"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exclaimed the terrified damsel, what, in the name of heaven, can it be? ere the silvery tones of her sweet voice had reached the ears of the petrified Alonzo, the "iron tongue" of the cathedral clock announced the hour of midnight, and the solemn intonation of its prodigious bell instilled new horrors into the confused minds of the affrighted lovers. The brave, the royal Alonzo heard not the voice of his enchanting dulcinea; he, poor fellow, with difficulty supported his trembling frame against an ancient memento mori, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... you are not so strong as he: you cannot leap so far. His effort was prodigious! I have examined the place: and, had he fallen half a foot short of where he did, he must ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... supposition, of the cloud in Tuscany having been produced by any other kind of exhalations from the earth; we may venture to believe, that an immense cloud of ashes, mixed with pyritical dust, and with numerous particles of iron, having been projected from Vesuvius to a most prodigious height, became afterwards condensed in its descent;—took fire, both of itself, as well as by means of the electric fluid it contained;—produced many explosions;—melted the pyritical, and metallic, and argillaceous particles, of which ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... dishevelled and perspiring, she waddled toward the steps of her coach; while the Mayor, his Adam's apple fairly pumping importance, led a sturdy band of thirsters recruited from among the train passengers across the flat toward a building over the door of which was fixed a pair of horns of prodigious spread. Lest some pilgrim of erring judgment should mistake the horns for short ones, or misapprehend the nature of the business conducted within, the white false front of the building proclaimed in letters of black a foot high: LONG HORN SALOON. While beneath the legend ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... too much Ingenuity in it to be altogether slighted; and, in Truth, the worst Fault it had, seem'd to be the prodigious Heat of it; which (as an Apothecary, who sat next the Fire, observ'd, in a very low Whisper to his next Neighbour) was so much incorporated into every Particle of it, that it was impossible, under such Fermentation, it should ...
— A Political Romance • Laurence Sterne
... ape appeared to him in a dream, not a mere mannikin as he was in reality, but as tall as Monte San Gemignano, cocking up a prodigious tail and tickling the moon. He was squatted in an olive wood among the farms and oil-presses, while betwixt his legs a narrow road ran alongside a row of flourishing vineyards. Now the said road was thronged with a multitude of pilgrims, who defiled one by one ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... after Trinity Sunday in 1431, being then about nineteen years of age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before midday, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a platform of prodigious height, constructed of wood billets supported by hollow spaces in every direction, for the creation of air-currents. "The pile struck terror," says M. Michelet, "by its height." ... There would be a certainty of calumny arising against her—some people would impute to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... strokes. He swung the bow in. He pointed it shoreward. Straight for the opening of the sluice! His last strokes were prodigious. The boat swung the right way and shot into the channel. Lane dropped his oars. He saw men below wading knee-deep in the water. The boat rode the incline, down to the long swell and curled yellow billows below, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the doctrine that, in the text mentioning Elkanah and his two wives, Elkanah means Christ and the two wives the Synagogue and the Church. Even such men as Alfred the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas were added to the forces at work in building above the sacred books this prodigious ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... his enthusiasm of the preceding moment. His intellect was a museum of freaks. Therein, Vanity was the prodigious fat man, Memory the dwarf, and Veracity the living skeleton. When Vanity rose to show himself, the others left ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... "The prodigious force with which he was endowed," says Sulte, "had made of him an exceptional being in the eyes of the soldiers," and when he returned to Canada after West Indian service of eleven years[14] a little before the war of 1812, he was already the hero of the French-Canadians. ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... In his enormous frame, his yellow curly hair, his high-coloured cheery face, his large gray eyes, we seethe type of the old Norse conquerors who had once harried England; we recognize it too in his carelessness as to food or clothing, his indifference to hardship, his prodigious energy, the sleepless nights spent in wandering through his camp where his resounding shouts awoke the sleeping sentinels, the enduring wrath which never forgot an enemy. Richard's uncle, Hervey of Mount Moriss, led a rival faction in the interests of Strongbow. The English ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... pink—the pink of her cheeks to a shade. And scattered about it were birds, and butterflies, and snaky, emaciated dragons, with backs like saw-teeth, and prodigious fangs, and claws, and very curly tails, such as they breed in Nankeen plates and used to breed on packages of fire-crackers—all done in gold, the gold of her hair. Moreover, one might catch a glimpse of her neck—which was a manifest favour of the gods—and ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the boat is apt to be discredited by fishermen. But it certainly is not doubted by the few who know. I have seen two swordfish threaten my boat, and one charge it. Walker, an Avalon boatman, tells of a prodigious battle his angler had with a broadbill giant calculated to weigh five hundred pounds. This fight lasted eight hours. Many times the swordfish charged the boat and lost his nerve. If that propeller had stopped he would have gone through ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... thieves of the first water," said he; "and the rest are petty thieves, for the most part, and keep at the upper end of the street; they consist of highway robbers, tailors, weavers, millers, measurers of wet and dry, and the like." In the midst of this discourse, I heard a prodigious tumult at the lower end of the street, where there was a huge crowd of people thronging towards the gate, with such pushing and disputing as caused me to imagine that there was a general fray on foot, until I demanded of my friend what was the matter. ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... that appeared to them then, ether to forewarne them of the death of their friend; or else to discouer vnto them, the will of the defunct, or what was the way of his slauchter, as is written in the booke of the histories Prodigious. And this way hee easelie deceiued the Gentiles, because they knew not God: And to that same effect is it, that he now appeares in that maner to some ignorant Christians. For he dare not so illude anie that knoweth that, neither can the spirite of the defunct returne ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... South American republics, the Sultan of Turkey, President Roosevelt, and Sebastian Cabral,—Mr. Landover positively loved to hear him talk. He made a point of getting him to talk about Percival a great deal of the time. He also liked the way in which the prodigious Manuel deferred to him. It inspired the philanthropic motives that led him to share his very excellent cigars with the doughty foreman. Moreover, he had something far back in his ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... off L30,000 of the Constable bankruptcy debt, and he is to pay the remaining L30,000 very soon. A new class of readers is produced by the Bell and Lancaster schools, and this is the cause of the prodigious and extensive sale of cheap publications. Moore had received a letter from Madame de Guiccioli to-day; he says she is not handsome. Byron's exploits, especially at Venice, seem to have been marvellous. Moore said he wrote ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... shoulder-blades, which once had been flat as the top of a table. His back, too, which had been broad and flat, was like the ridge of a gunyah now, from one end of which his neck rose gauntly, and appeared to be of prodigious length. His ribs were plain to see on either side his hollow barrel, and over them the loose skin rolled to and fro as he ran or walked. The eyes of every member of the pack were deeply sunken and ablaze with a dry light, half wistful and half fierce, and more awe-inspiring ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... way in which common sense can be brought to the criticism of some prodigious racial theories. To employ the same figure, suppose the scientific historians explain the historic centuries in terms of a prehistoric division between short-sighted and long-sighted men. They could cite their instances and illustrations. