"Petrify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into stone!" he exclaimed. "She is a regular Gorgon, with those heavy eyes of hers. I never saw such eyes. I believe she would petrify me if I had to bear them. Don't you give Medusa one of those sweet almonds, Daisy—not one, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... now re-diving, plunge in playful sport: "As chorus regular they act, and move "Their forms in shapes lascivious; spouting high, "The briny waters through their nostrils wide. "Of twenty now, (our ship so many bore) "I only stand unchang'd; with trembling limbs, "And petrify'd with fear. The god himself, "Scarce courage in my mind inspires; when thus,— "Pale terror from thy bosom drive, and seek "The isle of Naxos.—Thither come, I tend "On smoking altars, Bacchus' ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... what they all do. After a while I'll begin to believe that there must be something hauntingly beautiful and girlish about me or every one wouldn't petrify when I announce that I've a six-foot son attached to my apron-strings. He looks twenty-one, but he's seventeen. He thinks the world's rotten because he can't grow one of those fuzzy little mustaches that the men are cultivating to match their hats. He's down at the depot now, straightening ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... Passing Band Would cause each separate hair to stand On end and sway and writhe and spit,— She couldn't "do a thing with it." And, being woman and aware Of such disaster to her hair, What could she do but petrify All whom ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... who, half awake, Adorn themselves their daily lounge to take; Each lordly man his taper waist displays, Combs his sweet locks, and laces on his stays, Ties on his starch'd cravat with nicest care, And then steps forth to petrify the fair.' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the while, curved over the nest, and, with wavy, subtle motions, explored the interior. I can conceive of nothing more overpoweringly terrible to an unsuspecting family of birds than the sudden appearance above their domicile of the head and neck of this arch-enemy. It is enough to petrify the blood in their veins. Not finding the object of his search, he came streaming down from the nest to a lower limb, and commenced extending his researches in other directions, sliding stealthily through the branches, bent on capturing one of the parent birds. That a legless, wingless creature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... he had taught a man to love his brother whom he had seen he could never make him love God whom he has not seen. To vary the metaphor, his plan was, first warm and soften your wax then begin to shape it after Heaven's pattern. The old-fashioned way is freeze, petrify and mold your wax by a single process. Not that he was mawkish. No man rebuked sin more terribly than he often rebuked it in many of these cells; and when he did so see what he gained by the personal kindness that preceded these terrible rebukes! The rogue said: "What! ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... makes me shrivel with most Americans, because I am not above and beyond it as you are. America may stand for freedom, but it has an unimancipated soul and there is a perpetual affectation, a caution, a suspicion, a lack of independence that does simply petrify life and crush feeling. You may say it is a small world, I don't know, but it is everywhere ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... Professor's kindness! He was full, in those days, of raw enthusiasms, which he forced on any one who would listen when his first shyness had worn off. You can't picture him spouting sentimental poetry, can you? Yet I've seen him petrify a whole group of Mrs. Lanfear's callers by suddenly discharging on them, in the strident drawl of Western New York, "Barbara Frietchie" or "The Queen of the May." His taste in literature was uniformly bad, but very definite, and far more assertive ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves. It is the business of the archaeologist to awake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep. It is his business to make the stones tell their tale: not to petrify the listener. It is his business to put motion and commotion into the past that the present may see and hear: not to pin it down, spatchcocked, like a dead thing. In a word, the archaeologist must be in command ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... that slavery and polygamy have had something to do with the diminution of the population, as well as small-pox. Formerly large armies of fighting men could be raised in these States. Islamism is always antagonistic to national progress. It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen of a country, or member of a nationality. In these States law, government and social customs ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... word," said he, "that is a solution which I do not at all accept. I defy the gods ever to petrify my heart." ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... formula. If absolution be not a living truth, it becomes a monstrous falsehood; if you take absolution as a mystical gift conveyed to an individual man called a priest, and mysteriously efficacious in his lips, and his alone, you petrify a truth into death and unreality. I have been striving to show that absolution is not a Church figment, invented by priestcraft, but a living, blessed, human power. It is a power delegated to you and to me, and just so far as we exercise ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... devils would begin their dance: for it was by no means ended. Of course, William would come home as usual; and yet, though the sound of his footstep was the one sound she had listened for all day, Dora would immediately begin to petrify again, and when he would approach her with open arms, asking her to forgive and forget the morning, she would demur just long enough to set him alight again. Heaven, how the devils would dance then! And the night would usually ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... prepared. Published courses of lectures are my detestation. Cotta is also printing a volume of mine in German, "Physikalische geographische Erinnerungen." Many unpublished things concerning the volcanoes of the Andes, about currents, etc. And all this at the age when one begins to petrify! It is very rash! May this letter prove to you and to Madame Agassiz that I am petrifying only at the extremities, —the heart is still warm. Retain for me the affection which ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... illustrated, if not afterwards corrected, tend to harden into yet more distinctly "intuitive" errors. Thus, for example, one of the crude geological hypotheses, of which Sir Charles Lyell tells us,[141] would, by the mere fact of being kept before the mind, tend to petrify into a hard fixed belief. And this process of hardening is seen strikingly illustrated in the case of traditional errors, especially when these fall in with our own emotional propensities. Our habitual ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... looks as if, for the joke's sake, the poor man had twisted his features into an expression at once the most ludicrous and horrible that he could contrive, and at that very moment, as a judgment for making himself so hideous, an avenging Providence had seen fit to petrify him. Since it is out of his own power, I would gladly assist him to change countenance, for his ugly visage haunts me both at noontide and night-time. Some other players of the past generation were ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Manchester and Liverpool at the outset of October that this announcement came. "I have made a short reading of the murder in Oliver Twist. I cannot make up my mind, however, whether to do it or not. I have no doubt that I could perfectly petrify an audience by carrying out the notion I have of the way of rendering it. But whether the impression would not be so horrible as to keep them away another time, is what I cannot satisfy myself upon. What do you think? It is in three short parts: 1, Where Fagin sets ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... North. At the very first Sight, its Oddness of Figure promises something extraordinary; and given at that Distance the Prospect makes somewhat of a grand Appearance: Hundreds of aspiring Pyramids presenting themselves all at once to the Eye, look, if I may be allowed so to speak, like a little petrify'd Forrest; or, rather, like the awful Ruins of some capacious Structure, the Labour of venerable Antiquity. The nearer you approach the more it affects; but till you are very near you can hardly form in your Mind any thing like what you find ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe |
