"Spectacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue after the grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... spoiling the personal influence of the hero extolled. This is particularly true in the use of much Biblical material in Sunday School and in the unexplained classic references to the great and good. One wonders what children are thinking about, children who read in the daily papers long and spectacular accounts of trials for bigamy or adultery, when the worthies of the Old Testament are spoken of and their two or several wives taken as a matter of course in the lesson! One wonders what is the meaning of justness or kindness to the "servant" ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... least, till the time of Byron, for those very theatrical qualities which had hitherto put them in abhorrence. Wordsworth, in his Lines written above Tintern Abbey, in which he sets forth the succeeding stages of his mental development, refers to this love of the mountains for their spectacular qualities, as the first step in the progress of his ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, Monsieur, but surely you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... of fog or mist, when its meanest architecture would show stately. The city won its moving grandeur from the throng of people astir on its pavements, or the streams of vehicles solidifying or liquefying in its streets. The august groups of Westminster and Parliament did not seem in themselves spectacular; they needed the desertedness of night, and the pour of the moon into the comparative emptiness of the neighborhood, to fill them out to the proportions of their keeping in the memory. Is Trafalgar Square ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... and outdoor spectacles of all kinds. Add these stage settings to the splendid costuming and the flamboyant architectural accessories of Renaissance times in France and we have what is assuredly not to be found in other lands, a spectacular and imposing pageant of mediaeval and Renaissance life and manners which is superlative ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they divorce quickly ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... form any judgment as to how its slide-valves, or its blast, or the tubes of its boiler might be improved. It is similarly impossible for men of the socialistic temperament to understand the general process of industry, or to judge how it can and how it can not be altered, from the purely spectacular impressions which its intricate parts produce ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... they expand upon these facts. One rule should be noted in the writing of all these stories or of any athletic story—avoid superlatives. To a green reporter almost every game seems to be "the most spectacular," "the most thrilling," "the hardest fought," "the most closely matched," but a broad experience is necessary to defend the use of ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... sophistry and intimidation, into the mass of the people, who are told that their government's fortunes are their own. Now the rabble has a great propensity to take sides, promptly and passionately, in any spectacular contest; the least feeling of affinity, the slightest emotional consonance, will turn the balance and divert in one direction sympathetic forces which, for every practical purpose, might just as well have rushed the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; that the Mektoub practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying primitive sanity which we would do well ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... followed: toleration of handling, reining, mouthing, leading on foot, and on horseback and in due time saddling and mounting. One thing at a time and nothing new until the old was so perfected that when all was ready for the mounting from a spectacular point of view the mounting was generally disappointing. Just a little rearing and curvetting, then a quiet, trusting acceptance of this ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Shylock. The spectacular street scenes interested her; the boat that sailed so gracefully on the dry land of the stage excited her curiosity; and she felt the beauty and artistic delicacy of the Portia. But she was ill at ease through it all. She was too much in the ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Jefferson restrained his steed to a long swinging run which told off the miles without making him turn a hair until Kilton Hall was in sight. Then the dusky actor and his mount prepared to make their spectacular entre. Pulling up at the roadside Jefferson threw his cap upon the ground, twisted his tie awry, and let fly the belt of his riding blouse, then dismounting, he caught up a few handfuls of dust and promptly transformed big bay Jumbo into as disreputable looking a horse as dust rubbed ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... had changed her mind and that she was his just as soon as ever he wanted her.... Her breath came fast at the inspiration—it would be better than waiting for him here; it gave to her surrender the spectacular touch which hitherto it had lacked and her nature demanded. The rain was coming down the wind almost as fiercely and as fast as it had come on Tuesday night, but Joanna the marsh-born had never cared for weather. She merely laced on her heavy boots and bundled into her father's overcoat. ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... that it is a difference about nothing; I mean, these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion. However, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama which does the same for our morals. Cardailhac was especially bent upon justifying his title of "manager of the Nouveautes,"[9] ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... did not often act on the accepted social axiom that a man may go where he pleases, it was because he had long since learned that his pleasures were mainly to be found in a small group of the like-minded. But he enjoyed spectacular effects, and was not insensible to the part money plays in their production: all he asked was that the very rich should live up to their calling as stage-managers, and not spend their money in a dull way. This the Brys could certainly not be charged with doing. Their recently built ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... pray your particular attention, Sir JOHN, as this is the best thing in my play—it is a spectacular effect called ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... and buildings showed the marvelous progress achieved in electric lighting, and the expertness in obtaining brilliant spectacular effects. The electric launches on the lagoons manifested the usage of ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... the land and the trade of the interior have been the prize sought by rival nations and rival cities, and the possession of a speedy and convenient route has been the means of securing the prize. The later warfare was less spectacular than the old, but no less keen. The navvy took the place of the Indian, pick and shovel and theodolite the place of bow and musket, and a lower freight {31} by a cent on a bushel of wheat became the ammunition in place of the ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... about the coming night, and did not fear it; he was convinced that he should pass it in the best possible manner. The thought of Clara awoke in him from time to time; but he immediately remembered that she had killed herself in a "spectacular" manner, and turned away. That "outrageous" act prevented other memories from rising in him. Giving a cursory glance at the stereoscope it seemed to him that she was looking to one side because she felt ashamed. Directly over the stereoscope ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the first meeting had adjourned, this signal was given. A certain John Jenkins had robbed a safe and was caught after a long and spectacular pursuit. Jenkins was an Australian convict and was known to numerous people as an old offender in many ways. He was therefore typical of the exact thing the Vigilance Committee had been formed to prevent. By eleven o'clock the trial, which was conducted with due decorum and formality, ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... for an hour. I was woken up to take a message to 2nd Corps at Saacy. On my return I was lucky enough to see a very spectacular performance. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... water came in contact; the quick reprisal as the angry waves overswept the land; then the subsiding and retreat of the ocean to its own limits and the restoration of peace and calm, the fiery mount still unmoved, an apparent victory for the volcanic forces. Was it not this spectacular tournament of the elements that the Hawaiian sought to embody and idealize in his myth of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... tois dia tes opseos theamasi}. See Hartman, "An. Xen. Nova," p. 246. {theamasi} "spectacular effects," is perhaps a gloss on "all objects apprehensible through vision." Holden (crit. app.) would rather omit {dia tes opseos} ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... Patricia, La Devocion de la cruz, La Dama duende and Peor esta que estaba. In 1636-1637 he was made a knight of the order of Santiago by Philip IV., who had already commissioned from him a series of spectacular plays for the royal theatre in the Buen Retiro. Calderon was almost as popular with the general public as Lope de Vega had been in his zenith; he was, moreover, in high favour at court, but this royal patronage did not help to develop the finer elements of his genius. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... returns on writs of errors issued by the Supreme Court has already been noted in connection with the disobedience of the Virginia courts in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee[648] and Cohens v. Virginia[649] and in that of the Wisconsin court in Ableman v. Booth.[650] More spectacular disobedience to federal authority arose out of the Cherokee Indian case involving actions of Georgia and its courts. In the first of these the Supreme Court had issued a writ of error to the Georgia Supreme Court to review the conviction of Corn Tassel for the murder of another ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... around town at the end of a chain, being a vain little man, who liked to attract attention by any available means. All worked well until the next fall. Mr. D—— was lulled into false security by the docility of his pet, and allowed him the freedom of the city, regardless of protest. Then came the spectacular end of Billy's easy life. It occurred on another warm autumn day. The passengers of the noon train from the East were assembled in the hotel dining-room, putting away supplies as fast as possible, the train being late. The room was crowded; the darkey ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... liked Helen. She's not spectacular, but steady and dependable. Will you ever forget the way she took hold of that senior pageant committee and whipped it into shape after Mildred had made such a mess of it? How would she do here as a successor to me? I am filled with jealousy at the thought of a successor, but I suppose ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... from Detroit and Chicago, Mr. Justice William L. Day; '70, of the United States Supreme Court, and some twenty-eight members of both houses of Congress. Earl D. Babst, '93, the general chairman of the committee in charge, acted as toastmaster of this gathering, the spectacular character of which was emphasized, not only in the speeches, songs, and college yells, but also by a huge painting of the University Campus filling a good part of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... Then for minutes a spectacular battle raged. The twisting, turning, leaping airship, small as she was agile, kept on eluding the explosive projectiles of the fishes, and her screens neutralized and re-radiated the full power of the attacking beams. More—since Costigan did not ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... grass, under the tutelage of a barefoot boy. Constance patted their shaggy mouse-coloured noses, made the acquaintance of the boy, whose name was Beppo, and looked about for the driver proper. He rose and bowed as she approached. His appearance was even more violently spectacular than she had ordered; ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... eyes, and that I tried to reproduce what I saw.' But in the play itself this intention comes and goes; and, while some of it reminds one of Salammbo in its attempt to treat remote ages realistically, other parts are given up wholly to the exposition of theories, and yet others to a kind of spectacular romance, after the cheap method of George Ebers and the German writers of historical fiction. The satire is more serious, the criticism of ideas more fundamental than anything in The League of Youth; but, as in almost the whole of Ibsen's more characteristic work up to this point, satire strives ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... God, because we have missed the outward and visible sign of his working. We have thought that He was not here, because He has not been in the fire, the earthquake, or the mighty wind which rends the mountains. We have become so accustomed to associate the startling and spectacular with the Divine, that we fail to discover God, when the heaven is begemmed with stars, and the earth carpeted with flowers: as though the lightning were more to us than starlight, and the destructive than the peaceful ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of thing takes on a lighter, theatrical flavor amounting to a pageant of great fun and frolic. Dr. Hough says these are really the most characteristic ceremonies of the pueblos, musical, spectacular, delightfully entertaining, and they show the cheerful Hopi at his best—a true, spontaneous child ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... Not spectacular, this—not sensational—not even unusual. Common enough little hills, as the world goes, with the usual ragged-edged village between them and the river, peopled by human beings entirely usual both in their outer and inner lives. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... locality. He said to himself that if one of those fellows were to see in Naples that turmoil of cars, trucks, and teams of every sort, intershot with foot-passengers going and coming to and from the crowded pavements, under the web of the railroad tracks overhead, and amid the spectacular approach of the streets that open into the square, he would have it down in his sketch-book at once. He decided simultaneously that his own local studies must be illustrated, and that be must come with the artist and show him just which bits ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who has just come from a spectacular match and keeps on trying to reproduce that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... heard no sound since our spectacular entrance into her room. I was distinctly uncomfortable as, alone this time, I climbed to the tower staircase. Reasoning from before, she would probably throw a chair at me. I stopped at the foot of ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... restrictions, however, might have been borne if only they had been honestly applied. Unfortunately, some of the most spectacular frauds ever perpetrated were carried through in connection with the attempt of the United States Treasury Department to collect and sell the confiscable property in the South. The property to be sold consisted of what had ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... a consistant ground-gainer, and with Blair, who worked like a hero, and Kingdon, who won laurels for himself that remained fresh many years, gained the distance time and again. But although the spectacular performances belonged here to the backs, the line it was that made such work possible. Chesney, with his six feet four and a half inches of muscle, and his two hundred and twenty-nine pounds of weight, stood like a veritable Gibraltar of strength. Beside him Rutland was scarcely ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and Andy Green was not the first stranger to walk up and ask him if he had driven that stage coach and six horses down off a mountain grade into a wide gulch to avoid being held up and the regulation box of gold stolen. It was probably the most spectacular thing Luck had ever done. "Got down that bank fine as silk," he volunteered companionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene, by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... which this elephant did was spectacular, as it showed the enormous strength of the animal as well as his great intelligence. He took up on his tusks a log of teak, the native wood of this country, as hard as hickory and much heavier, and, with the aid of his trunk, stood with it at attention until every camera fiend had taken ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... football squad, his behemoth bulk swathed in heavy blankets and crowded into a narrow bunk, shifted his vast tonnage restlessly. He was dreaming of the wild and woolly West, and like a six-reel Western drama thrown on the screen in a moving-picture show, he visioned in his slumbers a vivid and spectacular panorama. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... one of the strangest of the many anomalies with which the Indian situation teems that the Central Provinces should have been chosen of all others as the scene for a great spectacular demonstration of revolt against the state of "slavery" to which Indians have been reduced by a "Satanic" alien rule. It is one of the precepts of Mr. Gandhi's gospel of "Non-co-operation," though ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... into the azure of pure perception, attainable only by a very few human beings, the spectacular sense is born,'." I was quoting. "'Life is no longer good or evil. It is a perpetual play of forces without beginning or end. The freed Intellect merges itself with the World-Will and partakes of its essence, which is not a moral essence but an aesthetic ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... every monument, every strange vehicle, every exceptional personage, was a show which stimulated our curiosity. For we had not as yet changed our Boston eyes for London ones, and very common sights were spectacular and dramatic to us. I remember that one of our New England country boys exclaimed, when he first saw a block of city dwellings, "Darn it all, who ever see anything like that 'are? Sich a lot o' haousen all stuck together!" I must explain that "haousen" used in my ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... it impossible for other boys to have a boyhood like mine. I don't mean that, quite literally, I thought one man or one generation could accomplish the feat. But I did truly think I could make a beginning. Miss Allen, in spite of the beautiful fights I had, in spite of the spectacular clean-ups we made, I did nothing for the boys that my successor did not wipe out with a single stroke of his pen, his first week ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... differently received by Henry and by Francis. The English King accepted the rebuff good-naturedly; perhaps he had never felt any real hope of success. But Francis was enraged. It was the first check he had met in a career of spectacular success. He invited Henry to their celebrated meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold[2] to plan an alliance and revenge. Henry came, but the silent Charles had already managed to enlist his interests by quieter ways; while Francis, by his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... had been employed for some time now, even before the wire fence had been installed, but the really spectacular change was in the heat blasters each guard carried. This, more than anything else, impressed on everyone connected with the project, that to move the wrong way, to say the wrong thing, or to act in any suspicious manner might result in ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... from a hill, a scene of woods and waters, of fields and hamlets—everything seems peaceful and idyllic there. He wants the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest. It is the same feeling which makes people wish to travel. When you travel, the new land is a spectacular thing—it is all a picture. It is not that you crave to live in a foreign land: you merely want the luxury of seeing life without living life. No ordinary person goes to live in Italy because he has studied the political constitution ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... A spectacular show occurred when the offensive began and the enemy observation balloons, hitherto practically unmolested, were attacked by our airmen with some new incendiary device with the result that nine were brought down in ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... designed to win success by spectacular appeal, there is no doubt that it is good business for the producer to spend as much money as is necessary to make his effects more beautiful and more amazing than anything ever before seen upon the stage. But even here he must hold his expenses down to the minimum that will ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... first play-house in London, until 1642, when the theatres were formally closed by act of Parliament, the drama dealt with stately speeches and with high astounding terms. It was played upon a platform, and had to appeal more to the ears of the audience than to their eyes. Spectacular elements it had to some extent,—gaudy, though inappropriate, costumes, and stately processions across the stage; but no careful imitation of the actual facts of life, no illusion of reality in the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... the little things that makes us ready for our opportunities for the great things when they come. Christ said "He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." The little things are not spectacular, they do not attract much attention, but they are the things that make up life; and if we are true in these little things, God will trust us with some greater things by and by. It is not wrong to yearn to do more; ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... at him! ... faces that were solemn, wistful, warning, and beseeching by turns! ... they drifted through the fire and smiled, and wept, and vanished, to reappear again and yet again! ... and as, with painfully beating heart, he strove to combat the terror that seized him at this strange spectacular delusion, all suddenly the heavy wreaths of smoke that had till now hung over the Inner Shrine of Nagaya parted like drapery drawn aside from a picture.. and for a brief breathing space of direst agony he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... we should deem it desirable to adopt many of their methods. Nor will the eating and drinking of the nations be so variously illustrated as in the cordon of restaurants that so largely contributed to the spectacular effect at Paris. The French genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet that were served up in fine Oriental style were not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... her personality at the heads of audiences in the certainty that it would hit them hard. That was what she was there for. She knew that the Women's Franchise union relied on her to wring from herself the utmost spectacular effect. And she did it every time. She never once missed fire. And Dorothea Harrison had come down on the top of her triumph and destroyed the effect of all her fire. She had corrupted five recruits. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... Office announces that a flotilla of armored aeroplanes provided with machine guns has been organized to attack the German aeroplanes that fly over Paris. Spectacular sights are ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... spectacular and as nicely timed, but as his nose climbed above the first row of trees his motor died as suddenly as though throttled by the strangling hands of some unseen genii. Sudden though it was, McGee had sensed that he was crowding the motor too much and had ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... born in a great emergency. A spectacular deliverance was needed to implant their trust in the Lord. They found no witness in the quiet daily providence; the unobtrusive miracle of daily mercy did not awake their song. They dwelt upon the "special" blessing, when all the time the really special blessing ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... Spectacular processions considerably helped these demonstrations. One night, the corps turned out representing a great harvest home with a wagon of hay, and the soldiers attired as farm labourers, carrying forks, rakes, and sickles, Chinese lanterns on sticks, and transparent ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... to determine the child saw nothing of her surroundings. The crowds of trimly dressed people, the nursemaids and babies, the swift slim outlines of the whizzing motors, even the battleships lying so suggestively quiescent on the river before them—all the spectacular, vivid panorama of afternoon on Riverside Drive—seemed absolutely without interest or savor to the child. Beulah's despair and chagrin were increasing almost as rapidly ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... before. It was the same room where he and Billie Dore had listened to Keggs telling the story of Lord Leonard and his leap. That window there, he remembered now, opened on to the very balcony from which the historic Leonard had done his spectacular dive. That it should be the scene of this other secret meeting struck George as appropriate. The coincidence appealed ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in the spectacular side of it that attracts. It would be strange if there were not. There is everything in a fireman's existence to encourage it. Day and night he leads a kind of hair-trigger life, that feeds naturally upon excitement, even if only as a relief from the irksome idling ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... me today in this veiled world of mine, despite the noisier and more spectacular advance of my brothers, I instinctively feel and know that it is the five million women of my race who really count. Black women (and women whose grandmothers were black) are today furnishing our teachers; ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... unflinchingly to the issue. In this ultimate sense, most of human life is tragic; because it involves a continual warfare with circumstances, which the majority of people carry on with a silent heroism. Originally, only the glorious and spectacular conflicts of great personalities were deemed worthy of representation in art; but with the growth of sympathy the range of tragic portrayal has gradually been extended over almost the whole of human life. The peasant in his struggle for subsistence against a ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... shining examples of self-sacrifice which occur to us at the first mention of the word. But we shall mislead ourselves if we confine our thoughts to cases so climactic, triumphant, and spectacular. Deeds like these dazzle and do not invite to full analysis of their nature. Let us turn to affairs ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... removed, that innumerable freighters, day after day, have crawled into town unnoticed, with feet cut and bruised and bleeding, and with no one to herald their suffering to a sympathetic world. It's because their labors were not spectacular, and the dogs were too obscure to attract more than a passing pity—never national interest, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... particular civilizations. Prof. A.J. Toynbee's massive ten volume Study of History is a good example. Still more extensive is the thirty volume history of civilization under the general editorship of C.K. Ogden. These writings have brought together many facts bearing chiefly on the lives of spectacular individuals and episodes, with all too little data on the life of the silent ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... from them by a species of exclamation or cry almost at his elbow, and turned to find that the spectacular Miss Silverton was standing beside him. Her dubious hair gleamed in the sunlight, and one of the criticised eyes was screwed up. The other gazed at Archie with an ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure in the agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the Lumen, not with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection of his own spectacular first appearance there. He had made subsequent appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a spectator, at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be asserted, however, that he appeared entirely at his ease this evening after he ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... spectacular, with fantastic shapes and colors. Then, as they went deeper, the colors gradually faded to a uniform green. Rick knew from underwater flash photographs that the appearance was deceptive. The colors remained, but the quality of ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... without showing genius and exemplifying a more dramatic conception and expression than any of her modern competitor" 'Constantine Palaeologus,' which the volume contained, had the liveliest commendation and popularity, and was several times put upon the stage with spectacular effect. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... niche." This does not happen often. The average young man is immature. His tastes are not formed. He is undeveloped. His very best talents may have never been discovered by himself or others. It is well known to those who study children that a boy's earliest ambitions are to do something he thinks spectacular and romantic. Boys long to be cab drivers, locomotive engineers, policemen, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... trick," he mused. "It's altogether too uncertain. It's spectacular, and all that, and when it works right it makes a big hit, but I don't like it. Well, I suppose he'll do it, anyhow—or try to. I'll be on the lookout though. If the current fails, as it did last time——" Joe shrugged his shoulders, and went ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum
... as it was the most spectacular, phase of the attack was the storming of the Sabotino, a mountain two thousand feet high, which, it was generally believed, could never be taken with the bayonet. The Italians, realizing that no troops in the world could hope to reach the summit of those steep slopes in the face of barbed ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Desmond Waddilove and Miss Esther Priddie, whose parents are prominently implicated in the milk trade, were marked by several interesting and appropriate spectacular incidents. A specially attractive feature was the progress of the wedding procession between a double row of milk-cans. Later on the bride and bridegroom left for Cowes (I.W.) amid a volley of pats of butter deftly hurled by the officials of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... Wood sojourn. On the highest point in the center a fine flagstaff one hundred and twenty feet high was proudly crowned by a liberty-cap. This elevated plateau was the field of our display. On a spot not too near the flagstaff we planned for a spectacular center of flame. During the day we gathered material for an enormous bonfire. Huge casks formed the base and inflammable material of all kinds reached high in the air. At dark we fired the pile. But ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... Sun might last 4^h 29^m, and at the latitude of Paris 3^h 26^m. These intervals, of course, cover all the subordinate phases. The total phase which alone (with perhaps a couple of minutes added) is productive of spectacular effects, and interesting scientific results is a mere matter of minutes which may be as few as one (or less), or only as many as ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... disturbance had been confined to the interior of the store, the city police could shrug it off as another minor riot on property supposed to be protected by private police, and do nothing about it. The rocket-attack on the top landing stage and the spectacular explosion of the fireworks temporarily stored there, however, was something that simply couldn't be concealed or dismissed. The cloud of varicolored smoke alone must have been visible all over the five original boroughs ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... spectacular. The great spangled flank of herself which New York turns to her harbor had just about died down, only a lighted tower jutting above the gauze of fog like a chateau perched on a mountain. Fog horns sent up rockets of dissonance. Peer as she would, Lilly could only discern ahead a festoon of lights ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... flamed with head-lines, which varied as usual in size and sensationalism with the character of the sheet which used them; and before Roma retired for the night, the whole city was stirred by the prospect of a most spectacular fight. One half the citizens were congratulating themselves that at last, corruption and the spoilsmen were to be uprooted, while the other half revelled in the excitement and turmoil which always attends the witnessing of ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... Spectacular as were the exploits of the American navy on the sea, they were of far less immediate consequence in deciding the destinies of the war than were the naval battles fought on fresh water between hastily improvised squadrons. On ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... keeping him in the dark on everything except the fact that it would be a slum cleanup, but he had the best p.r. men and the best lawyers in the country working on it, he told himself; and certainly the sales charts for the past two weeks had been spectacular. ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... been a fascinating girl; pretty, with the dash and piquancy of an oriole in a May apple-tree; clever and efficient in everything her swift hands touched; quite a spectacular housekeeper; and the sober, long-faced young downeasterner had married her with a sudden decision that he often wondered about in later years. So ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... evangelization of other nationalities, which constitute a very large part of the population in the anthracite regions, and their splendid zeal helped to make the 'Billy Sunday' campaign in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton the most wonderful, even that spectacular man has ever conducted. As personal workers they are unsurpassed, and since the revivals they have organized workers' bands and Bible classes, and have gone out into all the country for fifty miles around ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... establish the Imperial right of ownership in all the land throughout the empire. What these changes signified and with what tact and wisdom the reformers proceeded, will be clearly understood as the story unfolds itself. Spectacular effect was enlisted as the first ally. A coronation ceremony of unprecedented magnificence took place. High officials, girt with golden quivers, stood on either side of the dais forming the throne, and all the great functionaries—omi, muraji, and miyatsuko—together ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... he can prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity—for a nativity; With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... entertainment, to make one's flesh creep! Why, that was the misery of some of the religion taught us in old days, that it seemed often only dramatic—a scene without cause or motive, just displayed to show us the anger or the mercy of God, so that one had the miserable sense that much of it was a spectacular affair, that He Himself did not really suffer or feel indignation, but thought it well to feign emotions, like a schoolmaster to impress his pupils.—and that people too were not punished for their own sakes, to help them, but just to ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Nothing spectacular and nothing solemn; No company of men that I might drill, And either tick 'em off or else extol 'em And give 'em "Facing left, advance in column," And leave 'em marching, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... packed, there followed the process of hitching up, —a process at once spectacular and full of exciting incident, for the trip to the Crossing was to the bronchos, unbroken even to the halter, their first experience in the ways of civilized man. Wild, timid and fiercely vicious, they were brought ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... paled into insignificance compared with the spectacular debut of the minister's wife as a writer and embellisher of Christmas cards, two at least having been seen at the local milliner's store. How many she had composed, and how many of them (said Mrs. Popham) might have been rejected, nobody knew, though there was much speculation; and more ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... both the sacrifice of his country and himself. The canvass for Lincoln was conducted by the ablest men in the party, and was marked by great earnestness and enthusiasm. It was a repetition of the Fremont campaign, with the added difference of a little more contrivance and spectacular display in its demonstrations, as witnessed in the famous organization known as the "Wide-Awakes." The doctrines of the Chicago platform were very thoroughly discussed, and powerfully contributed to the further ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... remember being alternately amused and disgusted by a French theatrical delineation of an English war correspondent, given in a spectacular military piece which I witnessed a short time after my first arrival in Paris. It was called "The Siege of Pekin," and had been concocted by Mocquard, the Emperor Napoleon's secretary. All the "comic business" in the affair ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Chihuahua, or whence he had come to it, no one seemed to know or care. Enough that he was there, and gazing at the spectacular procession as it filed past ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... in good weather, but on this crisp January morning her outing had an objective other than the spectacular. When the clean-limbed Kentuckian had measured the length of Main Street, he was sent on across the railroad tracks into the industrial half of the town, and was finally halted in front of the Raymer Foundry ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... but gave the man his overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed with a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the overcoat, and invested the proceeds in a five-day's spree, in the closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high, spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweller's show-window in an attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers, the other he projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to soothe him. The victim of Beasley's charity ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... I chose this occasion to make a spectacular personal failure in the pulpit. I had been invited to preach the convention sermon, and for the first time in my life I had an interpreter. Few experiences, I believe, can be more unpleasant than to stand up in a pulpit, utter a remark, and then wait patiently ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... passion. And what is worse, interesting himself greatly in himself, he thinks it very natural that this interest should be shared by all the world. Do not imagine that his is a loving heart that feels a necessity of spending itself on others. He likes to make his emotions spectacular, and as his impressions are events for him, he would like to display them, even to the inhabitants of Sirius. His soul is like a lake swept by a gale of wind that would drive a man-of-war at the rate of twenty-five knots an hour; and on this lake ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... buildings just underneath the center of explosion. The damage to the Mitsubishi Arms Works and the Torpedo Works was spectacular, but not overwhelming. There was something left to see, and the main contours of some of ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... the best of friends. I rather think I have known her in a way none of the rest of you have. But—hypnotized her! Look at me, Dick. Remember me plodding along while you grew up; think what sort of a chap I am. You won't find anything spectacular about me. Never has been, never will be. And Nan, of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information. He was so thorough that, when he became a Bell lawyer, he first spent an entire summer at his country home in Petersham, studying the laws of physics and electricity. He was never in the slightest degree spectacular. Once only, during the eleven years of litigation, did he lose control of his temper. He was attacking the credibility of a witness whom he had put on the stand, but who had been tampered with by the opposition ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... down the hills of Vicksburg to the river, so the visitor's thoughts flow down to the great spectacular, mischievous, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... genial shrill and tinkle of many bells meant refreshment and most gregarious frivolity for the chattering, loitering, laughing and ever-spectacular groups so far below him—and how he hated their outlandish gibberish and their arrogant European aloofness!—it meant for him hard work, and hard work of a somewhat ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... position these instruments can be constructed to record the positions of stars with much greater accuracy than is possible to the more general and flexible mounting of equatorials. The recording of transit is comparatively dry work; the spectacular element is entirely absent; stars are treated merely as mathematical points. But these observations furnish the very basis of modern mathematical astronomy, and without them such publications as the Nautical Almanac and the Connaissance du Temps would ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson |