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... sailors. The rumors that he frightfully abused them were not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to support her prodigious cloud of sail. For her there were to be no leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck. Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then in seventy-nine—records which ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... of Lawson. Every struggle of the dog helped to throttle the hapless sailor. Jan's right hand was buried deep in the curling tendrils of Red Bill's shaggy head, and beneath all, Mr. Taylor lay pinned and helpless. It was a deadlock, for the strength of his madness was prodigious; but suddenly, without apparent reason, Jan loosed his various grips and rolled over quietly on his back. His adversaries drew away a little, dubious and disconcerted. Jan ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... For, as no man shall show me a commonwealth born straight that ever became crooked, so no man shall show me a commonwealth born crooked that ever became straight. Rome was crooked in her birth, or rather prodigious. Her twins, the patrician and plebeian orders, came, as was shown by the foregoing story, into the world, one body but two heads, or rather two bellies; for, notwithstanding the fable out of AEsop, whereby Menenius Agrippa, the orator that was sent from the Senate to the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... passed. The fire died down and the room grew chilly. Shorthouse had made several sketches of the two heads and was beginning to feel overpoweringly weary. His feet and his hands were cold and his yawns were prodigious. It seemed ages and ages since the steps had come to listen at his door and the face had watched him from the window. A feeling of safety had somehow come to him. In reality he was exhausted. His one desire was to drop upon the soft white bed and yield ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... travelled to collect wisdom as well as heroes to reap honour. Men think and fight for money. I won't see the man if I can help it. Flatterers are difficult enough to keep at a distance though they be no renegades. I hate a fellow who begins with throwing away his own religion, and then affects a prodigious respect ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Greek writers. Diogenes calls him "a most voluminous writer," and estimates the number of works composed by him at no less than three hundred, the principal of which he enumerates.[764] But out of all this prodigious collection, not a single book has reached us in a complete, or at least an independent form. Three letters, which contain some outlines of his philosophy, are preserved by Diogenes, who has also embodied his "Fundamental Maxims"—forty-four ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... fortress, she ascended several thousand feet, and continued her eastward course at such a prodigious speed, that in less than five minutes she ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... misled) Must in all things freshly start From his views of Ancient Art. All (the learned man proceeded) Otherwise who thought than he did, Showed a stupid, base, untrue, Obscurantist point of view; Men like these (the sage would say) Should be wholly swept away; They, and eke the faults prodigious Which beset their creeds religious, Render totally impure All their so-called Literature, Lastly, sap to its foundation All their boasted education,— Just because they've quite forgot What was meant, and what was not, By the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... princes) should straight absolve them, and that her sentence of excommunication should no longer have any strength. What! Shall the church draw and put up again the spiritual sword at the pleasure of princes? Or because princes will perhaps cast holy things to dogs, must others do so likewise? O prodigious licentiousness, and hellish misorder, worthy to be drowned in the lake of Lethe! But what, then, is the part of the prince, after that the church hath given judgment? Surely, whensoever need is, he ought, by the private ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... year from Myos-Hormos about the middle of July, and returned back within the year[37]. The merchandize they carried amounted to the value of one million two hundred thousand crowns; and the returns were an hundred for one; and through this prodigious increase of wealth, the matrons and noble ladies of those days in Alexandria, were exceedingly profuse in decorating themselves with purple, pearls, and precious stones, and in the use of musk, amber, and other rich perfumes of various kinds; of all which the historians and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the Salon," the great painter went on. "You see, these two works will not be appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more glory to be looked for there ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... boundless green plain, extending in all directions; and then, upon ascending a slight rise, they saw in the dip before them two ostriches. Almost simultaneously the creatures caught sight of their enemies, and went off at a prodigious rate, followed by the dogs and horsemen. For a time their pace was so fast that their pursuers gained but little upon them. Presently, however, the dogs gained upon one of them, and, by their barking and snapping at it, impeded its movements. ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... in the same square as the Temple, and just west of it, is aptly described by Mr. P. Donan as one of the architectural curios of the world. It looks like a vast terrapin back, or half of a prodigious egg-shell cut in two lengthwise, and is built wholly of iron, glass and stone. It is 250 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 100 feet high in the center of the roof, which is a single mighty arch, unsupported by pillar or post, and is said to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Strett's satellite began to move out of its orbit. Very slowly at first, but faster and faster. They continued to blast, with all their prodigious might and in carefully-computed order, until the desired orbit was attained—an orbit which terminated in a vertical line through the center of ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the strong-headed men used their strong-handed brethren as machines. Only he could be very knowing who owned many scribes, or he very rich who owned many hewers of wood and drawers of water. With our prodigious development of mechanical inventions, iron and coal, our mighty steam-driven machinery for making machines, the time for chattelizing men, or depending mainly on animal power of any sort for the production of wealth, has passed by. Abrogate the golden rule, if you will, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Sachs states, as Walther pauses. "Take careful heed now that the one following must be exactly like it."—"Why exactly alike?" the free-born asks, ready to chafe at the shadow of a restriction. Sachs, indulgent, makes play for this prodigious child's sake of the to him so grave business of song-making: "That one may see that you have ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... disgrace, he devised the starched neckcloth, with the design of putting the prince's neck out of fashion, and of bringing his Royal Highness's muslin, his bow, and wadding, into contempt. When he first appeared in this stiffened cravat, tradition says that the sensation in St. James's-street was prodigious; dandies were struck dumb with envy, and washerwomen miscarried. No one could conceive how the effect was produced—tin, card, a thousand contrivances were attempted, and innumerable men cut their throats in vain experiments; ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... facilitates the detachment of the pollen and the fecundation of the ovarium. This process is almost wholly the effect of winds; for though humblebees, and the "Blues" and "Fritillaries" (Polyommatus and Argynnis) amongst butterflies, do exist at this prodigious elevation, they are too few in number to influence the operations of vegetable life.' To this Dr Hooker adds: 'This singular little plant attains a loftier elevation, I believe, than any ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... navigation of eight hundred miles, and giving commercial facilities to the briny ocean. Behold this vast channel of commerce; this magnificent thoroughfare of trade; one grand, unbroken chain of inter-communication, like to a prodigious sarpent, with his head resting upon the shores of Europe, and his lengthened form stretching over the ocean and curling along this great winding stream in serpentine grandeur, proudly flaps his tail at Paducah! . . . SIR, the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... rose out of this deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound that bore it—deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away. It was prodigious; yet there was safety and delight in it that brought no hint of fear. They swam upon the pulse of some enormous, gentle life that rose about and through them in a swelling tide. They felt the heave of something that was ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... city on every side. The onslaught was more furious than any which had preceded it. The Danes had provided themselves with large numbers of mangonels and catapults. Every man capable of bearing arms was upon the walls; but so furious was the attack, so vast the number of the assailants, so prodigious were the clouds of missiles which they rained upon the walls, that the besieged almost ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... 54). "The reports of extraordinary cures effected by me brought me a great crowd of the sick. The street in front of my door was blocked with carriages. People came to consult me from all quarters.... The abstract of my experiments on Light finally appeared and it created a prodigious sensation throughout Europe; the newspapers were all filled with it. I had the court and the town in my house for six months.... The Academy, finding that it could not stifle my discoveries tried to make ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the influence of La Farge, and of that eminently picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character. It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without study from nature—a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal, the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... away to show her another princess, before Benyon answered her last inquiry. This gave him time to recover from his first impulse, which had been to answer it with a negative; he saw in a moment that an admission of his acquaintance with Mrs. Roy (Mrs. Roy!—it was prodigious!) was necessarily helping him to learn more. Besides, it needn't be compromising. Very likely Mrs. Percival would hear one day that he had once wanted to marry her. So, when he joined his companions a minute later he remarked that he had known Miss Gressie years before, and had even admired her ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... So with a prodigious stamping of snow from his feet and a cheerful wave of his mittened hand to the boy by the window, the Doctor bustled cheerily indoors and with kindly eyes averted from the single tell-tale sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... course of this appeal, to make her faculties converge, to ask herself what she could say to this prodigious young man that would make him feel as how base a thing she held his proposal that they should constitute themselves into a company for drawing profit from Verena. Unfortunately, the most sarcastic inquiry that ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... etc.)—Gachard. Rapport a M. le Minist. de l'Interieur, prefixed to corresp. Philippe II. Vol. I. xlix. note 1. It is obvious that a person who made such wonderful commentaries as this, and was hard at work eight or nine hours a day for forty years, would leave a prodigious quantity of unpublished matter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... clever woman, a great wool-spinning we then had, both little wheel and meikle wheel, for stockings and blankets—sitting, as I was saying, in the study, with the fire well gathered up, for a night's reflection, a prodigious knocking came to the door, by which the book was almost startled out of my hand, and all the wheels in the house were silenced at once. This was her ladyship's flunkey, to beg me to go to her, whom he described as in a state of desperation. Christianity required that I should obey the summons; ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... Vindication, in discussing the qualifications of writers, advocating the importance of genius and "Natural Parts" above mere learning. He instances the author of The True-Born Englishman and Shakespeare, the former "Characteriz'd as a Person of Little Learning, but of prodigious Natural Parts" and the latter having "but a small share of Literature." The further example of the literary achievements of the "Fair Sex," who had, of course, no university education, reminds one of Defoe's championship ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... settled. Luther, by his letters, was every where. He commenced the translation of the Scriptures; he wrote endless controversial tracts; his correspondence was unparalleled; his efforts as a preacher were prodigious. But he was equal to it all; was wonderfully adapted to his ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the washing of their Dishes, and what other filth they make, they pour down near their Fire-place: for their Chambers are not boarded, but floored with split Bamboes, like Lathe, so that the Water presently falls underneath their dwelling Rooms, where it breeds Maggots, and makes a prodigious stink. Besides this filthiness, the sick People ease themselves, and make Water in their Chambers; there being a small hole made purposely in the Floor, to let it drop through. But healthy sound People commonly ease themselves, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... descended to us of the prodigious banquets given on special occasions by our early kings, prelates and nobles, are apt to inspire the general reader with an admiration of the splendid hospitality of bygone times. But, as I have already suggested, these festivities ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... made her appearance in a plain dress, apron, mob cap, and of course prodigious hoops. Her hair was arrayed neatly and not powdered. There was powder enough and to spare on the wigs of the beaux in front, and on the elaborate ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... were a political power. Women had prodigious influence, and the two sexes were never more alike. Men not only dressed in colors, but they wore patches and carried muffs. The robust qualities of the old nobility still lingered among the exiles of the provinces, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the mul- titude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... instruction from the Guru in a class all by herself so prodigious was her advance in Yoga, for she could hold her breath much longer than anybody else, and had mastered six postures, while the next class which she attended also consisted of the other original members, namely Daisy Quantock, Georgie and Peppino. They had got on very well, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... dutifully bent on her deriving the utmost possible gratification from it, that he had invented the pretence that he himself could NOT read writing without spectacles. Therefore he now assumed a pair, of grave and prodigious proportions, which not only seriously inconvenienced his nose and his breakfast, but seriously impeded his perusal of the letter. For, he had the eyes of a microscope and a telescope combined, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... a trip to Crocky's Island, situated on the opposite side of the Strait. On landing at Hellgate, within Fools' Inlet my surprise was much excited by the prodigious flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread before them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... "Arcadian." Lemnos. Blowing big guns. The event with which old mother time is in labour is so big that her pains are prodigious and prolonged out of all nature. So near are we now to our opening that the storm means a twenty four ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... required to testify their loyalty to the emperor by heading the attack on his foes. Desperately the little British force had to fight to maintain their position, and their losses were so serious, the number of their enemies so large, so rapidly increasing, that it was clear to all that the most prodigious efforts would be necessary to enable them to hold on until reinforcements arrived, and that all idea of an early capture of the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... belonging to the hardest rocks of the Jurassian period. These debris, continually renewed, compose, even below the exit of the gorge where the river enters into a regular channel cut in a tertiary deposit, broad beaches, prodigious accumulations of rolled pebbles, extending several kilometres down the stream, but they diminish in size and weight so rapidly that above the mouth of the river, which is at a distance of thirty or thirty-five kilometres ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... If there is anything in modern music to be compared with the sheer, blunt, powerful volumes of primitive art it is the work of Moussorgsky. And as the years pass, the man's stature and mind become more immense, more prodigious. One has but to hearken to the accent of the greater part of modern music to gauge in whose shadow we are all living, how far the impulse coming from him has carried. The whole living musical world, from ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the Edipo of Nicolini—a tragedy written expressly for him—and achieved a great success. Next he appeared in Alfieri's Saul, and then all Italy declared that Modena's mantle had fallen on worthy shoulders. His fame was now prodigious, and wherever he went he was received with boundless enthusiasm. He visited Paris, where he played Orasmane, Orestes, Saul and Othello. On his return to Florence he was hospitably entertained by the marquis of Normanby, then English ambassador to the court of Tuscany, and this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... different. I mean to put things in your way than will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in a way to make more money than you'll ever know what to do with. You'll be right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I've got some prodigious operations on foot; but I'm keeping quiet; mum's the word; your old hand don't go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see his k'yards and find out his little game. But all in good time, Washington, all in good time. You'll see. Now there's an operation ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Athene. On her head she wore a three-cornered cap trimmed with a ruching of organdie, and beneath it her thin gray hair still showed a gleam of faded yellow in the sunlight. She had never been handsome, but her prodigious size had endowed her with an impressiveness which had passed in her youth, and among an indulgent people, for beauty. Only in the last few years had her fleshiness, due to rich food which she could not resist and to lack ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... difference? I answer fearlessly,—The prodigious development of physical science ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... such time as he went forth with Higelac on his fatal expedition against the Frisians, who were backed by a strong alliance of Chauci, and Chattuarii, and Franks; and there Higelac fell, and his army perished. Beowulf, by prodigious swimming, reached his home again, where now was a young widowed queen and her infant son. She offered herself and her kingdom to Beowulf; he preferred the office of the faithful guardian. At a later time the young king fell in battle, and then Beowulf succeeded. He ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... live on the waste of an Hawaii coolie. And wages! In gold dollars, ten a month, or, in trade dollars, two a month, was what the contract Chinese coolie received from the white-devil sugar kings. In a year the coolie received the prodigious sum of two hundred and forty trade dollars- -more than a hundred times what a coolie, toiling ten times as hard, received on the eleventh cataract of the Yangtse. In short, all things considered, an Hawaii coolie was one hundred times better ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... ample fortune, "he would sometimes confess," says his biographer, "that he was happier amid his early difficulties." The idea of retirement, indeed, does not readily associate itself with the impression of prodigious vitality, which from first to last is produced by the record of his varied activities. In this respect, as in others, the contrast is marked between him and Saumarez, the two who more particularly illustrate the complementary sides of the brilliant group of naval leaders, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... furnace, in which there is an apparently inexhaustible supply of red oxide and brown specular. This ore yields 60 per cent of pure metal. The erection of mills for making wrought iron is contemplated, and the high quality and prodigious quantity of the raw material will justify and reward any outlay of capital in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... week he was jubilant. Boys looked round in astonishment at the shrillness of his whistle and the ring of his laughter. His corner of the class room was a simple Babel, and the number of apples he bestowed in charity was prodigious. ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... right and good between us, and no cloud shall disturb our love or our mutual confidence. Come, let us smile and be cheerful again, that this listening and curious court may know nothing of your tears. They would make a prodigious affair of it, and we will not give them occasion to say we have been ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... administration[2328] keeps 2,988 officials busy in the departments, 6,950 in the districts, 1,175,000 in the communes—in all, nearly one million two hundred thousand administrators, whose places, as we have seen above, are no sinecures. Never did a political machine require so prodigious an expenditure of force to set it up and keep it in motion. In the United States, where it is now (around 1875) deranged by its own action, it has been estimated that, to meet the intentions of the law and keep each wheel in its proper place, it ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... John Forster of Yardhope, whose name is familiar to you all, as one of the most valiant of the defenders of the border against the Scottish incursions. None distinguished themselves more at the battle of Otterburn, where he performed feats of prodigious valour, in his endeavours to rescue me and my brother from the hands of the Scots. The earl my father offered him knighthood, but he said bluntly that he preferred remaining, like his father, plain John Forster of Yardhope. The lad's mother is a daughter of ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labor which it took me to make a plank or board; but my time or labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Tammas turning a somersault, miraculously saved from falling head first on to the road, by rebounding from the pitchfork which had been wedged upright in the hay, whilst the figure, which followed in their wake with prodigious bounds, was apparently trying to get at him with its spidery arms. But whether it succeeded or not I cannot say, for I was so uncontrollably fearful lest it should return to me, that I mounted my bicycle and rode as I had never ridden before ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... (Methuen, 7s. 6d.), and, cheaper, Mr. Walter Jerrold's *Lamb* (Bell and Sons, 1s.); also introductory studies prefixed to various editions of Lamb's works. Indeed, the facilities for collecting materials for a picture of Charles Lamb as a human being are prodigious. When you have made for yourself such a picture, read the *Essays of Elia* by the light of it. I will choose one of the most celebrated, *Dream Children: A Reverie*. At this point, kindly put my book down, and read *Dream ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and, endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with their ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... went to Soleurre: the Archimandrite designing to re-enter Germany, and return through Hungary or Poland to his own country. This would have been a prodigious tour; but as the contents of his purse rather increased than diminished during his journey, he was in no haste to return. For me, who was almost as much pleased on horseback as on foot, I would have desired no better than ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... another instance of the vagaries of that prodigious imagination? It rains, it hails; beastly weather. M. Joyeuse has taken the omnibus to go to his office. As he takes his seat opposite a species of giant, with brutish face and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse, an insignificant little creature, with his bag on his knees, draws in ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... until nine, and we parted the best of friends. I got home to a silent house of sleepers, only Fanny awaiting me; we talked awhile, in whispers, on the interview; then, I got a lantern and went across to the workman's house, now empty and silent, myself sole occupant. So to bed, prodigious tired but mighty content with my night's work, and to-day, with a headache and a chill, have written you this page, while my new novel waits. Of this I will tell you nothing, except the various names under consideration. First, it ought to be called—but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stretches from the bow to about four feet up the mast is stretched a piece of brown canvas just forward of the mast, on a flat stone some lumps of turf are burning, and under this canvas is spread the straw on which my friends sleep. Mike is now washing a prodigious quantity of potatoes in a large iron pot, "a grate crop of praties this year, but the salt water plays the divil with the keeping av them, like that," and he holds up one with a red mark on it in his gigantic paw. I kept wondering if they were really going ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... harnessed to my pulk, the rein carefully secured around my wrist, and Long Isaac let go his hold. A wicked toss of the antlers and a prodigious jump followed, and the animal rushed full tilt upon Braisted, who was next before me, striking him violently upon the back. The more I endeavored to rein him in, the more he plunged and tore, now dashing against the led deer, now ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the year before, had known an intimate friend of M. des Cultaux, the baroness's father, and the discovery of this mutual acquaintance gave rise to endless conversation about marriages, births, and relationships. The baroness, with prodigious feats of memory, talked about the ancestors and descendants of numerous families, and traversed the complicated labyrinths of different genealogies ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... burden, the Swanne made a far greater show than would be made by a craft of that size in the present day. The ships of the time lay but lightly on the water, while their hulls were carried up to a prodigious height; and it is not too much to say that the portion of the Swanne, above water, was fully as large as the hull which we see of a merchantman of four times her tonnage. Still, even so, it was but a tiny craft to cross the Atlantic, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or—or anything wrong with the country?" he added, when his nephew was ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... loving. As little rest had Juliet when she found that the gentle man that she had been talking with was Romeo and a Montague, for she had been suddenly smit with the same hasty and inconsiderate passion for Romeo which he had conceived for her; and a prodigious birth of love it seemed to her, that she must love her enemy and that her affections should settle there, where family considerations should induce her chiefly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... prodigious. He usually lectured not less than fifteen times a week, published twenty-five volumes, and left behind him several other volumes nearly ready for the press. His health was never firm. A rheumatic disease lurked ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... plenty of dish-water, and have it hot. There is no need of asking the character of a domestic, if you have ever seen her wash dishes in a little greasy water. When molasses is used in cooking, it is a prodigious improvement to boil and skim it before you use it. It takes out the unpleasant raw taste, and makes it almost as good as sugar. Where molasses is used much for cooking, it is well to prepare one or two gallons in ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... life in the south of France. La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret treated of the results of celibacy. Son Excellence Eugene Rougon dealt with official life. L'Assommoir was a tract against the vice of drunkenness. Some think this the strongest of the naturalist series. Its success was prodigious. In this the marvellous talent of Zola for minute description is evinced. Une Page d'Amour (A Love Episode) appeared in 1878. Of Nana, 1880, three hundred thousand copies were quickly sold. Pot-Bouille portrayed the lower bourgeoisie and their servants. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Crispianus in all his glory and regality, with the man in the coat-of-mail, of bell-metal, and the dukes, and lord mayor of London, at the which, the influx of lads and lasses from the country was just prodigious, and the rioting and rampaging at night, the brulies and the dancing, was worse than Vanity Fair in the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Poets, Retainers to seven shares and a halfe; Madrigall fellowes, whose onely business in verse, is to rime a poore six-penny soule a Suburb sinner into hell;—May such arrogant pretenders to Poetry vanish, with their prodigious issue of tumorous heats, and flashes of their adulterate braines, and for ever after, may this our Poet fill up the better roome of man. Oh! when the generall arraignment of Poets shall be, to give an accompt of their higher soules, with what a triumphant brow shall our divine Poet sit ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... scattered? Will they find kind masters? or, worst fate of books, fall into the hands of women who will sell them to the trunk-maker? Are the leaves to line a box or to curl a maiden's locks? Are the rarities to become more and more rare, and at last fetch prodigious prices? Some unlucky men are able partly to solve these problems in their own lifetime. They are constrained to sell their libraries—an experience full of ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... had trappings for their horses. Their favourite missile weapon was the dart or javelin, and in earlier ages the sling. The spear or lance, the sword, and the sharp, short-handled battle-axe, were their favourite manual weapons. Their power with the battle-axe was prodigious; Giraldus says they sometimes lopped off a horseman's leg at a single blow, his body falling over on the other side. Their bridle-bits and spurs were of bronze, as were generally their spear heads and short swords. Of siege implements, beyond ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... sun was up, there stood in the farmer's yard a new iron plough, and he yoked his dog, Water, to it; and though it was of the size of an ordinary plough, Water drew it with ease through the heaviest clayland, and it tore up prodigious furrows. The farmer used this plough for many years, and the smallest foal or the leanest little horse could draw it through the ground, to the amazement of every one who beheld it, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... famous for supplying London with turkeys.[396] Three hundred droves of turkeys, each numbering from 300 to 1000, had in one season passed over Stratford Bridge on the road from Ipswich to London. Geese also travelled on foot to London in prodigious numbers from Norfolk, Suffolk, and the Fen country, often 1,000 to 3,000 in a drove, starting in August when harvest was nearly over, so that the geese might feed on the stubble by the way; 'and thus they hold on to the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Augustine, an intelligent person, who enjoyed a liberal share of her confidence. Felix declared that he would willingly spend his life in the bosom of the Wentworth family; that they were the kindest, simplest, most amiable people in the world, and that he had taken a prodigious fancy to them all. The Baroness quite agreed with him that they were simple and kind; they were thoroughly nice people, and she liked them extremely. The girls were perfect ladies; it was impossible to be more of a lady than Charlotte Wentworth, in spite of her little village air. "But ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... went under our fore-sail and main-top-sail close-reefed: At day-light the next morning, added to them the fore and mizen top-sails. At four o'clock it fell calm; but a prodigious high sea from the N.E., and a complication of the worst of weather, viz. snow, sleet, and rain, continued, together with the calm, till nine o'clock in the evening. Then the weather cleared up, and we got a breeze at S.E. by S. With this we steered N. by E. till ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... lingered, a few paces from the carriage. Four minutes passed and the traveller was still absent. Thirty seconds left ... fifteen ... five ... the starting signal ... the first, almost imperceptible movement of the prodigious train. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... surroundings. As to his studies, little need be said. In his French history he read of the glories of the distant past (when "Germany was part of the French Empire"), the splendours of the reign of Louis XIV., the disasters of France in the Seven Years' War, and the "prodigious conquests of the English in India." But his imagination was kindled from other sources. Boys of pronounced character have always owed far more to their private reading than to their set studies; and the young Buonaparte, while grudgingly learning Latin and French grammar, was feeding ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... must cross that stream," murmured Jack, with half a shudder, as he looked out upon the prodigious volume rushing southward like myriads of wild horses; "it seems to me no one can swim to the other shore, nor can a raft or ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... September 27, 1790, came Mirabeau's final speech. The most sober and conservative of his modern opponents speaks of its eloquence as "prodigious." In this the great orator dwelt first on the political necessity involved, declaring that the most pressing need was to get the government lands into the hands of the people, and so to commit to the nation and against ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... relations wore slowly away. Under the circumstances, even the resources of bridge were scarcely to be essayed. Bayne lounged for hours with a book in a swing on the veranda. Briscoe, his hands in his pockets, his hat on the back of his head, his cigar cocked between his teeth—house-bound, he smoked a prodigious number of them for sheer occupation—strolled aimlessly in and out, now in the stables, now listening and commenting as Gladys at the piano played the music of his choice. Lillian had a score of letters to write. Her mind, however, scarcely followed her pen as she sat ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... small and too faint to be visible to the unaided eye. These objects are all dissipated in the way we have described; it is, in fact, only at the moment, and during the process of their dissolution, that we become aware of their existence. Small as these missiles probably are, their velocity is so prodigious that they would render the earth uninhabitable were they permitted to rain down unimpeded on its surface. We must, therefore, among the other good qualities of our atmosphere, not forget that it constitutes a kindly screen, which ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... frequently to speak to some group of spectators, or to greet cheerfully a golfer as he started for the first tee. She seemed very animated and happy; the decorative scene fitted her admirably. Dr. Lindsay came up the slope, laboring toward the ninth hole with prodigious welter. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a slave. He has lived in this strange region from boyhood, and a large proportion of the discoveries are the result of his courage, intelligence, and untiring zeal. His vocation has brought him into contact with many intellectual and scientific men, and a prodigious memory, he has profited much by intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... me for a moment as if hardly able to realise what I said, and then with a wild cry he ran away from me with prodigious speed and raced along the sands towards my house. Never before or since have I seen a human being run so fast. I followed as rapidly as I could, furious at this threatened invasion, but long before I reached the house he ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... began, Government, like everybody else, has had to learn new duties, and to learn them amid the stress and perplexity of a great conflict. And among other things, it has been obliged, in some respects, to recast its medical regulations to meet the prodigious enlargement of its medical work. Beyond a doubt, much help, which, on account of this imperfection of the medical code itself, or of the inexperience of many who administered it, was needed by our hospitals ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... cut with a flint a kind of steps in the bark, in order to climb up to the birds' nests: these steps were the distance of five feet from each other; so that we must conclude that either these people are of a prodigious size, or that they have some way of climbing trees that we are not used to; in one of the trees the steps were so fresh, that we judged they could not have ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... than his first hasty sketch on a single sheet of paper! While he was engaged on this work, there came one morning some Florentine artists to look at it. Seeing a lad enter soon after, and commence painting with prodigious fury, they called out to him to desist; but his mode of handling the brushes and colors, which they had imagined it was his business merely to clean or pound, soon convinced them that this daring youngster was no other than Luca himself; whereupon they crossed themselves, and declared ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... last summer and reflecting upon the prodigious changes which the sheep have brought about in a few years, it occurred to me that we must look to Oriental countries in order to see the final results of sheep and goat grazing in semi-arid climates. I have proposed as an historical ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... history of royal marriages ever be written in a manner proportioned to its importance, a large part of the work would have to be given to the marriages made by various princes of the house of Austria; for those marriages had prodigious effect on the condition of the best portions of the human race, and in the sixteenth century it seemed that they were about to bring, not only most of Europe, but nearly all America, a large part of Asia, and not a little of Africa under the rule of one family, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... but surely maturing, in obedience to the inner law of his being. He had struggled long in the bonds of operatic composition, but even here his innovations showed conclusively how he was reaching out toward the form with which his name was to be associated through all time. The year 1739 was one of prodigious activity. The oratorio of "Saul" was produced, of which the "Dead March" is still recognized as one of the great musical compositions of all time, being one of the few intensely solemn symphonies written in a major key. Several works now forgotten ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... careful dispositions for a battle—albeit once in it he bore himself like any captain of horse—nor ever did Du Mornay himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only from a shallow nature, found when it was too late that they had been outwitted ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... a brief notice of JAMES HARFIELD, who was connected with that journal more than twenty years. His reading, in every department of literature, was prodigious, and his memory almost a phenomenon. On all matters connected with Parliamentary history, precedent, and etiquette in particular, Mr. Harfield was an encyclopaedia of information, while the stores of his learning, in every department, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... signify a certain predominant quality, so inherent in a man that he must win whenever he plays, or at least win oftener than lose, it may be denied that there is any such thing in nature. The asserters of luck maintain that sometimes they have been very lucky, and at other times they have had a prodigious run of bad luck against them, which whilst it continued obliged them to be very cautious in engaging with the fortunate. They asked how they could lose fifteen games running if bad luck had not prevailed strangely against them. But it is quite certain that although the odds against ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... did wonder, and for a time without avail. She could detect no change in his customary ways and moods or treatment of her. He turned off his prodigious amount of work as usual, played as usual, chanted his songs, and was the happy good fellow. She tried to imagine an added sweetness toward her, but vexed herself with the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... for the capital Cuzco, where they managed to seize Atahualpa, the Inca of the time. He attempted to ransom himself by agreeing to fill the room in which he was confined, twenty-two feet long by sixteen wide, with bars of gold as high as the hand could reach. He carried out this prodigious promise, and Pizarro's companions found themselves in possession of booty ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum. Let us hasten to add that we shall approach him in the person of his agent, who, so far as Uncle Jap ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "that in our craft a very little gold goes a very great way. It is far otherwise in the world, as thou, albeit in no sort eminent for sapience, hast doubtless ere this ascertained for thyself. Thou art evidently a prodigious fool!" ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... her maternal duty toward me, came herself to inquire after my health before I was out of my room. So certain was she of not having been observed on the previous day—or so prodigious was her power of controlling herself—that she actually advised me to go out riding before lunch, and try what the fresh air and the exercise would do to relieve me! Feeling that I must end in speaking to Michael, it struck me that this would ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights shall be beautifully balanced,—all this means prodigious thought and care before the actual placing of the ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... pride, too, 'Our children are great readers; they read all the time.' Such parents ought to know that instead of turning out to be prodigies of learning, these library gluttons are far more likely to become prodigious idiots, and that teachers find them, as a rule, the poorest scholars and the worst thinkers." He adds an appeal to teachers: "Give out questions that demand research, and send out pupils to the library for information ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... purposes to which Eloquence may be made subservient, we at once perceive its prodigious import ance to the best interests of mankind. The greatest masters of the art have concurred, upon the greatest occasions of its display, in pronouncing that its estimation depends on the virtuous and rational use ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Clarendon is the foremost, and of highest authority; and in his words therefore, I shall give his character to the reader. "In this unhappy battle, (says he) was slain the Lord viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts, of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, and so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... conjures up as important to happiness. The vulgar mistake even what they have the means of knowing, or, which is the same thing, what they are least practised in they are dazzled with; they proclaim it, accordingly, marvellous, prodigious, extraordinary; it is a phenomenon. They neither admire nor respect much what is always visible to their eyes; but whatever strikes their imagination, whatever gives scope to the mind, becomes itself the fruitful source ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... conveyed into a wide and boundless plain, that was covered with prodigious multitudes of people, which no man could number. In the midst of it there stood a mountain, with its head above the clouds. The sides were extremely steep, and of such a particular structure, that no creature which was not made in a human figure could ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... people might talk learnedly about various schools and tone poems; he took all he could get silently and with a thankful heart; and because in far-away Peking he could not count upon others playing for him, he performed the prodigious feat of learning to play both violin and 'cello himself without a teacher, and long after ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... necessity to be in society.[2181] Their luxury, indeed, differs from ours. With the exception of a few princely establishments it is not great in the matter of country furniture; a display of this description is left to the financiers. "But it is prodigious in all things which can minister to the enjoyment of others, in horses, carriages, and in an open table, in accommodations given even to people not belonging to the house, in boxes at the play which are ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Flat Cove to prevent the landing. Pepperrell out-tricks the enemy by leaving only a few boats to make a feint of landing at the Cove, while he swings his main fleet inshore round a bend in the coast a mile away. Here, with a prodigious rattling of lowered sails and anchor chains, the crews plunge over the rolling waves, pontooning a bridge of small boats ashore. By nightfall the most of the English have landed, and spies report the harbor of Louisburg alive with torches where the French are sinking ships to obstruct the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... of light we have little more than conjectures. It is considered by most philosophers as a real substance, immediately emanating from the sun, and from all luminous bodies, from which it is projected in right lines with prodigious velocity. Light, however, being imponderable, it cannot be confined and examined by itself; and therefore it is to the effects it produces on other bodies, rather than to its immediate nature, that we must direct ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... luckless night, He slept, poor dog! and lost it to a doit. This put the man in such a desperate mind, } Between revenge, and grief, and hunger joined } Against the foe, himself, and all mankind, } He leaped the trenches, scaled a castle wall, Tore down a standard, took the fort and all. "Prodigious well," his great commander cried, Gave him much praise and some reward beside. Next pleased his excellence a town to batter: (Its name I know not, and it's no great matter). "Go on, my friend," ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... but from the change which instantly came over his manner, it was evident that the information obtained with such superfluous diplomacy was a prodigious relief to his mind. The officiousness with which he urged a handful of chestnuts on Perez, and even offered to carry in the wood for him, might moreover be construed as indicating a desire to make amends to him for unjust suspicions secretly cherished. As for asking Prudence directly whether ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... as enchanted; neither knowing the reason why, nor how to bee ridde of it: unusuall to these Woods, and, I feare, to our gods prodigious. Sylvanus whom I honour, is runne into a Cave: Pan, whom I envye, courting of the Shepheardesse. Envie I thee Pan? No, pitty thee; an eie-sore to chast Nymphes, yet still importunate. Honour thee Sylvanus? No, contemne thee; fearefull of Musicke in the Woods, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and the very human comfort that I found in knowing myself to be the possessor of such prodigious wealth, I needs must jump down again to where it was and take another survey of it before I left it behind. And then, being cooler and looking more carefully, I noticed that the box to which the tackle had been made ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the pride of the United Amateur Press Association. Born in Maine, and through childhood accustomed to the mystical spell of the ancient New-England countryside, Miss Jackson for a long period quietly and unconsciously absorbed a prodigious store of beauty and phantasy from life. Having no design to become a poet, she accepted these ethereal gifts as a matter of course; until about a decade ago they manifested themselves in a burst of spontaneous melody which can best be described ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... hoi kynokephaloi (akephaloi) hoi en toisi staethesi tous ophthalmous echontes (hos dae legetai ge hypo libyon) kai agrioi andres, kai gynaikes agriai kai alla plaethei polla thaeria akatapseusta;] i.e. That there are here prodigious large Serpents, and Lions, and Elephants, and Bears, and Asps, and Asses that have horns, and Cynocephali, (in the Margin 'tis Acephali) that have Eyes in their Breast, (as is reported by the Libyans) and wild Men, and wild Women, and a great many other wild Beasts that are not fabulous. Tis ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... Peter the Great, ever gave so many ex cathedra opinions on so many different subjects in the same length of time, and of course it cannot be supposed that he has not made mistakes, but it shows that it is only by prodigious industry that he has been able to gather the materials on which these utterances are based. He is indeed the "first servant of the state," and long before his court or indeed many of the housemaids of Berlin are awake, he is up and attending to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... and terror in the mind of a boy like Rollo, floating down into it helplessly on an enormous raft, with a hundred men, looking more like brigands than any thing else, marching solemnly to and fro at either end of it, working prodigious oars, with incessant toil, to prevent its being carried upon the rocks and dashed to pieces. In fact, Rollo began soon to wish that he was safe on ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she perhaps mistook me—I wore prodigious whiskers at that time—for a gallant colonel, whose name begins with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Julian tribulations—records a singular phenomenon in the nocturnal habits of the last-named vermin. "Every night they had a jubilee. The first symptom was an unusual clustering and humming amongst the swarms lining the beams overhead, and the inside of the sleeping-places. This was succeeded by a prodigious coming and going on the part of those living out of sight. Presently they all came forth; the larger sort racing over the chests and planks; winged monsters darting to and fro in the air; and the small fry buzzing in heaps almost in a state of fusion. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... was a young man-of-war's man we had, who went by the name of "Gun-Deck," from his always talking of sailor life in the navy. He was a little fellow with a small face and a prodigious mop of brown hair; who always dressed in man-of-war style, with a wide, braided collar to his frock, and Turkish trowsers. But he particularly prided himself upon his feet, which were quite small; and when we ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... we can now cultivate miles of land. In response to human industry, aided by science and machinery, the fruitful earth teems with such lavish abundance as was never known or deemed possible before. If you go into the different factories and workshops you will see prodigious quantities of commodities of every kind pouring out of the wonderful machinery, literally like water from ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... derived from his experience with wild natures, he carefully abstained from any attempt to force Lahoma's friendship, hence it was not long before he obtained it without reserve. As she walked beside him, grave and alert, she no longer thought of his bushy beard and prodigious mop of harsh hair; and the daily exhibition of his strength caused him to grow handsome in her eyes because most of those feats were performed for her comfort or pleasure. In the meantime he talked incessantly, and to his admiration, he presently found her manner of speech wonderfully like ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... distance on the way toward London with Home, when he carried his tragedy of "Douglas" for examination to the critics. Six other clergymen, accompanied the precious manuscript on that expedition, and the fun was prodigious. Garrick read the play and pronounced it totally unfit for the stage! "Douglas" was afterwards brought out in Edinburgh with unbounded success. David Hume ran about crying it up as the first performance he world had seen for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... 100s. the quarter, equal to 75l. of the present currency. This dearth continued, but with mitigated severity, until after the harvest of 1317; but great abundance returned in 1318. This famine occasioned a prodigious mortality among the people, owing to the want of proper food, and employment of unwholesome substitutes. The rains set in so early in 1315, and continued so violently, that most of the seed of that year perished in the ground; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... tight shut; and two peevish bald old gentlemen seemed to be hermetically sealed up inside, eternally reading the paper. That wonderful mystery, the music-shop, carried it off as usual (except that it had more cabinet pianos in stock), as if season or no season were all one to it. It made the same prodigious display of bright brazen wind- instruments, horribly twisted, worth, as I should conceive, some thousands of pounds, and which it is utterly impossible that anybody in any season can ever play or want to play. It had five triangles in the window, six pairs of castanets, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... translating into a curious jargon (Arabo-Franco-Italian) certain Oriental tales; and, although he was nearing the Psalmist's age-term of man, he agreed to "collaborate." The Frenchman used to take the pen at midnight when returning from "social pleasures," and work till 4-5 a.m. As he had prodigious facility and spontaneity he finished his part of the task in two winters. Some of the tales in the suite, especially that of "Maugraby," are attributed wholly to his invention; and, as a rule, his aim and object were to diffuse ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
