"Literally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of repugnance, Kathleen pulled the flowers off and before her father could interfere, opened the door and tossed the bouquet into the street. "Good gracious, Kathleen, don't take everything that I say literally!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitney. "I ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... literally buried in the wooded combe. Slabs of gray wall and purple roof, sunk in the black-green like graves in grass. A white house here and there faced him with the stare of monumental marble. In the middle a church with a stunted spire squatted ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... bad runner will find that he can do marvels as the snow seems literally to help him in all his experiments. I have known a day when a blinding blizzard has started blowing the snow into my face and I have run fast along the bottom of a valley with my eyes shut. The Skis kept to the lowest line ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... and gold embroideries, antique ornaments, she took carefully in her hands, seeming mentally to calculate their cost and value. Jewels that were set as necklaces, bracelets and other trinkets of feminine wear she put on, one after the other, till her neck and arms were loaded—and literally blazed with the myriad scintillations of different-colored gems. I marveled at her strange conduct, but did not as yet guess its meaning. I moved away from the staircase and drew imperceptibly nearer to her—Hark! what was that? A strange, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... up a big storeroom forgotten and abandoned, and in it—were all sorts of college paraphernalia, such as is used in theatricals. The room literally groaned with the stuff, and from the mass one object stood out ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... turned down the trail, passed through the gateway that led to the valley below, and wound down among the cow-backed hills toward the ranch roofs, which gleamed in the distance. They were the houses of the Twin Star outfit, the big concern owned by Buck Weaver, whose cattle fed literally ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... man said was literally true. The bear had gone into this cleft or cave to take his winter nap, and during the long weeks, while he was thus hybernating, the water, of rain and melting snow, dripping from the top of the cliff, had formed enormous stalactites of ice, with stalagmites as well: ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... attempt to escape. With Foy the case was different. At first Adrian thought that he was dead, for they were carrying him upon a ladder. Blood fell from his head and legs, while his doublet seemed literally to be rent to pieces with sword-cuts and dagger-thrusts; and in truth had it not been for the shirt of mail which he wore beneath, he must have been slain several times over. But Foy was not dead, for as Adrian watched ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... whether she would feel offended if I gave her an exact translation. She assured me that, on the contrary, she wished me to speak openly, and I told her literally what the captain ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... From a great altitude, literally out of the blue of heaven, high over the Gray lines, Marta made out a Brown squadron of dirigibles and planes descending across the track of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... denizens of the lowest dens of the town and the surrounding country were holding a drunken Saturnalia; for, as numerous kegs of beer were rolled out into the street and tapped, while liquor of a much stronger character was furnished without stint, it was not long before it was almost literally a huge reeling mass of drunkenness. Ever and anon some hero, smitten by the deadly shaft of king alcohol, would tumble from the ranks of the ragged regiment, his place being immediately supplied by another volunteer, who was also willing to vigorously tackle the enemy, though ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... were literally true, but they gave an utterly false impression. Annie was satisfied, however. It seemed a natural explanation, and she trusted Hunting implicitly. Indeed, with her nature, love could ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... have screamed, a hand was clapped over her mouth, breaking her false teeth, and all her stifled shrieks, queries and expostulations were literally cuffed into a whimper. Five minutes later, toothless, half-dressed and trembling, she thrust a few things into a dressing-case, struggled into a fur coat, and passed with sagging knees downstairs, clinging to the arm of a bully whom she had known as ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and being inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house in the place, he was directed to a gentleman's habitation that literally answered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that entertained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn; and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without ceremony; The master of the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Kaffir lad named Toby, whose memory is kept green, so far as I am concerned, by his enormous lips. These resembled sausages strung across his face literally from ear to ear. I now considered myself to be a full-fledged farmer. An old sheep kraal was put into a state of repair. Toby and I built a wattle hut, and a shelter for the pony. The hut was so small that Toby, had to lie curled up in ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... at her. "Aunt Vazzy is joking," said Linnet, severely. Annet was not too sure, and her brow puckered with a frown as she searched for the meaning beneath her aunt's words. But Matthew Henry believed them literally. