"Petrified" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... senses returned, I was lying on the floor, holding the half- perused paper in my hand. Grief and horror had locked up the avenues of complaint, and I sat as one petrified to stone. My father entered. At the sight of me, he started as if he had been a spectre. His well- known features opened at once my agonized heart. With fearful cries I cast myself at his feet, and putting the letter into his hand, clung, almost ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... world from going forward, but it is not possible then to prevent it from going back—from decaying. It is foolish to expect that, if everything be overturned, everyone will thereby get three meals a day. Or, should everything be petrified, that thereby six per cent, interest may be paid. The trouble is that reformers and reactionaries alike get away from the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... few moments they were under the walls of the Acropolis, walking in the shadow of the olive groves, among god-like statues, to which the gathering obscurity of evening gave an impressive distinctness—as if the light departing from the world, stood petrified ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Jack, petrified at hearing his mother called Charlotte, and unable to find words to express his sense of such generosity, ended by saying nothing. Seeing the child's embarrassment, his mother gently pushed him into the poet's arms, who pressed a theatrical kiss on ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... across the pool, gave a cry, and stood still, petrified. Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a great mat of shaggy ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Madigan stood petrified; and the last little martyred ox, stuffing her apron into her mouth, that she might not weep aloud, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... He stayed therein for four hours, and forgot all about the infant (squalling, no doubt, in special robe, and impatient for the christening), the waiting relatives, the inevitable decanter, and the thick cuts of indigestible bun. The minister, I say, trudged home with his treasure-trove of petrified ferns and foot-marked shale—a greater fossil than any under his own cases of glass. His memory was stirred by his wife's catechising, but it was too late to undo ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... men are waiting for the bell of the telephone to ring. It does not ring, and the fingers of the clock are moving. The world seems to be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate. The Ministers at length sit silent, rigid, almost petrified, looking fixedly at floor or ceiling. Then through the awful stillness of the room and the park outside comes the deep boom of "Big Ben." Boom, boom, boom! No one moves until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the night. Then comes a voice, heavy with emotion, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... hoarse; it petrified her, so still was she—so dumb; and at that moment the knocker sounded, and importunate voices were ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... cat will smell it out when she comes up.' My very blood runs cold within me at the recollection of seeing Softdown's as it spurted from beneath the monster's foot; whilst the crunch of his bones almost petrified me with horror. At length, however, recollecting the impossibility of restoring my beloved brother to life, and the danger of my own situation, I, with trembling feet and palpitating heart, crept softly ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... had also risen, stood as one petrified—as a statue of himself erected on the site of his assassination. He neither spoke, nor moved, nor once took his eyes off the face of Orderly Arman, who was now flinging his girl-gear right and left, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... returned, in a tone which rage had heightened in a small degree above a whisper, "Coward! stand aside, and see me do it. I will grasp her throat; I will do her business in an instant; she shall not have time so much as to groan." What wonder that I was petrified by sounds so dreadful! Murderers lurked in my closet. They were planning the means of my destruction. One resolved to shoot, and the other menaced suffocation. Their means being chosen, they would forthwith break ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... halted, not daring to advance farther, and yet unwilling to retreat; either because they were struck, and, as it were, petrified with horror, in the midst of this great destruction, or that Bagration was wounded at that moment; or, perhaps, because their generals, after the failure of their first disposition, knew not how to change it, from not ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... so petrified with surprise at the whole thing that he had ceased to reason. Everything came now as a matter of course, like the preposterous sequence of events in a dream. The Aphrodite lay, as a woman caressed, half buried in her silken folds, but Halcyone lifted ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the first amazing pictures, the first technical chit-chat of "plastique" and "masque" and "flowing line." Behold Mrs. Eleanor then, tired and mussed with shopping, dyspeptic from unassimilated restaurant-lunching (and a little nervous at her task, when actually confronted with it), staring petrified at Molly's darkened dining-room, where, on a platform, against dull velvet backgrounds, an ivory, loose-haired, barely draped intaglio-woman, swayed and whirled and beckoned. A slender spiral of smoke ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... seen it take hold of men of proved courage and paralyse them. It's just like an epileptic fit—beyond a man's control. I've known a fellow—the most reckless, hare-brained daredevil you can imagine—to stand petrified with fear on the bank of a river, and let a wounded comrade drown before his eyes. And he was ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... and of its assemblies, twenty thousand families dispersed over the soil of Europe by the fury of clubs, by the crimes of brigands, by constant lack of security, by the stupid and cowardly inertia of petrified authorities, by the pillage of estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants without bread or clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Petrified by the words which he had uttered and still more by those which he had been on the verge of uttering, Philippe suddenly, in the girl's presence, felt a need to be gentle and friendly and to make amends for his inexplicable rudeness. An unexpected sense of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... symbol for stone is used as the determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.[197] As the name for Isis in Egyptian is "Set" it is possible that the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... intricate manoeuvres, in which he had the advantage of advice from the crowd, it eventually fell on his head, and I scored the ace. I had now only to make one point to reach the game, and I effected this by a high-kicking service that left my opponent petrified. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... brightness penetrated into the dismal abyss—a ray more vivid and glorious than the sunbeams which thaw the snow figures that the children make in their gardens. And this ray, more quickly than the snow-flake that falls upon a child's warm mouth can be melted into a drop of water, caused Inger's petrified figure to evaporate, and a little bird arose, following the zigzag course of the ray, up towards the world that mankind inhabit. But it seemed afraid and shy of everything around it; it felt ashamed of itself; and apparently wishing to avoid all living ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... good. Now my idea of the meaningless term "instinct" is, that it is merely PETRIFIED THOUGHT; solidified and made inanimate by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but it become unconscious—walks in its sleep, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... promontory, and found ourselves close to a lofty forest! It consisted of straight trunks with tufted tops, in shape like parasols. The air seemed to have no effect upon these trees—which in spite of a tolerable breeze remained as still and motionless as if they had been petrified. ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... platform with Dr. Balthazar Walker in the chair, and Admiral Hay Denver among his more prominent supporters. One benighted male had come in from the outside darkness and had jeered from the further end of the hall, but he had been called to order by the chair, petrified by indignant glances from the unenfranchised around him, and finally escorted to the door by Charles Westmacott. Fiery resolutions were passed, to be forwarded to a large number of leading statesmen, and the meeting broke up with the conviction ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "We are petrified in traditions. Spicca said the other day that there was but one hope for us. The Americans may yet discover Italy, as we ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Attell wanted. He was more than surprised. He was petrified. The sudden shock of the blow, coming as it did from so unexpected a quarter, deprived him of speech: which was, perhaps, fortunate for him, for what he would have said would hardly have commended itself to Mr Spence, who ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... given way to an unpleasant vice of which you seem never before to have been guilty. What were my feelings when Thedora informed me that you had been discovered drunk in the street, and taken home by the police? Why, I felt petrified with astonishment—although, in view of the fact that you had failed me for four days, I had been expecting some such extraordinary occurrence. Also, have you thought what your superiors will say of you when they come to learn the true reason of your absence? ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... stood at the table with his arm still raised? Casanova, the only one of the company who had remained seated, derived an involuntary artistic pleasure from the contemplation of this fine, threatening gesture, meaningless now, but seemingly petrified, as if the young man had been ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... go immediately to our quarters, assuring him if he gave the smallest alarm, or made any resistance, the officers and soldiers then present would put him instantly to death. On hearing this proposal Montezuma was so petrified with terror and amazement that he seemed to have lost all sensation for a time. After recovering a little, he positively denied having given any orders to Quauhpopoca the governor of Nauhtlan to attack our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... repaired to the pavilion, and secreted himself among the trees that embowered it. Many minutes had not passed, when he heard a sound of low whispering voices steal from among the trees, and footsteps approaching down the alley. He stood almost petrified with terrible sensations, and presently heard some persons enter the pavilion. The marquis now emerged from his hiding-place; a faint light issued from the building. He stole to the window, and beheld within, Maria ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... exhibited none of the charms of childhood. Some were fighting, and others crying for food; their yells were mixed with their mother's groans, and the wind which rushed through the passage. Mary was petrified; but soon assuming more courage, approached the bed, and, regardless of the surrounding nastiness, knelt down by the poor wretch, and breathed the most poisonous air; for the unfortunate creature was dying of a putrid fever, the ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... she cried with some exultation; and then she observed that Mr. Archer had grown pale, and was kneeling on the rock, with his hand raised like a person petrified. "Why," said she, "you do not mind it, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whom I love more than myself, there he sits petrified for ever. Never again will he open his eyes! Three hundred years lived I with my father on the island of Kunnan, happy in the innocence of youth, as the fairest among the giant maidens. Mighty heroes sued for my hand. The sea around that island ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... straight through? And as for 'pay,' haven't you always been supplied with money enough to treat all doubtful voters, and in fact to float them up to the polls in an ocean of whiskey? I confess Tom, I am almost petrified with astonishment at witnessing your present indifference to the alarming crisis in which our country and our party are involved, and which nothing on earth can avert, except our ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... "It petrified the 'coon for the instant," explained Phil, "that happens in nearly every case. If you look close you'll find that the animal always has a startled expression. I rather think any of us would if a flash like that blinded us just ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... moment Pen sat almost petrified; then she rushed after them. She was wild with passion; she had never been so angry in all her life. There were many times when the other children at The Dales treated her with scant courtesy, but to be suddenly deserted in this fashion by strange children ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... in his mouth, but he made up his mind to die game, if he had to die. Slowly he walked up the stairway. Such was Thompson's vigilance, that he quickly arose and advanced toward Simms, who stood at the top of the stairs petrified and unable to move a muscle. Before Simms could think, his partner, Foster, appeared on the scene, and as he stood up, Thompson saw him and walked toward him and said: "Hello, Foster, how are you?" Slowly and deliberately Foster spoke: "Ben, this world is not big ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... vole stood petrified with terror; then he sank to the earth, and lay as still as the dead leaves beneath him. But there was no time to be lost; the "vears" were returning on their trail. In an agony of fear the mouse turned back ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... he uttered an exclamation and became petrified with fear. A ghost appeared to him; but he speedily recovered himself on perceiving that it was a goose, thrusting its neck out at him. Ivan Ivanovitch spit with vexation and proceeded with his work. The second post was sawed through; the building trembled. His heart beat ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... impossible to depart with speed. They kept turning round to look behind them at that following vision, as though they were so many of Lot's wives. Moreover, the same fate overtook many of them which fell upon that scriptural lady, since they appeared to become petrified and stood there quite still, like rabbits fascinated by a snake, until our people came up and ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... dread which haunted them was justified, because a page announced "The Earl of Valletort and Mr. Otto Schmidt," and before the petrified Marcelle could utter a word of protest, the two men were ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Pacific Ocean, and at the foot of a mountain called by the Shoshones the Dwelling of the Monster, were found the remains of an immense lizard belonging to an extinct family of the saurian species. Within a few inches of the surface, and buried in a bed of shells and petrified fish, our old missionary, Padre Antonio, digged up fifty-one vertebrae quite whole and well preserved. They were mostly from twelve to eighteen inches in length and from eight to fourteen inches in diameter, measuring in all more than fifteen feet in length. Of the tail ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... "That young man shall never again, with my consent, sit down at my board, or sleep under my roof. I believe him a false, unprincipled, dangerous companion—whom my doors shall never more be opened to receive. Had it not been for him, that pale, stone-like, petrified girl, might have been brilliant and blooming, yet. Had it not been for him, I should not have the anguish, the humiliation, the shame of seeing my son, my only son, the darling of his dead mother's heart, the pride and hope of mine, a blighted being, shorn of the brightness ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... petrified, without power to speak or move. An instant sufficed to disclose to him this unnatural vision; and an instant was enough to show the fairy that her secret was discovered. She turned her large lustrous eyes upon him, uttered ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... just light sufficient for me to observe on the still waters the reflection of the structures above them. Except two or three tapers glimmering through the casements, no one circumstance indicated human existence. I might, without being thought very romantic, have imagined myself in the city of petrified people, which Arabian fabulists are so fond of describing. Were any one to ask my advice upon the subject of retirement, I should tell him,—By all means repair to Antwerp. No village amongst the Alps, or hermitage upon Mount Lebanon, is less disturbed: you may ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... at her for a moment as if petrified, his mind seeming reluctant or unable to grasp at once her full meaning; then he came close to her, straight and tall, and paler than her own pale robe; the blood of all the Howards flashing from his eye, and speaking in his bearing. Thus, for a moment, they faced each other, pale, passionate, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to be healed with it, Lady Mar," returned he, "for it is not a man like the rest of his sex that now addresses you, but a being whose heart is petrified to marble. I could feel no throb of yours; I should be insensible to all your charms, were I even vile enough to see no evil in trampling upon your husband's rights. Yes, were virtue lost to me, still memory would speak, still would she urge, that the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a plainsman he pushed in through the labyrinths of bush, only to halt petrified upon the very edge of that inner barrier. No figment of imagination, but the glowing reality of flesh and blood, awaited him. She had neither seen nor heard his approach, and he stopped in perplexity. He had framed a dozen speeches for her ears, yet now he could do no more than ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... indifference. The dean could bear no longer; he threw up the sash, and loudly demanded what the paper contained. "It is a petition, please your reverence," replied the woman. "Bring it up, rascal!" cried the enraged dean. The servant, surprised and petrified, obeyed. With Swift, to know distress was to pity it; to pity to relieve. The poor woman was instantly made happy, and the servant almost as instantly turned out of doors, with the following written testimonial of his conduct. "The bearer lived two years in my service, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... [Sidenote: PETRIFIED GARDEN.] After remaining for a few minutes suspended from the cord, like a cluster of bees in the act of swarming, we again found ourselves on terra firma; and a passage behind some masses of projecting rock brought me to a platform, in front of which rose a stalagmite, admirably adapted by its ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... another class of vegetable fossils which, in later times, has acquired more importance than has been given to them before; they are petrified woods which by a new process of preparation, permit to study their interior organisation, and to compare them to living woods; these woods are found in the deposits of every epoch, and in countries ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... water supply. They would take spades and hammers and magnifying glasses and fountain pens, and Oswald's cigar lighter and some lunch, and come back at night with a fine mess of these here trilobites and vertebrae; and ganoids and petrified horseflies, and I don't know what all; mebbe oyster shells, or the footprints of a bird left in solid rock, or the outlines of starfish, or a shrimp that was fifty-two million years old ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... ray Comes to disturb thy dismal sway; And there amid unwholesome damps dost sleep, In such forgetful slumbers deep, That all thy senses stupefied Are to marble petrified. Sleepy Death, I welcome thee! Sweet are thy calms to misery. Poppies I will ask no more, Nor the fatal hellebore; Death is the best, the only cure, His are slumbers ever sure. Lay me in the Gothic tomb, In whose solemn fretted gloom I may lie in mouldering state, With all the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... people. The reverence for the remains of noble and pious men, the dresses which they had worn, or the bodies in which their spirits had lived, was in itself a natural and pious emotion; but it had been petrified into a dogma; and like every other imaginative feeling which is submitted to that bad process, it had become a falsehood, a mere superstition, a substitute for piety, not a stimulus to it, and a perpetual occasion of fraud. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... charms of the desert of the high plateaus of New Mexico and Arizona. Its arid character is not so impressive as its ancientness; and the part which interests us is not only the procession of the long geologic eras, visible in the extinct volcanoes, the barrancas, the painted buttes, the petrified forests, but as well in the evidences of civilizations gone by, or the remains of them surviving in our day—the cliff dwellings, the ruins of cities that were thriving when Coronado sent his lieutenants through the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... my room, I sat like the petrified Indian woman of whom my mother used to tell me. I wished my heart's burdens would turn me to unfeeling stone. But alive, in my tomb, I ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... my desire after strange and mystic knowledge, I gazed around with wonder and disquietude. Nothing in this marvellous city, I thought to myself, is really what it seems to be. The stones I stumbled over appeared to be living creatures petrified by magic. I fancied that the trees in the gardens and the birds that sang in their branches were men that had been transformed by Thessalian witches. The very statues seemed as if they were about to walk; every ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... napless hat. He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, and his attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, who were evidently enjoying their first taste of city life. The little old man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the last century, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and had them down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, or horse-car, or something to take them to the station. That he might be a man of some importance at home was evident, but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... eyes riveted upon her lifeless offspring.—I instantly caused the little delicate corpse to be removed. It had a smile upon its lip, and looked as transparent as alabaster; for it had died without a groan or a struggle. My wife sat petrified; she had never moved nor spoken since the infant had breathed its last, which was nearly an hour. The servants were fearful even to touch her or the child; she still sat motionless with her eyes fixed upon her lap, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the other side of the bar, calling out, "Come on, Jack!" and at once the elephant applied his trunk to the rails of the gate, lifted it from its hinges, and dashed it to the ground. He then went on his way, while the toll-bar man stood petrified to see what a mistake he had made in demanding an unjust toll ...
— The Nursery, July 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 1 • Various
... battlements and pinnacles of a buried city, or of many buried cities. I do not forget that such buildings have foundations that are to us almost like fossils; the gigantic fossils of some other geological epoch. Something may be said later of those lost empires whose very masterpieces are to us like petrified monsters. From this height, after long histories unrecorded, fell the forgotten idol of the Jebusites, on that day when David's javelin-men scaled the citadel and carried through it, in darkness behind his coloured curtains, the god whose image had never been made by man. ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... snorted, shook her mane, rattled the harness chains and looked angrily over her shoulder at the driver. The plowshare was buried deep in the rich, alluvial soil, and a ribbon of earth rolled from its blade like a petrified sea billow, crested with a cluster of daisies white as ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... Prince went steadily west through some of the most impressive scenery in Canada. The gradient climbs resolutely to the great lift of petrified earth above Kicking Horse Pass, so that the train seemed to be steaming ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... severely cut khaki suit she looked like a plump little dumpling that had got into a sausage wrapping by mistake. Her eyes, round, pale, blinking a little in the tropical glare, roved over the circle until they lit on me. Right where she stood Aunt Jane petrified. She endeavored to shriek, but achieved instead only a strangled wheeze. Her poor little chin dropped until it disappeared altogether in the folds of her plump neck, and she remained speechless, stricken, immobile as a ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... serpents. She became a cruel monster of so frightful an aspect that no living thing could behold her without being turned into stone. All around the cavern where she dwelt might be seen the stony figures of men and beasts which had chanced to catch a glimpse of her and had been petrified with the sight. Minerva and Mercury aided Perseus. From Minerva, Perseus borrowed her shield, and from Mercury the winged shoes and the harpe or crooked sword. After having flown all over the earth Perseus espied in the bright shield the image of Medusa ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... noble touched the handle of his sword significantly with a finger, and cast a look at the half petrified Annina, which effectually controlled the exclamation that was about to escape her. The monk appeared to understand the terms of this silent compact, for with a deep voice he commenced the offices of the mass. ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Phil was petrified at the sight, but he quickly regained his composure, left his dying horse and ran forward to the scene of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... weakness manifested itself by fits of absent-mindedness, in which she would seemingly lose connection with the present, and live over again, in imagination, the earlier years of her life. She had buried two husbands, had tried in vain to secure a third, and had never borne any children. Long ago she had petrified into a character which nothing under heaven could change, and which, if death is to take us as it finds us, and the future life to keep us as it takes us, promised anything but eternal felicity to those with whom she might associate after this life. Tom Delamere had been heard to say, profanely, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... perfect team work, come unexpectedly upon the quail scent in stubble, that one which first catches the nostril-warning becomes rigid as though a breath had petrified him—and at once his fellow drops to the stiff ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... to pitch a tent, partly on account of extreme fatigue, but chiefly because the ground was rough and stony and cacti in endless variety strewed the surface, branching and clustering about the petrified trunks of giant trees which ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... frisking out of their holes great numbers of mice, and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, the assembly, who did not come to see his person, but to hear his instrument, immediately broke up. As he had a great dislike to spiders, it was two days before he ventured again to touch his instrument. At length, having overcome, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... he could—and he drove down into the street, fetched around, came back, and actually did it again. I was stupefied, paralyzed, petrified, with these strange results, but they did not convince me. I didn't believe he could do it another time, but he did. He said he could do it all day, and fetch up the same way every time. By that time my ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... might be better to leave them to the following clutch of the new scientific devil; while those who had charged through to the head of the rout enjoyed themselves with utmost abandon. Such was, and is, the deduction from the new gospel (crude enough, doubtless, in many respects), which has finally petrified in the lordly egotism of Nietzche and in the unlovely outlines of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and putting on his hat, he then slowly left the room, whistling a tune. I stood, with Bendel, as if petrified, gazing after him. ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... passing an hour or two with her husband, which she so highly prized. Romayne withdrew, to meet her at the door—too hurriedly to notice Winterfield standing, in the corner to which he had retreated, like a man petrified. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Period, the Department of Geology in the University was honored by the appearance of a genuine petrified Quail. And the Head Lettuce carried the Personal Guarantee of the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... anxiously at each other. Chowles laid his hand on his companion's arm, and strove to detain her, but she would not be stayed, and he was forced to proceed. Setting down the lamp on the stone floor, Judith passed into the subterranean church, where she beheld a sight that almost petrified her. In the midst of the nave, which was illumined by a blue glimmering light, whence proceeding it was impossible to determine, stood a number of grotesque figures, apparelled in fantastic garbs, and each attended by a skeleton. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... managed to finish the last word Misha flew off his horse into the ravine, and crashed down on the stones. They were all fairly petrified with horror.... A good minute passed, and they heard Misha's voice proceeding as though from the bowels of ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... however, standing petrified with surprise, she looked up at him defiantly and brushed the ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... to grasp her husband, but her hand fell on a cold place. Her terror became so intense that she could not move her neck, which stiffened as if petrified; the membranes of her throat became glued together, her voice failed her. She remained sitting erect in the same posture in the middle of the alcove, both panels of which were wide open, her eyes staring and fixed, her hair quivering, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... alone was idle, and, somewhat indecorously draped only in a bit of old tapestry, with dishevelled hair and lolling head, leaned against the wall, apparently in the last stages of inebriety. There against the blue sky, all the world would have seemed petrified into the complete passiveness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... found several small kinds of Cereus, some of them growing near the snow-line in exposed situations on the highest mountains. In Mexico, C. giganteus, the most colossal of all Cacti, is found rearing its tall, straight, columnar stems to a height of 60 ft., and branching near the top, "like petrified giants stretching out their arms in speechless pain, whilst others stand like lonely sentinels keeping their dreary watch on the edge of precipices." In the West Indies most of the night-flowering kinds are common, their long, creeping ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... out this fascinating window, but, instead of a maiden, I beheld a glass containing white bellflowers. I clambered up, stole the flowers, put them quietly in my cap, and descended, unheeding the gaping mouths, petrified noses, and goggle eyes, with which the people in the street, and especially the old women, regarded this qualified theft. As I, an hour later, passed by the same house, the beauty stood by the window, and, as she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... me want to howl. Yes, it is a kind of comical thing that hurts me," answered Denoisel, picking up a Review that was next the album. "Caricatures are like petrified jokes to me. I can never see one on a table without thinking of a lot of dismal things, such as the wit of the Directory, Carle Vernet's drawings, and the gaiety ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Peter was so quiet that she looked to see what he was doing. These many secret threats and hints of dreadful punishments had so affected him that he sat as if petrified and stared at Heidi with horror-stricken eyes. Her kind heart was moved at once, and she said, wishing to reassure him, "You need not be afraid, Peter; come here to me every evening, and if you learn as you have to-day you will at last know all your letters, and ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... Jim stood petrified. He had half expected this, but now that he was face to face with it the blow came harder than he expected it to be. She was going—going out of his life for ever.... Perhaps it was as well that way. He turned to Hanky, ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... achieving. At last she was punished and rewarded, revenged, and destroyed by the sight of Cheever coming down the aisle with Charity. They had to pause to let a fat couple rise, and they paused, facing Zada. Cheever caught her eye and halted, petrified, long enough for Charity to sit down, look up at him, follow the line of his gaze, and catch a full blast of Zada's beauty and of the fierce look she fastened on Cheever. Charity's eyes ran back on the almost visible clothes-line of that taut gaze and found Cheever wilting ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Henry Grantham was petrified with astonishment and dismay at a declaration, the full elucidation of which we must, reserve for a future opportunity. The daring confession rang in his ears long after the voice had ceased, and it was not until a light vehicle had been brought ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... drove the old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her rheumy eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she recognized in all her mad, black world lying there across the table. She stood swaying in a petrified terror for a moment. Then with a thin wail, "He's killing her!" she ran around them and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... At Akstafa, for instance, a station surrounded by a howling wilderness of steppe and marsh; well-cooked viands, game, pastry, and other delicacies, gladdened the eye, instead of the fly-blown buns and petrified sandwiches only too familiar to the English railway traveller. The best railway buffet I have ever seen is at Tiumen, the terminus of the Oural railway, and ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Alexander the Great, had walked in procession before I produced my hero, I was looked on as rather weakminded. The teacher, too, seemed astonished, and he asked me on what grounds I founded my worship. This question, coming suddenly, petrified me for a moment, and I answered, "He fought with beasts." This was taken as a personal allusion by some of my dear comrades with whom I had had altercations, and I was made to suffer for it as much as these dear comrades deemed prudent. However, they discovered that I had "language" ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... both on the lakes and streams. It is fascinating to watch them unobserved, perched on a twig, as motionless as if petrified, until, suddenly, their prey is within grasp, and with a sudden splash ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... of the rock was an impossibility achieved. They were petrified by it. By degrees, however, they began to hope again. Such are the insubmergable mirages of the soul! There is no distress so complete but that even in the most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is seen ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonela, she was frozen in the attitude of motion;—a dancing nymph in colored marble; agility stunned; elasticity petrified. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... for the machine gun and yanked it from dead hands, while the cops slowly began raising their arms. Wayne sat petrified, staring unbelievingly, and Gordon drew out the ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... ravines between them, full of soft sand which drained down from the crumbling banks. On the surface of this fluid sand, one could find bits of brilliant stone, crystals and agates and onyx, and petrified wood as red as blood. Dried toads and lizards were to be found there, too. Birds, decomposing more rapidly, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... horse, petrified with amazement. Her father looked anxiously back when he reached the widow, with sad forebodings of the tempest that would follow, but there the spinster sat at the cross roads like an ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... fulfilled, but I shall now look out for another attendant for the boy. Do not answer me! no tears! I have had enough of that with the child's screaming." With these words, spoken loudly and passionately, she turned her back on Praxinoa—the wife of a distinguished Macedonian noble, who stood as if petrified—and retired into her tent, where branched lamps had just been placed on little tables of elegant workmanship. Like all the other furniture in the queen's dressing-tent these were made of gleaming ivory, standing out in fine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in anguish the arrival of the last hour. The very servants who danced attendance upon him like slaves in dress suits, knew of his misfortune and discussed his shameful plight; but not even the slightest suggestion of insolence disturbed the colorless glance of their eyes, petrified by servitude. He was such a nobleman! He had scattered his money with such majesty!... Besides, he was a genuine member of the nobility, a nobility that dated back for centuries and whose musty odor inspired a certain ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... struck suddenly in head and heart with fell remorse, she lost her equilibrium. No one aiding her, for all were petrified, she sank back in her fauteuil, breathing a weak, trembling sigh. Louis could not endure the spectacle and the affront. He bounded towards D'Artagnan, over whose brain a vertigo was stealing and who staggered as he caught at the door ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... itself upon its haunches, and was staring at the two men with an air of impudent defiance. This was too much for Ben Zoof's forbearance, and stooping down he caught up a huge stone, when to his surprise, he found that it was no heavier than a piece of petrified sponge. "Confound the brute!" he exclaimed, "I might as well throw a piece of bread at him. What accounts for its being ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... do? Should she hide? Should she raise the sash and shriek to the police? Should she arm herself with a knife? or—what? In the name of mercy, what? She glared into the street. He came on steadily, and she lost him, for he passed beneath her. In a moment she heard the jangle of the bell. She was petrified. She heard his heavy step below. He had gone into the little reception-room beside the door. He crossed to a sofa opposite the mantel. She then heard him get up and go to a window, then he walked about, and then sat down; probably upon a red ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... lawn below petrified him. Tess was picking up the child, and standing over her, fists doubled menacingly, was—Lysander Letts. Andy thought the enraged squatter was going to kill her and Boy. Wholly forgetful of his own danger, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... cabinet almost petrified. The sudden glitter of such unexpected happiness was at once so clouded by an odious and detestable condition, that he determined upon rejecting it. But all at once Ambition blew into his ear: "Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; to be dubbed a nobleman at once, and in such an ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... extended to the distance of several hundred miles, and I perceived that, instead of springing from a single source, this rolling torrent of fire was fed by numerous tributary streams, and these again by smaller rivulets. And what do you think I heard and beheld, as I stood petrified with astonishment and horror? There were hundreds of poor wretches struggling and just sinking in the merciless flood. As I contemplated the scene still more attentively, the confused noise of boisterous and profane ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Covered with red Ceder, the river is verry Shallow opsd. this Island- below the Island on the top of a ridge we found a back bone with the most of the entire laying Connected for 45 feet those bones are petrified, Some teeth & ribs also Connected. at 3 mes. above ceder I passed a large Island on the S. S. to this Island Several Elk Swam above this Island on the Midle is Situated 2 Islands small one above the other, those Islands are Called mud Islands and camped ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... crawled with belly to the planking, uttering uncanny mouthings. Rokoff stood as though petrified, his eyes protruding from their sockets, his mouth agape, and the cold sweat of terror clammy ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his pockets. They say, he thought, that this Bible contains the solution to all questions. So, opening it, he began to read at the place at which it opened itself—Matt. x., 8. After a while he inclined close to the lamp and became like one petrified. An exultation, the like of which he had not experienced for a long time, took possession of his soul, as though, after long suffering and weariness, he found at last liberty and rest. He did not ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Clayton—this right, at least, I reserve—but, the fact is, I doubt every thing lately, except this child and God. I do not believe my Creator will forsake me utterly—I shall not, till the end." And tears rolled down my face, the first I had shed for days. I had been petrified, of late, by the resolution I was making, and the effort of mind it had cost me. I had felt, until now, that I ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... like a parchment tube. What was this? She fancied that he had evacuated one end of his entrails. But he now began to breathe freely and regularly. This appearance of well-being frightened her more than anything else that had happened. She was sitting like one petrified, her arms hanging by her sides, her eyes fixed, when M. Colot suddenly made his appearance. The child, in his ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... we had an excursion to the Petrified Forest. It was got up partly to give us all a taste of camel-riding, and it was originally expected that everybody would go on camels; then it was agreed that half should go on camels, and "ride-and-tie." In this view, one camel and one donkey were ordered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... description was proved to be correct. I found, also, two broken columns of stone three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees and of a thickness superior to the body of a man; but whether they were of coral or of wood now petrified, or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks worn into that particular form by the weather, I cannot determine. Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... turned away from the awful spectacle. "I want to go," she said to the petrified Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, who had known nothing of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stage amongst the spectators. Too late alas; Canio {258} already has reached and stabbed her, and Silvio, who rushes forward, also receives his death-stroke from the hands of the deceived husband, who has heard his name slip from the dying lips of his wife. All around stand petrified, nobody dares to touch the avenger of his honor, who stands by his wife's corpse limp and brokenhearted: "Go", says he, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... received the deputies with loud, unbroken shouts, and met the princes and the king with applause. But no sooner was the queen in sight, than the people remained dumb; and then, after this appalling pause, which petrified the heart of the queen, the women with their true instinct of hatred began to cry out, "Long live the Duke d'Orleans! Long live the people's ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... that my reflections were very comfortable; and yet, though I sustained the whole damage, I was the only person in the company who bore the accident with any resolution and presence of mind. My coachman and valet seemed quite petrified with fear; and it was not till I had repeated my directions that the former drove farther into the wood, and took the first turning to the right, in order to regain the road, according to the command of the robbers, which I did not choose ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... plants were brought to a nearly similar centesimal composition representing the carbonized derivatives of the cellulose and its isomers. The vegetable debris thus transformed, but still resistant and elastic, were the ones that were petrified in the mineral waters or covered with sand and clay. Under the influence of gradual pressure, and of a desiccation brought about by it, and by a rising of the ground, the walls of the organic elements ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... geological, can disappear at once. And should we not be indulgent with our opponents, if we ourselves do not desist from fighting? Life is a struggle everywhere in nature, and without inner struggles we end by being like the Chinese, and become petrified. No struggle, no life! Only, in every fight where the national question arises, there must be a rallying point. For us this is the empire, not as it may seem to be desirable, but as it is, the empire and the Emperor, who represents it. That is why I ask you to join me in wishing well ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... character of ore, and its value per ton in gold, silver, copper, or lead. The exhibit also showed free gold, native silver, native copper, copper bars, lead-silver bars, copper ingots, onyx (rough and polished), marble (rough and polished) building stone of various kinds, lithographic stone, petrified wood in rough and polish, meteoric iron, etc.; also photographic views of many of the mines, mills, reduction works, and localities from which the exhibits were taken. The value of the exhibit was approximately $20,000 and the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... about Poughkeepsie abides in our memories as a series of bright and charming "pictures." North of Waldorf is Pelham, consisting of 1,200 acres, one of the largest fruit farms in the world. Passing Esopus Island, which seems like a great stranded and petrified whale, along whose sides often cluster Lilliputian-like canoeists, we see Brown's Dock on the west bank at the mouth of Black Creek, which rises eight miles from Newburgh on the eastern slope of the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... that frame-up, you bet; them caverns of sunset agleam; Them still peaks aglow, them shadders below, an' the lake like a petrified dream; The teepees that stood by the edge of the wood; the evenin' star blinkin' alone; The peace an' the rest, an' final an' best, ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... 'do not move as you value your life — he will not hurt you;' but I doubt if Alphonse heard me, being, fortunately for himself, almost petrified with horror. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... tortured conscience, or, worse still, the owners of petrified hearts; there is nothing to envy in them. But none the better is it for the good: if Ferdinands, Bosolas, Brachianos, and Flaminios perish miserably, it is only after having done to death the tender and brave Duchess, the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... only really lives until it has reached the boundary line of words; it then becomes petrified and dies immediately; yet it is as everlasting as the fossilised animals and plants of former ages. Its existence, which is really momentary, may be compared to a crystal the instant ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... at the flesh beneath the shells, and they alternately stabbed and drew back, all the while approaching the party, which watched them, petrified with terror. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... understanding of life. It cannot be given by any theory of the universe which, like the biblical one, is in glaring contradiction to the facts of modern science[1]. Nor is it conceivable that belief can be fixed so as to be unalterable. Intellectual correctness is relative, and Truth cannot be petrified into Creeds, but lives by discussion, criticism, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... them and they began to breathe with more ease, suddenly Lazarus' image loomed up before each one in formidable radiance: the blue face of a corpse, grave-clothes gorgeous and resplendent, a cold look, in the depths of which lay motionless an unknown horror. As though petrified, they were standing far apart, and darkness enveloped them, but in the darkness blazed brighter and brighter the supernatural vision of him who for three days had been under the enigmatical sway of death. For three days had ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... lovers in regiments threw The darts of their eyes at her heart, From the sorrow no pitying sympathy knew; For, cold as an icicle-shower, they drew Not a drop from that petrified part. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of a tree and pulled it down with a great crash. That instant the tiger looked at the direction from which the noise had come. His head was near me now, and he did not know whether to attack me or go back to his former prey. It seemed as if hours passed. I was petrified with terror, yet I knew that if I let my fright get possession of me, I would be killed. So I controlled myself. Kari was now trying to strike the tiger with this trunk, but he ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... of a nightly series. Life is opening out for you in a wonderful manner, Miss Knight. Don't refuse; my legs have petrified, and a gang of safe-movers ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach |
