"Fierce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the active members of the victorious party were sufficiently excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have thanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to me—who have been a calm and curious observer, as well in victory as defeat—that this fierce and bitter spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that of the Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as a general rule, because they need them, and because the practice of many years has made it the law ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could not lift his head. He was abject, crushed. He dared not show his swollen, blackened face. His fierce, cramped posture revealed more than his features might have shown; it betrayed the torturing shame of a man of pride and passion, a man who had been confronted in his degradation by the woman he had dared to enshrine in his heart. It betrayed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... over her prayers. Filled with unforgiving bitterness against her mother she had asked God to forgive her, scarcely deeming her fault one to be repented of. A brief struggle against the memory of bitter ill-usage and fierce wrong inflicted by her mother, and Mary drew a deep free breath. Her eyes filled, and meekly folding her hands she ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... monster, the one showing its head and body, the other its tail. Before being placed on the gables a sacrifice had been offered and the carvings had been smeared with blood—in other words, to express the thought of the Dayak, as this antoh is very fierce when aroused to ire, it had first been given blood to eat, in order that it should not be angry with the owner of the house, but disposed to protect him from his enemies. While malevolent spirits do not associate with good ones, some which usually are beneficent ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... mountains we blundered on a bear's den with two cubs in it. They were old enough to be playful and young enough not to be fierce or dangerous. I was for carrying them off, but Hedulio said that if the mother returned before we were well on our way home she would certainly catch us before we could reach a place of safety and we ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... occasion of greater violence in his struggle than before. He is as heroically obstinate in his resolution to succeed as the assailant or defender of some critical battle-field; he is unflagging and fierce in an effort which cannot lead to anything beyond itself. When, then, in like manner, you have once resolved that certain religious doctrines shall be indisputably true, and that all men ought to perceive their truth, you have engaged in an undertaking which, though continued ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... fellow to trembling visibly, and Polly again said "Lawr!" loud enough for him to hear it and give her one fierce glance ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... town. Little dark alley-ways, very narrow, climbing steeply between two rows of silent, mysterious houses whose roofs touch to make a tunnel. Low doorways and small windows, opaque and barred, and then, to right and left, little shops within whose deep shade fierce "Teurs" with piratical faces, glittering eyes and gleaming teeth, smoke their hookahs and converse in low tones, as if planning some wicked deed.... To say that Tartarin walked through this fearsome township unmoved would be to lie. He was on the contrary moved ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... a good and pretty woman, attentive to her household duties and very submissive to her husband, though she could not have loved him, for he was anything but amiable. He was obstinate and fierce in his manner, and when he dined at home he made a point of not leaving the table before he was drunk; out of his own house he was temperate to the extent of not drinking anything but water. His wife carried her obedience so far as to serve as his model for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... words, and they roused him to fury. He rushed at Roger, who, implicitly obedient, only dodged to let him pass, and again confronted him, engaging his attention until help arrived. He was, however, by this time so fierce and violent, that Roger felt ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... far down in the lower depths. Ashton's knees were beginning to tremble with weakness. They had brought no water, for they were descending to the river. The torment of thirst was added to the torment of his hate. He began to look with fierce eagerness for the opportunity to do his work—to accomplish the deed for which he had descended into this inferno. Then he could go up again, out of the roaring, reverberating hell about him, away from the burning hell ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... eyes strayed to Kirk with a look that made his blood move quicker. It boded well for the success of his plans, and filled him with a fierce, hot gladness. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... right arm, and the sight of the knife fully exposed, gave the impetus needed to galvanise Mrs. Dalton's nerves into sudden and fierce activity. Without a thought for her own danger, she sprang into the room and flung herself upon the Indian, clasping him round the waist and holding him back as in ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... in the year 1745-6. He was now sixty-two years of age, hale, and well proportioned, with a manly countenance, tanned by the weather, yet having a ruddiness in his cheeks, over a great part of which his rough beard extended. His eye was quick and lively, yet his look was not fierce, but he appeared at once firm and good-humoured. He wore a pair of brogues, tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare, a purple camblet kilt, a black waistcoat, a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord, a yellowish bushy wig, a large blue ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... as an idealized sheikh (with one important exception, Gen. xiv., see below), about whose person a number of stories have gathered. As the father of Isaac and Ishmael, he is ultimately the common ancestor of the Israelites and their nomadic fierce neighbours, men roving unrestrainedly like the wild ass, troubled by and troubling every one (xvi. 12). As the father of Midian, Sheba and other Arabian tribes (xxv. 1-4), it is evident that some degree of kinship was felt by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... irate swan pater-familias, who had hurried out from the alders, to see what business we meant by coming at that time of night so near the domain of Mrs Swan and her cygnet progeny. We were both much amused at the fierce air with which he advanced, as if to eat us all up; and then, his precipitate retreat, on getting wetted so unceremoniously. He turned tail at once; and, propelling himself away with vigorous strokes of his webbed sculls, made the water foam from his prow-like curving ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Jethro looked on with great interest, for they had seen painted on the walls representations of these fights between boatmen, which were of common occurrence, the Egyptians being a very combative race, and fierce feuds being often carried on for a long time between neighboring villages. The men were armed with poles some ten feet in length, and about an inch and a half in diameter, their favorite weapons on occasions of this kind. The boats had now come in close contact, and a furious battle ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... a great difference in opinion regarding the advisability of telling fairy stories to very young children, and there can be no question that some of them are entirely undesirable and inappropriate. Those containing a fierce or horrible element must, of course, be promptly ruled out of court, including the "bluggy" tales of cruel stepmothers, ferocious giants and ogres, which fill the so-called fairy literature. Yet those which are pure in tone and gay with fanciful coloring may surely be told occasionally, if ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Stephen Frenelle and Dick Farrington alone in the middle of the room. The attitude of the two left no doubt as to the cause of the disturbance. With clenched fists they faced each other as if about to engage in a fierce struggle. The former's eyes glowed with an intense light, while his strained, white face betokened the ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... and Lyster was taken aback at the fierce straightening of the brows and the strange tone in which the words were uttered. The older man could not but see his surprised look, for he recovered himself, and dropped his hand in the old familiar way on ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... fitted into an interspace in the opposite row. These teeth, as Mr. Darwin suggests, were used in the combats of the males. His forehead was no doubt low and retreating, with bony bosses underlying the shaggy eyebrows, which gave him a fierce expression, something like that of the gorilla. But already, in all likelihood, he had learned to walk habitually erect, and had begun to develop a human pelvis, as well as to carry his head more straight on his shoulders. That some such animal must have existed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of his footsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who had solemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent on gratifying his own fierce lust, and ready with unchecked sensualism to trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose very name made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses almost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not only wife and children ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... rode up the hill that night towards his ruined castle, the flush of fierce excitement and triumphant struggle died away, and self-reproach and miserable doubt struck into him like ague. For the death of Twemlow—as he supposed—he felt no remorse whatever. Him he had shot in furious combat, and as a last necessity; the fellow had twice insulted him, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... anger, and with what fierce resentment, I watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me—and with what despair too. But even in that moment I was conscious of two facts—I now knew that yonder was the probable murderer of both Phillips and Crone, and that ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... gate," said Edith, "and prove your sincerity. Open it, and efface these marks," she cried, as she indignantly held up her right hand, and showed her wrist, all black from the fierce grasp in which Mowbray had seized it. "Open it, and I promise you I will listen patiently to all that you may have ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... the morn will blush to hear Our tardy greeting [descending.] Gently, winds, I pray ye, Breathe through this grove; and thou, all-radiant sun, Woo not these bowers beloved with kiss too fierce. Oh! look, my ladies, how yon beauteous rose, O'er charged with dew, bends its fair head to earth, Emblem of sorrowing virtue! [to Inis] would'st thou break it? See'st not its silken leaves are stain'd with tears? Ever, my Inis, where thou find'st these ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... back from the walls, repeating itself. The sound was broken among the pillars, came confusedly to the listening ears. The waters stirred uneasily, sucking at the walls and the pillars with a kind of fierce intensity. Her hand sought his arm, caught it, ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... known, Which man can solely call his own In which no creature goes his half; Unless it be to squint and laugh? 470 I do confess, with goods and land, I'd have a wife at second-hand; And such you are. Nor is 't your person My stomach's set so sharp and fierce on; But 'tis (your better part) your riches, 475 That my enamour'd heart bewitches. Let me your fortune but possess, And settle your person how you please: Or make it o'er in trust to th' Devil; You'll find me reasonable and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Dona Maruja, that is unworthy of your father, of your mother, of YOU!" he gesticulated, in a fierce whisper. "I, Pereo, do not spy. I follow, follow the track of the prowling, stealing brute until I run him down. Yes, it was I, Pereo, who warned your father he would not be content with the half of the land he stole! It ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... my relative's, listening to the spit of the waves on the window-panes and the grumble of the tide, that rocked the land I lay in till I could well fancy it was a ship. Through the closes the wind ever stalked like something fierce and blooded, rattling the iron snecks with an angry finger, breathing beastily at the hinge, and running back a bit once in a while to leap all the harder against groaning lintel ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the sandalwood traders, who worked chiefly in Erromanga. They were not satisfied with buying the valuable wood from the natives, but tried to get directly at the rich supplies inland. Naturally, they came into conflict with the natives, and fierce wars arose, in which the whites fought with all the weapons unscrupulous cruelty can wield. As a result, the population of Erromanga has decreased from between 5000 and 10,000 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... wealth, family and position. Conceding then that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce storms of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that stands forth in the poems is everywhere present in all essential features in the letters. We have in the latter the same view of life, present and future; the same fierce contentment with honest poverty; the same aggressive independency of manhood; the same patriotism, susceptibility to female loveliness, love of sociality, undaunted likes and dislikes. The humour is the same, though often too elaborately ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... admire the strange colours drawn by the sunlight from the sea-soaked wilderness, the deep brown, the strange purple, the faint pink of the distant sands. But it was none of these which my eyes sought with such fierce eagerness. It was none of the artist's fervour which turned my limbs into dead weights, which drew the colour even from my lips, and set my heart beating with fierce quick throbs. Half in the creek and half out, not a dozen yards from the road, was the figure of a man. His ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that made him run with the speed of the wind toward the place where the noise arose. Buttons and Dick were surrounded by a crowd of fierce-looking men, who were making very threatening demonstrations. There were at least fifteen. As the Senator ran up from one direction, so came up Mr. Figgs and the ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... use in the winter, when the great colds come, and the fierce winds rage. But you, messieurs, who live so much in the forest, will, of course, prefer to keep them wide ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... burned instantly on the young man's face, and fierce anger shot from his eyes. But the one who had spoken so sharply fixed upon him a look of withering contempt, and riding close up to the carriage, handed him his card, remarking coldly, ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... had just loomed into view dimly through the trees, and the wolves, almost upon their expected prey, were sounding the wild, fierce cry of triumph, when another pack, like phantoms in the forest shadows, coming from the direction of the cabin, swept down past Skipper Ed and the boys, suddenly breaking forth as they ran into a fierce howl ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... that followed, the attacking party outdistanced the ladder-bearers. This caused a brief delay, during which the foremost files of the column were exposed to a fierce fire; but no one wavered. Very soon the ladders were brought, officers and men dropped down into the ditch, and away they all went, racing up the opposite slope and ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... of the assault directed against his own person, the Spanish commander retreated down the slope of the hill, still defending himself as he could with sword and buckler, when his foot slipped and he fell. The enemy set up a fierce yell of triumph, and some of the boldest sprang forward to despatch him. But Pizarro was on his feet in an instant, and, striking down two of the foremost with his strong arm, held the rest at bay till his ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... at me as if I'd insulted him, and I could anticipate some reply to the effect that he was not applying for domestic service. But the humble supplicant rather than the proud and fierce hill man won. He started to pick up the ash tray from ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... of a world where all was fear and sadness. The stories she heard in her childhood were stories of that fierce war which was reaching its disastrous close while she was in her cradle. She was told of the happy peaceful England of old, before darkness and confusion gathered over the land; before the hearts of the people were set against their King by a wicked ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... fellow, perfectly well made, with straight strong limbs, not too large, tall, and well shaped; and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of an European in his countenance too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... and constant pleasure from the undisturbed possession of this place of promenade during my whole sojourn.... Often, when my mind had been distracted with anxious cares, I had literally waited down its excitement and anguish in my fierce and rapid movements to and fro, over its smooth painted floor, the daily care of Sylphy, who might be heard in the hot season busily employed in refreshing it with mop and broom and water during the first hours of the morning, the pleasant, dewy freshness of which operation might be felt gratefully ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a tender subject with Miss Grey. She could not bear to disturb by a word the harmless illusion of her friend, and yet the almost fierce truthfulness of her nature would not allow her to murmur a sentence of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... dreadful needle-pointed public pen at the dreadful sand-strewn public table: implements that symbolised for Strether's too interpretative innocence something more acute in manners, more sinister in morals, more fierce in the national life. After he had put in his paper he had ranged himself, he was really amused to think, on the side of the fierce, the sinister, the acute. He was carrying on a correspondence, across the great city, quite in the key of the Postes et Telegraphes ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and here and there, as the engine puffed through the pine forests, dense columns of smoke rising from the woods near the railway lines alarmed all who beheld, and warned the neighbouring peasants to dig trenches, which alone could stay the fierce flames, rapidly gathering force, that ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... noses given— Even conflicts national took place, Among old Bytown's youthful race. Why not? for children bigger grown I rave sometimes down the gauntlet thrown For cause as small, and launch'd afar The fierce and fiery bolts of war, Simply to find out which was best. Caesar or Pompey by the test. In those past combats "rich and rare" Luke Cuzner always had his share. For Luke in days of auld lang syne Did most pugnaciously incline, Never to ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... to win her, it behoved him, therefore, to be cautious, and, as she put it very plainly, to humor her. After the wedding day all the self-restraint which he must at present exhibit might be withdrawn. His feelings for Bet contained a curious mixture of anger and fierce admiration. It never occurred to him for a moment even to try to make her a good husband; but get her he would—oh, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... shouts and sounds rose from the water; the bow of the second canoe had been stove in, and she also had sunk to the water level; a fierce fight was going on between several of the Malays; the chief, who was being supported by two of his crew, was shouting furiously; and others of his men, in obedience to his orders, were diving under water. Harry turned to the gunboat, and called to the men ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... 'e be deceived that way. 'Gird 'e wi' sackcloth, lament and howl; for the fierce anger o' the Lard is not turned back from us.' Three months o' righteousness is a purty bad set off 'gainst twenty years o' sin, an' it doan't become 'e to feel hopeful, I ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... amorous as a lover or terrible as a warrior and soldado; whether he will have his crates cut low like a juniper bush, or his subercles taken away with a razor; if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed, or his moustachios fostered to turn about his ears like vine tendrils, fierce and curling, or cut down to the lip with the Italian lash?—and with every question a snip of the scissors and a bow." If a poor man entered the shop he was polled for twopence, and was soon trimmed around like a cheese, and dismissed with ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... of Finsbury. Not for mere theatrical pageant do they carry those heavy axes and tough spears. Those bossed targets are not for festival show; those buff jackets, covered with metal scales, have been tested before now by Norsemen's ponderous swords and the hatchets of the fierce Jutlanders. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... grandeur. One little life in all that desert of snow and ice. And what a life. The poor wretch was swathed in furs; snow-shoes on his feet, and a long staff lent his drooping figure support. His whole attitude told its own tale of exhaustion. But a closer inspection, one glance into the fierce-burning eyes, which glowered from the depths of two cavernous sockets, would have added a sequel of starvation. The eyes had a frenzied look in them, the look of a man without hope, but with still that instinct ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... through Of forests with the iron veins Of industry. Would I could make you see How these, laboriously, These founders of New England, every hour Faced danger, death, and misery, Conquering the wilderness; With supernatural power Changing its features; all its savage glower Of wild barbarity, fierce hate, duress, To something human, something that could bless Mankind with peace and lift its heart's elation; Something at last that stood For universal brotherhood, Astonishing the world, a mighty Nation, Hewn from the solitude.— Iron of purpose as of faith and daring, And of ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein
... was heavy enough for them to drag to their daily toil. Among these were some with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, whose weary pilgrimage was evidently drawing to a close; but all, whether strong or weak, fierce or subdued, were made to tramp smartly up the steep street, being kept up to the mark by drivers, whose cruel whips cracked frequently on the shoulders of the lagging ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of the letters ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... over every thing, tropic birds in their branches, and she, her hair disheveled, her face pale, one arm—her left—hanging down, ripped and bleeding, trickling a thick stream of rich, red blood. On the floor was a pool of blood, fierce, scarlet, like some rich cloth, already turning ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... then raging between old England and old France, and between New England and New France. The vast region of North America, stretching far into the interior and southwest from Canada to Louisiana, had for three years past been the scene of fierce hostilities between the rival nations, while the savage Indian tribes, ranged on the one side and on the other, steeped their moccasins in the blood of French and English colonists, who, in their turn, became as fierce, and carried ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with the masses of the Apennines. Its inhabitants, the Samnites, were of Sabine origin, as has been already mentioned, and they settled in the country at a comparatively late period. They were one of the most warlike races in Italy, and carried on a long and fierce struggle with ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... Spain and England, two brothers of Senor Emperan, both of whom commanded ships in the Spanish navy, engaged with each other before the port of Cadiz, each supposing that he was attacking an enemy. A fierce battle was kept up during a whole night, and both the vessels were sunk almost simultaneously. A very small part of the crew was saved, and the two brothers had the misfortune to recognize each other ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Fierce discussions have raged over these opinions, and numerous works have been written to uphold the theories. The first of them remained popular for a very long time. It originated from the etymology of the word ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Elsa is a puzzle. She has always been one to me. I have been with her since her babyhood; and yet I know as little of what goes on in her mind as a stranger would. Her father, you know, was a soldier, of fierce loves and hates; her mother was a handsome statue. Elsa has her father's scorn for convention and his independence, clothed in her mother's impenetrable mask. Don't mistake me. Elsa is the most adorable creature to me, and I worship her; but I worry about her. I believe that it would be ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... away, toward the Hermosa mountains looming sharp and jagged in the fierce afternoon sunlight, and he saw her lips tremble. Then, as if her will caught and held them, the movements ceased with a little inrush of breath. He lowered his voice and made it very kindly and sympathetic as he leaned toward her and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... comes for trial, your newspapers comment upon it, and your friends spread reports and insinuations. What will result? why, an immense fall in public estimation for our adversary suspected of stealing a name which does not belong to him! What will result? why, the opportunity for a fierce challenge in the Chamber." ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the hearth, where an unusually fierce fire was banked up under a big black kettle, which sent a thin wreath of steam from its spout, but seemed otherwise to ignore the action of the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... a forecast of the struggle of the Church with the world till the cup of the world's iniquity is full and the day of its doom is come. The book appears to have been written on the occurrence of some fierce persecution at the hands of the civil power, and its object to confirm and strengthen the Church in her faith and patience by a series of visions, culminating in one of the Lamb seated on the throne of the universe as a pledge that all His slain ones ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... feelings contradict this observation of the resigned and unhappy sufferer; we look to death, under such an aspect, as the approach of rest; but human nature shrinks from the violent struggle, the momentary but fierce convulsion, plunging us, as it were, into the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the world from whom all Princes of Europe hold their sceptres," and was held "to be a greater prophet than Moses or John Baptist, even Jesus Christ, who was come with his fan in his hand to judge the world." Fuller says that Hacket was of so "cruel and fierce a nature that he is reported to have bit off and eat down the nose ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... thought it might be the second boat which had been loosened somehow during the fierce battle on deck. But when Ralph rose and looked around, the mate recognized the lad ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... positively upon your word of honour never to mention to any one that I went to this meeting at the Old King's Head, or, in fact, that I knew anything about it. I especially could wish that it be not mentioned to the Earl of Byerdale; for I know that he is a very fierce and vindictive man, and I do not wish to put myself in his power, just at present, above all times. Nobody on earth knows it but you and the people engaged in the affair, whose mouths are stopped, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... truth! Some little time ago you said it was wrong for me to shut out from my sight, my heart, my soul, the ugly side of Nature. I have remedied that fault! I am looking at the ugly side of Nature now,—in myself! The rebellious side—the passionate, fierce, betrayed side! I trusted you with the safety of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... dressed in the European costume, though some few were in their native blankets, which they wear with grace and even dignity. The men were of fine physique—tall, strong, and well-made—and, looking at their keen fierce eyes, I do not wonder that they have given our soldiers so much trouble. I could not help thinking, as I saw them hanging about the drinking-shops, some half drunk, that English drink will in the long run prove their conquerors far more than ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... useless after the discovery, and that her hour was come; she therefore lifted the cup to her withered lip, and was just going to fulfil her destiny and to drink, when I dashed it out of her hand, and broke it in a thousand pieces on the floor, darting, at the same time, a fierce look at Carlotta, who threw herself at my feet, which she fervently kissed in an agony ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... next morning, a rattling fire of musketry along the whole line of piquets made every one spring to his arms; and we remained looking as fierce as possible until daylight, when each side was seen expecting an attack, while the piquets were blazing at one another without any ostensible cause: it gradually ceased, as the day advanced, and appeared to have been occasioned by a patrole of dragoons getting ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... kingdom of Naples. Sicily was conquered by his brother, Count Roger, who, with a few Northmen, routed vast numbers of the Saracens and completed the subjection of the island, after thirty years of war. Meantime his brother Robert crossed the Adriatic and besieged and took Durazzo, after a fierce battle, in which the Scandinavian soldiers of the Greek Emperor fought with the Normans descended ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Bedevere, loved his uncle passing well. He sought his kinsfolk and friends, and gathered to his fellowship some three hundred men. This company wore helmet and hauberk and brand, and rode fair destriers, fierce and right speedy. Hiresgas ordered his house for the battle. "Come now with me," said he to his friends, "and crave the price of blood." Hiresgas drew near that place where Bocus, King of the Medians, displayed his banner. When Hiresgas beheld ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... that should combine your snow-white wrists, Are these which shall adorn your milk-white necks. The private cells, where you shall end your lives, Is Italy, is Europe—nay, the world. Th' Euxinian Sea, the fierce Sicilian Gulf, The river Ganges and Hydaspes' stream Shall level lie, and smooth as crystal ice, While Fulvia and Cornelia pass thereon. The soldiers, that should guard you to your deaths, Shall be five thousand gallant youths of Rome, In purple robes cross-barr'd with pales of gold, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... pleasures in life were as nothing to the fierce joy he knew when, with a dozen men clinging to the hand-rails, the captain pulling the bell-rope and Lannigan, far up above them all, swaying on the lines, the Gray Horse Truck swept up Broadway to ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... not waste too much time over it, Captain. But what is this fierce wind?" added the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... face. My dog is as tame as his master (in whose veins flows the blood of the old cavemen). But time has not tamed fire. Fire is as wild a thing as when Prometheus snatched it from the empyrean. Fire in my grate is as fierce and terrible a thing as when it was lit by my ancestors, night after night, at the mouths of their caves, to scare away the ancestors of my dog. And my dog regards it with the old wonder and misgiving. Even in his sleep he opens ever and again ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... whirled the scythed car, And the fierce matrons raised the shriek of war, Light forms beneath transparent muslin float, And tutor'd voices swell the artful note; Light-leaved acacias, and the shady plane, And spreading cedars grace the ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... hath no share, Only a coulter that parteth fair; But the ridges they rise To a terrible size Or ever the coulter comes near to tear: The horses and ridges fierce battle make; The horses are safe, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... impressions recurred to her of another kind—of a sensitive, almost fierce delicacy—a shrinking from the ugly or merely physical facts of life, as of one who had suffered some torment in ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... party still remained at the fountain, Rodomont came up with Mandricardo and Doralice, and all engaged in a fierce battle, which was at last interrupted by Malagigi, who, versed in wizard arts, conjured a demon into Doralice's horse so that it ran away; and Rodomont and Mandricardo, frightened by her screams, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... by Thorward when they faced the rapid the second time, and fierce was the struggle of the men when in it, and anxious was Tyrker to redeem his error—so anxious, in fact, that he missed another stroke and well-nigh ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... honesty. Pious talk very frequently is the haze in which an avaricious and greedy soul hides itself. Bluff, bluster, and boasting are the sops which the coward throws to his own vanity, while the quietest, sweetest, and gentlest tones often sheath the fierce heart of the born fighter, as a velvet glove is said to clothe a hand ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... soldiers, but from rebel Southern women, who, though perhaps wealthier and in more exalted social position than those whom they scorned, had not their tenderness of heart or their real refinement. Indeed it would be difficult to find in history, even among the fierce brutal women of the French revolution, any record of conduct more absolutely fiendish than that of some of the women of the South during the war. They insisted on the murder of helpless prisoners; in some instances shot them in cold blood themselves, besought their lovers and husbands to bring ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Celts. The forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political influence in their respective counties, for the representation of which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. The abolition of this franchise by the Emancipation Act made that measure a grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to increase them so long as they served their political purpose. It was one ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... is such frequency of intercourse among neighbours as is sufficient to enforce them. And there are many reasons why a man should prefer his own way of speaking to that of others, unless by so doing he becomes unintelligible. The struggle for existence among words is not of that fierce and irresistible kind in which birds, beasts and fishes devour one another, but of a milder sort, allowing one usage to be substituted for another, not by force, but by the persuasion, or rather by the prevailing habit, of a majority. The favourite figure, in this, as in ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... slowly. "She keeps making a excuse about Teddy to come over and see me. Last night 'e talked about making a 'ole in the water to celebrate 'Melia Kybird's wedding, and she came over and sat in that chair and cried as if 'er 'art would break. After she'd gone Teddy comes over, fierce as a eagle, and wants to know wot I've been saying to 'is mother to make 'er cry. Between the two of 'em I 'ave a nice life ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Miss Agnew, who was the ambassadress in such affairs of diplomacy. But while disapproving of some of his worldly ways, and convinced that she had too much indulged his childhood, the old lady loved him with all the intensity of the strange fierce lioness nature, which only one or two had ever had a glimpse of. And when (December 5th, 1871) she died, trusting to see her husband again—not to be near him, not to be so high in heaven but content if she might only see him, she said—her son was left "with a surprising ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... not changed, but his gray eyes flashed one bright, fierce glance at Mollie, that said, plainly as words, "I will have revenge for this insult as sure as my name ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... whirlpool, and before they could prevent the dying and wounded and rescuing were all caught by the fatal suction. Then the Sioux warriors rushed in from all sides, upstream, down the bluff from west prairie, and over the Corral, and slaughtered every Kickapoo here. Their fierce yells and the shrieks of the squaws and pappooses, the pounding of horses' hoofs in the stampede of hundreds of ponies, the roar of the river, the wrath of the storm made a scene this old Corral will ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... was that he could vary his spirit to the different characters he acted. Those wild impatient starts, that fierce and flaming fire, which he threw into Hotspur, never came from the unruffled temper of his Brutus (for I have more than once seen a Brutus as warm as Hotspur) when the Betterton Brutus was provoked, in his dispute with Cassius, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... spectacle, a truly noble subject for a painter. At the other end of the field a fine-looking youth was driving a magnificent team of four pairs of young oxen, through whose somber coats glanced a ruddy, glow-like name. They had the short, curry heads that belong to the wild bull, the same large, fierce eyes and jerky movements; they worked in an abrupt, nervous way that showed how they still rebelled against the yoke and goad, and trembled with anger as they obeyed the authority so recently imposed. They ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... "So wills the fierce, avenging sprite, Till blood for blood atones! Ay, though he's buried in a cave, And trodden down with stones, And years have rotted off his flesh— The world ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... were welcomed as allies of the Spanish power. The people were impressed by their zeal, piety, and disinterestedness, and in the Southern provinces they were able to bear away a victory after a fierce fight with Calvinism. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... of the fusion ticket.[593] It was a formidable combination of elements. Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately—now it met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious passion. Greeley pronounced it "a struggle as intense, as vehement, and as energetic, as had ever been known," in New York.[594] Yet Thurlow Weed's confidence never wavered. "The fusion leaders have largely increased their fund," he wrote Lincoln, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... cast a doubt upon my courage, and say that I shirked a meeting with you when we were young men. Our relationship and our age ought to prevent us from having recourse to such murderous follies" (Mr. Will started up, looking fierce and relieved), "but I give you notice, that though I can afford to overlook lies against myself, if I hear from you a word in disparagement of my brother, Colonel Warrington, of the Continental Army, I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did I imagine I should revert to such ingratitude, and in so brief a time. Julian, in his most impious moods, could not express himself more impiously than myself. To gloat over thoughts of hatred, or fierce revenge, when smarting under the scourge of heaviest calamity, instead of flying to religion as a refuge, renders a man criminal, even though his cause be just. If we hate, it is a proof of rank pride; and where is the wretched mortal that dare stand up and declare in the face of Heaven, his ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... herds of black-and white-tail deer and the large gray wolf. Coyotes about the size of a shepherd dog would assemble on the high bluffs or invade the camp and make night hideous by their continuous and almost perfect imitation of a human baby's cry, making sleep impossible. The prairie dog, the fierce rattlesnake, and the beautiful little white burrowing-owl, occupied the same hole in the ground, making a queer family combination. Contrary to the belief of all dwellers and travelers of the plains in ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... who has not been through it can understand how heartbreaking all this is to the preacher and how wearing on his human nerves. There have been times when I should have been almost willing to see William lose patience and expend about two pages of fierce Plutonian vocabulary on some old stumbling-block in the church. But he never did. And it will serve them right if the ten thousand prayers he made, asking God to soften their obdurate hearts, are registered against them somewhere in the debit column ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... That e'en if death's fell scythe[FN8] was here, If mountains should oppose my path Like two fierce foes[FN9] who block the way, Yet will I fight all these combined And risk all else to gain my end, And whether it be life or death I'll ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... evidence of deliberate calculation of effect. That book is at once curiously like and curiously unlike Borrows' Bible in Spain. The two belong to the same period and, in a sense, to the same fashion. Each combines a tantalizing personal charm with a strong, almost fierce, coloring of circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas Borrow stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of a good deal of fighting during the Civil Wars. On January 1st, 1642, in the dead of night, Sir John Byron's regiment had a sharp encounter with two hundred dragoons of the Parliamentary forces. A fierce struggle took place round the market cross, during which Sir John Byron was wounded in the face with a poleaxe. Cromwell's soldiers, however, were routed and driven out ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... without hope, which growing more envenomed from year to year, took him, while yet young, from those who loved him, and laid him in his still grave. As in the fair form of some beautiful victim, the marks of the grasping claws of the fierce bird of prey which has destroyed it, may be found; so, in the productions of which we have just spoken, the traces of the bitter sufferings which devoured his ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... would at the same time reveal to us new forms of beauty, new possibilities of pleasure on every side: and—to take a single instance—the emotions to which the sight of Niagara now appeals might then be gratified by a contemplation of the fierce grandeur of some sun's chromosphere or the calmer glories of its corona.' That satisfies, does it not?" she added, with a sigh. "It suggests such ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... they to the battle; Their bright hair blazed behind, As deadlier than the bolt they fell, And swifter than the wind. And all the stellar continents, With that fierce hail thick sown, Recoiled with fear, from sphere to sphere ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... cycles would prove so far tamed as to have outgrown fightings and revolutions. Cultured modern history, like Nature, would refuse to proceed per saltum. Yet the hundred years since gone by have brought wars as fierce, "leaps" of government as tremendous, as any century in the past. It is this same fair France that has contributed more than her share of them, and the Fall of the Second Empire was one of the most dramatic. The world is not, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the bank at full speed, he scrambled out on the barge and seized her by the arms. The struggle was brief, but fierce. With a cry of despair, she sank face downward on the coal and ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... "It's awful queer, her looking like that, too, in that crazy rig! Well, I'm glad she's gone, fer she was so awful queer it was jest fierce. She talked religion a lot to the girls, and then they laughed at her behind her back; and they kep' a telling me I'd be a missionary 'fore long if she stayed with us. I went to Mr. Wray, the manager, and told him my cousin was awfully shy, and ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... cries of men, and the unearthly yells of the savages, mingled in horrible confusion. It was evident to the appalled listeners that a fearful Indian massacre had commenced. They had seen Mrs. Grant fall; had seen the fierce Lean Bear tomahawk and ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... a man of low intellect, of a fierce countenance, a saucy, swaggering, insolent manner, debauched in his morals beyond the grossness of that indecent age,—ostentatiously living in public concubinage,—a notorious swearer in public ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... "Attila, my Attila!" But I saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested," in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little, deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I saw him and his men profiting by the strange ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... wrote with the same freedom as they acted." [111] This diminutive stature of mankind, if we pursue the metaphor, was daily sinking below the old standard, and the Roman world was indeed peopled by a race of pygmies; when the fierce giants of the north broke in, and mended the puny breed. They restored a manly spirit of freedom; and after the revolution of ten centuries, freedom became the happy parent of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon |
