"Giant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilful train crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts, punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as it alternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the soft night. All else was hushed, even to the giant chimneys in the steel works. One solitary furnace lamped the growing darkness. It was midsummer now in these marshy spots, and a very living nature breathed and pulsed, even in the puddles between the house and ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... work in a haunted seam!" he declared, vehemently. "It was a ghost nine feet high, and strong like a giant! If I'd no been so brave and kept my head I'd be lying there dead the noo. I surprised him, ye ken, by putting up a fight—likes he'd never known mortal man to do so much before! Next time, he'd not be surprised, and brave though a man may ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... appearing there, Sir Artegall defeat a Saracen who mounts guard over a neighboring bridge, despoiling all those who pass, for the benefit of his daughter. Such an undertaking suits Sir Artegall, who not only slays both the giant and his daughter, but razes their castle to the ground. Shortly after, on approaching the sea-shore, Sir Artegall perceives a charlatan provided with scales in which he pretends to weigh all things anew. Thereupon Sir Artegall, by weighing such intangible things as truth and falsehood, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... vingt un; not a word was said, but money was shovelled to the right and left very plentifully.... I forgot to mention that near Linz on the Rhine we passed a headland fronted and inlaid with as fine a range of Basaltic columns as the Giant's Causeway, some bent, some leaning, some upright. They are plentiful throughout that part of the country, and are remarkably regular; all the stone posts are formed of them, and even here ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... rock-bound hillsides rose almost perpendicularly from the narrow level ground that was little above the bed of the stream; it was the narrowest spot between the banks. George, the colored fellow, was set to work digging into one bank for an end foundation; the other bank held a giant boulder. ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... not understand. The small Indian again approached and after making several feints, struck with the tomahawk, but Andrew dodged and received the blow on his wrist instead of his head; and the wound though deep was not disabling. By a sudden and mighty effort he now shook himself free from the giant, and snatching up a loaded rifle from the sand, shot the small Indian as he rushed on him. But at that moment the larger Indian, rising up, seized him and hurled him to the ground. He was on his feet in a second, and the two grappled furiously, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... beach in the Filbert Islands so deserted. An hour after this photograph was taken more than three thousand natives were assembled to witness the judging of the exhibits. In the small hours of night, the entire strand is covered with pita-oolas, or giant land-crabs, about the size of manhole covers, who crawl inland to cut down the palm trees with which they build their nests. An examination of the picture with a powerful microscope will reveal the presence on the surface of the water of millions of ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... group formed. The stable boy was guiltily leading the horse through the door and around the gaudy rider came the old man, and a woman who had run from a neighboring porch, and a long-moustached giant. But all that Marianne distinctly saw was the white, set face of the rescuer as he soothed the child in his arms; in a moment it had stopped crying and the woman received it. It was the old man who uttered the thought ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... resuscitated in some later day; and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his heart. He was not such an ass, besides, but he must have been conscious of the deadly explosives, the gun-cotton and the giant powder, he was hoarding in his drawer. Let some contemporary light upon the journal, and Pepys was plunged for ever in social and political disgrace. We can trace the growth of his terrors by two facts. In 1660, while the Diary was still in its youth, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in man which welcomes the appeal to beneficence. May it find its way quickly now to the heads and hearts of the American people, before less worthy ambitions fill them; and, above all, to the kings of men, in thought and in action, under whose leadership our land makes its giant strides. There is in this no Quixotism. Materially, the interest of the nation is one with its beneficence; but if the ideas get inverted, and the nation sees in its new responsibilities, first of all, markets and profits, with incidental resultant benefit to the natives, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... except that of the sky and of its winds. It is the cloud that, holding the sun's rays in a sheaf as a giant holds a handful of spears, strikes the horizon, touches the extreme edge with a delicate revelation of light, or suddenly puts it out and makes ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... possible, ma'am;it actually split with the force of the almost convulsive motion of a cough that seemed loud and powerful enough for a giant. I could hardly myself believe it was little I that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... where'er she fled, the sea-voice followed; Whisperings innumerable of water-drops Would grow together to a giant cry; Now hoarse, half-stifled, pleading, warning tones, Now thunderous peals of billowy, wrathful shouts, Called after her to come, and make no pause. From the loose clouds that mingled with the spray, And ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to thee, fountain of eternal light, Streaming with dewy radiance in the sky! Rising like some huge giant from the night, While the dark shadows from thy presence fly. Enshrin'd in mantle of a varied dye, Thou hast been chambering in the topmost clouds, List'ning to peeping, glist'ning stars on high, Pillow'd upon their thin, aerial shrouds; But when the breeze of dawn refreshfully Swept the rude ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... seizing the reins of the horse forced him to halt. The young man aimed a blow at his enemy's head, and the helmet fell back, cut through the middle, but the force of the blow had broken his sword in two; and the horse lifted by his giant foe, reared, so that the rider, losing his balance, was thrown against the side of the rock, and fell ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... reverently, protected by the neighboring giants. They are very good and kind giants, apparently. But the acme of the sublimity, the quality in which I find my fancy insisting more and more, is in those two stately hostelries, the Gog and Magog of that giant company, which guard the approach to the Park like mighty pillars, the posts of vast city gates folded ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... of the far West as specks upon the financial horizon and grow and grow as they travelled Eastward, until in their length, breadth, and thickness they obscured the rising sun. At short range I have seen the giant money machine put together; I have touched elbows with the men who made it, as they fitted this wheel and adjusted that gear, while at the same time I broke bread and slept with the every-day people who, with the industry of the ant and the patience of the spider, toiled to pile in the pennies, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... makes the lingering Night so cling to thee? Thou vast, profound, primeval hiding-place Of ancient secrets,—gray and ghostly gulf Cleft in the green of this high forest land, And crowded in the dark with giant forms! Art thou a grave, a prison, ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... solitary grandeur, eating and sleeping alone (and these were his principal occupations), and communing with his own dignity. The boy, a Marblehead hopeful, whose name was Sam, was to act as cook; while I, a giant of a Frenchman named Nicholas, and four Sandwich-Islanders were to cure the hides. Sam, Nicholas, and I lived together in the room, and the four Sandwich-Islanders worked and ate with us, but generally slept at the oven. My new messmate, Nicholas, was the most immense man that I had ever seen. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... fungus—a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thee well, O Moon, thou cavern'd realm, Sad satellite, thou giant ash of death, Blot on God's firmament, pale home of crime, Scarr'd prison house of sin, where damned souls Feed upon punishment: Oh, thought sublime, That amid night's black deeds, when evil prowls Through the broad world, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stride of a giant, M. de Baisemeaux," said Aramis; "and your reasoning is irresistible. But on what special grounds do you base your idea ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a man is awake, when he feels that he is in a moral order, is free, and hears the call of his destiny, why is his progress so slow and difficult? No one has ever delineated this period in the soul's growth with greater vividness than Bunyan. The Valley of Humiliation, the Slough of Despond, Giant Despair, Doubting Castle are all pictures of human life taken with photographic accuracy. What are some ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... creeping over the bay as Dan pulled out from the Battery basin in a boat which he kept there for recreative jaunts about the harbor. Hard pulling and cold it was, but the boatman bent his back and shot up the East River with the strength of the young giant he was. He could see Captain Barney, muffled to the ears, stamping impatiently about on the end of the designated pier. Without a word he swung his boat in such a position that the Captain could drop ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Peninsula these chestnuts should be well worthy of trial. They are, indeed, splendid chestnuts. The principal varieties are the Rochester, Progress, Fuller and Boone. The last is not related to the others; but is the result of an artificial cross between the American sweet chestnut and the Japan Giant. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... leaping towards us with giant strides, and it was one the like of which Egypt had not known for seventy-five years. Day by day the sun waxed stronger until work became a torture unspeakable and hardly to be borne. With the slightest exertion the perspiration ran ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... round on every side; On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw; He howls with rage, and he shrieks with pain, He strikes around, but his blows are vain; Hopeless is the unequal fight, Fairy! nought ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... I had only known! He was battling like a giant, and I did not guess it. Alone, all alone, in the midst of millions of his fellow-men, he was fighting his fight. Torn by his horror of the asylum and his fidelity to truth and the right, he clung steadfastly to truth and the right; ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... the dirty gray merge into one, a windmill spinning in the breeze—Holland. Near at hand, standing in the sea, the picture of wet and disconsolate solitude, a little beacon, erect on three legs, like a bandbox affixed to a giant easel. It is alight, although it is broad daylight; for it is always alight, always gravely revolving, night and day, alone on this sandbank in the North Sea. It is tended once in three weeks. The lamp ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... steep and twice as rough, Where a horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride, The man that holds his own is good enough. And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home, Where the river runs those giant hills between; I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam, But nowhere yet ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... Confucius has all along been trying to carry the nation back. Principles have been needed, and not 'proprieties.' The consequence is that China has increased beyond its ancient dimensions, while there has been no corresponding development of thought. Its body politic has the size of a giant, while it still retains the mind of a child. Its hoary age is in danger of becoming but senility. Second, Confucius makes no provision for the intercourse of his country with other and independent nations. He knew indeed of none such. China was to him 'The ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... giant octopus—brown and warty and wrinkled and blase. But the diminutive cousin in the grotto with the jellyfishes is a bird of quite another feather. Physically he is constructed on the same model as the other, but his mentality is utterly opposed. No grand roles for him; his part is comedy. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... came upon another cedar tree, as big and as old as the first; the only one they had passed since that one. "Now there is a landmark worth noting," said Uncle Teddy, pointing to the tree. "Giant cedar, towering above other trees, only one in sight. Fifteen minutes' walk due west from the other cedar beside the river. And you see we will have to turn right here because there seems to be a path at right angles to the direction we ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... things sizzling made music for the hungry. The miner laid bare a section of the table, which he set with cups, plates, and iron tools for eating. He then dished up two huge supplies of steaming beans and bacon, two monster cups of coffee, black as tar, and cut a giant pile of ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... fought several times during the day and like myself had always proven victorious, but occasionally by the smallest of margins, especially when pitted against the green warriors. I had little hope that he could best his giant adversary who had mowed down all before him during the day. The fellow towered nearly sixteen feet in height, while Kantos Kan was some inches under six feet. As they advanced to meet one another I saw for the first time a trick of Martian swordsmanship which centered Kantos Kan's every hope of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... face carried him on further. "I can't undertake to say how much your wonder-ball can hold, but somewhere near the centre of it will be a meeting with Betty and Eugenia, and perhaps a glimpse of the Gate of the Giant Scissors that you are ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... gigantic weighs "Of huge Typhoeus, who the heavenly throne "Had dar'd to hope for: struggling oft he tries, "His efforts, daily bent to lift his load: "But hard Pelorus on his right hand lies, "Ausonia facing; while Pachyne rests "Heavy to left: wide o'er his giant thighs "Spreads Lilyboeum: Etna presses down "His head; beneath whose crater, laid supine, "From his hot mouth he ashes sends, and flames. "Thus with his body labouring to remove "The ponderous load of earth;—whole towns o'erwhelm; "And lofty hills o'erturn; ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... about 2,200 common barrels! On top of it is a dancing-floor having the bung-hole in the center! What a joy it must be for the dancers to reflect that there is such a flood of wine still beneath them! This giant tun erected as an altar to the jovial God "Bacchus," has been filled completely ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... to think that such giant 'archaspistae' of the Catholic Faith, as Bull and Waterland, should have clung to the intruded gloss (1 'John' v. 7), which, in the opulence and continuity of the evidences, as displayed by their own master-minds, would have been superfluous, had it not been worse than superfluous, that is, senseless ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... In discussing sakurajima (giant Japanese radish) Eastern publications advise planting late, about August 1, and not earlier than July 1. What can you tell ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... timberline were the most wonderful of all. From high above the world I could see tier upon tier of distant, snow-capped mountains—ghost ranges—and southward, at the horizon, loomed Pike's Peak a hundred airline miles away, a giant pyramid above the foothills, standing sentinel over the vast, flat plains that ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... with eager eyes And ready hands and tender hearts,— They find the giant year, that parts, Hath forged strong links ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... she, taking no more notice of the Yorkshireman than if he had been enveloped in Jack the Giant-killer's coat of darkness, "what is the meaning of this card? I found it in your best coat pocket, which you had on last night, and I do desire, sir, that you will tell me how it came there. Good morning, sir (spying the Yorkshireman at last), perhaps you know where Mr. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... and its notes. Peveril's antagonist, however—or rather the mask which the antagonist takes,—connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he reanimates the body of Gogmagog, the famous Cornish giant, whom Corineus slew. The diabolic Gogmagog, however, seems neither to have stayed in Cornwall nor gone to Cambridgeshire, though (oddly enough the French editors do not seem to have noticed this) Payn Peveril actually held fiefs ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the ticking of the watch by my bedside; silent as the stars which gleam down from the blue sky above the cross-crowned crag, which stands like some giant sentinel keeping watch over the village, at its foot. Herod, our host, sleeps soundly, and Johannes, wearied by his double service of waiter at the hotel and his role in the sacred play, is oblivious of all. The crowded thousands ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... but, on the whole, the pleasure is rather of a placid order, though still contrasting favourably with the settled gloom visible on the faces of the attendants in the various galleries. How well we can understand such gloom! How utterly hateful must that giant elk and overgrown extinct armadillo be to a man condemned to spend a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... evidences of what he was to be. It is almost always so. There were two Napoleons—the boy Napoleon and the man Napoleon—but both alike; two Howards—the boy Howard and the man Howard—but both alike; two Samsons—the boy Samson and the man Samson—but both alike. This giant was no doubt the hero of the playground, and nothing could stand before his exhibitions of youthful prowess. At eighteen years of age he was betrothed to the daughter of a Philistine. Going down toward Timnath, a lion came out upon him, and, although this young giant was weaponless, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... his feet, with a pair of binoculars in his hand and the little Malay Serang at his elbow, like an old giant attended by a wizened pigmy, was taking her over the ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... consequent love that there is much joy. Let us search our own hearts. If there is but little heat around the bulb of the thermometer, no wonder that the mercury marks a low degree. If there is but small faith, there will not be much gladness. The road into Giant Despair's castle is through doubt, which doubt comes from an absence, a sinful absence, in our own experience, of the felt presence of God, and the felt force of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... when, in the midst of this fine quarter, we come suddenly upon a ruin, a giant building resting on huge pillars, but half completed, and partly covered with moss and lichens. It was intended for a splendid church, and is built entirely of marble; but the soft ground would not bear the immense weight. The half-finished building began to sink, and the completion ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... hand in hand with you in the dark, I have a right to say "friends" than I could count on one hand. What are we all if we only realized it? We talk of dignity and propriety, and we are like so many children playing with knucklebones in a giant's scullery. Come along, he will, some suppertime, for us, each in turn—and how many even will so much as look up from their play to wave us good-bye? that's what I mean—the plot of silence we are all in. If only I had my brother's lucidity, how much better I would have ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... is famine in the gulf of hell, Its giant worms of fire for ever yawn.— Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn, 4120 Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent To make our souls their spoil. See! see! they fawn Like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... answered that the boy, as she persisted in calling the giant, meant well and was certainly intelligent. Her father did not like to change servants, for it took him a long time to get used to new ones. So Millicent tossed her head, returned to her collaboration with Mr. Roseleaf, and things went on ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... long to wait! For an instant the pearl-pale zenith shone serenely void. Then, heralded by a droning noise as of giant bees, and a vicious spitting of shrapnel, high overhead sailed a wide-winged black bird, chased by four other birds bigger, because nearer earth. They soared, circling closer, closer—two mounting high, two flying low, and so passed westward, while the sky was spattered with shrapnel—long, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... He died as he had lived, in silence; and his death was the sacrifice of a martyr, the fall of a warrior at his post. Then the tempest broke over all the Piedmont lands, and the wind arose as a giant refreshed with his rest, and drove the dark thunder- clouds upward before the sounding pinions of his might like demon hounds upon the track of a flying world. Then came the sharp swift hiss of the stinging hail and rain, and the baying of the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... found—in the book itself; it is too wide and variegated for any other habitation. Yet, if it would be vain to attempt an accurate and exhaustive account of Rabelais' philosophy, the main outlines of that philosophy are nevertheless visible enough. Alike in the giant-hero, Pantagruel, in his father, Gargantua, and in his follower and boon-companion, Panurge, one can discern the spirit of the Renaissance—expansive, humorous, powerful, and, above all else, alive. Rabelais' book is the incarnation of the great reaction of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... honourably, perseveringly, fearlessly." Some of those who had formerly yielded to the force of circumstances now confessed their misdemeanours with bitterness of heart. "Tears of repentance," said a popular poet, "give relief, and call us to new exploits." Russia was compared to a strong giant who awakes from sleep, stretches his brawny limbs, collects his thoughts, and prepares to atone for his long inactivity by feats of untold prowess. All believed, or at least assumed, that the recognition of defects would necessarily entail their ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Nature had become intolerably monotonous; the circumscribed, prim country was horrible. On every inch of it the hand of man was apparent. It was a prison, and his hands and feet were chained with heavy iron.... The dark, immovable clouds were piled upon one another in giant masses—so distinct and sharply cut, so rounded, that one almost saw the impressure of the fingers of some Titanic sculptor; and they hung low down, overwhelming, so that James could scarcely breathe. The sombre elms were too well-ordered, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... flying thing like a giant blue-bottle fly that he had been battling in his sleep. Memory of the thing's high-pitched, droning buzz still rang in his ears. Then abruptly he realized that the peculiar buzzing was no mere echo of a nightmare. It was an actual sound that still ...
— The Cavern of the Shining Ones • Hal K. Wells
... Red Man, but when treating a man he must pray to the Red Woman, so that this personage seems to have dual sex characteristics. Another god invoked in the hunting songs is Tsul'kal, or "Slanting Eyes" (see Cherokee Myths), a giant hunter who lives in one of the great mountains of the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the Detsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... and Romans were encamped on either bank of the Arno. A gigantic Gaul stepped forth from the ranks and insultingly challenged a Roman knight. T. Manlius, a Roman youth, obtained permission from his general to accept the challenge, slew the giant, and took from the dead body the golden chain (torques) which the barbarian wore around his neck. His comrades gave him the surname of Torquatus, which he handed down ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... constantly engaged in austere devotional exercises. There the mighty and worshipful god of great puissance, accompanied by his consort Uma, and armed with his trident, surrounded by wild goblins of many sorts, pursuing his random wish or fancy, constantly resides in the shade of giant forest trees, or in the caves, or on the rugged peaks of the great mountain. And there the Rudras, the Saddhyas, Viswedevas, the Vasus, Yama, Varuna, and Kuvera with all his attendants, and the spirits and goblins, and the two Aswins, the Gandharvas, the Apsaras, the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... upon the island. Lord Hailes observed to me, that Brantome calls it L'isle des Chevaux, and that it was probably 'a SAFER stable' than many others in his time. The fort, with an inscription on it, MARIA RE 1564, is strongly built. Dr Johnson examined it with much attention. He stalked like a giant among the luxuriant thistles and nettles. There are three wells in the island; but we could not find one in the fort. There must probably have been one, though now filled up, as a garrison could not subsist without it. But I have dwelt too long on this little ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. "It been here once and will be here again!" And that ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... measure and then arose those gigantic plants and animals, which laid the foundation for all later organisms. Without the colossal ferns and lichens and palm-like growths of the early ages, the plants of to-day would have been impossible, and without the monstrous giant creatures of old, which became more and more refined through gradual adaptation to altered relations, the modern animal kingdom could not have arisen. This adaptation is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... flower! To this resplendent hemisphere, Where Flora's giant offspring tower In gorgeous liveries all the year: Thou, only thou, art little here, Like worth unfriended and unknown, Yet to my British heart more dear Than ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... professor was generally sent after the fugitives. In visiting their squirrel traps they often separated, Stockie examining one trap, Paul another. They would appoint a place of rendezvous, close to some well known giant pine. The one to arrive first would call the other by a loud whistle in close imitation of a quail. The other would answer by a similar whistle. One day when about to mount the tree and give his usual signal of recall, Paul discovered ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Song of Triumph, over Goliah and the Philistines. It is made up of a chorus ("How excellent Thy Name, O Lord"), which is a stirring tribute of praise; an aria ("An Infant raised by Thy Command"), describing the meeting of David and Goliah; a trio, in which the Giant is pictured as the "monster atheist," striding along to the vigorous and expressive music; and three closing choruses ("The Youth inspired by Thee," "How excellent Thy Name," and a jubilant "Hallelujah"), ending ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... near by. I could hear it patter among the dead leaves of the flowers that lay upon the table. I turned my head and saw it sitting close by my fallen hand. Its tiny paws were waving. I could see its breast, for which a rose leaf would have been a giant buckler, pulsing and beating above its throbbing heart. Its eyes were shining.... A rhythm came into the swing of the pink-tinted paws. And then, so high and thin and sweet that at first I looked above to trace the sound, there came the singing of the Singing Mouse.... Dreams ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... three feet high. In the centre of the house there are two, and sometimes three, posts or pillars, twenty feet long, sunk three feet into the ground, and extending to and supporting the ridge pole. These are the main props of the building. Any Samson or giant Tafai pulling them away would bring down the whole house. The space between the rafters is filled up with what they call ribs—viz. the wood of the bread-fruit tree, split up into small pieces, and joined ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... not perceived a figure approaching them across the open space in front of the house. Suddenly it stepped into the circle of light projected from the door and windows, and they beheld little Sam Singleton stopping to stare at them. He was the giant whom they had seen descending along the rocks. When this was made apparent Roderick was seized with a fit of intense hilarity—it was the first time he had laughed in three months. Singleton, who carried a knapsack and walking-staff, received from Rowland the friendliest ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... her long sleep of a hundred years; and Puss in Boots curling his whiskers after having eaten up the ogre who foolishly changed himself into a mouse; and Beauty and the Beast; and the Blue Bird; and Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Bean Stalk; and the Yellow Dwarf; and Cinderella and her fairy godmother; and great numbers besides, of whom we haven't time to say ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... was the newest product of the Atomic Age, half soldier, half scientist—shrewd and perceptive, an intellectual giant. ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... possible giant oil and gas fields on the continental margin, manganese nodules, possible placer deposits, sand and gravel, fresh water as icebergs; squid, whales, and seals ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and manufactures. Wide differences in climate, mineral resources, and levels of technology among the republics accentuated this interdependence, as did the communist practice of concentrating much industrial output in a small number of giant plants. The breakup of many of the trade links, the sharp drop in output as industrial plants lost suppliers and markets, and the destruction of physical assets in the fighting all have contributed to the economic difficulties of the republics. One singular factor ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... been said, they seem to burn the page on which they are written. It was perhaps at Mademoiselle Lespinasse's that Burke met Diderot. The eleven volumes of the illustrative plates of the Encyclopaeedia had been given to the public twelve months before, and its editor was just released from the giant's toil of twenty years. Voltaire was in imperial exile at Ferney. Rousseau was copying music in a garret in the street which is now called after his name, but he had long ago cut himself off from society; and Burke was not likely to take much trouble to find out a man whom ...
— Burke • John Morley
... but they preferred the immediate gains to be derived from the ownership of the trade with the Spice Islands; and so for the unimportant over-lordship of a few patches of tropical soil, they bartered the chance of building a giant Dutch Republic in the South Seas. Had the Swedish successors of Gustavus Adolphus devoted their energies to colonization in America, instead of squabbling with Slavs and Germans for one or two wretched Baltic provinces, they could undoubtedly ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... all his disarray. Courtland towered above the great man with righteous wrath in his eyes. Ramsey Thomas cringed and looked embarrassed. He had come to look over the ground to see how much trouble they were going to have getting the insurance, and he hadn't expected to be met by a giant Nemesis with blackened face and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... orchids pendent from the great fungus-covered roots of a giant challenged her attention. She gathered them. Farther on, in a spot where a shaft of sunlight fell, she plucked an armful of golden California poppies and flaming rhododendron, and with her delicate burden she came at length to the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... once the meaning of this, he was obliged to explain it to her, which had something of an aukward and ludicrous effect. 'Why, Madam, it has a reference to me, as using big words, which require the mouth of a giant to pronounce them. Garagantua is the name of a giant in Rabelais.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, there is another amongst them ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... she soon grew accustomed to it, perceiving that a man would behave as a man, and must be expected to do so. This man, in truth, did what he liked in all things. Cyril having always been regarded by both his parents as enormous, one would have anticipated a giant in the new man; but, queerly, he was slim, and little above the average height. Neither in enormity nor in many other particulars did he resemble the Cyril whom he had supplanted. His gestures were lighter and quicker; he had nothing of Cyril's ungainliness; ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... could tell if it could but speak! Had it been on the southern slope it might have been lost in the cool shadows of the forest, or have disappeared in the leafy molds and decaying twigs of many autumns. But it was on the north slope, from which the hungry flames of a giant forest fire had snatched every tree and bush, leaving ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... His home!—the Western giant smiles, And twirls the spotty globe to find it; - This little speck the British Isles? 'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it! - He laughs, and all his prairies roll, Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, And ridges stretched from pole to pole Heave till ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... A man of giant size and herculean strength, had laid aside his pipe and slowly rising to his feet, seized the scoundrel ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... adorned with silk and cloth of gold hangings, where, between two bronze sphinxes, the Princess Ziska, attired wonderfully in a dim, pale rose color, with flecks of jewels flashing from her draperies here and there, waited to receive her guests. Like a queen she stood,—behind her towered a giant palm, and at her feet were strewn roses and lotus-lilies. On either side of her, seated on the ground, were young girls gorgeously clad and veiled to the eyes in the Egyptian fashion, and as the staring, heated and impetuous swarm of "travelling" English and Americans came face to face with her ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Calhoun. I don't know which is worse—Ireland bloody with shootings and hangings, Ulster up in the north and Cork in the south, from the Giant's Causeway to Tralee; no two sets of feet dancing alike, with the bloody hand of England stretching out over the Irish Parliament like death itself; or France ruling us. How does the English government live here? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... brow Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, Robed in the sable garb of woe With haggard eyes the Poet stood (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air), And with a master's hand and prophet's fire Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre: 'Hark, how each giant oak and desert-cave Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath! O'er thee, O King! their hundred arms they wave, Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe; Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, To high-born Hoel's harp or ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... or a group of sauntering students. Lights from the dignified old houses—among which was Rodney Temple's—overlooking the embankment and the Charles threw out a pleasant glow of friendliness. Beyond the river a giant shadow looming through the mist reminded him of the Roman Colisseum seen in a like aspect, the resemblance being accentuated in his imagination by the Stadium's vast silence, by its rows upon rows of ghostly gray sedilia looking down on a haunted, empty ring. His thoughts ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... lose thine eye, for this Ospakar is a giant, and strong as a troll; also he is merciless. Still, thou art a mighty man, and I shall love thee as well with one eye as with two. Oh! Eric, methought I should have died yesterday when thou didst leap from Wolf's Fang! My heart ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... healthful life. And then men of political or national prominence were always seeking him out, to gain a little dynamic energy and balance from the Doctor's storehouse of experience and philosophy. He was a giant of helpfulness and inspiration, to everyone who ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... ladder from the floor to the loft, and on the ladder they tied a squash vine all the way up to the loft, to look like the wonderful bean-stalk. One of the little girls was dressed up to look like Jack, and she acted that part. When it came to the place in the story where the giant tried to follow Jack, the little girl cut down the bean-stalk, and down came the giant tumbling from the loft. The giant was made out of pillows, with a great, fierce head ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... the sphere in which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had the peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its many and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless—those who had their fortune yet to make and those whose fortunes and affairs had reached a disastrous climax elsewhere. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... ran through my whole frame, so that I dropped the saucer on the floor. The liquid was spilled; the saucer was broken; the compass rolled to the end of the room, and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... figured as the defenders of industries harassed beyond bearing by the Socialist meddlers spoke with more fire, with more semblance, at any rate, of putting their hearts into it than any men of their kind had been able to attain since the "giant" days of the first Factory debates. Those, on the other hand, who were urging the House to a yet sterner vigilance in protecting the worker—even the grown man—from his own helplessness and need, who believed that law spells freedom, and that the experience of half a century ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Seignior, there's no venturing without a Grate between us: the Devil wou'd not give her due Benevolence— No, when I'm marry'd, I'll e'en show her a fair pair of Heels, her Portion will pay Postage —But what if the Giant should carry her? that's to be fear'd, then I have cock'd and drest, and fed, and ventur'd all this while ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the officer is!—Once, twice, will you get out of the way?" returned a giant grenadier. "You won't? All right then, just ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... he asked, "Is there any way out of here, except down there?" pointing to the river frozen in its bed, stretching away interminably to the west, through groves of icicles, and marble forest, like a granite roadway hewn out and levelled by a giant, vanished race. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... reaching the open part on the farther side, we drew rein for a moment to look down at the deep valleys, now dark with the early shade, at the higher peaks red with the westering sun, and at the black masses of foliage, through which some giant trunk here and there caught a lingering ray of the departing light. Then, as we felt the cool of the evening coming on, we wheeled and scampered along the level stretch, stirrup to stirrup and knee ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... Herself and through herself of own accord, Rid of all gods. For—by their holy hearts Which pass in long tranquillity of peace Untroubled ages and a serene life!— Who hath the power (I ask), who hath the power To rule the sum of the immeasurable, To hold with steady hand the giant reins Of the unfathomed deep? Who hath the power At once to roll a multitude of skies, At once to heat with fires ethereal all The fruitful lands of multitudes of worlds, To be at all times in all places near, To stablish darkness by his clouds, to shake The serene spaces of the sky ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... Through dim aisles of giant pine he spurred to a dead run on the chance of cutting Quintana from the eastward edge of the forest and forcing him back toward the north or west, where patrols were more than likely to ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... lay in dense billows resembling those of the sea, through which hills and temple tops started up like islands. By slow degrees as we passed upon our downward road the vapours cleared away, and the lakes of Tezcuco, Chalco, and Xochicalco shone in the sunlight like giant mirrors. On their banks stood many cities, indeed the greatest of these, Mexico, seemed to float upon the waters; beyond them and about them were green fields of corn and aloe, and groves of forest trees, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... I have many blessings to comfort me, on closing my relations with you. I have kind souls who love me; and—observe this!—I stand on my political principles as firmly as ever. The world is getting converted to my way of thinking: the Pratolungo programme, my friends, is coming to the front with giant steps. Long ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... The roses are not, indeed, so numerous as one might expect, but the path is beautiful, green and quiet, and below it the tinkle of a little stream is heard, flowing down from the spring where the lane ends. There they sat down beneath a giant tree on a beaten terrace, where a Kaffegee has his little shop. The water pours from the spring in the hillside into a great basin bordered with green, the air is cool, and there is a delicious sense of rest after leaving the noise and dust of the quay. Both men smoked ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure, displayed beneath the sky their glittering domes, rosy and white. The sweet perfume of their blossoms mingled ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... name was?" asked Raegen, awkwardly. But this was beyond the baby's patience or knowledge, and she waived the question aside with both arms and began to beat a tattoo gently with her two closed fists on Raegen's chin and throat. "You're mighty strong now, ain't you?" mocked the young giant, laughing. "Perhaps you don't know, Missie," he added, gravely, "that your dad and mar are doing time on the Island, and you won't see 'em again for a month." No, the baby did not know this nor care apparently; she seemed content with Rags and with his company. ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... wanted to get repaired, I came upon the chest, and opening it, discovered my boys' hoard, and in it this packet of books. I sat down on the top of the chest and read them all through, from Jack the Giant-killer down to Hop o' my Thumb without rising, and this in the broad daylight, with the yellow sunshine nestling beside me on the rose-coloured silken seat, richly worked, of a large stately-looking chair with three golden legs. Yes I could tell you all those ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... if the people of California desire it, as many of them certainly do, it also should be taken by the National Government to be kept as a national park, just as the surrounding country, including some of the groves of giant trees, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... who lives there?" thought the rabbit. "It is too small for a giant to live in, but there may be a bad bear or a savage fox in there. I guess I'd better ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... giant strides. Human society has traversed, in the course of thousands of years, all the various phases of development, to arrive in the end where it started from,—communistic property and complete equality and fraternity, but no longer ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... got before the wind, and away she ran towards the south and east, surrounded by a cloud of mist and foam which circumscribed our view to a very narrow compass. The sea, too, got up with a rapidity truly astonishing. It seemed as if the giant waves had been rolling on towards us from some far-off part of the ocean. All that day and night we ran on. Scarcely had the first streaks of dawn appeared, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... across the Willamette River to the depot of the Oregon and California Railroad, and soon afterward we were rushing southward in the train along the right shore of that stream—here as broad as the Rhine—the rival of the mighty Columbia. After a pleasant and interesting journey through giant forests and over fertile prairies, some large, some small, embellished here and there with farms, villages and orchards, we reached Oregon City, which lies in a romantic region close to the Willamette: then leaving the river, we thundered on some miles farther through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... long after his tour in Italy, to one of his artistic friends: 'Only imagine,' he exclaims, 'that I here every day see men who are mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly hewn out into outlines of human form, like the giant rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them brandish their knives in act to carve, and look on them as savages that devour one another. I should not stare at all more than I do if yonder alderman at the lower end of the table were ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... treasure-ship, and had flanges of sizzled richness on it. Here was no pindling fowl that had taken the veil and lived the cloistered life; here was no wiredrawn and trained-down cross-country turkey, but a lusty giant of a bird that would have been a cassowary, probably, or an emu, if he had lived, his bosom a white mountain of lusciousness, his interior a Golconda and not a Golgotha. At the touch of the steel his skin crinkled delicately and fell away; his tissues flaked off in tender strips; and from him ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... now one sea of white and purple, with emblems, gold and silver and jewelled, shining here and there; the green strip was gone; for the Papal procession was begun; and then, on the instant, as he looked, there was a new group standing beneath the giant columns of the portico, and the cry of the silver trumpets told to the thousands that waited that the Vicar of Christ had come out into this city that was again the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... spruce and a fir, standing close together, erect and arrowy in a thrifty, compact growth; but they are quite small, say from six to twelve or fourteen inches in diameter, and bout forty feet in height. Among their giant relatives of the Sierra the very largest would seem mere saplings. A considerable portion of the south side of the mountain is planted with a species of aspen, called "quaking asp" by the wood-choppers. It seems to be quite abundant on many of the eastern ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... man whose sympathy is active for a few of the 'meanest things that live' will gush with sensibility towards a countless multitude, fluttering into rags and gaunt with famine. He will go back to first principles; he will, with a giant's arm, knock down all the conventionalities built by the selfishness of man—(and what a labourer is selfishness! there was no such hard worker at the Pyramids or the wall of China)—between him and his fellow! Hunger will be fed—nakedness will be clothed—and God's image, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... quarried for ages, the jagged masses of the overhanging cliff seem ready to fall upon the city beneath them. To the south the hill is less lofty, but the rock has been steeply scarped, and is generally quite inaccessible. Midway over all towers the giant form of a massive Hindu temple, grey with the moss of ages. Altogether, the fort of Gwalior forms one of the most picturesque views in Northern India' (A.S.R., vol. ii, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the man in the easy chair, jumping hastily to his feet and shaking Dancing's hand. Then quite as hastily he sat down, crossed his knees violently, stared at the giant lineman, and ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... discouragement seek to dog your steps)— every great structure requires the process of time. "The giant trees of California were once puny saplings. The slow lapse of time has drawn nature into their mighty hearts." Just as surely as the absorption of natural forces built the giant redwoods, just as surely can you draw upon nature for ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock |
