"Stun" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stun a person, and he will remain unconscious. Untie strings, collars, etc.; loosen anything that is tight, and interferes with the breathing; raise the head; see if there is bleeding from any part; apply smelling salts to the nose, and hot bottles ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... cheerful ye sent it back. Some o' the fellers," he pursued with an affectation of a confidential tone, "some o' the fellers said mebbe ye wouldn't send it back cheerful. They said ye'd got no more compassion fer the poor than a flint stun. They said, them fellers did, that ye'd never in yer life let up on a man as owed ye, an would take a feller's last drop o' blood sooner'n lose a penny debt. They said, them fellers did, that yer hands, wite ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... went down, but Nicol his son Ran awa' afore the fight was begun; And he run, and he run, And afore they were done There was many a Featherston gat sic a stun, As never was seen since the world begun. I canna tell a', I canna tell a', Some got a skelp and some got a claw, But they gar't the Featherstons haud their jaw. Some got a hurt, and some got nane, Some had harness, and some ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... reject the falsehood we had embraced. Far from judging that master, it is by him alone we are judged peremptorily in all things. He is a judge disinterested, impartial, and superior to us. We may, indeed, refuse hearing him, and raise a din to stun our ears: but when we hear him it is not in our power to contradict him. Nothing is more unlike man than that invisible master that instructs and judges him with so much severity, uprightness, and perfection. Thus our limited, uncertain, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... to spend the few remainin years uv a eventful life. Here in the enjoyment uv that end uv the hopes uv all Democrats, a Post Offis, with four well-regulated groceries within a stun's throw, and a distillery ornamentin the landscape only a quarter uv a mile from where I rite these lines, with the ruins uv a burnt nigger school house within site uv my winder, from wich rises the odor, grateful to a Democratic nostril, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... the blow will stun the sufferer. I know that, Mr. Bertram. But that dull, dead, deathly feeling will wear off at last. You have but to work; to read, to write, to study. In that respect, you men are more fortunate than we are. You have that which must occupy ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... dazed bewilderment. After those mental pictures of the Mary Thorne he had expected to find, it was small wonder that the sight of this slip of a black-frocked girl, with her soft voice, her tawny-golden hair and wistful eyes, should stun him into temporary speechlessness. Even when he finally pulled himself together to feel a hot flush flaming in his face and find one gloved hand recklessly crumpling his new Stetson, he could not quite credit the evidence ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... his brother pointed and saw Dick lying in a heap, face downward. The fall had been sufficient to stun him and he was thus ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... so heartily tired, that it would be absolutely barbarous to stun your ears any longer; only give me leave to tell you in one good round sentence, that your prose is admirable, and that I am just now (at three o'clock in the morning) sitting over the poor pale remnant of a once glorious blazing ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the water as the vessel rolled heavily from side to side, and the bumping and thumping of some casks that had got loose, and were smashing against one another, and the shouting, and the roaring of wind and waves, there was enough to stun and terrify any creature, be he quadruped ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... Tee whipped a stun-gun from inside his jacket and waved it at the clerk's back. It caught him in mid-stride, and unbalanced, he crashed heavily to the floor. Tee glanced briefly down as he stepped over the paralyzed form, avoiding the accusing ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... which with their terrific noise will stun all who are near; and with their breath will kill men and destroy ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Omnipotence? What can stun and confound thy reason more? What more can ravish and exalt thy heart? It cannot but ravish and exalt; it cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take in all that suggests. Thou child of the dust! Thou speck of misery and sin! How abject thy weakness! how great is thy ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Clumb a tree this morning after wild grapes. Come near falling. Gin me a little crick in the back. Willie hes got a stun ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the coral-hung anchor swings from the bow: and together, the three royals are given to the breeze, that follows us out to sea like the baying of a hound. Out spreads the canvas—alow, aloft-boom-stretched, on both sides, with many a stun' sail; till like a hawk, with pinions poised, we shadow the sea with our sails, and reelingly cleave ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... democratic party, demoralised by discords, upset by the popular agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals, especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to pieces. Caesar understood that there was but one way to stop this ruin: to stun public opinion and all Italy with some highly audacious surprise. The surprise was the annexation of Gaul. Declaring Gaul a Roman province after the victory over the Belgae, he convinced Rome that he had in two years overcome all Gallic adversaries. And so, the conquest of Gaul—this ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... utter another word, his legs were cut from under him by the sweeping blow of a handspike, and he fell with a crash to the deck, the back of his head striking so violently on the planking as to momentarily stun him. In an instant a belaying-pin was thrust between his teeth and secured there with a lashing of spun-yarn; and then, before he had sufficiently recovered to realise his position, he was turned over on his face, his arms drawn behind him, and his wrists ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Skaif, "distant, wild, scattered abroad, or apt to be dispersed" (is the definition given), corresponds exactly to O.N. skaeif in form, but not in meaning. Skaeif meant "crooked." Sco. daive, "to stun, stupefy," is here regularly spelled deeave (deave in Swaledale). It must, then, be derived from O.E. deafian, not O.N. doeyfa, O. Ic. deyfa. Swaledale slaiching, "sneaking," is the same as ...
— Scandinavian influence on Southern Lowland Scotch • George Tobias Flom
... wedded until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in their regular sequences ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... I'll deceive you, For the Country now I leave you: Who can bear, and not be Mad, Wine so dear, and yet so bad: Such a Noise and Air so smoaky, That to stun, this to choak ye; Men so selfish, false and rude, Nymphs so young ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... anguish, and an utter and dreadful pain of longing, such as truly no words shall ever tell; for, in truth, I that had all the world through her sweet love and companionship, and knew all the joy and gladness of Life, have known such lonesome misery as doth stun me to think upon. ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... answer, for the noise, the rush of the snow, the swaying motion of the ship, and the darkness combined to stun his senses. All he could do was to struggle for his breath, gasping, glad to get his hands over his mouth and nostrils as he realised how easily any one might be suffocated in such ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... discords stun, Its glaring sunshine blindeth, And blest is he who on his way That fount of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... now the self-elected Chief finds time To stun the first sensation of his crime, And raise it in his followers—"Ho! the bowl!"[357] Lest passion should return to reason's shoal.[fb] 100 "Brandy for heroes!"[358] Burke could once exclaim— No doubt a liquid path to Epic fame; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the ceiling of the immense dome. Tons upon tons—Pelion on Ossa—of literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish, despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage once possessed the breasts of those ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... so glad and so sorry in my life," said Solomon. "It's a hell-mogrified place to be in. Smells like a blasted whale an' is as cold as the north side of a grave stun on a Janooary night, an' starvation fare, an' they's a man here that's come down with the smallpox. How'd ye ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... in conversation, that with a loud laugh, unnatural mirth, and a torrent of noise, domineer in public assemblies; overbear men of sense; stun their companions; and fill the place they are in with a rattling sound, that hath seldom any wit, humour, or good breeding in it. I need not observe that the emptiness of the Drum very ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... accurate an observer was measuring my sentiments, numbering the novels which I criticised, and speculating on the probability of my being plucked. "I was familiar with all the novels whose names he had ever heard." If so frightful an accusation did not stun me at once, I might perhaps hint at the possibility that this was to be attributed almost as much to the narrowness of his reading on this subject as to the extent of mine. There are men here who are mere mathematical blocks; who plod on their eight hours a day ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... street a bugle is blown, When the cloud of smoke on the sky is thrown, For it's sixty seconds before the roar Reverberates o'er, and a second more Till the shell comes down with a whiz and stun From that long-range, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... been better for him if he had let go, for in that vehement struggle he felt the evidence of the sea-maid's power. He remembered—his last thought as he lost consciousness—that with the fishy nature is sometimes given the power to stun an enemy by an electric shock. Some shock came upon him with force, as if some cold metal had struck him on the head. As his brain grew dull he heard the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... his reverie by the attack upon him of some hundred dogs, who saluted his ears with such a volley of howls as nearly to stun him. These natural scavengers are protected by the laws here, and whenever a stranger is seen, one whose dress or manner betrays him as such, they set upon him like mad, but the staff that had stood him ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... shield hangs stainless still; but I shall not go where they praise it, A sword is still at my side, but I shall not ride with the King. Only to walk and to walk and to stun my soul and amaze it, A day with the stone and the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... a blow on the head. It did not stun him, but he staggered under it. Had he run against a tree? No. There was the dim bulk of a man disappearing through the boles. He darted after him. The man heard his footsteps, stopped, and waited ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... in heavy metal; a heavy ball will frequently stun a vicious elephant when in full charge, when a light ball would not check him; his quietus is then soon arranged by another barrel. Some persons, however, place too much confidence in the weight of the metal, and forget that it is necessary to hold a powerful rifle as straight ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... her up above him at arm's length. When he struck it was full on his back, the back of his head coming in contact with the hard ground with such force as to stun him almost to the point of unconsciousness. As he struck he gave Dimples a little throw so that she cleared his body, landing ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce believe that either of us realizes the real terrors of our position. I feel that I should be reduced to panic; but yet I am not. I imagine that the shock has been so great as to partially stun our sensibilities." ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... still upon his knees, and cowering like a beaten hound. "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him—I never meant to do more than stun him! Manslaughter—manslaughter—not murder!" ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... that seems to stun Eggleston. He stares at Mr. Hubbard, blinkin' his eyes rapid and swallowin' hard. Then he appears to recover. "But—but are you not somewhat prejudiced?" says he. "I think I could show you, Sir, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... according to the unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient historians, two hundred thousand strong, and commanded by that famous, ferocious, and insolent Brennus mentioned before. His idea was to strike a blow which should simultaneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plunder the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such was, in the opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that, on ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... eat more than wuz good for me—rich stuff that I never did eat—and bought me candy, which I sarahuptishly fed to the pup. And he follered me round with footstools, and het the soap stun hotter than wuz good for my feet, and urged me to keep out ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Did ever any of your carnal acquaintance take knowledge of a difference of your language and conduct? [Does it stun them?] Or do they still like and approve of you as well as ever? What reason, then, have you to think yourself a pilgrim? If the heart be ever so little acquainted with the Lord, the tongue will discover it, and the carnal and profane will ridicule and despise ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... town was mad, a man was like a boy. A thousand flags were flaming where the sky and city meet; A thousand bells were thundering the joy. There was music, mirth and sunshine; but some eyes shone with regret: And while we stun with cheers our homing braves, O God, in Thy great mercy, let us nevermore forget The graves they left ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... Okiok and Angut were seen approaching the village at an easy trot. Evidently they knew nothing of what had occurred. Simek ran out to meet them. A few words sufficed to explain. The news seemed to stun both men at first, but the after-effect on each was wonderfully different. The blood rushed to Okiok's face like a torrent. He clenched his hands and teeth, glared and stamped, and went on like one deranged—as indeed for the moment he was. Angut, on the other hand, was perfectly self-possessed ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... head didn't frighten them by swelling out so big, and opening and shutting his great jaws with such a loud snap. What a number of fish he must eat in a day, and how I should have liked to watch him when he beat the water with his tail, so as to stun the fish and make them easy ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... animal upon the head, as it would risk serious damage to the paw. We have seen that the cheetah strikes the haunch of a black-buck when coursing at full speed, and it is highly probable that the lion would exert its prodigious strength in the same manner, to stun the hind-quarters by the stroke, and, by throwing the animal upon one side, to expose the throat to the grip of the powerful jaws. All beasts of prey occasionally meet with dangerous antagonists, and should the first spring fail, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... to honest lingua Franca. Why, this is enough to stun a Christian, with your Hebrew, and your Greek, and such ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... said, in reply to the question. "Thar ain't no conveyance to the clarin'. It's off in de woods a piece, right smart. You sticks to de road a spell, till you comes to a grave—what used to be—but it's done sunk in now till nuffin's thar but de stun an' some blackb'ry bushes clamberin' over it. Then you turns inter de wust piece of road in Floridy, and turns agin whar some yaller jasmine is growin', an fore ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... up carefully, almost reverently. It was the first time he'd held one since he'd been beamed down himself, so long ago. He turned the intensity knob down to the "stun" position. ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his exuberance of animal spirits, that inexhaustible fountain of life and gaiety, in which he equals Scott and far surpasses any other modern. The intensity of the man, his electric activity, his spasmodic nervous power, quite dazzle and stun us. But this restless gaiety too often grows fatiguing, as the rollicking fun begins to pall upon us, as the jokes ring hollow, and the wit gets stale by incessant reiteration. We know how much in real life we get to hate the joker who does not know ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... said Cam, "I've ben a leetle slack about gittin' a grave-stun up fur Dollie, seein' she's still livin', but I have threatened her time an' agin to put a winder to her memory in the church an' git her in shape to legalize it if she don't learn how to git me up a good meal. Darned ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... like mountains, or, the sun, Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee? Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily, Is, thou and I eternally are one; And this god-passion which no power can stun, I owe to her, who gave ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... was Harry's faltering reply. He looked around to assure himself that it was not all a dream. The sudden acquisition of what appeared to be an immense store of wealth, the ghastly relics below, seemed to stun him. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... quick eye and good glasses, even though he should want nerve for the Scilly rocks," cried the mate, who was looking out from the mizzen rigging. "There go his stun'-sails already, and a ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a roar which he thought must be heard from the top of the world to the bottom of the world, and must certainly stun the fox. But the fox, as soon as he knew the tiger's roar to be at an end, jumped up out of the hole where he had been hiding his ears, and said: "Why! I hardly heard you. You can surely roar louder than that. You had better ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... warning, that within her beauty her reign had ended, and the days of her love were over? What does a seaman do in a storm if mast and rudder are carried away? He ships a jurymast, and steers as he best can with an oar. What happens if your roof falls in a tempest? After the first stun of the calamity the sufferer starts up, gropes around to see that the children are safe, and puts them under a shed out of the rain. If the palace burns down, you take shelter in the barn. What man's life is not overtaken by ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... his discourse. All of a sudden, however, he cried with a sharp, cracked voice, 'That won't do, sir; that won't do—more vehemence—your argument is at present particularly weak; therefore, more vehemence—you must confuse them, stun them, stultify them, sir'; and, at each of these injunctions, he struck the back of his right hand sharply against the palm of the left. 'Good, sir—good!' he occasionally uttered, in the same sharp, cracked tone, as the voice of Francis Ardry became more and more vehement. 'Infinitely ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... us good voyage, gentle stream—we stun not Thy sober ear with sounds of revelry; Wake not the slumbering echoes of thy banks With voice of flute and horn—we do but seek On the broad pathway of thy swelling bosom To glide in silent ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... is my suggestion: The fellow thought he had killed me and in alarm determined to throw me into the muskeg. As I had a hazy recollection of being roughly lifted, I imagine he laid me across his saddle and after a while I must have moved or groaned. Then, having no doubt only meant to stun me, he left me on the ground. All this fits in ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... were almost enough to stun him again, and he lay there with a hot sensation of rage against the treacherous young scoundrel who had lured him on to that struggle, and held him so thoroughly fixed against the bars till he was secured and bound. Yes, and ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... reptile, the bird rose nearly in a vertical direction to a height of many yards, and then opening his beak permitted the serpent to fall to the ground. His object was to stun the latter by the fall; and the more effectually to do this, he would have carried the cobra still higher, had not the latter prevented it by attempting to ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... forcibly—do you understand? Is it not in your power to return in a few days' time with two or three friends to do this thing? You must come disguised and armed. If I am in the way I will do what I can to protect her, but you will easily knock me down and stun me—do you understand? Don Hilario must not know that we are in the plot. From him fear nothing, for, though he is brave enough to threaten a woman with death, before armed men he is like a dog that ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... and the gate was a fierce stream which was broad and deep; it had no bridge, and the mere sight of it did so stun Christian and Hopeful that they could ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... of the public affairs, you shall resume your great work in the tragic style of Athens, O Pollio, thou excellent succor to sorrowing defendants and a consulting senate; [Pollio,] to whom the laurel produced immortal honors in the Dalmatian triumph. Even now you stun our ears with the threatening murmur of horns: now the clarions sound; now the glitter of arms affrights the flying steeds, and dazzles the sight of the riders. Now I seem to hear of great commanders besmeared with, glorious dust, and the whole earth subdued, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... on the floor where Manning indicated. There were about forty of them—blunt-barrelled guns with thick casing around the powerpacks, weighing about ten pounds each. They looked as statically blunt as anvils, but they could stun any animal at two hundred yards; within a two-foot range, they could ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... shot-guns, pistols, rifles, clubs, stones; but they know these will avail little against murderous machine guns. They know they must find strength in their weakness and overwhelm the enemy by the sheer weight of their bodies. They must stun the invaders by their willingness to die. That is the only real power of this Boston host, their ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... mistake in that," said Phil. "The snow-ball was hard enough to stun me if it had hit me a little higher. I wouldn't be hit like that ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... stun the King. His eyes wandered from face to face aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him. Then he said in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... certain spinster whom Sam Price had been trying to make up his mind to marry for ten years or more, and it was that gentleman's habit to spend at least one day in the month in Harwich for the purpose of paying his respects. In spite of the fact that his horse had been "stun lame" the night before, Mr. Price was able to start for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel, humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty, and letting his imagination ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... thought. She's turned on the trackers! He could see the pale greenish glow of their little eyes watching him all around the room. If he made any fast move, they would cut him down with a stun beam before he could ...
— The Man Who Hated Mars • Gordon Randall Garrett
... calamity that they practically killed each other. They killed each other almost simultaneously, like Herminius and Mamilius. Liberalism (in Newman's sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and through head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and ill-prepared intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... vain. Lawless had already begun ringing his bell in a manner which threatened to stun us all; and Coleman saying to me, "Come, Frank, we're regularly in for it, so you may as well take a rope and do the thing handsomely while we are about it; it would be horridly shabby of you to desert us now," I ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of the Washy revelations on Mr. McCall had been merely to stun him. It was not until the arrival of Archie that he had had leisure to think; but since Archie's entrance he had been ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... (unimportance) 643 for; disregard &c. (neglect) 460; set at naught &c. (make light of) 483; turn a deaf ear to &c. (inattention) 458; vegetate. render insensible, render callous; blunt, obtund[obs3], numb, benumb, paralyze, deaden, hebetate[obs3], stun, stupefy; brutify[obs3]; brutalize; chloroform, anaesthetize[obs3], put under; assify[obs3]. inure; harden the heart; steel, caseharden, sear. Adj. insensible, unconscious; impassive, impassible; blind to, deaf to, dead to; unsusceptible, insusceptible; unimpressionable[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... an honest man called Jeppe of the Hill, as sure as that's true, I have been in paradise and have seen things that it will stun ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... to choose between us, for, if I was a shade the taller, he was a year older than I, and undoubtedly the heavier and thicker. In fighting all other animals except those of his kind, a bear's natural weapons are his paws, with one blow of which he can crush a small animal, and either stun or break the neck of a larger one. But he cannot do any one of these three things to another bear as big as himself, and only if one bear is markedly bigger than the other can he hope to reach his head, so as either to tear his face or give him such a blow as will daze him and render him incapable ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... is as great to defend myself in an honourable strife as yours can be to assail me with a most dishonourable purpose. Do not shame yourself and me by putting it to the combat. You may stun me with blows, or you may call aid to overpower me; but otherwise you ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... snow was clear for a few yards, free of dead trees and stumps, and he could lift his eyes without fear of stun-Ning, they were fixed upon Maria; between the woollen cap and the long woollen jersey curving to her vigorous form he saw the outline of her face, downward turned, expressing only gentleness and patience. Every glance gave fresh reason for his love but brought ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... seafaring man as has got a mind equal to any undertaking that he puts it alongside of, and as was all but smashed in his 'prenticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give him such an opinion in his own parlour as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain Cuttle, vauntingly, 'as much as if he'd gone and knocked his head again ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Girls followed two of the men down the cellar steps. It was evident to them that resistance would be worse than useless. A single blow from the fist of one of those powerful men would stun any of the girls, if it did not knock her unconscious. In fact their captors could make quick work of them if necessary, and, cooped up as they were in this isolated prison, they could scarcely hope to send forth an ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... wild horse the hunter requires to be a perfect shot, and it is not every man of the west who carries a rifle that can do it successfully. Creasing consists in sending a bullet through the gristle of the mustang's neck, just above the bone, so as to stun the animal. If the ball enters a hair's-breadth too low, the horse falls dead instantly. If it hits the exact spot, the horse falls as instantaneously, and dead to all appearance; but, in reality, he is only ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have to lay out a hundred and fifty or more," said Petrovich, and pursed up his lips significantly. He liked to produce powerful effects, liked to stun utterly and suddenly, and then to glance sideways to see what face the stunned person would ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... that within my bosom aye Clamors and bids me still renew my tears, Doth stun my senses and my soul bewray With wandering fantasies and cheating fears; The gentle form of her that is but ta'en A little from my sight I seem to see At life's bourne lying faint and pale with pain,— My love that to these tears abandons me. "O my own true one," tenderly she ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... excitement. Five minutes after Sir Lewis had entered the front door, it opened again. A man whom Houston had never seen before stepped out and gestured with one hand. At the same time, Houston's speaker said: "They've got him. Hit him with a stun gun when he tried to get out through ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... said Mazzuolo, 'you must give her a blow on the head that will be sufficient to stun her. Then we will complete the job; and as we shall start early in the morning with Tina in female attire, they will never miss her.' Karl, as usual, made no objection; and when they arrived at night at the inn, ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... anything like a fair encounter the weasel would get the first hold, would draw the first blood, and hence probably effect his escape. So I carried the animal, writhing and scratching, to a place in the road removed from any near cover, and threw him violently upon the ground, hoping thereby so to stun and bewilder him that the terrier could rush in and crush him before he recovered his wits. But I had miscalculated; the blow did indeed stun and confuse him, but he was still too quick for the dog, and had him by the lip like an electric trap. Nip lifted up his head and swung the weasel violently ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... 't wouldn't make no difference to her. She'd talk to a pump or a grind-stun; she'd talk to herself ruther ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of the noisiest days spent during several years in clamorous Italy, whose voiceful uproar strikes to the summits of her guardian Alps, and greets the coming stranger, and whose loud Addio would stun him at parting, if he had not meanwhile become habituated to the operatic pitch of her every-day tones. In Genoa, the hotels, taking counsel of the vagabond streets, stand about the cavernous arcade already mentioned, and all the noise of the shipping reaches their guests. We rose early ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the severe strain he had imposed upon himself began to be felt, for when within hearing distance he stated that he had fallen asleep for a few moments and had been unceremoniously awakened by a sea breaking over him with such force on the side of the head as almost to stun him. The crew now expressed their thorough appreciation and admiration for Boyton's intrepidity and powers of endurance, and declared he had done as much as to cross the straits three times over in point of distance; but he persistently turned a deaf ear to their entreaties ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... swiftness was amazing, almost inconceivable, more like the effect of a trick or of a mechanism. The thump on the door was awful as if he had not been able to stop himself in time. The shock seemed enough to stun an elephant. It was really funny. And after the crash there was a moment of silence as if he were recovering himself. The next thing was a low grunt, and at once he picked up the thread ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... burned. Another village, about the same distance south of the plantation, had also gone up in flames, and at a dozen more they had found the natives working themselves into frenzies and had had to sleep-gas them or stun them with concussion-bombs. Those had been the villages to which the deserters from Sanders' had themselves gone; from every one, runners had gone out to neighboring villages—"The Gone Ones are returning; all the People go to greet them at the Deesha-Phoo. Burn your villages; send on ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening things; and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me of the first time we met," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "That's always the way with you girls. You can't be civil to a man unless you're dressed up fit to stun him, as though you couldn't make fool enough of him without the aid of ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... the blue lightning of steel, And stun him with cannon-bolts, peal upon peal! Mount, troopers, and follow your game to its lair, As the hound tracks the wolf and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... surely finding. Her act was bringing forth its fruit. She had put a gulf, in which rolled the sea, between the land of the old life and the land in which at least the new life was to begin. The completeness of the severance had acted upon her like a blow that does not stun, but wakens. The days went like a dream, but in the dream there was the stir of birth. Her lassitude was permanently gone. There had been no returning after the first hours of excitement. The frost that had numbed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... impact that Throg sagged forward. But Taggi, outraged at the nature of creature he had attacked, squalled and retreated. Shann had had his precious seconds of distraction. He fired, the core of the stun beam striking full into the flat dish ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... company with some of the same sort who worked at Wasborough's mill, and were complaining of its irregularities and frequent disasters, told them he could put them in a way to make a rotative motion which would not go out of order nor stun them with its noise, and accordingly explained to them what he had seen me do. Soon after which, John Steed, who was engineer at Wasborough's mill, took a patent for a rotative motion with a crank, and applied it to their engine. Suspicions ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... division of time to which I refer, none had so confounded, perplexed, alarmed, and grieved me, as the discovery of Mr Clayton's criminality and falsehood. There are mental and moral concussions, which, like physical shocks, stun and stupify with their suddenness and violence. This was one of them. Months after I had been satisfied of his obliquity, it was difficult to realize the conviction that truth and justice authoritatively demanded. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honour—had been chief officer in the P. & O. service in the good old days when mail-boats were square-rigged at least on two masts, and used to come down the China Sea before a fair monsoon with stun'-sails set alow and aloft. We all began life in the merchant service. Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... at last I succeeded in getting one hand free. Waiting my opportunity till we came to a piece of woods, I suddenly jumped up and sprang from the wagon. It was a very dark night, and in running into the woods I struck against a tree with such force as to knock me down and nearly stun me. Two of the men were on me in an instant. After a brief struggle I managed to get away and ran again. I should have escaped, only a high rail fence brought me to a sudden stop, and I was too exhausted to climb over it. My pursuers who were hard at my heels the ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... an' a gentleman, eh? Gittin' tu big for yer boots, youngster? What's yer old man du but go down t' the Banks regular every spring? You're no better 'n he, I guess: Keep yer trade, an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu home's better 'n roast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various |