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the translation of Professor Palmer[5] it can afford pleasure to no reader. The translation, it is true, loses the poetry and music of the original, which are highly spoken of; but the main obstacle to reading the Koran is its want of arrangement. The earliest suras (chapters; literally courses of bricks) stand mostly towards the end of the collection; the long ones in the beginning and middle are later, and many of them are composite: two or several chapters have been joined into one. When read in their historical order, the suras can be read with ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... of the position, and these may be very divergent among the parties concerned. History alone can pass a final verdict on the conduct of States. But in no case can a formal rule of right in such cases—especially when a question of life or death is depending on it, as was literally the fact in the Manchurian War as regards Japan—limit the undoubted right of the State. If Japan had not obtained from the very first the absolute command of the seas, the war with Russia would have been hopeless. She was justified, therefore, ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... in motion for the place of action about the same time, and a merrier pack of rascals never was on the march. Murphy, in accordance with his preconceived notion of a "fine effect," had literally "a cart full of fiddlers;" but the fiddlers hadn't it all to themselves, for there was another cart full of pipers; and, by way of mockery to the grandeur of Scatterbrain's band, he had four or five boys with gridirons, which they played upon with pokers, and half a dozen strapping fellows carrying ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... that do? Don't take chances. Oh, Rutherford! Tell Rutherford my terms are that the directors of the Fidelity Life Insurance Company are to resign, and he is to go to China for six months. Yes. I mean that literally... Plimpton? What do I want with his banks... I've got my own money... And, oh, by the way, Isman... call up the White House again, and tell the President that the regulars will be needed in New York.... No, I understand you... I ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... she's asked: besides, they'll make her do it. Fancy if, when she's gone, I find I have to share everything with those people!" And he struck his forehead and pushed the hair off his perspiring face, as he literally shook with despair. "I must see her, Daly. I'm quite sure she'll make a will if I beg her; they can't hinder me seeing my own, only, dying sister; can they, Daly? And when I'm once there, I'll sit with ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... meaning of the publisher. Many a quarter of an hour did I pass at this period, staring at periods of the publisher, and wondering what he could mean, but in vain, till at last, with a shake of the head, I would snatch up the pen, and render the publisher literally into German. Sometimes I was almost tempted to substitute something of my own for what the publisher had written, but my conscience interposed; the awful words, Traduttore traditore, commenced ringing ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... mouth of the creek. At the last angle of the stream, where it turned against the rock wall, there was a pool perhaps fifty feet across and twenty feet in depth, and as the boys looked down into this it seemed literally packed with hundreds and thousands of great salmon, which swam around and around before picking out the current of the stream up ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... There was literally nothing inside the seventeen feet cube except one chair, one easel, a horrible thing like a huge doll, with no end of joints, called a lay figure, but Percivale called it his bishop; a number of pictures leaning their faces ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... regards mental power painfully deficient. No sense, dumb as soon as the conversation took a serious turn, only able to talk dress like a woman, or about horses like a jockey. And it was such a person upon whom Micheline literally doted! The mistress felt humiliated; she dared not say anything to her daughter, but she relieved herself in company of Marechal, whose discretion she could trust, and whom she willingly called the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... with Mrs. Lucas to a meeting of the Salvation army, in Exeter Hall, which holds 5,000 people. It was literally packed—not an inch of standing-room even, seemed to be unoccupied. This remarkable movement was then at its height of enthusiasm in England, and its leaders proposed to carry it round the world, but it has never been so successful in any other ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... native of North America, and a distinct species, from its finely-cut foliage and small, dark, orange-yellow flowers. For several weeks it has a few flowers, but during September it literally covers itself with bloom, so that it is one of the most pleasing ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... with electricity. It dripped, literally, from the barrel of Banion's pistol when he took it from its holster to carry it to the wagon. He fastened the reins of his horse to a wheel and hastened with other work. A pair of trail ropes ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... such an infamous exhortation to the most dastardly murder on a wholesale scale since the Albigensian crusade with its "Strike them all: God will know His own"—a sentiment indeed that Luther almost literally reproduces ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the advanced ships to form line for mutual support, ceasing the general chase under which the engagement had hitherto been fought. While the main body was still standing south on the port tack, three ships,—"Cornwall," "Grafton," and "Lion" (c),—obeying literally the signal for close action, had passed much to leeward of the others, drawing upon themselves most of the fire of the enemy's line. They thus suffered very severely in men and spars; and though finally relieved by the advanced ships, as these approached from the southward on the opposite ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... post, which closed on the same evening. We are all in good health and spirits. The road we are about to take is not that which I had anticipated, namely, down the side of the Lower Darling, as we hear there is literally nothing for the horses to eat; so that we are going right across the country to the Darling, passing the Murray at this place. We leave Swan Hill about the middle of next week, and shall then be out of the colony ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Don's lady, Dona Mercedes, she may be described broadly as a sleeping partner, her department in the firm being literally the sleeping department. After disposing of her housekeeping duties, which are briefly accomplished by handing the black cook a certain sum daily for marketing purposes, the worthy lady passes the rest of the day with a fan in a rocking ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... these delaying tactics, literally hundreds of bills which had needlessly been held up in committees were forced upon the consideration of the Senate during the last three weeks of the session. Each House made records of passing more than 100 bills a day. There was little ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body,—even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,—the spectacle is a sublime one,—didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?—and we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the honor to recognize ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... entirely firm to renounce Edward, and to separate myself from him for ever. I had hoped that we might never meet again; it has turned out otherwise. Against his own will he stood before me. Too literally, perhaps, I have observed my promise never to admit him into conversation with me. My conscience and the feelings of the moment kept me silent toward him at the time, and now I have nothing more to say. I have taken upon myself, under the accidental impulse of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... possible that you ask me this? Why, there is not so poor a village in the United States where they would not tell you that Robert Browning was an Englishman, and that they were very sorry he was not an American.' Very pretty of the American Minister—was it not?—and literally true besides. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... structure, but is a vast aggregation of streets and houses, or in fact of towns and cities, which have to be mastered in detail. I tried the third or fourth day to get a bird's-eye view from the top of St. Paul's, but saw through the rifts in the smoke only a waste,—literally a waste of red tiles and chimney pots. The confusion and ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... enthusiastic reporters; and very probably the Citizen would overlook many items and stories of burning local interest were it not for the fact that the population has been cunningly made to serve in a reportorial capacity without either pay or its own knowledge. We literally get our local news by wireless; and from dawn to dark there's a constant supply ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... pave road, peculiar to these parts, is always a bone-shaker at the best of times, but now, after the passage of so much heavy traffic, it is simply appalling. A curious feature is the extraordinary straightness of the main roads, down which you can literally see for miles. The by-roads, on the other hand, seem to abound in right-angled turns, and it is not an easy matter to drive a car along at any ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... She would not be denied. One wild cheer, one more terrible broadside as her guns almost touched those of the enemy, then grappling irons were thrown, and the vessels literally ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... and the variety of the scenery repaid us; and Le Mire loved the danger for its own sake. Time and again she swayed far out of her saddle until her body was literally suspended in the air above some frightful chasm, while she turned her head to laugh gaily at Harry and myself, who ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... Louisiana, a person well connected, and of a wealthy family. In a state of intoxication he entered the bar of an hotel, and affronted at the bar-keeper not paying immediate attention to his wishes, he rushed upon the unfortunate man, and literally cut him to pieces with ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... three pairs of laughing eyes fastened upon her. Indeed she did think it a shame; but it was a hard struggle listening to words which bore little interest, scarcely a meaning, to her. So she stayed at home, and made the Sabbath-day a day of rest literally; for as soon as the others were away, and her light household tasks finished, she took her book and fell asleep, as surely, and far more comfortably, than she did when she went to the kirk; so that, as a day in which to grow wiser and better, the ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... daughter of this tributary lord, which he had the good luck to bring to pass: and from that time, valued himself as author of a most glorious union, which indeed was grown of absolute necessity by his corruption." This passage, cited literally from an old history of Sarmatia, I thought fit to set down, on purpose to perplex little smattering remarkers, and put them upon the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... problems had never occurred to him. Old Ben Flint's philosophy pounded into him, at times literally with a solid and well-deserved paternal cuff, could be summed up in the eternal dictum: "That which thou hast to do, do it with all thy might." It was the beginning and end of his rule of life. He looked not, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the next morning, the partners found the streets literally blocked up with enterprising cat-sellers. Huge negroes were there, each with ten or fifteen sage, grave tabbies tied together with a string. Old market-women had brought thither whole families of the feline genus, from the superannuated Tom, to the blind kitten. The air resounded with ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... the canons showed their lighted windows to the darkness of the November evening, he was stopped by a terrible sound. It came to him from the garden of Little Cloisters. It was short, sharp and piercing, so piercing that for an instant he felt as if literally it had torn the flesh of his body. He had never before heard any sound at all like it; but, when he was able to think, he thought, he felt almost certain, that it had come from an animal. He shuddered. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... his arm and walked on, leaving the unfortunate policeman literally stupefied by his first encounter ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... observations and angles for the survey, we the next day entered a small bay, where we pitched our tent; our whole party being now so snow-blind with endeavouring to distinguish the land from the ice (so entirely were both covered with snow), that we could literally no longer muster one eye among three of us to direct the sledge. I found a handkerchief tied close, but not too tightly, round the eyes for a whole night, to be a more effectual remedy for this disagreeable complaint than any application of eyewater; and my companions being induced to try ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... said Hooker, "and all operations were for a while suspended, the army literally finding itself buried in mud, from which there was no ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... have spoken of Andriaovsky's contempt for such as had the conception of their work that it was something they "did" as distinct from something they "were"; and unless I succeed in making it plain that, not as a mere figure of speech and loose hyperbole, but starkly and literally, Andriaovsky was everything he did, ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... nymphs with all gentleness, receives the advice with scorn and contempt, and Oceanus retires. But the courage which he lacks his daughters possess to the full; they remain by Prometheus to the end, and share his fate, literally in the crack of doom. But before the end, the strange half human figure of Io, victim of the lust of Zeus and the jealousy of Hera, comes wandering by, and tells Prometheus of her wrongs. He, by his divine power, recounts to her not only the past ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... or I may have backed up kind of foolish like, or something. Whatever it was, she answered, "Billy, your brother's hair is a good deal darker than yours, isn't it?" Now, what do you think of that frosty-hearted fairy? Literally forced me to drink that punch, gets me ripened up, and then throws the hooks into me. As a love-maker I guess I am a shine. Jim, have you ever gone home late at night and told yourself in front of the mirror how you loved some girl? and have you ever seen that ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... "Us," he said to some one when the boy was gone. Which of us would have expressed himself like that? You see, he did not say to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was right, because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump with their teeth, and not break ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... admirable book.... Interesting as fiction, scientifically exact, simply expressed, this well-prepared volume will almost literally repeople the earth for many readers. Those who already love natural history will rejoice in its fascinating richness of information, while it would be difficult to imagine a more readable and comprehensive introduction to the numerous big ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... the children had escaped thus far; and as the sturdy lad stood out on the pond with the long limb grasped in his hand, staring around him, he could not but wonder how it was he had been preserved after driving directly into the forest when it was literally aflame from one ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... regularity was natural to Louis XIV., and he soon made it apparent in his councils. "Under Cardinal Mazarin, there was literally nothing but disorder and confusion; he had the council held whilst he was being shaved and dressed, without ever giving anybody a seat, not even the chancellor or Marshal Villeroy, and he was often chattering with his ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... equally overlooked, so far as concerns the infinite variety of lobsters, crayfish, crabs, and all their minor congeners. The polypi, echini, asterias, and other radiata of the coast, as well as the acalephae of the deeper waters, have shared the same neglect: and literally nothing has been done to collect and classify the infusoriae and minuter zoophytes, the labours of Dr. Kelaart amongst the Diatomaceae ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... religious sense, may be defined as human society as it organises itself apart from God. The first Beatitude enjoins detachment, such as His who emptied Himself, as having nothing and yet possessing all things. We are all to be detached; there are some whom our Lord counsels to be literally poor. 'Blessed are they that mourn' means that we are not to screen ourselves from the common lot of pain. We must distinguish 'godly sorrow' from the peevish discontent and slothfulness which St. Paul calls the sorrow of the world, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At first, he complained of the heat—a complaint merely preliminary to others, but with sufficient tact to prevent Maria Theresa guessing his real object. Understanding the king's remark literally, she began to fan him with her ostrich plumes. But the heat passed away, and the king then complained of cramps and stiffness in his legs, and as the carriages at that moment stopped to change horses, the queen said:—"Shall I get out with you? I too feel tired of sitting. We can walk on a little ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... affirms that ancient Carnia, or Halicarnassus, was in those days the Baden-Baden of Asia Minor; that thither repaired all the victims of gluttony, debauchery, and general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally "Karnassus-by-the-sea," like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other. Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... rear. The rest of the flock had, while his attention was diverted by the rooster and his followers, galloped joyfully back to the garden again. Now, as Captain Sears gazed, the rooster and his satellites flew to join them. All hands—or, more literally, all feet—resumed excavating with the abandon of conscientious workers striving to make up ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... account given by Irish historians of this famous trial is to be accepted literally or not, the result, at any rate, was conclusive. The king seems to have felt, that Kildare was less dangerous as sheep-dog—even though a head-strong one—than as wolf, even a wolf in a cage. He released him and restored him to his command. Prince Henry, according to custom, becoming nominally ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... amiably fraternal. We were united to her by a common enthusiasm; we were fellow-celebrants at her ancestral altar—or, rather, she was the high priestess there, we were her acolytes. For, with her, filial piety did in very truth partake of the nature of religion; she really, literally, idolised her father. One only needed to watch her for three minutes, as she sat beside him, to understand the depth and ardour of her emotion: how she adored him, how she admired him and believed in him, how proud of him she was, how she rejoiced in ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... records three cases of spontaneous orgasm in women coming under his notice.[224] Such crises are frequently found in both men and women, who, from moral reasons, ignorance, or on other grounds are restrained from attaining the complete sexual orgasm, but whose sexual emotions are, literally, continually dribbling from them. Schrenck-Notzing knows a lady who is spontaneously sexually excited on hearing music or seeing pictures without anything lascivious in them; she knows nothing of sexual relationships. Another lady is sexually excited on seeing beautiful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... used to engage the whole of the inside places of the coach for their conveyance from London. The walls of all the rooms and passages of his house at Pimlico were lined with books; and another house in York Street, Westminster, which he used as a depository for newly purchased books, was literally crammed with them from the floors to the ceilings. He had a library in the High Street, Oxford; an immense collection at Paris, which was sold in the years 1834 to 1836; another at Ghent, sold in 1835; and others at Brussels and Antwerp, together with smaller gatherings in several places on ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... of the egging season the gulls hover in clouds over the rocks, and when a rookery is started, and the poor birds leave their nests by hundreds, the air is presently alive with gulls flying off with the eggs, and the eggers are sometimes literally drenched. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... matter with which, both literally and metaphorically, the air is filled, we must also make allusion. The existence of micro-organisms in countless numbers is no new fact, but the influence they may exert over living tissues has only lately become the subject of earnest attention. So long as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... under the scorching rays of his perpetual activity, as weeds wither in the noon-day sun. He had accomplished wonders in his parish, and many another, less efficient than himself, might have supposed nothing more was to be done. Not so, thought Father Duffy. Literally and figuratively hills were to be brought down, and level places to be ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... rajah and his troops was unbounded. They felt that, now and henceforth, they were safe from another invasion; and the rajah saw that, in the future, he should be able to gain greatly increased territory, as the ally of the English. His gratitude to Charlie was unbounded, and he literally loaded him with ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... Strictly and literally the apotheosis. For, differing as they do on such vital points, they both agree in dispensing with the ideas of God and immortality as conceptions superfluous in the realization of the theoretical perfection they contemplate. Not that either scheme omits the religious ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... and sitting down under the shade of the yew tree, mused and murmured to herself alternately, but in such an evident spirit of desolation and despair, as made her father fear that her heart would literally break down under the heavy burden of her misery. When she had sat here nearly an hour, he approached her and gently taking her hand, which felt as cold ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the complement of Orangeism; that if the latter were made illegal, the other would die of itself. This was believed by the whig and radical parties of the day; and after a feeble resistance on the part of the Tories, Orangeism was at last discountenanced by the state, and literally turned out of doors, after having been used and misused, petted and pampered, for half a century. Instead, however, of Ribbonism taking a voluntary departure, as lay and priestly liberal spouters of the popular Roman Catholic party presumed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that The Club of Queer Trades tends to curl up somewhat (quite literally, in the sense that the end comes almost where the beginning ought to be) when it receives heavy and serious treatment. I should therefore explain that this serious treatment has been given under protest, and ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... did not say good-bye to mamma... he will not deceive me... Can Andrei Petrovitch have been right? It cannot be... He didn't promise to come in words... Can I have parted from him for ever——?' Those were the thoughts that never left her, literally never left her; they did not come and come again; they were for ever turning like a mist moving about in her brain. 'He loves me!' suddenly flashed through her, setting her whole nature on fire, and she ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... living within the limits of the peninsula, close to half the population of the United States. Does that sound as if it might be China's appendix? You wouldn't think so if you saw the cities, roads and fields of this great stretch of land literally swarming with human beings, and every last one of ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... stranger here is the number of policemen; they are literally swarming everywhere. Very dandified as to dress and bearing, very vigilant and watchful about the eyes, with a double portion of importance pervading them all over as men on whom the peace and safety of the country depend. These very dignified conservators ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... anything of the kind. We've had Free Trade for the last fifty years and today most people are living in a condition of more or less abject poverty, and thousands are literally starving. When we had Protection things were worse still. Other countries have Protection and yet many of their people are glad to come here and work for starvation wages. The only difference between ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Vaudrey was not a very difficult task. Sulpice was literally blinded by this love.—For a moment, he had been aroused by Jouvenet's intimation that his secret was known to others. For a while he seemed to have kept himself away from Marianne; but after taking new precautions, he returned trembling with ardent passion to Mademoiselle ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... starving women and children whose husbands and fathers fought in the Cuban army, my mother and sister were driven from their home to the nearest city, where the former, always delicate, died, literally of starvation, and from which my sister disappeared, so that I do not know her fate. At that time, also, our house was stripped by the soldiers of everything that could be carried away, and then burned. It is for this record ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... every side of an open plain. On the first onset, the militia made a most precipitate retreat, leaving the few, but brave regulars to stand the charge. The conflict was short but bloody. The regular troops, over powered by numbers, were literally cut to pieces; and only seven of them made their escape and rejoined the main army at ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... an eye for an eye), by adding that it is applied only if he that is maimed will not accept money in compensation for his injury, a half-way position between the Sadducean doctrine, which understood the Biblical law literally, and the Pharisaic rule, which abrogated it. But in several instances he makes offenses punishable with death, which were not so according to the tradition, e.g. the insulting of parents by their children and the taking of bribes by judges.[6] Summing up the version of Deuteronomy, ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... to tell you the whole story before you'll credit me. Shalt have it, then. But..." and he checked on the word, his face growing serious, his eye wandering to the door, "I would not have it overheard—not for a king's ransom," which was more literally true than he may have intended ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... few received the news with great joy, but many others were depressed rather than rejoiced at the responsibilities of their new positions. Hitherto they had been clothed and fed, the doctor attended them in sickness, their master would care for them in old age. They had been literally without a care for the morrow, and the thought that, in the future, they would have to think of all these things for themselves almost frightened them. Several of the older men went up to Mrs. Wingfield and positively declined to accept their freedom. They were quite ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... hundred miles between Malden and Hampton. It is still more remarkable that, although he was undoubtedly one of the most daring and doggedly persevering youths that could have been found among the coloured people, he was still not a solitary example of a negro boy literally making stepping-stones of difficulties. There were other black youngsters who were quite as determined, and their efforts were also destined to ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... everything I say and that literally. Perhaps I don't mean everything you fancy I mean.—Tell me then, would life be worth having on any and every ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... At Saintes, under de Grasse, he led the boarding of two of our frigates, one after the other, which had been taken by the enemy, and recovered them both. After the battle, he was taken up for dead, wounded in eleven places. The deck was literally washed with his blood. I am positive the thing has only to be mentioned to the King himself for him to recognise my son's claims and appoint him sub-lieutenant in the Bodyguard. I seek that for him because of the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... expect to see me," he said; "I've but just arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... Phraseologists, who explain a thing by all that, or enter into particulars, with this and that and t'other; and lastly, the Silent Men, who seem afraid of opening their mouths lest they should catch cold, and literally observe the precept of the Gospel, by letting their conversation be only yea ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... such little, unknown people as the Hubbards; and then, to avoid marking them as the subjects of the festivity by the precedence to be observed in going out to supper, she resolved to have tea served in the drawing-room, and to make it literally tea, with bread and butter, and some thin, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... door he halted Captain Candage, who was following on his heels, taking Mayo's statement literally, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the wood thrush. With a little practice Malcolm could reproduce the "song from the book." He talked of it incessantly, sang and whistled it, making patent to every member of the family that what was in his heart was fully as much a desire to do the notes so literally that he would win the commendation of his mother, as to obtain an answer from an unsuspecting bird; for that was the sport. The big thing for which to strive! They worked to obtain a record so accurately, to reproduce it so ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... stomach. After the remains of the old Squire had been consigned to the family vault, Algernon accompanied his mother and brother to the library to hear the reading of the will. No suspicion that his father would realize his threat had ever crossed his mind; and he was literally stunned when he found that his unnatural parent had left all to his elder brother, and cut him off with ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... bishops acknowledged the supreme authority which resided in the assembly of their brethren; but in the government of his peculiar diocese, each of them exacted from his flock the same implicit obedience as if that favorite metaphor had been literally just, and as if the shepherd had been of a more exalted nature than that of his sheep. [118] This obedience, however, was not imposed without some efforts on one side, and some resistance on the other. The democratical part of the constitution was, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... hundred or more men, women, children, and slaves, found themselves among the islands of what now is named Hili-liland. There they settled—there, where nature furnishes, without labor, light and heat the year round, and vegetation is literally perpetual. They met with none of the initial difficulties of primitive peoples. They were educated, and they possessed the treasures of knowledge born of a thousand years of Roman supremacy; from the beginning they had that other priceless treasure, leisure—that real essential ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... wailing, "how much better it would have been." It was not easy to slay the champion of French Protestantism; yet, to one less buoyant, the game, even after the brilliant but fruitless victory of Contras, might have seemed desperate. Beggared and outcast, with literally scarce a shirt to his back, without money to pay a corporal's guard, how was he to maintain ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... kings. Jacky XLVIII, under whose mild sway I have spent many peaceful years, wears clothes exactly when it suits his comfort. When his royal pleasure is to emulate the lilies of the field, he simply goes that way; thus literally excelling Solomon in all his glory. The Evolution of Intelligence has stripped him of every other prerogative; but there its stripping-power ends, and his own begins. European monarchs will do well to paste a memorandum of this inside their diadems, for, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in this fashion down a lane running between high brick walls, fringed with feathery trailing shrubs or gorgeous red and white flowers, whose fragrance literally streamed into the evening air, in that delicate dusk when the senses are lulled into acquiescence, and the mind and emotions become so vivid and ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... recognised greeting to the new comer at Whinnyliggate school. When this was asked of Walter, he replied modestly that he did not know, whereupon his enemy, without provocation, smote him incontinently on the nose. Him our boy-from-the-heather promptly charged, literally with tooth and nail, overbore to the dust, and, when he held him there, proceeded summarily to disable him for further conflict, as he had often seen Royal do when that mild dog went forth to war. Walter could not at all understand why he was dragged off his assailant ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... unattainable; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illusion. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, [Footnote: Trauerweiden der verbannung, literally the weeping willows of banishment, an allusion, as every reader must know, to the 137th Psalm. Linnaeus, from this Psalm, calls the weeping willow Salix Babylonica.—TRANS.] breathes out its longing for its distant home, what else but melancholy can be ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... should be twisted and made nowhere else than here. Leland, that industrious chronicler, came to grief in this matter, for he calls Bridport 'a fair, large town,' where 'be made good daggers.' He shows the danger of taking words too literally, since a 'Bridport dagger' is only another name ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Tess rounded the mud cellar, she glanced up the hill and saw the three making their way leisurely toward the lake. She gave one bound and literally hurled herself through the shanty door ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... in the beginning that the word prohibition in Russia must be taken literally. Its use does not imply a partially successful attempt to curtail the consumption of liquor resulting in drinking in secret places, the abuse of medical licenses and general evasion and subterfuge. It does mean that a vast population ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... Bullard out, muttering about damn fool groundlubbers always sticking their noses in. The cook caught at Lomax's hand on the way, literally slobbering over it. Lomax rubbed his palm across ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... it, then?' he said, giving her a pleasant look from his twinkling, almost kindly eyes. She looked down at him and turned aside. She looked down on him both literally and figuratively. Still he persisted, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... vizier, while Mahmood abandoned himself to debauchery. If Mahmood, however, submitted to the ascendancy of his able minister, not so did his son, the prince Kamrau. By his orders Futteh Khan was seized at Herat and deprived of his eyesight; and a few months afterwards the unhappy vizier was literally hacked to pieces by the courtiers of Mahmood, in the presence of that monarch. In the days of his power Futteh Khan had distributed the different governments of his kingdom among his numerous brothers, and this act drove them ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... weather. At Brazennose neither servants nor tradesmen connected with the college are allowed to enter it otherwise. It is not long since a certain bookseller was discommoned for wearing his hat in B- n-e quadrangle, and literally ruined in consequence. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... island with full powers from the Gov.-General, whilst he was supported on the coast by armed vessels from Zamboanga. Sumoroy fled to the hills, but his mother was found in a hut; and the invading party wreaked their vengeance on her by literally pulling her to pieces. Sumoroy was at length betrayed by his own people, who carried his head to the Spanish Captain, and this officer had it exhibited on a pole in the village. Some years afterwards another rebel chief surrendered, under ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... correlation of forces, our mental and spiritual powers are regarded as but transformed phases of physical forces, conditioned as they are on our bodily states and changes; and the soul, it is said, is but a child of nature, who is most literally its mother. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... herself so far as to clap thunderously: she caught her hands together just in time—recollecting that her demonstration would be taken too literally. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... distinguished-looking, grey-haired man of about forty-five, wearing a smile of such excessive cordiality that one felt it could only have been brought to his well-bred lips by acute disappointment. Anne did not take the smile literally, but began to ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... knowledge here blinds the hearer to much ignorance elsewhere. In Italian, for example, the polite way of addressing one's equal is to speak in the third person singular, using Ella (she) as the pronoun. "Come sta Ella?" (How are you? but literally ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... structureless plasson. However carefully we examine it with our finest chemical reagents and most powerful microscopes, we can find no definite parts or no anatomic structure in it. Hence, the Monera are literally organisms without organs; in fact, from the philosophic point of view they are not organisms at all, since they have no organs. They can only be called organisms in the sense that they are capable of the vital functions of nutrition, reproduction, sensation, and movement. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... I had not the smallest relish. During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows; and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and mocassins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buona Ventura. Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... sublime his stately growth he rears, A tree, and well-dissembled foliage wears.—POPE. [Footnote: I have here quoted the translation of Pope, though nothing can well be more vapid and more unlike the original, which is literally, "First, he became a lion with a huge mane—and then flowing water; and a tree with lofty foliage."—It would not, perhaps, be advisable to recur to our earliest mode of classical translation, line for line, and nearly word for word; but when German Literature ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... England during those five great speeches were worth 50,000 soldiers to the National government, and probably had much to do with the prevention of the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by European nations. It was a triumph of oratory; he literally compelled a vast multitude, who were thoroughly in opposition to him, to take a new view ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the railroad to her heart, literally. The depot, the yards, the red section-house and the water-tank are all in the very center of the town. Every train while stopping for water (and they all stop) blocks two of the three principal streets. And when, after waiting in the rain or snow until his patience ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... the last-named has, I think, the most pleasing title. Anybody can write a play; the trouble is to get it produced. Almost anybody can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being. Writing for the magazines, again, sounds a delightful occupation, but literally it means nothing without the co- operation of the editors of the magazines, and it is this co- operation which is so difficult to secure. But to earn 600 a year with the pen is to do a definite thing; if the book could really tell ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... told me,' said the Duke; 'and likewise that you took his words so literally as to set out with ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... American Republics—revolted at its denial to Belgium in the interest of German military aggression; and censure of the breach of international contract was converted to passion by the wrong wantonly done to a weak and peaceful by a mighty and ambitious Power. Great Britain was not literally bound to intervene; but if ever there was a moral obligation on a country, it lay upon her now, and the instant meeting of that obligation implied an instinctive recognition of the character of the war that was to be fought. Mixed and confused though the national issues might be in various quarters, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... in the previous verses, had been pointing His disciples "to the fowls of the air," and "the lilies of the field," in order that they should be without carefulness about the necessaries of life; He adds: "Therefore take no thought, (literally, be not anxious) saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek;) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... waltz Tornik managed to find Nina and announced supper. In the stampede for food there was such a crush that people stepped on her slippers and literally swept up the floor with her train. Tornik, being a giant, and able to reach over any number of smaller persons, finally secured a pate and an ice. Standing near her, two young men were stuffing cakes and sandwiches into their pockets. Amazed, she drew Tornik's attention. He shrugged his shoulders. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... be considered roughly to represent about two feet; literally translated it means ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... statement that the Government unlawfully discriminates in drawing any distinction between good and bad trusts; but let me say further, that it is my definite opinion that the Sherman Act, as it now stands, is a menace to the country. That Act, literally interpreted, would break up every trust into smaller corporations. It is based on a hasty inference that great consolidations are of necessity monopolies. Even if we disintegrated a great corporation like the Consolidated Companies, for instance, into a large number of smaller corporations, ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... ANTS. A correspondent has suffered for years from annual raids of ants that literally swarm over everything and everywhere. "Last year," says this lady, "they killed ever so many plants, from Pansies to trees. All of our outdoor flowers were almost ruined by them. I have tried molasses and Paris green, but they only increase in numbers. They are everywhere, but I ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... bulls arrived the wounded elephant on the ground ceased to scream, but began to make a low moaning noise, and to gently touch the wound near his shoulder, from which the blood was literally spouting. The other two seemed to understand; at any rate, they did this. Kneeling down on either side, they placed their trunks and tusks underneath him, and, aided by his own efforts, with one great lift got him on ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... was little mair than seventeen, my faither and me were gaun to Morpeth, and we were wishing to get forward wi' the beasts as far as Whittingham; but just as we were about half a mile doun the loanin' frae Glanton, it cam' awa ane o' the dreadfu'est storms that e'er mortal was out in. The snaw literally fell in a solid mass, and every now and then the wind cam' roarin' and howlin' frae the hills, and the fury o' the drift was terrible. I was driven stupid and half suffocated. My faither was on a strong mare, and I was on a bit powney; and amang the cattle there was a camstairy three-year-auld bull, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... prejudices out of your phiz. But mother literally looks down her nose. And she never forgives an "h." They'd get the "hell" from her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reading at book-stalls, purchasing cheap books with pennies stained all over with the sweat of his toil. An heroic student, who labored for more than twenty years with almost unparalleled industry, and with an equally unparalleled neglect of the laws of health; of whom it is scarcely too much to say literally, that he knew no change, but from his desk to his bed, and from his bed to his desk again. A voluminous writer, who, if he produced no work of positive genius, has done more than any other man to illustrate the Scriptures, and to make familiar and vivid the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... journey by their prayers," but only to pray to God to bring him safely home again and no more. A clergyman, who must have been a bit of a wag (for it is difficult to explain his conduct otherwise), is said to have literally carried out his bishop's orders, and to have prayed publicly "That God would return our noble prince home again to us and no more."(263) When it became known that the prince had arrived safely at Madrid, bonfires were lighted and bells rung; but the Londoners were but ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... "end of the world" was a thoroughly accepted tenet of physical geography. Yet men, adventurous and inquisitive, kept ever pushing forward into the unknown, until now there remain no strange seas and few uncharted and unlighted. The mariner of these days has literally plain sailing in comparison with his forbears of one ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... noisome cell in the whole prison. Here, without a glimpse of daylight; visited by no one except Austin at stated intervals, who neither answered a question nor addressed a word to him; fed upon the worst diet, literally mouldy bread and ditch-water; surrounded by stone walls; with a flagged floor for his pillow, and without so much as a blanket to protect him from the death-like cold that pierced his frame,—Jack's stout ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and its ethics are those of the Talmudic Hebrews. It has done good work in its time; but now it shows only decay and decrepitude in the place of vigour and progress. It is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... often heard. Gentlemen presented at Court, who had not been invited to stay at Marly, came there notwithstanding, as they did to Versailles, and returned again to Paris; under such circumstances, it was said such a one had been to Marly only 'en polisson';—[A contemptuous expression, meaning literally "as a scamp" or "rascal"]—and it appeared odd to hear a captivating marquis, in answer to the inquiry whether he was of the royal party at Marly, say, "No, I am only here 'en polisson'," meaning simply "I am here on the ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but none could doubt the strength of a religious conviction that submitted to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, with all her gifts, sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered from that part of the village known as ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston |
