"Frightful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since the decision of the Council of 543 A.D.[1] condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of Justice inclining to the side filled with their iniquities ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... morrow Hakon and Siwald met in an encounter and fought two whole days. The combat was most frightful; both generals fell; and victory graced the remnants of the Danes. But, in the night after the battle, the fleet, having penetrated the Susa, reached the appointed haven. It was once possible to row along this river; but its bed is now choked with solid substances, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... had he done so than Bengal, uttering a frightful roar, whirled. The force of the jerk as the brute turned hurled Phil Forrest against the bars of the cage with a crash, and Bengal's sharp-clawed feet made a vicious sweep for the body of the lad pressed so tightly against ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... French maid, pushed her way in, weeping and exclaiming. Lady Tressady, it seemed, had been in frightful pain all the afternoon. She was now easier for the moment, though dangerously exhausted. But if the heart attacks returned during the next twenty-four hours, nothing could save her. The probability was that they would return, and she was asking piteously ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... otherwise beset with dangers. Whilst engaged in it, Paul seems to have experienced those "perils of waters," or of "rivers," [75:5] and "perils of robbers," which he afterwards mentions; for the highlands of Asia Minor were infested with banditti, and the mountain streams often rose with frightful rapidity, and swept away the unwary stranger. John Mark now returned to Jerusalem, and, at a subsequent period, we find Paul refusing, in consequence, to receive him as a travelling companion. [76:1] But though ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... A frightful scream suddenly scatters our wandering senses. It is a rogue elephant upon us! It was the scream of his trumpet that we heard! and he is right among us. How we should bolt! How we should run at the first start until we could get a gun! But let him continue this ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Over all the rest the blackest fates hovered menacingly— fates from which a mother might pray that kindly death would save her children in their infancy. One was to wander with the stain of murder on his soul, with the curses of a world upon his name, with a price set upon his head, in frightful physical pain, till he died a dog's death in a burning barn; the stricken wife was to pass the rest of her days in melancholy and madness; of those two young lovers, one was to slay the other, and then end his life a raving maniac" (Nicolay ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... was in a frightful condition from the vaccine disease, though I was still a teetotaller, now of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... treated like a conquered country; and hangings and shootings of rebels were frequent. The fleet at the Nore mutinied; and the mutiny was put down by bloodshed and executions. Towns and cities swarmed with ruffians; and brutal sports and brutal language existed to a frightful degree. Criminals were hanged, five or six together, at Tyburn. Gibbets existed at all the cross-roads throughout the country. The people were grossly ignorant, and altogether neglected. Scepticism and irreligion prevailed, until Wesley and Whitfield sprang up to protest against formalism ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... storms or floods interfere. No grade-crossings and no flying dust are known in this Tube Line which has brought the ends of Ploid together. Think of a person crossing a vast continent in a day, for the cars in this Tube Line run with frightful speed across the long stretches of level. They make as high as a three-hundred mile run ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... India and China (A.D. 851) which accurately represents the view entertained of this people by mariners down to modern times. "The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive. They are black, with woolly hair, and in their eyes and countenances there is something quite frightful. . . . They go naked and have no boats. If they had, they would devour all who passed near them. Sometimes ships that are windbound and have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crews sometimes fall into the hands of the latter and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... lot in the world sadly changed. So, indeed, it was. Mattie and Evey could not, for instance, begin naturally by asking, "Cally, did you have a lovely summer?"—when of course they knew very well that she had had a perfectly frightful summer. Mattie came in before eleven o'clock on the first morning, chirping affectionate greetings; but neither then nor later did she manage to convey any real sense of sympathy with Cally, or of understanding what she had been through, or even of wanting to understand. Cally would have liked ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... that most of this frightful inhumanity was the work of so-called good men, the pillars of society, the respectable element, what we are pleased to call "our first citizens," instigated by the Church that happened to be in power. Socrates poisoned; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... cousin of more resolute character. The acknowledgment or exclusion of the bastards was a fruitful source of contest and most of these families in consequence were plagued with a crowd of discontented and vindictive kinsmen. This circumstance gave rise to continual outbreaks of treason and to frightful scenes of domestic bloodshed. Sometimes the pretenders lived abroad in exile, like the Visconti, who practiced the fisherman's craft on the Lake of Garda, viewed the situation with patient indifference. When ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... General Johnson, nearly three thousand were either slain or captured. This victory over them was followed by another more decisive: on the 21st of June General Lake attacked the fortified position at Vinegar Hill, and carried it with a frightful loss to the insurgents. The rebels, indeed, never rallied again; and though some fearful atrocities were committed by isolated bands of them, they were, in effect, from that time subdued. Soon after, Lord Camden was recalled from the lieutenancy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with a modern language. Latin was the gate to many things, and, apart from the question of overloading the curriculum, there was great danger if educational possibilities were not thrown open to all without restriction. There is no more frightful "sitting on the safety valve" than in denying men of ability the means of rising to the positions for which their talents ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... sir, only terribly frightened, like some of us,' replied the man, smiling on one side of his face, and blushing as well as he could on the other, 'but life is sweet to us all, and who would not have run away from that frightful beast?' ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... morning when we left the place and it had blown up cold during the rain, so that the streets were a glare of ice and our taxi was skidding horribly. When we got to Twelfth Street and Fifth Avenue there came a frightful explosion; a gas main had taken fire and flames were shooting twenty feet into the air. I was terrified, for it made me think of Paris—the air raids, the night sirens, the long-distance cannon. Captain Herrick saw that I was quite hysterical and said that I mustn't think of going ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... her this morning I remarked that she ought to be very grateful to you for saving her life. 'I am,' she hesitatingly answered. 'But I think he might have acted a little more gentlemanly and not caught me by the hair. I have a frightful headache.'" ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... detachment toiled all night up the steep and dangerous pathway, among rocks, chasms, and precipices, frightful by day, and now made still more frightful by the gloom of the night. They came out at last, in the dawn of the morning, into valleys and glens high up the declivity of the mountain, and in the immediate vicinity of the Phocaean encampment. ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Mount Ararat was probably derived from the following passage in Tournefort: "It is a most frightful sight; David might well say such sort of places show the grandeur of the Lord. One can't but tremble to behold it; and to look on the horrible precipices ever so little will make the head turn round. The noise made by a vast number of crows [hence the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... bulwarks. The storm soon broke in great fury, beginning with a fierce wind which swept the waves before it. There was but little rain, and the waves rose higher and higher with every minute, until the heavy ship began to roll and pitch in a frightful way, so that the soldiers began to think, some of them, that she would certainly sink. Finally the waves were so high they dashed themselves over the decks, and no one was allowed above the gangways. The cries of the poor horses, as they felt themselves being washed ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... his eyes shut, with a semi-circular dotted line marking the progress of his flight and a few stars above his head to indicate moral collapse. There are no words that can adequately describe the sheer, black horror that froze the blood in his veins as this frightful speech ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... black fur; a cape of the same material was clasped round his neck and covered his elbows; a gigantic hood which bristled with all the ferocity of a grenadier's cap, covered his head; his hands were disguised in tiger's paws, while a frightful mask, with sharp nose, thin lips, and white color, concealed his face. He was accompanied by ten stout barbarians, dressed and masked like himself, each sounding some discordant instrument. Every door, by ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... had been present, he would have experienced the most frightful impression it is possible to conceive—a ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... fix altogether," Jack said. "And anyhow, we shall lose our ship and get into a frightful row, and, if somebody won't pay our ransom, I suppose they will knock us on the head finally. The best thing, you know, will be for ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... happen, they would say nothing of it; That he used all means to make his Wives Write, Sign, Seal, and Swear a Covenant, never to reveal any of his Secrets; That his Wives had privately complained unto the Neighbours about frightful Apparitions of Evil Spirits, with which their House was sometimes infested; and that many such things have been whispered among the Neighbourhood. There were also some other Testimonies relating to the Death of People whereby the Consciences ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... he looked across the meadow, which told of the inundation in its sweep of bent, muddy grass, and saw, between the creekbank trees, the lodged timber to which he had clung, the recollection of the night impressed him like a frightful dream. It was a bright, sharp, wintry day,—the most violent contrast to that which had preceded it. The hills on either side, whose outlines he could barely guess in the darkness, now stood out from the air with a hard, painful distinctness; the sky was an arch of cold, steel-tinted ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... force of arms, of Cavite and Manila. The rest of the Archipelago, excepting Mindanao and the Sulu Sultanate, was virtually and forcibly held by the natives in revolt. At the close of 1898 the Americans and the rebels had become rival parties, and the differences between them foreboded either frightful bloodshed or the humiliation of the one ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... twisted tight. Many, however, obtained more relief from kicks and blows, which they found numbers of persons ready to administer; for, wherever the dancers appeared, the people assembled in crowds to gratify their curiosity with the frightful spectacle. At length the increasing number of the affected excited no less anxiety than the attention that was paid to them. In towns and villages they took possession of the religious houses; processions were everywhere instituted on their account and masses ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... excitement I slips below an' plugs up one hole, an' forces two men, at the point of a revolver that wasn't loaded, to pump ship. They just managed to hold the water level, while up on deck Bull is tearin' his hair an' cursin' somethin' frightful. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... so Hope stopped dead. A man's voice, shouting curses, came from the open window; and, with it, the sound of struggling and the sound of blows—blows delivered with the precision and regularity of a machine—frightful, swinging blows ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... robbed her of all sleep that night and made her the first one astir at daybreak. But thenceforward, and now for half a week or more, the aptness seemed quite to have passed. Strange was the theatre whose play was all and only a frightful reality; whose swarming, thundering, smoking stage had its audience, its New Orleans audience, wholly behind it, and whose curtain of distance, however thin, mocked every bodily sense and compelled all ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the slightest noise made me tremble. I spread out on the table our map of Europe, and there, in the very presence of all my hopes, in that room where I had conceived and had so nearly realized them, I abandoned myself to the most frightful presentiments. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... are going to lose that reputation which you have gained, and which I have so much at heart; call up, my dear daughter, all your courage and constancy; retire from Court; oblige your husband to carry you away; do not be afraid of taking such resolutions, as being too harsh and difficult; however frightful they may appear at first, they will become more pleasant in time, than the misfortunes that follow gallantry: if any other motives than those of duty and virtue could have weight with you, I should tell you ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... totally exterminating a people it was found so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.—On the first of October 1793, Barrere, after inveighing against the excessive population of La Vendee, which he termed "frightful," proposed to the Convention to proclaim by a decree, that the war of La Vendee "should be terminated" by the twentieth of the same month. The Convention, with barbarous folly, obeyed; and the enlightened Parisians, accustomed to think with contempt on the ignorance of the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... name of a Louis the Fifteenth, a Caligula making his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that most savage monster," who sometimes drank the blood of relatives, sometimes employing himself with slaughtering the most distinguished citizens before whose gates fear and terror kept watch; a tyrant of frightful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly seeking darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to make solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the Constitution are above the Incapables, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... flattered by the respectful attention of the naive Russian, continued his sermon. It was before the days of the Beyliss trial. Nevertheless, except for the "ritual" murder, all the rest of the jargon of our anti-Semitic papers was there, and the Jewish character was painted the most frightful black. ...
— The Shield • Various
... "What a frightful thing to have happen!" grieved Mrs. Witherspoon as she poured out the tea for Mr. Hepplewhite. "You don't ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... She would not change her dress until Anna had retired, as that might excite suspicion; so with the same rigid apathy of manner she sat down by Willie's side and waited till Anna was heard moving in her room. The lamp was burning dimly on the bureau, and so Anna failed to see the frightful expression of Adah's face, as she performed her accustomed duties, brushing Anna's hair, and letting her hands linger caressingly amid the locks she ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... quotations might be made to any extent, and I defy you to deny that these specimens exhibit the real condition of your operatives in every branch of your industry. There is of course a variety in their sufferings. But the same incredible amount of toil, frightful destitution, and utter want of morals, characterize the lot of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... constantly disturbing and modifying the relations of all Europe, has not yet taken a single step toward ensuring the maintenance of his successors."[12128] In 1809, adds the same diplomat:[12129] "His death will be the signal for a new and frightful upheaval; so many divided elements all tend to combine. Deposed sovereigns will be recalled by former subjects; new princes will have new crowns to defend. A veritable civil war will rage for half a century over the vast empire ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... castaway, a very child of the devil, because she could thus stand and listen to her lover at her chamber door, yet could she not think of the sin that would really make her so without an abhorrence which made that sin frightful to her. She was not allured, hardly tempted, by the young man's offer as he made it. And yet, what else was there for her to do? And if it were true that she was a castaway, why should she struggle to be better than ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... not beg enough to suit him, while under the lash, will fly into a passion, uttering the most horrid oaths; while the victim of his rage is crying, at every stroke, "Lord have mercy! Lord have mercy!" The scenes exhibited at the whipping post are awfully terrific and frightful to one whose heart has not turned to stone; I never could look on but a moment. While under the lash, the bleeding victim writhes in agony, convulsed with torture. Thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, which tear the skin at almost every stroke, is what the South calls a very moderate punishment! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... devil is much like being afraid of the darkness. When I was a boy, I was bold enough to go where I wanted to in the darkness; but when I started for the house again, I could imagine that dogs and bears and all sorts of frightful things might be anywhere about, so I would run at full speed. There might have been something, but if so, I never really knew it; but I would get panic-stricken just the same. If you become frightened this way in spiritual ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... How must you behave when the devil comes against you? he has many ways of attack; sometimes he comes openly, sometimes craftily, sometimes he tempts you, sometimes he frightens you, but whether he comes in a pleasing or a frightful form, be sure, if you saw him himself with your eyes, he would always be hateful, monstrous, and abominable. Therefore he keeps himself out of sight. But be sure he is all this; and, as believing it, take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand in the evil day, and having ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... cape of violet silk, and a scarf richly embroidered in gold, which was all very pretty, but his arms and hands were encased in sleeves, finished with gloves, of scarlet cloth, which showed through the lace sleeves of the surplice, and gave the hands a very frightful appearance. He wore a little round cap on the top of his head, a golden crucifix on his bosom, and an enormous gold ring on his right hand. He spoke very slowly, screaming rather than speaking, in order to make himself heard in the distant parts of the building. The service lasted two hours, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... rush the house. It was a mad plan and yet I was convinced that they had no other. And when they should enter, in the face of a stream of bullets from those terrible automatic pistols, what a carnage there would be! It was frightful to think of. Why does the law permit those cowards' tools to be made and sold? A pistol is the one weapon that has no legitimate use. An axe, a knife—even a rifle, has some lawful function. But a pistol is an appliance for killing human beings. It has no other purpose whatever. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... wouldn't condescend to anything more than a dislike that he hasn't tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it's different; when he feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you can't go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father, there is danger now." As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned forward a little and looked ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... commit a crime, perhaps. The horrible temptation of opportunity assails them; the knife is in their hand, and the unconscious victim by their side. They may conquer the restless demon and go away and die innocent of any violent deed; but they may yield to the horrible temptation—the frightful, passionate, hungry craving for violence and horror. They sometimes yield ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Otah knew. He knew and was helpless. A frightful thing had been launched and there could be no turning; nothing now but the constant fear, the trap without end, the perilous thing above all their heads ... and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... antagonist. But the terrible punishment which the mucker had inflicted upon him overcame him at last, and as Byrne felt the man's efforts weakening he partially disengaged himself and raising himself upon one arm dealt his now almost unconscious enemy a half-dozen frightful blows upon the face. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... invalid, knows the judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father's bankers and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and together ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... impeachment proceeding, or afterward, would see this slumbering volcano throughout the South burst forth with frightful violence. Impeachment, or the coming presidential election, will, it is calculated, furnish an opportunity when the national power will be so embarrassed as to allow the new outbreak to get head before it can ...
— The Oaths, Signs, Ceremonies and Objects of the Ku-Klux-Klan. - A Full Expose. By A Late Member • Anonymous
... Miserably mean-spirited, he seeks to propitiate the wrath of the fiend by invoking his torments upon an old man whose disinterested appeal momentarily quickened his conscience into revolt. Finally, when we recall the words with which Tamburlaine faced death, what contempt, despite the frightful anguish of the scene, is aroused by Faustus's screams of terror at the approach of Lucifer to claim him as his own! Instinctively we think of Byron's Manfred and his scorn of hell and its furies. It ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the old man will come round without much fuss," Bertie went on. "We have been very penitent—the waste of note-paper before we could get our feelings properly expressed was something frightful; but the money was well laid out, for we have heard from him again, and there is a perceptible softening in the tone of his letter. Emmeline assures me that he is passionately fond of music, and reminds me how anxious he was that she should learn to play. The reasoning does not exactly convince ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... not even by the death of her husband, had she received such a frightful blow as that which the dreamy Cyril had ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... of cannonading again commenced, drowning the remainder of the sentence. Then came a shock that made the stately vessel reel throughout the whole of her massive fabric. There was a rending and grinding of timber, and a frightful crash on deck announced that one of the masts ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... average of three murders annually for each, as calculated by Captain Sleeman and other writers, murder every year thirty thousand of their fellow creatures. This average is said to be under the mark; but even if we were to take it at only a third of this calculation, what a frightful list it would be! When religion teaches men to go astray, they go far ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... in 1856, the road was opened to Youngstown, and its receipts, carefully husbanded, began slowly to lessen the floating debt, by that time grown to frightful proportions, and carried solely by the pledge of the private property and credit of the president and Ohio directors. These directors, consisting of Hon. Frederick Kinsman and Charles Smith, of Warren, Governor David Tod, of Briar Hill, Judge Reuben Hitchcock, of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... door just then and come in, as Clump demolished the window and went out, but Captain Mugford! Having left Mr Clare enjoying a nap on a sofa in the brig, he had come up to the house, and, hearing the frightful noises in the kitchen, rushed in there. So much was he prepared by the yells that escaped for some tragic scene of scalding or other accident, that it required two or three minutes before he could take in the meaning of the commotion. But when he recognised in the fierce ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Came frightful days of snow and rain. He did not know when he made camp, when he broke camp. He travelled in the night as much as in the day. He rested wherever he fell, crawled on whenever the dying life in him flickered up and burned less dimly. He, as a man, no longer strove. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... of the temporal or eternal felicity of man, has prevailed in Spain (as also in other Nations) during several Centuries, by the ABSOLUTE exclusion of the true knowledge of the Great God and last Judge of Mankind: and thus it has been plunged into the most frightful calamities. There was a time in which precisely the same was read in the then VERY LITTLE Kingdom of England, but at length Her Sons recognising their imperative DUTY towards God and their Neighbour, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... state that a part of the American continent extended far into the Atlantic Ocean, and that this region was destroyed by a series of frightful cataclysms at long intervals apart. Three of these are frequently referred to (see Baldwin's Ancient America, p. 176). It is a curious confirmation that the Kelts of Britain had a legend that part of their country ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did. Of these mustachios or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon them, but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough, and such as, in England, would have passed for frightful. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... it: all Picardy, for example, and all Sologne; nothing is uglier—and, oh my life! what frightful men ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... some day. Gruby says very soon. But doctors are so inconsistent. Last week, after I had had a frightful attack of cramp in the throat and chest, 'Pouvez-vous siffler?' he said. 'Non, pas meme une comedie de M. Scribe,' I replied. So you may see how bad I was. Well, even that, he said, wouldn't hasten the end, and I ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... number of N.C.O.s, all of them Prussian, carried canes which they made use of frequently, and according to the current expression there was a cane for every seven men. The penalty for desertion by a foreign soldier was inevitably death. You can imagine the frightful position of these foreigners, who having enlisted in a moment of drunkenness, or been taken by force, found themselves far from their native land, under a glacial sky, condemned to be Prussian soldiers, that is slaves, for the rest of their lives! ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Scriptural gloss. The pestilence, the smallpox or the cholera must, indeed, have caused enormous ravages among the dense population of Egypt, at an epoch when there existed yet but very rudimentary ideas about hygiene and where, consequently, such diseases must have rapidly assumed frightful virulence. ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... is that the trial to any one here? I thought old Oxford was the great guardian nurse of truth! I am sure she cannot deal in magic mirrors or such frightful things. Do you know you are talking ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... approaching. Nor was it long when, in the centre of his bodyguard, surrounded by his domestic officers and those hideous negroes who guard the Eastern haram, and whose misshapen forms were rendered yet more frightful by the richness of their attire, came the Soldan, with the look and manners of one on whose brow Nature had written, This is a King! In his snow-white turban, vest, and wide Eastern trousers, wearing a sash of scarlet silk, without any other ornament, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and waited, Lena silent, Feuerstein pacing the room and rehearsing, now aloud, now to himself, the scene he would enact with his father-in-law. Peter was in a frightful humor that evening. His only boy, who spent his mornings in sleep, his afternoons in speeding horses and his evenings in carousal, had come down upon him for ten thousand dollars to settle a gambling debt. Peter was willing that his son should be a gentleman and should conduct ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... you, my dear, but it's all the result of your inexperience; you ought to have eaten pebble-stones with your meal when you were setting. Don't you see, Dame Kertarkut, what bills they have? That'll increase, and they'll be frightful!" ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... the fiends came in shapes like beasts and reptiles. In a moment the place was filled with lions roaring at him, bulls thrusting at him with their horns, creeping serpents unable to reach him, wolves held back in the act of springing. There, too, were bears and asps and scorpions. Mid the frightful clamor of roars, growls and hisses, rose the clear voice of the saint, as he triumphantly mocked the demons in their rage. Suddenly the awful tumult ceased; the wretched beings became invisible and a ray of light pierced the roof to cheer ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... and, when he had succeeded, struggled as fruitlessly to escape the consequences, as the wife of Bluebeard in washing the key of the ensanguined chamber, who, as often as she cleared the stain of blood from the one side, found it showing itself with frightful ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... assured of confirmation on my part, that I could not find it in my heart to disappoint him. But as I was about to answer, Discontent grumbled out a few words, which I think were to the effect, that where the country was so hideously frightful, that any thing that was decent attracted notice, but that the same object in England would not have been regarded; asking me if I had ever travelled through a more ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... now plying their trades—scores of human beings, amidst a roar of sounds to which even the tumult of a great city is as nothing, four, six, or eight strong men at a time, have been hurried violently and swiftly from the world, when the scene has been rendered frightful with excess of human life; when curious eyes have glared from casement and house-top, and wall and pillar; and when, in the mass of white and upturned faces, the dying wretch, in his all-comprehensive look of agony, has met not one—not one—that bore the impress ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... frightful stillness succeeded the explosion, which had just been heard bursting from the bowels of the rock. But when Le Renard raised his voice in a long and intelligible whoop, it was answered by a spontaneous yell from the mouth of every Indian within hearing ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Europe and America, burying everything beneath its crushing weight, and bringing many forms of life to a sudden and untimely end. No doubt a considerable number of species of animals and plants perished before this frightful invasion. A notable instance among these was perhaps that of the American horse, which disappeared at about this period. Other species survived by a retreat to more tropical regions, to return after the invasion had spent ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... think I have ever been so happy in my life.... It's almost worth having been in the army for the joy your freedom gives you. That frightful ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... spotting a way over. She was buried at once by the beam sea, and the jib flew to blazes; but the reefed stays'l stood, she recovered gamely, and I held on, though I knew it could only be for a few minutes, as the centre-plate was up, and she made frightful leeway towards the bank. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... they were still savage heathens there could be no doubt. However, as emerging from the wood they saw us kneeling, they stopped, apparently watching us with the greatest astonishment. Not till we rose from our knees did they again advance. Flourishing their weapons, however, with frightful gestures, they rushed towards us. Happily they did not shoot their arrows. Mr Bent called out to them, but so loud were their shrieks and cries that his voice was not heard. We had a couple of muskets and a fowling piece in the boat; but so completely wetted ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... moment I beheld the double rows of horrid teeth close upon him. He uttered a piercing shriek, and there was an indescribably horrible scrunch as he went down. In a moment after, he re-appeared, and making a last frightful effort to gain the rocks, caught my hand. I dragged him out of danger instantly, and then I found, to my unutterable joy, that the shark had only bitten off the half of ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... he satisfied himself so long ago as 1845 that you have a frightful temper and that your hens are unutterable nuisances, I see no reason why he should change his mind," I said, frigidly. "You have; and your hens are; and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... a frightful cry as he discerned what had just attracted the notice of the young engineer. The ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... not sat long, before they heard a frightful noise, and a terrible cry from the sea, which filled them with fear; then the sea opening, there rose up a thing like a great black column, which reached almost to the clouds. This redoubled their fear, made them rise speedily, and climb up into a tree to hide ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... to me with added force when, from subsequent examination, we learned that the entire mouth of this cave had been sealed up for unnumbered ages. It will be remembered that Marama told me the mountain in the lake had risen much during the frightful cyclone in which we were wrecked and with it the cave mouth which previously had been invisible. From the markings on the mountain side it was obvious that something of the sort had happened very recently, at any rate on this eastern face. That is, either ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the Janissaries, in 1826, he had sapped Turkish strength. He now began in his own person to set at nought the precepts of the Koran. All day he worked with frenzy, and at night he indulged himself in frightful orgies, till, dead drunk, he desisted from his madness, and was carried by his slaves to ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... such a moment in my life, and the thought flashed into my head that it was Simon's ghost come to forbid my second marriage. This idea was so frightful, that it was actually a relief to hear a vulgar shout of laughter coming from the other end of ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... foot. Blithe-hearted waxed the dwellers in that town, And glad in soul; for help was come to pass After their grief. The flood subsided straight, And at the saint's behest the storm was stilled, The waters ceased. Then was the mountain cloven— A frightful chasm—into itself it drew The flood, and swallowed up the fallow waves, The struggling sea—the abyss devoured it all. 1590 Yet not the waves alone it swallowed up; But fourteen men, worst caitiffs of the throng, Went headlong to destruction with the flood Under the yawning ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... if seeking their protection from a "Bogy Man." And as he stopped in the midst of the group which circled around him almost as excited as he, the little fellow looked back as if expecting to behold some frightful looking object ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... tamely,' said Mabel, her cheeks flushing again. 'At the time he ran back for the dog, we could all hear the other train rushing up in the fog, mamma, and nobody knew whether there might not be a frightful ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... that were adorned with Angadas and cased in leathern fences, and that still held swords and lances and battle-axes, and with headless bodies risen on their feet and bleeding and dancing on the field, and swarming with carnivorous creatures of diverse kinds, the Earth, O lord, presented a frightful aspect! After the Bharata army had been reduced to a small remnant, the Pandavas, filled with delight in that dreadful battle began to despatch the Kauravas to Yama's abode. Meanwhile, the heroic and valiant son of Subala's son very forcibly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... This has as frightful an aspect as the other, and perhaps more so; as many think there is less danger of their turning Heathens, than their turning Papists. But be not frightened at nothing; perhaps the tables again may be turned upon the objectors. Whether Christ's tasting death for every man be Popery ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... frightful extravagance as she paid away two of Miss Cobb's shillings for Bulwer's 'Caxtons;' but she felt also that to live through those three tedious hours without such aid would be a step on the road ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... to slide downward, the snow driving up into his face. The pace grew rapidly faster; he could not keep himself straight, but slid on his side; then his pack caught something that turned him farther round so that his head was lowest. He could see nothing; his pace grew frightful, and he drove on, unable to ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... camp. As the dusk fell the General talked to us for the last time. He took up the subject of preparedness where he left it yesterday—what are we to do to face an emergency, all our present methods failing, the emergency, if it comes, sure to be so frightful? The old volunteer system has broken down in each of our wars—the Revolutionary, the war of 1812, the Mexican, the Civil. We have seen it, before our eyes, break down in England now. The volunteer system is unfair—why should one man fight for another ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... of fine chain-armour which I bought of an Arab down by Darfur. I'm wondering if it would be too cowardly to wear it in the scrap that's coming. I don't know, though, but what I'll wear it, I get so scared. But it will be a frightful hot thing under my clothes, and it's hot enough without that, so I'm not sure. It depends how much my teeth chatter when I see "the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as the door closed upon Mrs. Dinks, "it is a scheming, artful woman. Her son has no money, and I doubt if he ever will have any. Boniface will be implacable. I know him. He is capable of seeing his daughter suffer. Fanny has made a frightful mistake. Poor Fanny! she was not so clever as she thought herself. There is only one hope—that is in old Burt. I think we had better present that view chiefly to Boniface. We must concede the poverty, but insist ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the enemy scared them; and they shrank from him, as children before some monstrous object. It is observed of the Scythians, their ancestors, who, as I have mentioned, came down upon Asia in the Median times, that they were a frightful set of men. "The persons of the Scythians," says a living historian,[7] "naturally unsightly, were rendered hideous by indolent habits, only occasionally interrupted by violent exertions; and the same cause subjected them to disgusting diseases, in which ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... gaze to the image, and asked who was that who had so much reverence there. No one replied, whereupon the zealous father seized the image, which was a fierce devil, made of wood covered with black paint, which made it altogether ugly and frightful. The barbarians were as if thunderstruck, for they thought that no one could touch that god without losing his life, and they could not cease their surprise that that father had been able to capture their divata. Thereupon the fervent missionary took occasion to make them understand their blindness, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... not pretend that this thought finally drove me from the scene, for I am of a very hardy make when it comes to the most frightful sort of suppositions. But the afternoon was wearing away, and we must go sometime. It seemed better also to leave the gayety at its height: the river covered with soft colors, and the barges and house-boats by the brink, with their companies responsive in harmonies of muslin and gauze and lace ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... darkness to a speedy death. In this great emergency he said, "There is no strength or power but in the great and high God"; and in joining his hands to pray he rubbed the ring which the magician had put on his finger. Immediately a genie of frightful aspect appeared, and said, "What wouldst thou have? I am ready to obey thee. I serve him who possesses the ring on thy finger; I, and the ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... new to her. Mr. Parsons, after his partial survey, was considering of possibilities, or more truly of endeavours at impossibilities, a mission to that dreadful population, means of discovering their sick, of reclaiming their children, of causing the true Light to shine in that frightful gross darkness that covered the people. She had never heard anything yet discussed save on the principle of self-pleasing or self-aggrandizement; here, self-spending was the axiom on which ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very luscious to eat, yet it is thought to disturb the fancy with frightful and confused dreams. And the like observation may be made concerning poetry, that it affords sweet and withal wholesome nourishment to the minds of young men, but yet it contains likewise no less matter of disturbance and emotion to them that want a right conduct in the study thereof. For of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the details of this new vision. It wore white, sprinkled slightly with drops of scarlet; its girdle was red; it had something in its hair leafy, yet shining—a little wreath with an evergreen gloss. Spectral or not, here truly was nothing frightful, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... valance and its fringe. I looked up and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bedtop was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me—in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of France—such a machine ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... girl saw not the frightful white, as of powdered skulls, bare, sinister, sunbaked, but a vision of a little house in a fragrant green meadow, with golden fields on either side of a peaceful river, and forests ranging up ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... improvidence had brought her to a pitiable condition; and in her latter days, after a career of splendor, caprice, and extravagance, she was obliged to subsist, it is said, by button-making. She died in frightful indigence, the recipient of charity, at a hospital ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... Ward refused, as long as possible to allow him to get out of bed, and even when Neal was up and dressed, peremptorily forbade him to leave the house. He spoke weighty words about his experience of wounds, of frightful consequences which followed cuts on the head when the cold of the outer air got at them, of men who had died of lockjaw because they would not take care of scalp wounds, of burning eruptions which broke out on the unwary, of desperate fevers ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... the younger cat sprang on the table and fetched a blow with her right paw at the candle to put it out. But the apprentice struck at her with his axe and sliced the paw off, whereupon the two cats vanished with a frightful screech. The apprentice wrapped the paw up in paper to shew it to his master. Very glad the miller was next morning when he came down and found the mill going and the young chap at his post. The apprentice told him what had happened in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... "With such a frightful catastrophe, gentlemen, the remembrance of which actually makes me nervous, my last speculation in Texas ended. Going over the whole matter with the captain that evening,—a process which took us well into the night,—it was our united opinion that the speculation ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... when you turn away, you must be a very timid signorin, indeed, if you buy his content with any thing more. I fancy that all these things are now much better managed in Italy than in America, only we grumble at them there and stand them in silence at home. Every one can recall frightful instances of plunder, in which he was the victim, at New York—in which the robbery had none of the neatness of an operation, as it often has in Italy, but was a brutal mutilation. And then as regards civility from ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... child," pleaded Agnes, almost tearful. "It's frightful to me, who've had experience, to hear ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... saw a frightful shape appear on the far side of the circle; that is to say, the table was between me and this shape. It was just like a grey cloud having the vague outlines of a man, but with two eyes of red fire glaring out ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... was not surprised when, next morning, a frightful bellowing was heard instead of Johnnie being seen, and she learnt that Master John was in the hands of Nurse Freeman, who was administering to him a dose in consequence of his having been greatly indisposed all night. It must be confessed that Christabel was not ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a nightmare," groaned Dick. But if it were, it was a nightmare which ran with us glaring, showing frightful fangs, for mile after mile of horror. Just as the steep slope of a descent offered a softer cushion for the suffering tyres, and hope stirred within us, we broke into such a region as imagination pictures in the streets of Lisbon after the great ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... taken at any point, may present a temporal sequence with any number of members, according to the synthetic and analytic power exerted by the given mind. What is tedious and formless to the inattentive may seem a perfect whole to one who, as they say, takes it all in; and similarly what is a frightful deafening discord to a sense incapable of discrimination, for one who can hear the parts may break into a celestial chorus. A musical education is necessary for musical judgment. What most people relish is hardly music; it is rather a drowsy ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... woman, 'lovely woman,' will come to our aid. What a rare sight it would be, now, to see even an ordinary house-maid or cook out here! It would be good for sore eyes. It seems to me a sort of horrible untruth to say that I've not seen a woman since I left Red River; and yet its a frightful fact, for I don't count the copper-coloured nondescripts one meets with hereabouts to be women at all. I suppose they are, but they ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... horribly fatal to the Fusiliers, when Arthur Carlton, for it was he who led, appeared out of a cloud of dust and smoke close to the Battery. Leveling his pistol, he shot down one of the Seik gunners, the lintstock of the other was within a few inches of the vent. A second more and a frightful gap would have been made in the ranks ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... who had become so, of frightful mien, wearing a long beard smeared with the blood of human beings, the Brahmana Utanka, O king, did not become agitated. That monarch of great energy, inspiring terror in every breast and looking like a second Yama, rising up, addressed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... while disposed to kill himself. In that state it was he reached Redman's Farm, and his interview with Rachel occurred. It was the accidental disclosure of the blood, in which his shirt sleeve was soaked, that first opened Rachel's eyes to the frightful truth. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... folds,—the papers crackling as her eye glanced over them. They were there; but not all. She pored over the mystery,—her thoughts running away upon every side-avenue of conjecture, and as often returning to the frightful, remediless fact before her. She was faint with sudden terror. By degrees she calmed herself, wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, smiled at her fright, and sat down again, with an attempt at self-control, to look through the drawers thoroughly. As she went on, the tremor returned, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... known that of which they of the family were in complete ignorance? Oh, the horror of the descent—the horror of the rude snatching away of the golden aureole! "Father, father, how could you do it? How could you hurt us so?" she muttered. Then, up before her rose his face with that frightful look in the eyes. "But how doing it made him suffer!" she thought. And the memory of those hours on hours she had spent with him, buried alive, flooded over her. "Doing it killed ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... grating chains and rush of air Awoke the sleeping page From frightful dreams. A voice he heard. Alas! 'twas fierce with rage, While on his sight there flashed the fitful gleams Of warders' arms. In haste they clangour down ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... still Sister Agatha remained lost in thought, wondering what new ideas had been put into that young head. "Perhaps she was right. Vanity and pride! How frightful the words sound! We never know ourselves as well as we do others; so, after all, the child has given me a good lesson. I must look into my own heart more thoroughly, and be more severe with myself, before I presume to advise and ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... priest to them, "the Arlberg was far more dreary than it is now. There was only a mule track over it, and no refuge for man or beast; so that wanderers and peddlers, and those whose need for work or desire for battle brought them over that frightful pass, perished in great numbers, and were eaten by the bears and the wolves. The little shepherd-boy Findelkind—who was a little boy five hundred years ago, remember," the priest repeated—"was sorely disturbed and distressed to see these poor dead souls in the snow winter after winter, ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... be difficult to find, my dear,' said Mrs. Fordyce sadly. 'This is a melancholy end to all our high hopes and ambitions. It will be a frightful blow to them ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... municipal ambulance service and to Doctor Bicknell, he had been dragged back into the world he had sought to leave. The Doctor's co-workers had shaken their heads when the case was brought in. Impossible, they said. Throat, windpipe, jugular, all but actually severed, and the loss of blood frightful. As it was such a foregone conclusion, Doctor Bicknell had employed methods and done things which made them, even in their professional capacities, shudder. And lo! the man ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London |
