"Astonishingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a man in private life of astonishingly even temper. The only thing that appeared to have the power to ruffle him to the slightest extent was the contemplation of what he described as the bunch of cheeses who pretended to fight nowadays. He would have considered it a privilege, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... therefore excelled in rendering bambini. With a note-book in his hand, he studied them everywhere. This explains why his Loves and his Cherubs have such rare truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. His knowledge of anatomy is great and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the advent of Michael Angelo. His enchanting colouring, impasted like that of Giorgione, vivid as that of Titian, ran through the most delicate gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. Beneath his facile brush, soft ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... wrath. 'Git down here yourself, and go to work, and see how you like it,' he shouted excitedly, forgetting his English and everything but that we had encountered an astonishingly hard proposition, and it had gotten the best of us. Like an old clock he was wound up ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... unbarred by a company of the tallest lads my eyes had ever rested on, all astonishingly drunk and very decently dressed, and one (who was perhaps the drunkest of the lot) carrying a tallow candle, from which he impartially bedewed the clothes of the whole company. As soon as I saw them I could not help smiling to myself to remember the anxiety with which I had approached. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mary's room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau, tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the physician a new revelation in ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... in me.... And I am not astonishingly generous—merely sensible. I knew from the first that I couldn't marry him—if I really loved him," she ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... grafted trees, or from cut back trees, makes the best scions and is the easiest to keep. Wood more than 1 year old and as large as one can handle makes good scions. Dr. Morris, with the use of the plane, has succeeded with astonishingly large scions and even branches. Sometimes buds are absent from these large scions or are very inconspicuous. They may be searched for with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... Old experience told him that they were dangerous, and only a blind trust in Bull Hunter enabled him to conquer the panic which surged up in his brain time and again. But he kept on trying, and the constant struggle against men which had featured his life made him astonishingly quick to pick up new facts. The first step had been the hard one, and it seemed to Bull Hunter that the close-knit, smooth-flowing muscles beneath him were carrying him onward into the esteem of all men. To Diablo he gave the praise, and after Diablo to little freckled Tod, and to Pete ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... is, that while languages differ, men (and above all early men) have the same kind of thoughts, desires, fancies, habits, institutions. It is not that in which all races formally differ—their language—but that in which all early races are astonishingly the same—their ideas, fancies, habits, desires—that causes the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... a purpose of God in this city, but there is as much purpose in the desert. There is no astonishingly great purpose. The disease will work itself out. And I know God's whole truth to man was revealed long since, and any one of calm soul may know it. The hope of learning the purpose through the ages, the following of the gleam, is the preoccupation ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... Directly to address a serving-man or maid was deemed incorrect, for it would have betokened an unfitting equality. However, Madame de Ruth's peasant lad responded with alacrity to his lady's homely speech, and in an astonishingly short time he reappeared with an enormous bowl of the steaming hot spirits—the punch, which Marlborough's army had brought into fashion on the Continent, and which the damp of South Germany in the autumn made ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... catching me by the sleeve and turning astonishingly pale for one ordinarily so ruddy. "I want to ask a favor of you. Come into my little room behind. You won't regret it." This ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... girlish voices, usually so soft, give out their hoarse and guttural notes, Chrysantheme's hands fly wildly and convulsively over the quivering strings. Both of them lower their heads, pout their underlips in the effort to bring out these astonishingly deep notes. And at these moments their little narrow eyes open, and seem to reveal an unexpected something, almost a soul, under these trappings ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Rennes during the great military trial there was a Frenchman who asked "Who is Dreyfus?" and we were surprised at such ignorance of a name that had been on the lips of all France for years, but yet we discover ourselves to be astonishingly lacking in the knowledge of our own little island and find ourselves asking "why should anyone trouble to write a book about a town of which so few have even heard?" But it is often in the out-of-the-way places that historical ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... much opposed to the bookmaking, pool-selling features of the track as Senator Walker himself. Griffiths was made chairman of the Assembly Committee on Public Morals. While this committee has sundry sins to answer for, nevertheless it made an astonishingly clean record on the Walker-Otis bill. On January 18, less than three weeks after the Legislature had assembled, Chairman Griffiths called his committee together to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... beneath an apple tree, on the bank of the stream in deep conversation with a most remarkable old man, who was fishing industriously with the very rod The Seraph so lately had bewailed. He was an astonishingly old man, with hair and beard as white as wool, wreathing a face as pink as the apple-blossoms that fell about him. Cautiously we drew near, quite unobserved by the two who seemed utterly absorbed in their occupation of watching the line as it dipped into the stream. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the girl searchingly. Her eyes were closed, she had the look of complete exhaustion. He could almost not believe she had spoken those significant words. Did she know what she was saying? Was it mere accident that her last sentence had sounded so astonishingly rational? ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... little galley-slave who is made to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague.* It is one of the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers' in old silverware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words: "Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen"—"In the year 1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Thetis in the waters of Styx. The stars tell him anything he wishes to believe, and he can conjure up spirits as easily as another man can order a cab. It is not that he is a fool. In practical affairs he is astonishingly astute. It is that he has an illimitable capacity for belief. He is always ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... speed down the street. Wilhelm, plucking sword from scabbard, pursued no less fleetly. The scanty lighting of the city thoroughfares gave advantage to the fugitive, but Wilhelm's knowledge of the town was now astonishingly intimate, considering the short time he had been a resident, and his woodlore, applied to the maze of tortuous narrow alleys made him a hunter not easily baffled. He saw the flutter of a cloak as its wearer turned down a narrow lane, and a rapid mental picture of the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... over the way are the lights of the great German Stadt Theatre. The Atlantic Garden stands by the side of the older theatre, rivalling it in brilliancy and attractiveness. Scores of restaurants, with tempting bills of fare and prices astonishingly low, greet you at every step. "Lager Bier," and "Grosses Concert; Eintritt frei," are the signs which adorn nearly every other house. The lamps of the street venders dot the side-walk at intervals, and the many colored lights of the street cars stretch away as far as the eye ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... began to wander idly about the streets, turning here and there as if moved by nothing more than the vaguest curiosity. But gradually he was working through the sections in which the larger buildings stood. Concrete structures, astonishingly modern, dotted the business section. But none of them had the air that would surround a place where a man with power of life or death would be. In a town the size of Punta Arenas there would be unmistakable evidences about The Master's residence, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... of three young girls walking hand in hand up the alley on their way from early mass, the tallest where all were tall, and, as it seemed to him when he dreamed of it, astonishingly beautiful. Though they were very young, they were ladies of rank; their heads were high and crowned, their gowns of figured brocade; they had chains round their necks, and each a jewel on her forehead; by chains also swung their little mass-books ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... numerous relatives, Sciurus fossor, Tamias quadrivitatus, T. Townsendii, Spermophilus Beccheyi, S. Douglasii, he maintains intimate relations with the nut-eating birds, particularly the Clark Crow (Picicorvus columbianus) and the numerous woodpeckers and jays. The two spermophiles are astonishingly abundant in the lowlands and lower foot-hills, but more and more sparingly distributed up through the Douglas domains,—seldom venturing higher than six or seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. The gray sciurus ranges but little ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... increased his pace, and the detective, astonishingly active for one of his bulk, raced along at ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the consideration—took so long that it was nearly dark when Elsie announced that she simply MUST go. It was Ralph's duty as a gentleman to help her in putting on her coat, and this took an astonishingly long time. Finally it was done, however, ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the moment he had retired from business—he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he did not worship rank and titles; it was Intellect—but Intellect that had the stamp of fashion—that ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... girl present me with a hair chain which she had just completed. Great order and decorum prevailed. Amongst the permanent scholars in the upper part of the institution, there are some who embroider astonishingly well—surplices, altar-hangings, in short, all the church vestments in gold or silk. In the room where these are kept are the confessionals for the pupils. The priests are in a separate room, and the penitents kneel before the grating which separates the two apartments. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Stanton's clumsy fingers finally dislodged from the box a big, soft blanket-wrapper with an astonishingly strange, blurry pattern of green and red against a somber background of rusty black. With increasing amazement he picked up the accompanying ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... intimate from the start, and increasingly so. Both had that elemental quality, somewhat remote from civilization and its standards, which you find amongst those who consort greatly with horses and cattle. Both were simple and astonishingly shrewd. They loved a horse and understood him as did few: they loved a rogue and were ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... unpolitical, unpoetical rustics, but remarkably well off, paying only three pounds a year for excellent four-roomed cottages, having abundance of cheap and good food, and various rights of common, and privileges which help to make them comfortable. It is an astonishingly sleepy and quiet sort of community and neighborhood, and this is a pretty place, on the edge of a wild common, with fine clumps of fir-wood about it, and a picturesquely colored district of heath, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a disturbing impression. For seen thus, at close quarters, not only was the said stranger notably, even astonishingly good-looking, but he bore an arresting likeness in build, in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... because she loved him more steadfastly than he did her. Whatever happened he must not take it out of Martin. It was astonishing how real she had become now—as V.V. became a dream. Yes, Martin was astonishingly real. And if only he could go now and talk to Martin—and face all the facts of life with her, even as he had done with that phantom ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... less familiar, called the Jew. The Jew claimed to be a literary man, and said it would act as receiver while the father acted as transmitter on Hedrick. Then they got this one-sided telephonic conversation in a thick, wheezy voice that was astonishingly like Hedrick's: ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... are clipped so as to present the smooth, velvety appearance peculiar to the finest yew and box hedges. The colour and texture of these walls of ancient vegetation, contrasting with the vivid green lawns at their feet, are astonishingly beautiful. One of the peculiar charms of such hedges is that where yew of a different kind or age, or a bush of box, forms part of the mass, it shows like an inlay of a different material, and the same effect is given merely by the trick that some yews have of ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... It grew plainer that the volume of business had barely been maintained, and it was glaringly evident that the expenses, especially wages, had sensibly increased. He abandoned the figures not quite finished, partly from weary disgust, and partly because Big James most astonishingly walked into the shop, from the back. He was really quite glad to encounter Big ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... cold yet, Mrs. Morton. In fact, it is astonishingly warm for November. And there's the queerest, yellowish haze I have ever seen." Sherm said ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... fault," said Margaret, merrily, "if you are a bat as well as a dozen other animals, my dear. Well, girls—oh, I am ashamed, and it really is most astonishingly virtuous of me to tell you about it. Peggy, just before you came, I was very blue; deeply, darkly, most ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... tearing open the anthers under water the grains were easily detached. Towards the apex of the anther the grains are arranged in a single row and lower down in two or three rows, so that they could be counted; and there were about 35 in each cell, or 70 in the whole anther; and this is an astonishingly small number for an anemophilous plant. The grains have very delicate coats, are spherical and about 5/7000 of an inch (.0181 millimetres), whilst those of the perfect flowers are about 7/7000 of an inch (.0254 millimetres) ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... where the force of gravitation is one-sixth as great as upon the earth, we had found ourselves astonishingly light. Five-sixths of our own weight, and of the weight of the air-tight suits in which we were incased, had magically dropped from us. It was therefore comparatively easy for us, encumbered as we were, to make our way about ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... of it. The number on the slip—for the purpose of identifying the girl who packed the tin—was 220. Let the reader, therefore, be informed that if he smokes Edgeworth Ready Rubbed, and finds in a tin a slip bearing that number, he has been served by no less a person than Miss Katie Wise, of the astonishingly speedy fingers. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... that this astonishingly audacious proceeding must result either in the fall of Cecil, to whom it was due, or in open war with Spain, and the immediate committal of England to the formation of a Protestant League; which might force the English Catholics in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Bronzino Allori, fresh as if painted yesterday. "The works of that master," I said, "are rare, but a friend of mine, Mr. Day, had a noble one at his rooms in Piccadilly, St. John in the Wilderness. The conception of the figure and poetical expression of the face always seemed to me astonishingly fine. Pray, Sir, do you know that picture?" "Perfectly, it partakes of the sublime and is amazingly fine." "Your portrait of Cosmo has the expression of a resolute, determined man, and I think ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... promise. The modern torpedo is a very efficient weapon, and the problem of designing an aeroplane or seaplane to carry it was a problem requiring adaptation rather than new invention. Yet the development of torpedo aircraft during the war was, in the words of an official memorandum, 'astonishingly slow'. After the Gallipoli exploits nothing of importance in this kind was achieved during the years that followed, until the very end ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... But old folks are astonishingly obtuse. Neither of the three seniors saw what had happened; but entered CON AMORE into the proposed expedition to Cape Chatham, and when bedtime came, Captain Brentwood, honest gentleman, went off to rest, and having said his prayers and wound up ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... flagged path to the veranda, where the planking moved and creaked under our weight while my companion unlocked the front door. Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed place was neither musty nor damp, when we stepped in. Instead, there was a faint, resinous odor, very pleasant and clean; perhaps from the cedar of which the ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... him—lay within his reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all! Lear was of a cheerful disposition, and seems to have been wholly inoffensive—at a distance. He fabricated his own clothes, and subsisted chiefly on milk and ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... an hour the first sketch of his drawing was complete. It was astonishingly good, vigorous and solid; better than all, it had that feeling for form that makes just the difference between the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... her daughter, is a very pretty girl, aged nineteen or nearly, of greyhound build, so to say, by turns amazingly active and astonishingly indolent, capricious and decided in her caprices while they last, passionately fond of dancing, much inclined to amuse herself in her own way when her mother is not looking, and possessing a keen sense of prime ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... the Serjeant gave up a portion of his valuable time and, further, the junior counsel was summoned specially from his chambers to supply his "advice and opinion." Mr. Pickwick ought surely to have to pay for his whim. And the bill of costs that these "sharks" of attornies sent in! It was astonishingly moderate. For writ, service of subpoenas, hunting up evidence, consultation, fees to counsel, fees for the day, retainers, etc.,—the sum of 120 pounds was ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... even wise ones for the period, have never ceased from pasting on their persons. If in your career you had knocked against painted pots, labelled: birthplace, fatherland, humanity, charity, etc., you would have gone at considerably less speed, and not gone so far. But you were astonishingly logical. With amazing strength and unsparingness you have known how to will. It is from this point precisely that I looked, and I was filled with real admiration. During your absence, of more than three years, I called you frequently, in thought, a superhuman. Friederich Nietsche ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Saunders, that you have been taking the astonishingly presumptuous course of soliciting the hand of one of my wards. I am not given to severity, or I do not exactly know how I ought to resent an act which exhibits such a forgetfulness of what your attitude should be towards a person in the station of my ward. You are merely a half-breed; you ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... as her heart and her reason have made for her; she understands life, and has set me to dreaming of another happiness.... I begin to reflect.... But how beautiful Madame Potocka looked at the masked ball yesterday evening! Her dress as a sultana became her astonishingly. Her beauty shone as a sun above that of all other women; every one admired her, and all coveted the honor of dancing with her. As for me, I could only dance one Polonaise; I was attacked by so severe a pain in my foot that I could not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... booms fitted and sent aloft that night. We accordingly jogged along under plain sail until daylight, when we got the studding-sails once more upon the little hooker and tried her paces. She proved to be astonishingly fast in light, and even moderate, weather, and I felt convinced that had the wind not breezed up so strongly as it did on the previous day, the Shark would never have ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... astonishingly civil answer that Beauty's courage rose: but it sank again when the beast, addressing the merchant, desired him to leave the palace next morning, and never return to it again. "And so ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... it—whisk! he sank to the deck; the turban, spread open by the resistance of the air, fluttered down to cover him from head to foot. Apparently he fell asleep at once, for he did not again move nor alter his position. He, as well as an astonishingly large proportion of the other Somalis and Abyssinians we saw, carried a queer, well-defined, triangular wound in his head. It had long since healed, was an inch or so across, and looked as though a piece of the skull had been ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... an order of the most elegant and ornamented character, but possessing a happy simplicity and regularity of composition which renders it more easy of application than any other. In like manner in the later, which has been called the florid style of Gothic architecture, there are buildings astonishingly rich and elaborate; but we find this excess of ornament supported and rendered practicable by a principle of simplicity in design and construction. In the earlier and middle styles of Gothic there are ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the English Navy. She informed me that if she had been the English people she would have made Nelson king. The Royal family of England might see objections to that, I told her. Cries she: "Oh! anything for a sea-hero." You will find these young princes and princesses astonishingly revolutionary when they entertain brains. Now at present, just at present, an English naval officer, and a poet, stand higher in the esteem of that young Princess Ottilia than dukes, kings, or emperors. So you have seen her!' my father ejaculated musingly, and hummed, and said: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rapid evolution of talent is thus produced. Such cases might be explained, too, by the facts that musical faculty is strong in both sexes, that musical families associate together, and that the more gifted members may intermarry. Great musicians are often astonishingly precocious. Meyerbeer "played brilliantly" at the age of six. Mozart played beautifully at four. Are we to suppose that the effect of the adult practice of parents was inherited at this early age? If use-inheritance ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... modern idea of the Evil One, and since their erection the schools have been patronized by an astonishingly large number of disappointed church-members who receive instruction more readily from the modern methods here in vogue than ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... me!" says Jurgen, "this is astonishingly inadequate impersonation, as any married man would see at once. Well, I made no contract to love any such plain and short-tempered person. I repudiate the claims of any such person, as manifestly unfair. And I pledge ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or absence of sexual gratification, although gross disproportion in the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either party, may lead to the same result. Dyspareunia, Kisch adds, is astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is absence of ejaculation on the woman's ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was trying to make beer out of bananas. The stuff, after being bottled, blew up with a great noise and a dissemination of the astonishingly offensive odour of the fermented fruit that seemed to spread for acres about. On the other hand, her attempt at making perfume from the moso'oi flower (said to be the real ylang-ylang) was a distinct success. She had to get permission from the government to import the small still she set ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... is dedicated. Lower down, kneeling on one side of the throne, is a group of various members of the Pesaro family, three of whom are habited in crimson robes, as Cavalieri di San Marco; the other, a youth about fifteen, looks out of the picture, astonishingly alive, and yet sufficiently idealized to harmonize with the rest. This picture is very remarkable for several reasons. It is a piece of family history, curiously illustrative of the manners of the time. The Pesaro here commemorated was an ecclesiastic, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... us; and have helped many thereby to attain peace and self-possession. But still the conscious use of autosuggestion for the attainment of personal ideals has been very little discussed, and in the employment of this great power we are astonishingly backward. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... George Moore on Zola: "I had read the 'Assomoir,' and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new—the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is broken off short, it flutters through a web of ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... he is astonishingly like the disciples of Calvin described in a previous chapter. Hypnotised by their faith, nothing could deter them from their object. All those who contradicted their articles of faith were considered worthy of death. They too seemed ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... I have read of Braddock's Field, yonder terrain most astonishingly resembles it. What an ambuscade could Butler lay for our army yonder, within shot of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... run him down. They kill Sheep and young Cattle. The harder the winter the bolder they become, and they have been known to attack man himself. In the Far North they grow especially large, and because of the scarcity of food there in winter, they become exceedingly fierce. They can go an astonishingly long time without food and still retain their strength. But hunger makes them merciless. They will not attack each other, but if one in the pack becomes injured, the others will turn upon him, and kill and eat ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... his few dances were with Dolores, who discovered that, notwithstanding his evident weariness, he was astonishingly light on his feet and by no means a poor waltzer. But after midnight she found it increasingly difficult to lure him out on the floor whenever she was seized with the whim to favor him by scratching the name—and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Bruce, the tombs of many bishops, abbots, and of the great chiefs and nobles, the Macdougalls, Lords of Lorn; the Macdonalds, Lords of the Isles; the Macleods, and the Macleans. Nowhere, perhaps, has death placed his seal on a more imposing assemblage, of truly royal stateliness, of astonishingly cosmopolitan variety. In the midst of it all, in the very centre of the burying-ground, stands a ruined chapel, under the invocation of St. Oran, the first Irish monk who died in this region. The church was built by the sainted Margaret, the wife ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... celebrity, who had satisfactorily proved that as the tail was the intellectual or the spiritual part of a monikin, the farther it was removed from the mass of matter, or the body, the more likely it was to be independent, consecutive, logical, and spiritualized. The idea had succeeded astonishingly at first; but time, which will wear out even a cauda, had given birth to schisms in the church on this interesting subject; one party contending that two more joints ought to be added to the archbishop's embellishment, by way of sustaining the church, and the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the afternoon went her hopes, her courage, and her strength. She had been astonishingly persistent. So earnest an effort was well deserving of a better reward. On every hand, to her fatigued senses, the great business portion grew larger, harder, more stolid in its indifference. It seemed ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... he found them,—two astonishingly small bear-cubs. One whined pitifully and struggled to his feet as though in anticipation of supper, but the other was cold and stiff. It had evidently ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... And it may be a kind of comfort to readers, both to know it, and to discern gradually what the just gods make of it withal. Devil-Diplomatists do exist, at least have existed, never doubt it farther; and their astonishingly dexterous mendacities and enchanted spider-webs,—CAN these go any road ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... court, and the merchants brought valuable collections. "The monarchs of Iran and Turan sent him some very rare breeds. His Majesty," says the courtly historian, "by crossing the breeds, which method was never practised before, has improved them astonishingly."[349] Akber Khan possessed seventeen distinct kinds, eight of which were valuable for beauty alone. At about this same period of 1600 the Dutch, according to Aldrovandi, were as eager about pigeons as the Romans had formerly been. The breeds which were kept ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... Her perceptions are keen and quick. She works planfully and rapidly with our concrete problems and shows good powers of mental representation. It is notable that she is very keen to do her best on tests and takes much delight in a good record. Her psychomotor control is astonishingly good. In a certain tapping test, which we consider well done if the individual has succeeded in tapping in 90 squares in 30 seconds, she did 117 and 129 at two successive trials with only one error in each. This is next to the best record we have ever ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... only gay, it was brilliant. Life flowed fast and it was astonishingly vivid. A restless society, always seeking something new flitted from house to house. Dick, young and impressionable, would have been glad to share a little in it, but his time was too short. He went once with Colonel Winchester to ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of Christianity in the world, its adaptation to individual needs, &c. Consider also the extraordinary diversity of human characters in respect both of morality and spirituality though all are living in the same world. Out of the same external material or environment such astonishingly diverse products arise according to the use made of it. Even human suffering in its worst forms can be welcome if justified by faith in such an object. 'Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness,' but are rather to ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... had brought in the tea-things, which she did with especial care, apparently wishing to blot out the memory of the morning's escapade by astonishingly good behavior for the rest of the day, Miss Leaf called her, and asked if she knew that her month of trial ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... in the same house with a fuming bull. Even Fred agreed with me that Jack was being treated unfairly, and he never spoke about him at all if he could help it. When Jack and he had met during the last year at Oxford, as they had often, they were so astonishingly polite to each other that had I not known the reason I should have been very amused, but as it was, I thought they were making a great fuss ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... been her inexhaustible strength. The snow was deep and soft, heavy with moisture, the March air was moist, too, not keen with frost, and the green firs were softly dark against an even, stone-colored sky of cloud. To Joan's eyes, so long imprisoned, it was all astonishingly beautiful, clean and grave, part of the old life back to which she was running. Down the canyon trail she floundered, her short skirt gathering a weight of snow, her webs lifting a mass of it at every tugging step. Her speed perforce slackened, but she plodded on, out of breath ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the decoration was of an inferior type of revived Gothic. But, however an architect might shake his head at Groombridge, it was really a striking building, massive and very well disposed, and in an astonishingly fine position, commanding an immense view of a great plain on nearly three sides, while to the east was stretched the rest of the range of splendidly-wooded hills on the westerly point of which it was situated. In the sweet, soft air many delicate trees and shrubs were developed ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. Here the growth of large private fortunes was marked by much greater celerity than in the East, although these fortunes are not as large as those based upon land in ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the second canto: there is not a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Ireland in all but the name. Every thing, of course, was done in the name of Charles. He carried the same energy into his government here that he had exhibited in the north of England. He improved the condition of the country astonishingly in respect to trade, to revenue, and to public order. But he governed in the most arbitrary manner, and he boasted that he had rendered the king as absolute a sovereign in Ireland as any prince in the world could be. Such a boast from a man who had once been a very prominent ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... example were those of a living presence in the household of "Light Horse Harry;" and thus to young Lee he early became the ideal of manhood upon which, consciously or unconsciously, he molded his own character and life. But quite apart from this, the careers of these two great Virginians were astonishingly alike. ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... still maintained, in vigorous activity, many healthy outdoor interests, and were quite keen in their enthusiasm for, and remarkably instructed in, the latest developments of horse-racing, football, and prize-fighting. Likewise, they had retained an astonishingly fresh and unimpaired interest in women, and still enjoyed the simple earth-born pleasures of the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who exhibits interesting stereopticon pictures and then knocks the interest all out of them with his comments upon them. But all the world go there to look and listen, and are apparently well satisfied. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... assistant cards (there were no chambermaids) had contrived to make a fire that didn't smoke, and the bed linen looked clean, though coarse. Dinner—which we ate with our feet on boards under the table, to keep them off the cold stone floor—was astonishingly good, and we quite enjoyed grating cheese into our soup on a funny little grater with which each one of us was supplied. We had a delicious red wine with a little sparkle in it, called Nebiolo, which Sir Ralph ordered because he thought we would like it; and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... domesticated so soon as in the Old Dominion. You may come to any of its towns a perfect stranger, but with a name known to one prominent citizen, or fortified with a few letters from the right source, and in a time astonishingly short you find yourself at home. This has been time out of mind Virginian custom; and as Richmond is but a condensation of all that is Virginian, it prevailed here as well. If the stranger did not give himself up to the whirl and yield himself, "rescue or no ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... get a breath, much less move. His mind remained perfectly clear, but the fall left him momentarily paralyzed. His efforts to regain his breath, to make himself breathe, were astonishingly futile, and he lay annoyed at his helplessness. It seemed as if minute after minute passed. Listening, he heard sounds above. Daylight was coming fast and every ray of it meant a slenderer chance ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... unity. Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions, special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere. The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid character of this country without unity was illustrated by the streaks found in the Carthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan by the slave-merchant, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... are astonishingly courageous and resigned. That of Chateau-Thierry watched the evacuation of the Government Offices, the banks, the prefecture and the post office without the slightest alarm. The retreat was well advanced ere they dreamed of it. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... is no evidence whatever that he is fitted for that calling. This is just as true of the ministry as of any other vocation. Every man-of-business knows this. The clergy seem to us behind the age in being astonishingly blind to it. Men-of-business know that only a very small fraction of their number can ever attain eminent success. They know, that, in a term of twenty years, ninety-seven men in a hundred fail. Here and there one develops a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... accuse the late Liberal Government with perfidy of the basest kind. The author is not in the least inclined to admit the charge, but thinks, rather, that the Government in question—individually and collectively—was astonishingly ignorant of European conditions and problems, especially those ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... of speech and brusqueness of manner gave him a cachet that Society found distinguished. He was married, too—so romantic! married to a girl who was shut up with him in Gueldersdorp all through the Siege. Quite too astonishingly lovely, don't you know? and with manners that really suggested the Faubourg St. Germain. Where she got her style—brought up among Boers and blacks—was to be wondered at, but these problems made people all the more interesting. And one met her with her husband at all the best houses since ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... from Patmore or Rossetti. It was against the sham of second-hand mood and subject, rather than the great truth of music and loveliness, that the new poets broke into unmetrical protest. They have done a brave and needed work,—but they have produced astonishingly little quotable poetry, they have sung their way not far into the hearts of their listeners. The lingering, lovely line is not for them. No, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... bodies, with his stiff and almost heavy movements, is astonishingly quick at storing away wreckage. In a shift of a few hours, a comparatively enormous animal—a Mole, for example—disappears, engulfed by the earth. The others leave the dried, emptied carcass to the air, the sport of the winds for months on end; he, treating it as a whole, makes a clean job ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... including the main guard of the trenches), during the siege, was about one hundred and fifty. When it is considered that on an average over two hundred men were constantly engaged in these duties, being under fire for fifty days, the number of casualties is astonishingly small. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... among those figures of two dimensions and coming to sit beside me, a companion. I had never had one before. There might never have been such a thing happen before to anybody, it seemed so strange and so astonishingly fortunate! For years I didn't get used to it. And if I am, in a way, accustomed to the idea now, it is only the occasional veiling of a vision, a breathing on the glass, as it were. At sea it will come upon me like a dream of ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... nature about them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender, graceful brown lads are bathing with them,—lightly built as deer: these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading horses;—they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into the sea,—yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some are a fine brown color, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to be a mere civil contract, easily made and easily broken. Common as divorce had become, the married state was regarded as undesirable. Augustus vainly made laws to encourage matrimony and discourage celibacy. Suicide, especially among the upper classes, was astonishingly frequent. No one questioned another's right to leave this life at pleasure. The decline of the earlier paganism left many men without a deep religious faith to combat the growing doubt and worldliness ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... endeavoured to forget him in her swain's comments upon the political news arrived with the packet that afternoon. When tea was over and Miss Bargarny, who cultivated liveliness of manner, had engaged the poet in a discussion upon the relative merits of Shelley and Nathaniel P. Willis—astonishingly original on her part, mild to the outposts of indifference on his—Anne followed Hunsdon to the other side of the room to look over an album of his mother's, just unpacked. It contained calotypes of the most distinguished ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... its attention upon her little person for the moment, and to shower her with ten times enough flattery and praise to turn a much steadier head. Presents rained upon Leslie, and every one of them was astonishingly handsome and valuable; newspapers clamoured for her picture, and wherever she went she was immediately the focus for all eyes. That old Judge Lee should send her some of his mother's beautiful diamonds; ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... same year he received the astonishingly bold and grand idea of ascertaining the truth of his doctrine by actually drawing down the lightning, by means of sharp-pointed iron rods raised into the region of the clouds. Even in this uncertain state his passion to be useful to mankind displayed itself in a powerful manner. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... performance of their duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than elsewhere in India. Gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and Mr. Campbell informs us that a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "The longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become;" and we need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency of the system. The hill tribes, on the contrary, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... not look forward; I will only enjoy the present pleasure of believing myself one of the first in her esteem and friendship, and of shewing her all those little pleasing attentions so dear to a sensible heart; attentions in which her lover is astonishingly remiss: he is at Montreal, and I am told was gay and happy on his journey thither, though ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... such as may still be seen in the Alhambra of Granada and in the Alcazar at Seville. The columns are of marble, of porphyry and jasper; tradition says they came from Carthage, from pagan temples in France and Christian churches in Spain; they are slender and unadorned, they must have contrasted astonishingly with the roof of larch wood, all ablaze ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... showed me all I have passed through since, I must have died. But he does not try us more than we are able to bear. Indeed he bestowed such rich spiritual blessings upon us (your dear mother and myself) in that dark hour, that we were astonishingly sustained. We were filled with gratitude because "dear father" was ready. We knew that he had nothing to do, but to die. ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... visited the chemical laboratory, with the distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Dr. Hadley. Franklin suggested that temperature could be astonishingly reduced by evaporation. It was entirely a new idea to the Professor. They both with others repaired to Franklin's room. He had ether there, and a thermometer. To the astonishment of the Professor of Chemistry ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... was not in the best of temper just then. "One could almost wonder if you had any personal grudge against the man, Clavering. You are so astonishingly disinterested when you talk of him. Now, if I didn't like a man I'd make ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... to-day were wrought by men such as he was; quiet, thoughtful men, residing in villages, who developed their artistic sense in solitude. I am quite sure that this man thought a great deal more of his work than of the money he earned by it. At all events he charged me astonishingly little. He refused a contract, evidently regarding it as implying suspicions of his honesty. 'I'll charge ye what's fair,' he said, 'and you and me'll not quarrel as to the price.' If my bill for labour was so moderate that it seems ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... which serves to overcome a difference in level of fifty-nine feet, raises vessels of 1,000 tons capacity with a velocity of 0.3 to 0.7 foot per second, and has been constructed after a new and astonishingly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... strange knife, wrapped in a handkerchief under his shirt, with its bronze blade and gold hilt in the shape of a woman dancing. The woman dancing was astonishingly like ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... nethermost limbs. He had to remove his trousers and his coat, and submit to having his ribs wound with yards of torn sheeting, in order that what little flesh he had might be compressed to the smallest possible compass. The result was astonishingly satisfactory. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... little orchestra, that seems itself to dance, there is such an airy motion of flags and streamers all about it. And we do not suppose that between the Torrid Zone and the North Pole there are to be found male dancers with such astonishingly loose legs, furnished with so many joints in wrong places, utterly unknown to Professor Owen, as those who here disport themselves. Sometimes, the fete appertains to a particular trade; you will see among the cheerful young women ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... still, plunge in to the knees! He straightened from his fruitless effort, drew back, but before she could think what he was about he had leaned forward again, flashed out his cane, and with three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown. It was deftly, delicately, astonishingly done, but it gave her a singular shock, as if she had seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them cleverly toward him in the crook of his cane, took them up daintily in his fingers, and returned to her across the shallow valley. She ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... knock came upon the door. The grave faced German opened it, ushering in an astonishingly lovely girl; tall, most fashionably attired and with a manner of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... burning bravely to the end, it had breathed its last in doing its master service, all became black and cheerless around; the passengers had dropt off one by one, preferring to be dry and ill below rather than wet and squeamish above; even the mate, with his gold-laced cap (who is so astonishingly like Mr. Charles Dickens, that he might pass for that gentleman)—even the mate said he would go to his cabin and turn in. So there remained nothing for it but to do as ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... rector of Brown's Town, after hearing him sing in the hotel, at once commandeered him for his church on Sunday, though warning him that he would be the only white member of the choir. My services were also requisitioned for the organ. That church at Brown's Town is, by the way, the most astonishingly spacious and handsome building to find in an inland country parish in Jamaica. On the Sunday, seeing the Guardsman in conversation with the local tenor, a gentleman of absolutely ebony-black complexion, at the vestry door, both ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton |
