"Eyewitness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ruins once or twice, that he had also been up the Urubamba Valley and seen the great ruins at Ollantaytambo, and that those which he had seen at Yurak Rumi were "as good as those at Ollantaytambo." Here was a definite statement made by an eyewitness. Apparently we were about to see that interesting rock where the last Incas worshiped. However, the foreman said that the trail thither was at present impassable, although a small gang of Indians could open it in less than a week. Our hosts, excited by the pictures we had shown them of Machu ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... had the peace of his government often disturbed by these brawls of Montagues and Capulets, came determined to put the law in strictest force against those who should be found to be offenders. Benvolio, who had been eyewitness to the fray, was commanded by the prince to relate the origin of it, which he did, keeping as near the truth as he could without injury to Romeo, softening and excusing the part which his friends took in it. Lady Capulet, whose extreme grief for the loss ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and supporting himself by the cloak collars of tall men, that he might dole out to them also the same share of information. He felt himself one of the heroes of the affair, being conscious of the dignity of superior information on the subject as an eyewitness, and much disposed to push his connexion with the scuffle a few points beyond the modesty of truth. It cannot be said that his communications were in especial curious and important, consisting chiefly of ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... knowledge and authority, and the tale he has to tell is very complete and full of precious detail. He was, himself, an eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance with many of those who were connected with Sir Oliver's affairs that he might amplify his chronicles, and he considered no scrap of gossip that was to be gleaned along the countryside too trivial to be recorded. I suspect ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... on the bones of a man who may have been murdered five years before, a Chinese coroner quite as often proceeds gravely to examine the wounds of a corpse which has been reduced to ashes by fire and scattered to the four winds of heaven. No mere eyewitness would dare to relate the singular process by which such a result is achieved; but directions exist in black and white, of which the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... as her son. There you lived for many years; there you learned to admire the peaceful life and to appreciate the genuine happiness of our patriarchal families; there you were an eyewitness of the "bonne entente" and noble rivalry which exist between the ethnical groups that go ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... [Stz. 119]. "A Ford was found to set his Army ore Which neuer had discouered beene before." —This cannot be, for the anonymous priest to whose narrative as an eyewitness of the campaign we are so deeply indebted, says, "The approach was by two long but narrow causeways, which the French had before warily broken through the middle" (Nicolas, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... of one such mock-trial as given to Captain Johnson, the historian of the pirates, by an eyewitness: ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Indian Wars," (133) written by an eyewitness; it is the most valuable book we have on ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... letters as a memorial and vindication of that struggle, in comparison with the history which Madame Ossoli had written, and which perished with her; but well do they deserve to be preserved, as the record of a clear-minded and true-hearted eyewitness of, and participator in, this effort to establish a new and better Roman Republic. In one respect they have an interest higher than would the history. They were written during the struggle, and show the fluctuations of hope and despondency-which animated ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... remonstrance to the Sheriff against such an unwarrantable violation of the freedom of election, and he called upon the Sheriff to have Watson taken into custody, who had actually been assaulting several of his voters in the presence of the Sheriff. Although Mr. Sheriff had been an eyewitness of these proceedings several times before, yet he felt that, now his attention was thus publicly called to the subject, he could not connive at them any longer; and as Watson had been laying about him in the most outrageous manner, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... of his character and acquirements and his known sense and conservatism made him a power in Congress, and he had the confidence of the people. He visited Cuba and wrote a report in which he detailed as an eyewitness the atrocities which the government and the soldiers were perpetrating. He read this report to Mr. McKinley and Senator Hanna. They both said: "Senator Proctor, if you read that to the Senate, our negotiations end and war ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... was recently an eyewitness of the scene, is particularly entitled to be heard on this interesting subject, even at the risk of extending this note to a disproportionate length: "The Dead Sea below, upon our left, appealed so near to us, that we thought we could have rode thither in a very short space ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... kind exist without the other kind to balance it? Sparke was a soldier who never found his sea legs. But his diary, besides its other merits, is particularly interesting as being the first account of America ever written by an English eyewitness. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... and knew the writer, answered him by saying, "The author has never been in Poland." "Impossible!" replied the general; "no one could describe the scenes and occurrences there, in the manner it is done in that book, without having been an eyewitness." The lady, however, convinced the general of the fact being otherwise, by assuring him, from her own personal knowledge, that the author of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" was a mere school-girl in England at the time of the events of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... states that many of the Corsicans and Ilvese who witnessed this action, being still living when he visited La Madelena, and relating various circumstances relative to it, he heard the following story from an old veteran, who was an eyewitness ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... ye not see that?" added I, shoving down his head mostly on the top of it. "Do ye not see that? awful, most awful! extonishing!! Do ye not see that long beard? Who, in the name of goodness, ever was an eyewitness to a sheep's head, in a Christian land, with a beard like an unshaven Jew crying 'owl clowes,' with a green bag ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... telling of the calm and quiet heroism of Thomas, holding his position on the horse-shoe ridge till night put an end to the fighting, and then retiring in perfect order to the Rossville Gap, to which he was ordered. This part of the story has been made familiar to all. An eyewitness has told how, when Rosecrans reached Chattanooga, he had to be helped from his horse. His nerves were exhausted by the strain he had undergone, and only gradually recovered from the shock. [Footnote: Cist, The Army of the Cumberland, p. 226.] His first ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... addressed to the public, describing the interview with the Secretary of War, which he calls a "Council of War." I did not then deem it necessary to renew a matter which had been swept into oblivion by the war itself; but, as it is evidence by an eyewitness, it is ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... account of every incident, from the embarkation at Southampton to the return to London. The author tells us himself, that he was present at Agincourt, and "sat on horseback with the other priests, among the baggage, in the rear of the battle." We have, therefore, the evidence of an eyewitness; and by that testimony I have regulated the general representation of this noble play, but more especially the ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... sisters, and young children had been robbed, insulted, and abused, and were found by them in temporary huts more resembling a savage camp than a civilized habitation." Though Captain McCall was an eyewitness of some of the scenes he describes, the picture he draws might seem to be too highly colored were it not supplemented by a great mass of evidence. One more instance out of many may be given. In a skirmish with the Americans under Colonel Harden, Brown captured several ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the First Consul learned of the death of General Kleber. The poniard of Suleyman had slain this great captain the same day that the cannon of Marengo laid low another hero of the army of Egypt. This assassination caused the First Consul the most poignant grief, of which I was an eyewitness, and to which I can testify; and, nevertheless, his calumniators have dared to say that he rejoiced at an event, which, even considered apart from its political relations, caused him to lose a conquest which had ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... that is not true, and with having related nothing that he has not seen, he feels no misgivings or regret at leaving much unsaid. Of all the information which can be acquired without leaving one's fireside in London or St. Petersburg he gives not a word, but the valuable testimony of the eyewitness he records in a series of drawings in which Eastern life is 'taken in the fact' with a truth and liveliness of touch rarely found in an amateur pencil. The letter-press is a secondary part of the work,—merely to render the drawings intelligible; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... precise as they are sometimes represented to be, if Time really dotes and repeats his old stories, then ought students of history to be the best statesmen. Yet, with Guizot for an adviser, Louis Philippe, himself the eyewitness of two revolutions, became the easy victim of a third. Reasoning from what has been to what will be is apt to be paralogistic at the best. Much influence must still be left to chance, much accounted for by what pagans called Fate, and we Providence. We can only say, Victrix causa diis placuit, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... violent agitation by a speech from M. Dufraisse, one of the most able and earnest of the Montagnards, who delivered a speech which would not have been misplaced in the mouth of Robespierre or Danton. "The pale head, compressed lips, and intense expression of the young lawyer of the Mountain," says an eyewitness, "reminded the auditors, not without a shudder, of such a thoroughbred Jacobin as St. Just." He declared that the laws of proscription were just, and ought to be maintained. "The Revolution can not ask pardon of the dynasties it has justly upset. Have the family of Orleans ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... deny that something can be said for the idea of evolution in the religions of mankind, but the study of Animism, with which I have long been familiar as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea. Rather the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic heathenism is not a transition stage to a higher religion. There are no facts to prove that animistic heathenism ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... the Silent, the leader of the Protestants of Holland in their struggle for independence from Spanish dominion. The sentence pronounced upon the murderer, Balthazar Gerard, a mere hired assassin, was carried out within ten days after commission of the crime. A contemporary writer, apparently an eyewitness of his execution, speaks of Gerard as one "whose death was not of a sufficient sharpness for such a caitiff, and yet too sore for any Christian." His description of the murderer' ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... sides of the sea. America's pride in him is shown by some of the comments in the New York press, after he had so brilliantly helped in the capture of La Jonquiere's ships. Here is, for instance, one letter from an eyewitness which was printed in the New ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... greatly enhanced by the fact that it is one of the few books in English about the wise men of India which has been written, not by a journalist or foreigner, but by one of their own race and training—in short, a book ABOUT yogis BY a yogi. As an eyewitness recountal of the extraordinary lives and powers of modern Hindu saints, the book has importance both timely and timeless. To its illustrious author, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing both in India and America, may every reader render due appreciation and gratitude. His unusual life-document ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... treated, her genius slighted, and herself subjected to an odious tyranny from Mrs Schwellenberg, the Keeper of the Robes, and that she fled from the scene of such cruelties as the only means of preserving her health and life. As an eyewitness, I may be permitted to set forth another view which, though uncoloured by the rosy or lurid hues of the genius of the author of "Evelina," may be received as a plain account of what took place, especially with regard to the Honourable Colonel Digby and the causes of the lady's quitting ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... hawk like its evil genius: it is most singular that so small a creature should thus overcome one that is the formidable enemy of so many of the feathered race. I should have been somewhat sceptical on the subject, had I not myself been an eyewitness to the fact. I was looking out of my window one bright summer-day, when I noticed a hawk of a large description flying heavily along the lake, uttering cries of distress; within a yard or two of it was a small—in the distance it appeared to me a very small—bird ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... said Bertram, "you were yourself an eyewitness of that transaction, which has been spoken of far and wide, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... mention this because from the first oak I see I mean to rend such another branch, large and stout like that, with which I am determined and resolved to do such deeds that thou mayest deem thyself very fortunate in being found worthy to come and see them, and be an eyewitness of things that will with ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Mary; Martha's return to the house and whispering in her sister's ear, "The Master is come and calleth for thee;" the hurried obedience to the call—all these incidents are recorded by John with the particularity and vividness of an eyewitness. ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... dogmatic and the Anglican principle were one, as I had taught them; but I was breaking the Via Media to pieces, and would not dogmatic faith altogether be broken up, in the minds of a great number, by the demolition of the Via Media? Oh! how unhappy this made me! I heard once from an eyewitness the account of a poor sailor whose legs were shattered by a ball, in the action off Algiers in 1816, and who was taken below for an operation. The surgeon and the chaplain persuaded him to have a leg off; ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... katapiptei]) from the golden to the iron age. It fades, as it were, into the light of common day in a double sense: for the events succeeding this reign Dio himself was able to observe as an intelligent eyewitness. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. "No one of us," says an eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, "has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, represented ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... vindicate the French Republic and Napoleon from one at least of the many unjust aspersions cast on them. I feel it also my duty to state on every occasion that I, belonging to an army sent to Egypt in order to expel them from that country, have been an eyewitness of the good and beneficial reforms and improvements that the French made in Egypt during a period of only three years. They did more for the good of that country in this short period, than we have done for ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Canterbury Cathedral, consisting of Trinity Chapel and the circular adjunct called Becket's Crown. The building of these commenced the year following the fire which occurred A. D. 1174, and was carried on without intermission for several successive years. Gervase, a monk of the cathedral, and an eyewitness of this re-edification, wrote a long and detailed description of the work in progress, and a comparison between that and the more ancient structure which was burnt; he does not, however, notice in any clear and precise terms the general adoption ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... and reverend of all, inasmuch as its waters are not polluted by fresh sin; which also our Lord underwent for our sakes, and rightly called it baptism. So as imitators and followers of him, first his eyewitness, disciples, and Apostles, and then the whole band of holy martyrs yielded themselves, for the name of Christ, to kings and tyrants that worshipped idols, and endured every form of torment, being exposed to wild beasts, fire and sword, confessing the good ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... editions could be had; but through the interpreter, I learned that the conditions of the city had been altered since the Boxer Rebellion in 1890. Indeed, that fearful event was the cause of many changes in Peking and of great suffering as well. The story of the conflict as related by an eyewitness was very thrilling. Certain portions of the city at the present time consist of naught but ruins, such as the foreign mission buildings and the eastern and southern cathedrals, one of which was in process of renovation. The Legation quarter ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... more or less of the civilised world, the natural evolution and development of law and order were suddenly and insanely interrupted through the inconceivable weakness of a most amiable and useless king, by the 'wild asses' of Mirabeau, acting in 1789 under the pressure of what so friendly an eyewitness of their conduct as Gouverneur Morris calls the 'abominable' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of the United States forces and the capture of Washington. They also helped to inspire Francis Scott Key. Whether or not he understands the technical characteristics of the rocket, every schoolboy remembers the "rocket's red glare" of the National Anthem, wherein Key recorded his eyewitness account of the bombardment of Fort McHenry. The U. S. Army in Mexico (1847) included a rocket battery, and, indeed, war rockets were an important part of artillery resources until the rapid progress of gunnery in the latter 1800's made ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... jumping from the walls seemed more desirable to many than appeal to Christian mercy. Their last resort was to the mosques, and particularly the Mosque of Omar. Into this the Christians rode on horseback and trampled the heaps of dead and dying laid low by "Christian" swords. An eyewitness, Raymond d'Agiles, says that in the porch of this mosque blood rose to the knees and bridles of the horses! Ten thousand were slain there. The authority cited above declares that bodies floated in the blood, and arms and hands were tossed by sanguine ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... thus: "Parvae staturae erat, curtam habens faciem, inaequales humeros, dexter superior, sinisterque inferior." What feature in this portrait gives any idea of a monster? Or who can believe that an eyewitness, and so minute a painter, would have mentioned nothing but the inequality of shoulders, if Richard's form had been a compound of ugliness? Could a Yorkist have drawn a less disgusting representation? And yet Rous ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... slay her family scatheless; but one thing you must not do: you must not lay a hand upon her sleeping-mat, or your belly will swell, and you can only be cured by the lady or her husband. Here is the report of an eyewitness, Tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money—certainly no fool. In 1886 he was present in a house on Makatea, where two lads began to skylark on the mats, and were (I think) ejected. Instantly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rooms were occupied last night," continued Thorndyke, "we might obtain an actual eyewitness of the crime. This room was brilliantly lighted, and all the blinds were up, so that an observer at any of those windows could see right into the room, and very distinctly, too. It might be worth ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Battle of Appomattox has been written from the account of an eyewitness. Dick plays an important part. The volume closes with the blue and the gray ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... them in matters which admit of verification, over certain points of ordinary fact, which can be placed beyond the region of dispute, and by which the truth of his narrative may be held to stand or fall. I shall confine myself for this purpose to what he states at first hand in his capacity as an eyewitness, and to two salient cases which may be taken to represent the whole. Among the rest some are in course of investigation, and so far as they have gone are promising similar results; the locality of others has been so chosen as to baffle ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... he walked in; saw Val lying there, and almost fell headlong into the room in his haste and perturbation. It looked very much as if he had at last stumbled upon the horrible tragedy which was his one daydream. To be an eyewitness of a murder, and to be able to tell the tale afterward with minute, horrifying detail—that, to Polycarp, would make life really worth living. He shuffled over to Val, pushed aside the mass of yellow ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... circumstances attending the lamented fate of Mr. Park, was given to the travellers by an eyewitness, and together with all the information which they could collect, tallies with the story, disbelieved at the time, which Isaaco brought back from Amadi Fatooma. The informant stated "that when the boat came down the river, it happened unfortunately ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Versailles. In reproducing the whole of this scene, I have not altered the sense of a word; I have only sought to make up for the charm which every conversation loses that is reported by a third party who was not actually an eyewitness. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... this sort with Napoleon. He preserves nothing of the etiquette he borrows from the old court but its rigid discipline and its pompous parade. "The ceremonial system," says an eyewitness, "was carried out as if it had been regulated by the tap of a drum; everything was done, in a certain sense, 'double-quick.'[1287]... This air of precipitation, this constant anxiety which it inspires," puts an end to all comfort, all ease, all entertainment, all agreeable intercourse; there ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... here given of the mutiny, is nearly in the words of Pricket, an eyewitness of the event. It is difficult at first to perceive the whole enormity of the crime. The more we reflect upon it, the blacker it appears. Scarcely a circumstance is wanting, that could add to the baseness of the villainy, or the horror ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Flamstead, the astronomer, when a lad of nineteen, went into Ireland to be touched by Greatrakes, and he testifies that he was an eyewitness of several cures, although he himself was not benefited. In a letter to Lord Conway, Greatrakes says: "The King's doctors, this day (for the confirmation of their majesties' belief), sent three out of the hospital to me, who came on crutches; but, blessed ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... when the object is within range; and some men throw them five at a time. Although it is so weak a weapon, it has such violence that it has gone through a boat and has pierced and killed the rower. Brother Diego de Santiago told me, as an eyewitness, that he being seated saw that thing (which appears a prodigy) happen in the same vessel in which he had embarked with a garrison. To me that seemed so incredible that I wished immediately to see it myself; and, cutting a bagacay, I had it thrown ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... is to be given rather to Dionysius, who is an eyewitness as to this having occurred by the moon eclipsing the sun. For he says (Ep. ad Polycarp): "Without any doubt we saw the moon encroach on the sun," he being in Egypt at the time, as he says in the same letter. And ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas |
