibility elektebleco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... ecstacy and despair. In mental disease there is the same abnormal structural change as in other local diseases; but for these sick mind-centres there is no rest. There must be still thinking and feeling, no matter how chaotic, to tax them, and there is no cheer to electrify the stomach into easy display of power. We may well marvel that powers so wonderful as the power to think, love, admire, see, hear, and feel are located in structures so fragile as the brain; and we may ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... that if the editor of the Monetary Afternoon or Financial Sunday had been able to know what was happening with the two wizards, he could have written up a news story calculated to electrify all America. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... makes some persons using very simple words say them so they drop like manna into hungry minds and hearts, or electrify with grand ideas and moving suggestions? Some will answer that it is brightness of intellect, and a keenness of insight added to profound thoughtfulness. I believe this in a large measure, though, if it were ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... the seeds of domestic greatness. Before they parted, he had come to terms with him. Nor had the latter failed to justify his intuition. He made an admirable editor. It was not Mr. Renshaw's fault that the new paper had failed to electrify America. It was the public on whom the responsibility for the failure must be laid. They spoiled the whole thing. Certain of the faithful subscribed, it is true, and continued to subscribe, but the great heart of the public remained ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse |
