"Awfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't face,—not that, not that; but I loved her true, I say,—I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in and day out, and year upon year, as long as she remembered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... her, to know faintly that she was involved in unhappy circumstances, that she was the victim of distresses he could not fathom. And these distresses weighed upon him like a burden, as things weigh upon us in dreams, softly and heavily, and with a sort of cloudy awfulness. He wanted to strive against them for his mother, but he was held back from action, and Dion seemed to have something to do with this. It was as if his friend and enemy, Dion Leith, did not wish his mother ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... vale of tears to Mary whose obedience had restored what Eve's self-will had ruined, and the last threefold sob of endearment to the "kindly, loving, sweet, Virgin Mary." After the high agonisings and aspirations of the day's prayer, the awfulness of the holy Sacrifice, the tramping monotony of the Psalter, the sting of the discipline, the aches and sweats of the manual labour, the intent strain of the illuminating, this song to Mary was a running into Mother's arms and finding ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... went wrong with the hoisting machinery, the upward movement was arrested, and the bucket hung motionless not more than ten feet above the deadly mine. In the awfulness of their common danger, the men forgot their enmity and gazed at each other with horror-stricken eyes. Then, with a groan of despair, Mike Connell sank limply to the bottom ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... scene, and to express the thought that rose in my mind, as I gazed upon it. It was in the great cathedral church of the world; and it brings a kind of religious impression over my mind to recall its awfulness and majesty. Above, far above me, rose a dome, gilded and covered with mosaic pictures, and vast as the pantheon of old Rome; the four pillars which supported it, each of them as large as many of our churches; and the entire mass, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... name: I arose, and, taking my sword, stood at the door. At this moment I heard the same voice still beseeching me to rise and saying, 'O! my God, the world is on fire!' I then opened the door, and it is difficult to say which excited me most, the awfulness of the scene or the distressed cries of the negroes. Upward of one hundred lay prostrate on the ground, some speechless, and some with the bitterest cries, but most with their hands raised, imploring ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... she had been through had etherialized her face, added to its look of age and gravity, but imparted likewise a sort of "awfulness." She exhaled an aura of righteous authority. She had been through the furnace, and foolishness and petulance had been burnt out of her ... though, thank goodness, she retained some sense of humour. She had probably never been ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... was in vain to tell himself that his own act had placed him there; that he had friends to whom he might appeal. He would not, he dare not, accept outward help, even outward friendship, however hearty and sincere, at that crisis of his existence. It seemed a desecration of its awfulness to find comfort in anything but the highest and the deepest. And the glimpse of that which he had attained seemed to have passed away from him again,—seemed to be something which, as it had arisen with Argemone, was lost with her also,—one speck of the far blue sky which ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... gentleness, modesty, the timidity of young passion, repugnance to vice, an imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open.... It lay through perils, but was made attractive by perpetual wonders. It was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over the young mind. It learned to trample down that last bond which united the child to common humanity, filial reverence; the fond and mysterious attachment of the child and the mother, the inborn reverence of the son to the father. It is the highest praise ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... till you sit silent and happy, you know not why; when sweet music fills your heart with noble and tender instincts which need no thoughts or words; ay, even when you watch the raging thunderstorm, and feel it to be, in spite of its great awfulness, so beautiful that you cannot turn your eyes away: at such times as these Lady Why is speaking to your soul of souls, and saying, "My child, this world is a new place, and strange, and often terrible: but be not afraid. All will come right at last. Rest will conquer ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... letter Bridget's reflections had been more disagreeable than any she had yet grappled with. In Nelly's company the awfulness of what she had done did sometimes smite home to her. Well, she had staked everything upon it, and the only possible course was to brazen it out. That George should die, and die quickly—without any return ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it was, is ended in proclaiming him unfit for the King's service. Very moderate, in comparison of what was intended and desired, and truly not very severe, considering what was proved. The other trial, Lord Ferrers's, lasted three days. You have seen the pomp and awfulness of such doings, so I will not describe it to you. The judge and criminal were far inferior to those you have seen. For the Lord High Steward(49) he neither had any dignity nor affected any; nay, he held it all so cheap, that he said at his own table ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... day, as I sat by mother's pillow, my mind full of the dread that seemed now as if it might any moment be realized,—of the awfulness of being left alone in that living tomb with the marble image of what was and yet was not my mother, the clock struck nine in the morning. Somewhere the sun was shining, I thought. Somewhere there were happy lovers, merry-makings in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... much of the voluble rhetoric with which a certain school of writers are wont to discourse of the great Miracle of Beauty which has been given to men in the life and character of the blessed Saviour. For I must needs think that, if they duly felt the awfulness of that Beauty, their fluency would be somewhat repressed; and that their eloquence would be better if they feared more ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Kingdom which is obedience to God in Christ, is because we have a superficial knowledge, or no knowledge at all, of our own sinful condition, and of the gravity of that fact. Intellectually, I take it that an under-estimate of the universality and of the awfulness of sin has a great deal to do in shaping all the maimed, imperfect, partial views of Christ, His character and nature, which afflict the world. It is the mother of most of our heresies. And, practically, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... escape from her position by immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival's case. She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was mostly ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... nothing of a jackdaw in a cage. She embraced him with enthusiasm, dropping the heaviest of the parcels, which seemed to contain bricks, upon his toe, and in a flood of language told him of the peculiar awfulness of the row between his father and herself which ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... present she felt that suffering had refined her, and a great love had burned away all that was false. But now—now that her god had turned to clay, what would happen? Desperation seemed possible, notwithstanding the awfulness of the example. No, she would never come to that! And she repeated it over and over to herself as she dressed, as though to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hundred opinions were pronounced, and every newcomer was given a detailed description of how terrible his face had been before. The few men who had shared Bogdan's room with him from the start described the former awfulness of his face with a sort of pride, as though they had taken part ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... afterwards crossed the frontier and reached the field of Salamanca. The dead still lay unburied, and flocks of vultures rose sullenly as the travellers threaded their way across that terrible scene of carnage. However, neither Lord John's phlegm nor his philosophy deserted him, though the awfulness of the spectacle was not lost upon him. 'The blood spilt on that day will become a real saving of life if it become the means of delivering Spain from French dominion,' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... favorite junction of neck and collar-bone which Christobal had said was so well understood by those of his ilk. At the foot of the stairs the Indian lay still, and Frascuelo tried to rise. She helped him gladly. The awfulness of this killing no longer appalled her. Each dead or disabled Indian was one less obstacle between her and Courtenay. A third time the revolver barked, but Christobal missed. It did not matter greatly, as Tollemache ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... and they can't keep out of the game. The very bigness of the thing lures them on; the bigger the issue, the bigger the fascination. The millions of men and the billions of dollars—that lures them. And the awfulness—the dead, the wounded, the horrors, that lures them like nothing else. There was one ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness—the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... mittened hands and let them fall into her lap. The awfulness of Cousin Jane's indignation transcended the poor lady's powers of description. Zora dismissed the Vicar and Cousin Jane as persons of no account. The silly pair were legally married, and she would see that there ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Sallie, and so glad to see all of you that I'm laughing at the same time," I exclaimed to save myself from the awfulness of greeting a young widow's announcement of her sorrow in such an unfeeling manner. To cover my embarrassment and still further struggles with the laugh that never seemed to be able to have itself out, I bent and hugged up one ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... it through the woods upon the left. But Fafa hesitates,—halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge orange face sink down,—sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture themselves in blackness funereal,—sees the burning behind them crimson into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the darkling path to the left. Whither is she ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... could not help remarking the calmness of Holgrave's demeanor. He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... studded with diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or studying the awfulness of the storm. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... but I think the Cavern is. In looking at the Bridge we are filled with awe; at the Cavern with delight. At the Bridge we have several views that are awful; at the Cave hundreds that are pleasing. At the Bridge you stand and gaze in astonishment; at the Cave awfulness is lost in beauty, and grandeur is dressed in a thousand captivating forms. At the Bridge you feel yourself to be looking into another world; at the Cave you find yourself already arrived there. The one presents to us a God who is very "wonderful ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... understand," she said, "how the people there fancied they heard the mermaids singing—amidst so much mystery, and with the awfulness of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... softly through the vine-latticed window and stirring its white draperies brought David to wakefulness. With the first surprise at the strangeness of his surroundings came a fluttering of memory. The fragrance of lilacs was always hereafter to bring back the awfulness ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... And think... think of the awfulness of it... it was hovering at the gates of life! It wanted to be! And I trembled.. . I suffered; at any moment I might have said the word, and it would have come. But I did not say the word... and it is gone. And now it will never come! Never... never! I have ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... after Jack Curtis. I pitied every girl who was not engaged to him. How could my sisters be happy? Resigned, content, they might be; but to be married and done for, and afterwards to meet Jack—well, imagination failed me to depict the awfulness of such ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... here God's awfulness displayed; His kindliness and mercy more appear; For flow'rs, the precious emblems He has made Of graciousness, in plenitude are here. In rich profusion blooming unconfined, They seem to ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... looks when he gives his blessing at St. Peter's; and the feeling you have when you stand by Napoleon's tomb—the awfulness of what he did and was—and being here in Switzerland, where I always feel somehow the pressure of all the past of Europe about me. Now,"—and she laughed lightly,—"I have ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... tacuisse nocet'?—of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... John Brown Patterson of Falkirk—one whom the Lord had gifted with preeminent eloquence and learning, and who was using all for his Lord, when cut off by fever. He had spoken much before his death of the awfulness of a pastor's charge, and his early death sent home the lesson to many, with the warning that the pastor's account of souls might be ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, are all in our own hearts as they were in the heart of Adam. Heaven and Hell are there. The one stands fully revealed in the triumphant Adam, who is Christ; the other is {58} exhibited in its awfulness in the disobedient ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?" Dolly resumed. "Not the slightest! He's happy ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her yashmak for a moment in order to give me a better idea of the effect which she produced by suddenly revealing the awfulness of her countenance. ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the voice seemed to draw nearer, and he could distinguish the words, "el Yanko." He, then, was the subject of that gay conversation. A moment later, from the same source, came an expression that numbed him with the awfulness of its possible meaning. "To be shot at sunrise? Poor fellow!" Could he be the "poor fellow" meant? Of course not; but then he might be. Such a summary disposition of prisoners was ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... had ceased, the wind blew as hard as ever. Still the water rose until the white foam reached almost close up to the spot on which their tent stood. A few minutes more might decide their fate. Owen felt deeply the awfulness of their situation. Ere long he and his companions might be standing in ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... the notion flashed into his mind he knew how silly it was to think of a secret chamber in the Bush. He was so paralyzed by the awfulness of the sounds that for a moment he could not move; but at last, with a mighty effort, he forced himself to dart forward in the ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering. The full awfulness of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with double knocks as of an angry postman. If he did not take that 'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that young enemy, her brute of a brother. Yet if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... day in rooms or law courts where the atmosphere was absolute poison; and using his brains with intense application, without ever allowing himself proper or sufficient relaxation. Now, will you tell me that Providence intended that this man should so labor and so suffer? Why, the very awfulness of the consequence forbids such a supposition for a moment. Or will you, perhaps, say that this dire calamity was sent upon him in order to try the fortitude, patience, and resignation of his wife, within a month of her confinement; or of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... venerableness, with a view to which these edifices seem to have been built. A new cathedral would lack the last touch to its beauty and grandeur. It needs to be mellowed and ripened, like some pictures; altho I suppose this awfulness of antiquity was supplied, in the minds of the generation that built cathedrals, by the sanctity which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... and the voice of the sea began to moan through the back of the cave, the gorse crackled no longer, and the turf burned in a dull red glow. Night with its awfulness had come down, and the boys were cut ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more 500 The voice that once waked multitudes to war Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond To the death dirge of the melancholy wind: It were a sight of awfulness to see The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 505 So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing! Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall. A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death To-day, the breathing marble glows above To decorate its memory, and tongues ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... there, on all sides of me, from one end of the valley to the other, lay dozens of bodies,—bodies of men and horses,—Highlanders and English, white-cheeked, lurid eyes, and bloody-browed,—a hotch-potch of livid, gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure of an officer with half his face shot away; and there, a horse with no head; and there—but I cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which makes me feel sick and faint. The air, that ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... once said, speaking of the heavens," said the first voice again, "'There is a size at which dignity begins; farther on there is a size at which grandeur begins; farther on there is a size at which solemnity begins; farther on a size at which awfulness begins; farther on a size at which ghastliness begins.' Surely that was written unknowingly ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the awfulness of the responsibility. It was a conscientious class, and Miss Jenny's high ideals had worked upon its sensibilities. No little girl dared to be "six." How could she know, for instance, in her reading lesson, if she had paused the exact length of a full stop ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... themselves, without any external cause; but merely to express their swinish sympathy. I suppose it is the knowledge that these four grunters are doomed to die within two or three weeks that gives them a sort of awfulness in my conception. It makes me contrast their present gross substance of fleshly life with the nothingness speedily to come. Meantime the four newly-bought pigs are running about the cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd, investigating everything, as their nature is. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Egyptian beholder and worshiper was not to be attracted and charmed, but overwhelmed. His own nothingness and the terribleness of the power and the will of God was what he was to feel. But, if the awfulness of Deity was thus inculcated, the divine power of the Pharaoh was not less strikingly set forth. He is seen seated amongst them, nourished from their breasts, folded in their arms, admitted to familiar intercourse with them. He is represented ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was reached when a woman approached and began to speak to him about his soul, and the danger of hell fire. She dilated glibly upon the awfulness of sin, and even offered to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... over the cold shining of the water, now lost again in the woods, the train sped on its wonderful way. Elizabeth on her platform at its rear was conscious of no other living creature. She seemed to be alone with the night and the vastness of the lake, the awfulness of its black and purple coast. As far as she could see, the trees on its shores were still bare; they had temporarily left the spring behind; the North seemed to have rushed upon her in its terror and desolation. She found herself imagining the storms that sweep the lake ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had ever known before. The agitation of her confessor, the tremulous eagerness of his words, the alternations of severity and tenderness in his manner to her, all struck her only as indications of the very grave danger in which she was placed, and the awfulness of the sin and condemnation which oppressed the soul of one for whom she was conscious of a deep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... at least certain bodies had been found there, and upon comparing the date when the house was hired I knew it to be the same as when the children had been in Toronto; and thus being forced to realise the awfulness of what had probably happened, I gave up trying to read the article, and saw instead the two little faces as they had looked when I hurriedly left them—felt the innocent child's kiss so timidly given, and heard again their earnest words of farewell, and realised that ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... The awfulness of sudden death and the glory of heaven stunned me! The thing that had been mystery at twilight, lay clear, pure, open in the rosy hue of dawn. Out of the gates of the morning poured a light which glorified the palaces and pyramids, purged ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... tube that contained such vast possibilities of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with a sweeter or more sonorous voice could carol the rustic lay. Even the figure assumed by Roderic, his garb, his step, his gesture had something in them of angelic and celestial without the blaze of divinity, and without the awfulness that surrounds the godlike existencies, that sometimes condescend to visit this sublunary scene. The shepherd took into his hand the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... ascent of Long's Peak could not be written at the time, I am much disinclined to write it, especially as no sort of description within my powers could enable another to realize the glorious sublimity, the majestic solitude, and the unspeakable awfulness and fascination of the scenes in which I spent Monday, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... my forehead was damp with a cold sweat, and I could hardly shake off the horror of the vision. It was ridiculous, I said to myself, and yet, even with my eyes open, I could see the white awfulness of that dead finger, as it beckoned me, shining palely in the light of ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... and half crazed the genius of Tourneur and Marston? Where in this brilliant and courteous and humane and civilized nation are the gigantic villains whose terrible features were drawn with such superb awfulness of touch by Webster and Ford? Where in this Renaissance of Italian literature, so cheerful and light of conscience, is the foul and savage Renaissance of English tragedy? Does the art of Italy tell an impossible, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... So with the dead among men: their hatred is no more to be feared, for it can harm nothing; their love is no more to be valued, for it can profit nothing; their zeal and energy are no more to be accounted of, for they can effect nothing; yea, all has come to an end forever under the sun. Oh, the awfulness of this darkness! "Then I will give," continues Ecclesiastes, "counsel for this vain life in conformity with the dense gloom of its close. Listen! Go eat with joy thy bread, and merrily drink thy wine; let never shade of sorrow mar ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... revival in almost every place he touched. He was mighty in the Scriptures, and seemed to know the Book by heart. His was no rose-water theology. He believed in a hell, and pictured it in Bible language with a vividness and awfulness that thrilled the stoutest sinner's heart; he believed in heaven, and spoke of it in such a way that it seemed that with him faith had already changed to sight. The gates of pearl, the crystal river, the ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... a grim elation, drawn irresistibly by its immensity, its awfulness. Straight towards him it came, and the lightning was dulled by its nearness and the thunder hushed. He heard a swishing, whistling sound like the shriek of a shell, and instinctively he gathered himself together for the last great shock which no human power could withstand, the shattering ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... water," he said, but Dan's luck was out this trip, and the Spring Hole proved a slimy bog "alive with dead cattle," as he himself phrased it. Three dead beasts lay bogged on its margin, and held as in a vice, up to their necks in slime and awfulness stood two poor living brutes. They turned piteous terrified eyes on us as we rode up, and then Dan and the Maluka firing in mercy, the poor heads drooped and fell and the bog with a sickening ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... her breath. It was the black place—the rope of the Canadian Indian. The awfulness—the loneliness of her despair made her whimper brokenly behind a tattered sleeve. The hag was muttering her incantations and did not ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... carefully we shall find that, while there are a great many clear proofs of the certainty and awfulness of Hell, the proofs of this theory of Everlasting Torment are not much to be depended on. Practically they can all be gathered into ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... at once an intellectual, a moral, and a religious faculty. It is the mother and mistress of faith, hope, and love. It is the source of great thoughts, of high aspirations, and of heavenly dreams. Without it the illimitable starlit expanse loses its sublimity, oceans and mountains their awfulness and majesty, flowers their beauty, home its sacred charm, youth its halo, and the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... some change in Robert's mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that were past, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands with amusement at an organ-grinder with a monkey and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... holiness by which He desires to be remembered as that is the attribute which most glorifies Him. Let us bear this fact in mind as we study this attribute of the divine nature. It is just this vision of God that we need today when the tendency to deny the reality or the awfulness of sin is so prevalent. Our view of the necessity of the atonement will depend very largely upon our view of the holiness of God. Light views of God and His holiness will produce light views of sin ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... involves some monotony of aspect; and that the possibility of a rent like that indicated in the last figure, extending itself without a check, so as to detach some vast portion of the mountain at once, would be a means of obtaining accidental forms of far greater awfulness. We find, accordingly, that the bedded structure is departed from in the central peaks; that they are in reality gifted with this power, or, if we choose so to regard it, affected with this weakness, of rending downwards throughout into vertical sheets; and that to this end they are usually ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... through, sang it atrociously—not like a poor professional, but like a pretentious amateur, a reversion to a manner of singing she had once had, but had long since got rid of. She paused at the end, appalled by the silence, by the awfulness of her ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... has ever been able to overtake them. Assured on that point, they have pillaged whatever their greed has dictated to them. Their method of attack is for all of them to land at once with a terrifying and barbaric cry, the awfulness of which strikes terror to the people as they are caught defenseless and separated and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." But I can alienate and make void every promise and title, if I will or if I do not care. This is the unique glory, and awfulness of the human will. And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good. "If God is for us who is against us?" It must be so if God's laws are his modes of aiding men ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... other person during the present century. She has given laboriously and minutely wrought pictures of plantation life. She has held up to the gaze of the world portraitures comic and serio-comic, which for the gorgeousness and awfulness of their drapery will perish only with the language in which they ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... than this vast area of rock and woodland. We can choose between sites, savage or idyllic, pastoral or grandiose, here finding a sunny glade, the very spot for a picnic, there break-neck declivities and gloomy chasms. The magnificent ruggedness of Alpine scenery is before our eyes, without the awfulness of snow-clad peaks or the blinding dazzle of glacier. In more than one place we could almost fancy that some mountain has been upheaved and split asunder, the clefts formed by these gigantic fragments being now filled with ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... occurrence of a jar or a rattle, a false quantity, a false rapture, or a bathos. And above all, or rather beneath all—for we suspect that this has been throughout the very secret of Mr. Tennyson's power—there was a hush and a reverent awe, a sense of the mystery, the infinitude, the awfulness, as well as of the mere beauty of wayside things, which invested these poems as wholes with a peculiar richness, depth, and majesty of tone, beside which both Keats's and Wordsworth's methods of handling pastoral subjects looked ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Emperor's expression was of pity only. He sank to his knees, the better to make the wounded man understand the words of comfort on his lips. For Jacqueline, the horror of it chilled her. Surely, surely, she thought, the hidden tragedy must now unmask; because of its very awfulness, it must! That the prince should be thus oblivious of such a knowledge, and yet kneeling there, made the scene ghastly ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... home, safe and free of the horrors of war, is to me a strange thing. I think it comes into the experience of most of the men who have been over there and who have been invalided out of the service. Looking back on the awfulness of the trenches and the agonies of mind and body, the sacrifice seems to fade into insignificance beside the satisfaction of having done a bit in the great and ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... making towards the spot we occupied. They were larger than geese, black, with white wings, and sailed heavily along, whilst I lay breathlessly awaiting their approach. The dogs were held down by the boy, and we all seemed equally to feel the awfulness of the moment. The birds came slowly towards us, and then slanted away to the right; and then wheeling round and round, they ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is "the struggle for power." The antithesis "good and bad" to this first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "Bad" in the master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... heretofore accustomed to the narrowness of human limits, with the lamps of neighboring tenements glimmering across the street. The house probably seemed to her adrift on the great ocean of the night. A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of nature, so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless extent. Once, while the blast was bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia's robe, with precisely the air of one who hears her own name spoken at a distance, but is unutterably ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stark, raving lunatic!" declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner interview with the outlaw, that evening. "I'd send him to military school, but I don't believe they'd take him. Do you know WHY he says all that awfulness happened?" ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Appalled by the awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs were deep and ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... long enough to go anywhere, but before I go away for good if I could tell you what you could tell to others, and make them understand how different it is from what they think, make them know the awfulness—awfulness—" ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the word 'German' was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn us from his evil companionship into the restful paths of British piety. The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often been prone to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... J.D. Kestell, who accompanied the Boer forces, gives the following striking description of the attack—a description which conveys to the mind of the reader something of the awfulness of war, as well as of the courage and heroism displayed by Boer and ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... a little at the awfulness of it; felt smaller than ever, backed away from the rim of the canyon, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... the cataract deafened us, the awfulness of the catastrophe made us dumb. We were as if stunned, and I was conscious of nothing save a sickening sense of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... was now lighted up by their flames. On, on they went, carrying havoc, terror, and confusion wherever they went; their loud explosions, added to the roar of the guns, which opened on them from the whole French squadron, increasing the awfulness of the scene. The enemy soon saw that their firing was in vain: even their boats failed to tow aside the fiery masses borne down on them by the gale. One after the other they cut their cables, and attempted to run up the harbour; but in the darkness and confusion, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... that, in the confusion of my sleepy brain, it seemed to be far more terrible than that even of the gorilla. I was mistaken in this, however, and no doubt my semi-somnolent condition tended to increase its awfulness. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... written by George Percy who sailed to Virginia with the first settlers in 1606-07, described the distress caused by seasoning and famine during the summer of 1607. The awfulness of that summer is made more dramatic by the manner in which Percy introduced the subject. Having described the voyage over, which was relatively pleasant with the stopover in the beautiful West Indian islands, and having entertained ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... in her innocent furies. But balk her in a whim, and she would pour forth the eloquence of a fish-wife or a lady of easy virtue in a pot-house quarrel. There was no human creature near her who had mind or heart enough to see the awfulness of her condition, or to strive to teach her to check her passions; and in the midst of these perilous surroundings the little virago grew handsomer and of finer carriage every hour, as if on the rank diet that fed her she ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... usual. No presentiment of the coming awfulness clouded our young mirth. I remember Dicky and Oswald had a ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... hand over his mouth and began to chide him for his awfulness, whereupon he kissed the palm of her hand and put ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... I ever saw,—unexpectedly more impressive than all the ruins of Rome. I could but merely glance at its interior; so that its noble height and venerable space, filled with the dim, consecrated light of pictured windows, recur to me as a vision. And it did me good to enjoy the awfulness and sanctity of Gothic architecture again, after so long shivering in classic porticos. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... moment by moment, as we go about our work, and often, by our cowardice, by our faithlessness, by our inconsistencies, 'deny the Lord that bought' us. It is an awful thought, and therefore do men put it away from them: 'Thou God seest me.' But it is stripped of all its awfulness, while it retains all its purifying and quickening power, when we think, as our old ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... around me without feeling that if I stirred I was a doomed man. I clambered up the lower portion of the main rigging, but only saw black, turbulent waters, hissing and heaving, and raging on every side, and seemingly stretching away into infinity. With terrible force the utter awfulness and hopelessness of my position dawned upon me, yet I did not despair. I next thought it advisable to try and slip my anchor, and let the ship drift, for I still half-fancied that perhaps I might come across my companions somewhere. Before I could free the vessel, however, the wind veered ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... ears. Poor fellow, he had met the Fate which, as he declared, walked about loose in Wambe's country. Then with an oath the remaining man sprung at the rock and clambered over it in safety. Aghast at the awfulness of what had happened, I stood still, till I saw the great blade of a Matuku spear pass up between my feet. That brought me to my senses, and I began to clamber up the rock like a cat. I was half way round it. Already I had clasped the hand of that brave girl Maiwa, who came down to help me, ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... looked down from the bridge over the river of the monks. The man passed over the bridge and I followed him; on the other side we stopped and turned round. The river was rushing and surging, the pot was boiling and roaring, and everything looked wild and savage; but the locality, for awfulness and mysterious gloom, could not compare with that on the east side of the Devil's Bridge, nor for sublimity and grandeur with that ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... happened to her! To change like that. An awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... coruscation seemed emanating from its edges. The faces of the multitude were justified. The mass above us was a train of celestial missiles, hurling toward Mars. Its contact seemed more and more imminent. I felt a nameless terror. The thought of isolation in this new world, the unknown awfulness of this planetary disturbance, the sudden extinction of the hopes that were feeding my heart with a new life, and the forecasting of the impossible agonies of universal death in this great, strange place I had so wonderfully ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket-Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's own hand; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... amusement at the expense of the demented ones. Fred and Flossy were perhaps in the wrong in causing such an upheaval in a very model household. But they were young, and the mischief had taken root before they suspected that any such danger was in existence. When the awfulness of the situation dawned upon them they looked at each other one day in the interrogative and agreed that the poisonous weed should be uprooted. But since it had grown to such proportions it was difficult to arrive at a means by ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... their impertinent if well-meant efforts. Meantime, the money-makers have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life. For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow. Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because of financial fear, partly because ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the common people, sounder judges often of true nobility than many who fancy themselves their betters. Conceive—but which of us can conceive?—His perfect tenderness, patience, sympathy, graciousness, and grace, combined with perfect strength, stateliness, even awfulness, when awe was needed. Remember that, if, again, the Gospels are to be believed. He alone, of all personages of whom history tells us, solved in His own words and deeds the most difficult paradox of human character- -to be at once ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... girl. "Shore that is Arizona. I reckon I love THIS. The heights an' depths—the awfulness of ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honour, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; oh that Thou wouldest slay them with Thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies unto it: for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that they may live unto Thee. But behold others not faultfinders, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... I can tell you. But his gift is only just eyesight, sharp as an owl's, as near as I can make it out just a grand natural animal talent, no more, no less, and prime as far as it goes, but no intellect in it, and for awfulness and marvelousness no more to be compared to what this man does than—than—Why, let me tell you what he'd have done. He'd have stepped over to Hogan's and glanced—just glanced, that's all—at the premises, and that's enough. See everything? Yes, sir, to the last little detail; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and character of those who were entertained. It is also believed that she divined their lineage from the lines and features of the face, and could discern any man's birth by sheer shrewdness of vision. When she stood and fixed the scrutiny of her gaze upon Olaf, she was stricken with the strange awfulness of his eyes, and fell almost lifeless. But when her strength came slowly back, and her breath went and came more freely, she again tried to look at the young man, but suddenly slipped and fell forward, as though distraught. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... know how it feels to be mortified? The—the awfulness—" Lila stopped and swallowed once or twice as if something stuck in her throat. "She might have told me in a different manner so as not to wound me so ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... for help, laid his ear to her heart, her lips. Then the awfulness of the shock, and of his self-reproach, the crumbling of all his hopes, became too much to bear. Consciousness left him, and when the woman of whom Louie had spoken did actually come in, a few minutes later, she found ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet highly intelligent. No doubt but that his features were capable of a vast range of expression; but, as I never saw them otherwise than beaming with benevolence, or sparkling with wit, I must refer to Master James, or Master Frank, for the description of the austerity of his frown, or the awfulness of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in hand, they entered the room on tiptoe—the darkened room where Russell was What a hush and oppression there seemed to them at first in the dim, silent chamber; what an awfulness in all the appliances which showed how long and deeply their schoolfellow had suffered. But all this vanished directly they caught sight of his face. There he lay, so calm, and weak, and still, with his bright, earnest eyes turned towards them, as though to see whether any of their ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... where an active population swarms, with the lonely barren places where the granite will not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in short, with all the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and awfulness, poesy with its renascent magic, sublime pictures, delightful ruralities,—all these are here; it is Brittany ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... while he gradually bent the Pisan down to his own uncompromising simplicity. If, as Lord Lindsay asserts, "Giotto had learned from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art," the sculptures of the Campanile of Florence would not now have stood forth in contrasted awfulness of simplicity, beside those of the south door of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... course, properly speaking, in miracles there is no distinction as to the greatness of the fact, but also by reason of the manner of the working. The voice thrown into the cave reaches the ears of the sheeted dead: 'Lazarus, come forth!' And then, in words which convey the profound impression of awfulness and solemnity which had been made upon the Evangelist, we have the picture of the man with the graveclothes wrapped about his limbs, stumbling forth; and loving hands are bidden to take away the napkin which covered his face. Perhaps the hand trembled as it was put forth, not knowing what ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... next day closed all was made plain to her, all the awfulness, all the cruel, inhuman truth of things which seemed to lose their possibility in the exaggeration of proportion which made their incongruous ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have rushed toward the vessel with a noise that was "deafening." The bark was struck flat aback, and "a roaring, white sea passed ahead." "The master, an old, experienced mariner, declared that the awfulness of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... violins of a larger growth. The pizzicato is, indeed, oftenest heard from the double-basses, where it has a much greater eloquence than on the violins. In music of a sombre cast, the short, deep tones given out by the plucked strings of the contra-bass sometimes have the awfulness of gigantic heart-throbs. The difficulty of producing the other effects grows with the increase of difficulty in handling the instruments, this being due to the growing thickness of the strings and the wideness of the points at which they must be stopped. ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... before) as being such a particularly impressive and beautiful service. I never saw anything conducted with greater decorum. Not a single fellow spoke except at the responses, which were well and audibly made, and really every fellow seemed to be really impressed with the awfulness of the ceremony, and the great wickedness of not piously receiving it, I do not know whether there will be another Sacrament here before the holidays, or whether I shall receive it with you at Feniton ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... than loved him, worshipped him, felt for him an idolatry that had something in it of pain. A number of thoughts ran through her mind swiftly. One was this: "Can it be possible that he will die some day, that he will be dead?" And the awfulness, the unspeakable horror of the death of the body gripped her and shook her in ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the centre of the Ark's floor, the whole of the Mysteries learned during the study of ages were set down in accurate writing. I read through some of them during the days which passed, and the awfulness of the Powers over which they gave control appalled me. I had seen some of these Powers set loose in Atlantis, and was a witness of her destruction. But here were Powers far higher than those; here was the great Secret of Life and Death which Phorenice also had found, and for which she ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliest of all ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the natural good and joy which the heart seeks instinctively,—if sadness, if melancholy, be the soul of its inspiration, and misery for myriads the burden of its prophecy,—I do not believe that the vast deeps of space above us would have been tinted with tender azure, hiding their awfulness; I do not believe that storms would break away into rainbows, and that the clouds of sunset would display the whole gamut of sensuous splendor; I do not believe that the ocean would wear such joy for the eye over its awful abysses; I do not believe ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the wrath is regulated by the conditions of the "covenant," the original notion (which scorns the thought of adjustment) is completely changed. What gave the thing its mysterious awfulness was precisely this: that in no way was it possible to guard against it, and that nothing could avail to counteract it. Under the pressure of Jehovah's wrath not only was sacrifice abandoned, but even ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... The awfulness of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that it would take a host of angels to proclaim ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and cast appalling shadows over the future. If the earth was full of devils and phantoms, surely hell must swarm worse with them. The Inquisition sat shrouded and enthroned in supernatural obscurity of cunning and awfulness of power, and thrust its invisible daggers everywhere. The facts men knew here around them gave credibility to the imagery in which the hereafter was depicted. The flaming stakes of an Auto da Fe around which the victims of ecclesiastical hatred writhed were but faint emblems of what awaited ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... before him the dwelling of eternal night,'—meditates on the gloomy enigmas of his future destiny. Soliloquies on this subject are numerous,—from the time of Hamlet, of Cato, and downwards. Perhaps the worst of them has more ingenuity, perhaps the best of them has less awfulness than the present. St. Dominick himself might shudder at such a question, with such an answer as this: "What if thou shouldst send me companionless to some burnt and blasted circle of the universe; which thou hast banished from ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the solemn awfulness of the place and scene oppressed her. She began to think that she, too, saw ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... as he rose from his chair, "appear to you very serious. You are overcome by their importance because you have not adequately realised the awfulness of your state in the sight of God. If you were to die now, your soul would be lost. Once you have grasped this central fact in its full significance, the rest will seem easy. I will lend you a book which I ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... terrors of a Russian winter; and her daughters, enlisted to aid in this pious work, began that career of beneficence which two of them were to pursue afterwards to such good purpose, amid the ravages of wars whose colossal awfulness dwarfed the Crimean campaign in the memories ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... in the night, in the wreck and confusion of the storm, in our loneliness without father and mother, and in the possible awfulness and change that were so near,—over there in ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... frozen image of his living self, had been in a state not far removed from stupefaction, burst out into a torrent of grief. Now that he was no longer in the presence of the dread She, his sense of the awfulness of all that had happened, and more especially of the wicked murder of Ustane, who was bound to him by ties so close, broke upon him like a storm, and lashed him into an agony of remorse and terror which was painful to witness. He cursed himself—he cursed the hour ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... I do not mean by calling these fables "paltry," to dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth; but only their want of apprehension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena introduced. So also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of observation, or his power of seizing on the main points of landscape, but I deny the power of landscape over his heart, unless when ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... The awfulness of their situation may be readily imagined. Women, delicately reared, cared for their infants beneath canvas tents, rendered habitable only by the banks of snow which lay six feet deep in the open spaces ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... leads up the glen to the waterfall. This is considered by the people here a sublime and magnificent cataract, and it is very fine in its way, and abundantly makes up in beauty for what it lacks in awfulness; it is a charming thing to look at, and listen to, and ramble about; and though it does not thunder and plunge and roar, like Niagara, it glads the hearts of all who behold it—it manufactures quite as radiant bows in the sunshine, and makes soft, musical, lulling sounds enough to ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... completely proof against the horrible sight of death and devastation. But the scenes which were being enacted around him in the comparatively narrow space of the magnificent flagship during this engagement, far surpassed in their awfulness everything that he had hitherto seen. Heideck was full of admiration for the heroic courage, contempt of death, and discipline of officers and men, not one of whom stirred a foot from ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... approval—came before long under her mighty sway. The pianoforte threw a spell over him, and, attracting him more and more, inspired him with such a fondness as to induce his parents to provide him, notwithstanding his tender age, with an instructor. To lessen the awfulness of the proceeding, it was arranged that one of the elder sisters should join him in his lessons. The first and only pianoforte teacher of him who in the course of time became one of the greatest and most ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... had something in his own experience which he considered just as sensational as that. Far from philosophizing on the treatment accorded Nelson, some of the boys made his misfortunes serve to emphasize the reckless awfulness of their own careers, the uncertainty of which was a source of pride and self-congratulation. There are bank-fools who take delight in the very unsubstantiality of their occupation; instead of treating their avocation with the seriousness one's life-work deserves, they look ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... mighty animal—a terrible animal. He is but little larger than his cousin of the lesser, lower hills; but he makes up for it in the awfulness of his ferocity and in the length and thickness of his shaggy coat. It was his coat ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Life from a loftier height than he had ever before attained. Thus he sensed, as never before, the bigness, the fullness, the grandness, the awfulness, of Life. And so the man became very humble with a proud humbleness. He became very proud with a humble pride. He became even ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... to have seen her finest mind carried away and lost to her, but it is a mortification which more confident and peremptory systems than hers have had to undergo; the parting was not without its compensations if only that it brought home so keenly to many the awfulness and the seriousness of truth; and surely never did any man break so utterly with a Church, who left so many sympathies behind him and took so many with him, who continued to feel so kindly and with such large-hearted justice to those from whom his changed position separated ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... by the "initiates" and the "candidates" in symbolic sacrifices and purifications.[*] On one of these days the arch priest, the "Hierophant," has preached a manner of sermon at the Painted Porch in the Agora setting forth the awfulness and spiritual efficacy of these Mysteries, sacred to Demeter the Earth Mother, to her daughter Persephone, and also to the young Iacchus, one of the many incarnations of Dionysus, and who is always associated at Elusis with the divine "Mother and Daughter." The great cry has gone forth ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... own Son,' point to a community of nature, to a uniqueness and singleness of relation, to a closeness of intimacy, to which no other is a parallel. And so we have to estimate the measure of the surrender by the tenderness and awfulness of the bond. 'Having one Son, His well-beloved, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... pricking sensation which I now felt in my brain, a sensation exactly like that of June, 1900, led me to believe that I might again be thrown out of touch with the world I had so lately regained. Realizing the awfulness of that fate, I redoubled my efforts to effect my rescue. Shortly after midnight I did succeed in gaining the attention of the night watch. Upon entering my room he found me flat on the floor. I had fallen from the bed and ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... The awfulness of their surroundings and the enormity of his responsibility, came upon Harvey with overwhelming force. He was too horrified for speech, and, for a few ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... echoed their own. The monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI) falling in at such a crisis trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness—the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester |
