"Overpowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... An overpowering pain seized on Edward during this speech; he felt on the point of fainting. With a look of utter despondency he threw himself into a chair, hid his face with his hands, and bent it down upon the table, till at length a flood of tears that streamed from his ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... once be attacked and recaptured by them. You will, therefore, remain quiet until you have orders, whether it be one day or ten. All the arms they have taken from us are lying piled here, and when the time comes, we shall have no difficulty in overpowering the Genoese, and shall, I hope, bring the Pluto safely to anchor in the port of ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... whom in our arrogance we consign to eternal damnation, instead of endeavouring to draw out the heart of their mystery, and gather up the gems of their learning as fresh proofs of the active presence of God's working in, and through all things! Think of the Church's invincible and overpowering obstinacy in the case of Galileo! He declared the existence of God to us by the utterance of a Truth,—inasmuch as every truth is a new message from God. Had he pronounced his theories before our divine Master, that Master would have confirmed, not denied them! Have we one single example ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... in the short winter days and long evenings, when all the west was a shrieking black fury, out of which hurtled blasts so overpowering that you could lean up against them as against a wall, and with no more fear of falling, and the roar of great waters was never ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... suggestions in her presence was that overpowering richness of oriental beauty which no other kind in the world may surpass in its appeal to the loves of men. Enough of the Roman stock in her line had given structural firmness and stature to a type which at her age would have developed weight and ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the enemy hurl his columns against the remnant of men that formed my front and right flank, and again were they met as gallantly as before. But my decimated ranks were unable to resist the overpowering force hurled against them, and after their advance had been checked, seeing that our lines were completely flanked on both sides, Major Ward gave the order to retire, which was done in good order, forming and charging the enemy twice ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... contrary maintain that they have never recognized Turkish rule, and never paid tribute save when forced by overpowering numbers; that they do not recognize the assigning of their nahias to the Pashas of Spuzh and Scutari; that they have chosen a Gubernator whose title has not been disputed; that they rule themselves without Turkish interference. In truth, however, the apparent independence of the land depends as ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the streets of Kilburn, but it was no physical fear. Who could be safer in a city than the man who has not a penny in his pockets? It was rather a strange, deep, spiritual shrinking. There seemed something so irresistible about this life of the city, so utterly overpowering. I had a sense of being smaller than I had previously felt myself, that in some way my personality, all that was strong or interesting or original about me, was being smudged over, rubbed out. In the country I had in some measure come to command life, but here, it seemed to me, life was commanding ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... An overpowering evil are the secret speakings of slander, to the slandered and to the listener thereto alike, and are as foxes in relentless temper. Yet for the beast whose name is of gain[10] what great thing is gained thereby? ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... He was sent into space with the precision he expected. The experience was exhilarating and, although he had anticipated each event in advance, he could not possibly have foreseen the overpowering feeling that came over him. Weightlessness he had experienced for brief periods during training, but nothing could match the heady impression of continuous ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... on guard. As she stared at Heloise, lovely in her Red Cross uniform, a white torch against the dark horizon, her tragic eyes once more searching the heavens, it struggled for life again and again. She loved Heloise and she felt a sudden inclusive love of her sex, an overpowering desire to deliver it from the sadness and horror of war; a profounder emotion than anything it had inspired in those far off days of peace. After all, however serious she had believed herself to be, it had been a game, a career; for in times of peace one must ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... that one mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.' It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering energy to the mind." ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... flock of wild birds, resting on their journey at the other end of the mill-dam, rose in terror and pursued their seaward way; so wild and so prolonged were the echoes of that strange, speechless cry in which collective man gives vent to overpowering emotion. ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... without being moved by the faintest surprise that her toilet had produced such an overpowering sensation. Bertha's emotion did not appear to her in ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... An overpowering melancholy surged through David; though his youth responded to the dramatic, the tragic change that had enveloped them, at the same time he was reluctant to leave the farm, the valley with its trout and ground hogs, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... an overpowering odour," said the old parson; "it is suggestive of incense. I am sure I once smelt something like it in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. It is ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Crotch, who has science but no taste, execution but no expression!" Here they talked a vast deal about expression. Alfred did not understand them, and doubted whether they understood themselves. "Then her voice! how people can call it fine!—powerful, if you will—but overpowering! For my part, I can't stand it, can you?—Every body knows an artificial shake, when good, is far superior to a natural shake. As to the Miss Barhams, the eldest has no more ear than the table, and the youngest such a thread ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... I were of opinion that we had accidentally discovered the entirely unsuspected existence of a more than ordinary interest in you on the part of a certain lady; but since then I have come to the conclusion that we mistook overpowering excitement for a more tender feeling; hence I do not consider that I ought to enlighten you at all. If any tender feeling exists, why, it is the girl's own secret, for her to retain or not as she pleases; and if she has such a feeling, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... overpowering thought, is it not?" he agreed pleasantly. "Now you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main thing"—his voice sank to an impressive whisper—"is not to infringe the copyright. The publisher ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... man of antiquity, but performed more varied labors than he, since he was not only great as a writer and speaker, but as a statesman, and was the most conspicuous man in Rome after Pompey and Caesar. He may not have had the moral greatness of Socrates, nor the philosophical genius of Plato, nor the overpowering eloquence of Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his hands, and is divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized history, and paid honor to all art, even ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Delaford's history, most likely we should find him another nineteenth-century victim to an artificial life. At least, I trust that Jane has been the greatest blessing, Marianne herself speaks of her as more than a mother to her; and I believe I told you of the poor girl's overpowering gratitude, when she found we would not turn her out to die homeless. We read, and we talk, and Mr. Danvers comes; but I believe dear old Jane does more for her ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... head drooping. Half a dozen times he pulled himself together, only to realise that the overpowering desire for sleep had ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... kerosine oil-tin; and in the corner, with his back to the audience, an immense African—an ebony Pan blowing frenzy through his wide lips—is forcing the whole weight of his lungs into a narrow reed pipe. The noise is phenomenal, overpowering, but is plainly attractive to Sidi ears; for the room is rapidly filling, and more than one of the spectators suddenly leaps from his seat and circles round the drummers, keeping time to the rythm with queer movements of his body and feet ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... had expected Reginald to fly out of the window, or seek refuge up the chimney, at this announcement, the composure with which he received the overpowering disclosure ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of that narrow defile, listening intently for the slightest unusual sound which would indicate the near presence of anything human. It was caution, not fear, however, which caused me to breathe quickly—my sole, overpowering dread being that I might have to return, and face Sheridan with a report of failure. I preferred anything rather than that. I thought of his stern eyes as he looked me over in the late sunlight of the evening before; the sharp rasp ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... medicine, and, having set the glass upon the center table, returned to her cot, where, after a still interval, she snored faintly. Upon this, his expression became that of a man goaded out of overpowering weariness into irony. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... There is a very curious example of this inability or unwillingness to admit—perhaps even to understand—the force of this argument exhibited by those to whom one would suppose that it would come home with overpowering force: I ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... overpowering impression which nature and people exerted on those of us, who now for the first time visited Japan, China, India, Borneo, and Ceylon, it was however specially difficult, during a stay of a few days at each place, to preserve this side of the ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... watched the progress of that, fiery sea whose waves were flame—red, rolling flame. Onward it came, with resistless speed, overpowering every obstacle, widening its sphere of action, till it formed a perfect semicircle about them. As the night drew on, the splendour of the scene became more apparent, and the path of the fire better defined; but there was no fear of the conflagration spreading as it ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... seized with overpowering dumbness and chill. What was really in his mind was the Terrace—was Wharton's advancing figure. But her state—the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... incidents I ever remember. The courteous confusion of the chairman, the dismay of the committee, the colossal nature of the fiasco filled me, I am glad to say, not with mortification, but with an overpowering desire ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... throbbing steadily in one spot in the dim garage. The gas rolling up from somewhere in the back made it wonderfully realistic. But out on the open road the smell of burning gasoline would not have been so overpowering. Inside the little box-like garage it began to close in on them and settle ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... trying to solve even the simplest of problems. They don't know where to turn for answers, who to hold accountable, who to praise, who to blame, who to vote for or against. The main reason for this is the overpowering growth of Federal grants-in-aid programs during the past ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... was silence, and the great heat caused a mist to swim before her eyes, and an overpowering drowsiness—Oh, heaven!—if unconsciousness ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... silence and darkness of night brought the past to her mind more vividly, in vain she sought forgetfulness in sleep. Was it happiness, triumph, that bade her bury her face in her hands and weep, weep till almost every limb became convulsed by her overpowering emotion? Her thoughts were undefined, but so painful, that she was glad—how glad when morning came. She compared her present with her former self, and the contrast was misery; but even as her ill-fated ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... way upon which we are meant to go is always clear, or at least indicated, at the time we are meant to take it; that guidance is definitely felt through the soul's own overpowering conviction. The struggle and the terror fell away from her like a garment she had cast aside, and for the moment she emerged into freedom as before ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... by the by, whether William could get me that agistment-money! 't is a heavy thing to lose; but going to law, as my poor father used to say, is like fishing for gudgeons [not a bad little fish; we can have some for supper] with, guineas) knowledge, as well as its splendid and overpowering (I do love Will for keeping up the family honour; I am sure it is more than I ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... remembrance, needed no new founder; of whom, indeed, all the records are silent. It probably arose in many places at the same time; for the terror of death, which pervaded all nations and suddenly set such powerful impulses in motion, might easily conjure up the fanaticism of exaggerated and overpowering repentance. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... smells. There were two hotels with their complex, unclean livery barns and yards, beside, behind, and around them; and on every side and in every yard there were pigs—and still more pigs—an evidence of thrift rather than of sanitation; but over all, and in the end overpowering all, were the sweet, pervading odour of the new-sawn boards and the exquisite aroma of the different fragrant gums—of pine, cedar, or fir—which memory will acknowledge as the incense to conjure up again in vivid actuality these early ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... magnolias!" cried Grace, as they passed a tree in full bloom, the fragrance being almost overpowering. "They are just like those the boys sold us when the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... which were ever outgrown and held me like a corselet. At last the house door was locked and we drove the two miles to the church, silent and serious as became our Sunday clothes and our equipage. We felt strange to ourselves and not at ease. When the meeting was over I had a sudden overpowering revulsion in my spirits. I wanted to shout, to run, to jump over something and a hitching post as high as my head offered the nearest opportunity. I forgot the Sunday school lesson in a moment; I had not understood a word of it. On the way home we became very cheerful. There was comment on the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... murder, I've to confess that at Versailles I felt the impulse again. You know that infernal Galerie des Glaces? Well, of a sudden the multiplication of Farrell's face and the bald spot at the back of his head came near to overpowering me. We had escaped, too, from the wandering sightseers, and stood isolated at the end of the vast hall. . . . High sniffing dilettanti may say what they like, but Versailles is what Jimmy would call a 'knock-out.' The very first view of the Grand Avenue ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... awful flash of overpowering light blazed before him. His eyes seemed put out by its bewildering intensity, and a little scream of terror escaped from his lips. A hand seized him by the collar and dragged him over backward upon the floor. The blazing, burning light filled all the room with a glare ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a passionate, overpowering thirst for art and knowledge in Gorki when he was about fifteen. Without a notion of how he was to be clothed and fed during his student life he betook himself to Kasan to study. His rash hopes soon foundered. He ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... beautiful and solemn. At midnight on New Year's Eve we repeated the service. Again there was a large congregation, and to me as I looked back to the gathering held in that place just one year ago it was quite overpowering. How many of those who had been with us at the dawn of 1917 had passed away? The seats where they had sat were filled with other men. The hymns they had joined in were sung by other lips. In my heart went up the cry, "How long, O Lord, how ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... than was necessary. All we could do, indeed, was to collect a further supply of wood to keep up our fire. On looking at my watch I found that it wanted scarcely three hours to morning. I felt by this time an overpowering inclination to sleep, and Dio, I saw by the way he uttered his words, was affected in the same manner. As far as we could judge the snow continued to come down as heavily as before, but as we were protected by the thick overhanging limbs of the trees, very ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... could have listened for hours, but our time was limited, and we set off anew. Fortunately the evening was delightful, and the moon shining brightly. We visited about twenty churches in succession. In all the organ was pealing, the blaze of light overpowering, the magnificence of jewels and crimson velvet and silver and gold dazzling, the crowd suffocating, the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Tudors and the early Stuarts, he comes to trials full of historic interest; to the dramatic scenes in which Sir Thomas More, and Throckmorton, and Raleigh played their parts. He has to show how in a period of overpowering excitement, when social organisation was far weaker, and the power of the rulers more dependent upon personal vigour, the Government dealt out sharp and short justice, though juries still had to be cajoled or bullied; ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... within the cavern, and the uproar fairly deafened him. It seemed to him that ten thousand little imps were perched all around the cavern, with their fingers thrust in their mouths, waiting for him to start the tumult, when they joined in, with an effect that was overwhelming and overpowering. ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... all his comrades. He seemed at once younger and older than he really was. Small and fragile, he was at fifteen years of age afraid of everything that alarms little children. Darkness caused him an overpowering terror, and he could never meet one of the servants of the school, who happened to have a big lump on the top of his head, without bursting into tears. And yet at times, when we saw him close at hand, he looked quite old. His parched skin, glued to his ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... various shades and shapes, and armed with countless varieties of smoking gear. The roughness of the road precludes all possibility of reading, and, after all, the rapid motion and the constant appearance of danger—which in reality does not exist—prevent any overpowering ennui from assailing the dusty traveller. So we spun along all day, stopping once or twice for a little refreshment, and changing horses every five or six miles. Everybody was in capital spirits, and we changed seats often, thus obtaining some little variety. Isaacs, who to every ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... There were sixty or seventy dollars upon the table, and my own contribution was my last cent. As I fumbled I felt the strain of bodies pressing against mine, and heard the hiss of feverish breaths, and a foolish laugh or two. Nevertheless the silence seemed overpowering. ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... surrounded us, and then we expressed our full confidence in His mercy and goodness. That did us more good than the lighter songs. It was certainly more in accordance with our feelings; yet, perhaps, La Motte took the best means for arousing the people from the lethargy which was overpowering them. ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... fascination about the battered remnant, far gone in decay, but the stench from it finally proved so overpowering that, despite his intense desire to linger near his discovery, Loll ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... humanoid glared back, his eyes bright with hatred. Kennon felt the short hairs prickle along the back of his neck. George roused a primal emotion—an elemental dislike that was deeper than reason—an antagonism intensely physical, almost overpowering—a purely adrenal response that had no business in the make-up ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... gladly at that moment of discovery have fled to her own apartment and cried for joy, but she dared not; she trembled lest his eyes, if she looked up, should discover the secret of her own. She had an overpowering consciousness that she stood upon the brink of her fate; that ere long that look of his would be followed by words—blessed, hoped-for words, from the lips of Pierre Philibert! words which would be the pledge and assurance ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... they burst out simultaneously with a hearty hurrah, one that seemed to give fresh energy to the rowers. But it sounded feeble, hushed, and smothered as it were by the increasing roar of the falling water, ever growing into an overpowering, muffled thunder. ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... over the fort, and that there were several smaller vessels. I thought that there would be more fighting, but instead of proceeding to that extremity, the commodore sent in a boat with a flag of truce, pointing out the overpowering force he had under him, and demanding the instant surrender of the ships ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... had reckoned without the disposition of the Princess, a kind good girl with an overpowering sense of duty. When pressed to choose, she replied firmly, "I will have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... vent of human thoughts; but there are emotions so simple and overpowering, that they rush out not in words, but eloquent sounds. At such moments man seems to lose his characteristics, and to be merely one of the higher animals; for these, when greatly agitated, ejaculate, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... addressed by her somewhat overpowering mother as Mabel, takes the proffered arm with a murmured acquiescence and a quivering lip. She ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... everywhere else he was direct and simple. He awed and terrified jurymen; he convinced their reason; but he commanded rather than persuaded, and carried them with him by sheer force of eloquence and argument, and by his overpowering personality. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Notwithstanding the high admiration which he entertained for the works of Beethoven, certain portions of them always seemed to him too rudely sculptured; their structure was too athletic to please him, their wrath seemed to him too tempestuous, their passion too overpowering, the lion-marrow which fills every member of his phases was matter too substantial for his tastes, and the Raphaelic and Seraphic profiles which are wrought into the midst of the nervous and powerful ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... once restored, a great reaction would have ensued, his interest in life would have reawaked, and most probably he would have become indifferent to that which now oppressed him; but on the slightest weariness or disappointment, the same overpowering sense of desolation would have returned, and indeed at times amidst the warmest glow of health and keenest consciousness of pleasure. On the other hand, if by any argument addressed to his moral or religious ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... place where the ground had been cultivated, but not as recently as the last six months. There was a scant shock of corn and many meager standing stalks. He became aware of a low, whining hum and a fragrance overpowering in its sweetness. And there round another corner of wall he came upon an orchard all pink and white in blossom and melodious with the buzz ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... mercifully to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There is the grateful 'nod, nod, nodding,' with the sudden jerk of an awakening; until the nodding becomes more overpowering, and one settles into a deep and profound sleep. Ugh! how chilly it gets! And the machinery—or is it the ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... and arduous labours, he is denied the refreshment of a pipe; but, as a kind of compensation, he is not obliged to wear his dress suit when he is gardening! The joint wages are L50, with all found except clothes and beer; and the lucky recipients of this overpowering guerdon must be members of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... much like having these French beggars on board, and it wasn't without reason, for they were as many as we were. The very first night they were overheard by a negro who belonged to us, and had learnt French, making a plan for overpowering us, and taking possession of the vessel; so when we heard that, their doom was sealed. We mustered ourselves on the deck, put the hatches over some o' the French, seized those on deck, and—in half an hour, they ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... unerring, dealt by the mercilessly honest hand of youth. Esther's eyes were quite dry now. Her nervousness was passing. Regret and pity were merged in one overpowering, instinctive desire: the desire to show him beyond all manner of doubt that she repudiated that possessive touch upon her hand. "I could not ever possibly marry you," she said, as calmly as if she had been accustomed to dismissing suitors all ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... (the leaping notwithstanding) it is a permanent property; and this difference alone leaves no doubt as to where the original is to be looked for, and where the imitation. Saul alone, according to the old tradition, was made king in a divine, i.e. an overpowering and ideal manner: David was made king in a tedious human way, and after many intermediate stages. Of Saul alone was it originally told that the sudden outbreak of the spirit with which he, unelected as he ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the order for the final attack, which must be more formidable, more overpowering than any that have gone before. The plateau of Mont Saint Jean, he commands, must be carried at ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... have been few, and where poverty has been great, jealousy has been suppressed, even in the Venice of the eighteenth century. Sir H. Maine says, 'The usage' (that of polyandry—many husbands to a single wife) 'seems to me one which circumstances overpowering morality and decency might at any time call into existence. It is known to have arisen in the native Indian army.' The question now is, what are the circumstances that overpower morality and decency, and so produce ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... whose limits it exactly defined. Germany, so far as possible, will seek to close this war zone with mines, and will also endeavor to destroy hostile merchant vessels in every other way. While the German Government, in taking action based upon this overpowering point of view, keeps itself far removed from all intentional destruction of neutral lives and property, on the other hand, it does not fail to recognize that from the action to be taken against Great Britain ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... weird shadows through the wild glen. Now the burning wall of red flames is before him. With a ringing cry of exultation he dashes through them, and before him lies the sleeping maiden in her glistening armor. Mad with her beauty and his own overpowering passion, he springs to her side and wakes her with a kiss. The Volsung and the Valkyr gaze at each other a long time in silence. Bruennhilde strives to comprehend her situation, and to recall the events that led up to her penalty, while love grows within her for the hero ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... marriage. She mentioned both, but not in a manner that would add to your or my knowledge of her intentions. My sister disappointed me, sir. She was much less open than I wished. All that I could make out of her manner and conversation was the overpowering shock she felt at seeing me again and seeing me so changed. She didn't even tell me when and where we might meet again. When she left, she was as much lost to me as she was to you, and I am no less interested ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... hat with its waving plumes was overpowering enough, but her voice, strident and angry, seemed to fill the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... trust which are man's eternal defiance to the iron silences about him. Originally, as we know, he had shrunk from the thought of change in her corresponding to his own; now that his own foothold was strengthening, his longing for a new union was overpowering that old dread. The proselytising instinct may be never quite morally defensible, even as between husband and wife. Nevertheless, in all strong, convinced, and ardent souls it exists, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... bring about innumerable results far more excellent than themselves: the bird that, intoxicated with music, transcends itself in soul-like tones; the little artistic creature, that, without practise or instruction, accomplishes light works of architecture; but all directed by an overpowering spirit, that lightens in them already with single flashes of knowledge, but as yet appears nowhere as the full sun, as ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... social vanity, on local pride, on the gambling instinct, on the instinctive fear of diseases, and above all on the sexual instinct, can gain suggestive power. Everywhere among the uncritical masses such appeals reach individuals whose psychophysical attitudes make such influences vivid and overpowering. Every one knows, too, those often clever linguistic forms which are to aid the suggestion. They are to inhibit the opposing impulses. The mere use of the imperative, to be sure, has gradually become an ineffective, ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... hand, utterly belying her heart, to Bertie, who bent over it as if sorely tempted, in spite of Mrs. Leigh's presence, to carry it to his lips. But she withdrew it abruptly, and sat down, seized with more overpowering shyness than she had ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... graces which are so much more potent than our affected and studied elegancies. She had almost all the honors of the quadrille, and if she were envious of the Count of San-Felice's daughter, we will not undertake to say that Carmela was not jealous of her. And with overpowering compliments her handsome cavalier led her back to the place whence he had taken her, and where Luigi awaited her. Twice or thrice during the dance the young girl had glanced at Luigi, and each time she saw that he was pale and that his features were agitated, once even ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Terrestrials, revealing as they did a degree of culture which none of them had expected to find in a race of beings so monstrous, the food was even more surprising, although in another sense. For the wonderful crystal goblets were filled with a grayish-green slime of a nauseous and overpowering odor, the smaller bowls were full of living sea spiders and other such delicacies; and each large platter contained a fish fully a foot long, raw and whole, garnished tastefully with red, purple, and green ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... need to ask that question. Undoubtedly the old man was brewing something in the kettle over the fire. There was a peculiar odor in the air, not unpleasant, but rather overpowering. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... in his own thoughts that he failed to notice the overpowering heat as he climbed the rough hill-side in the full glare of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... room. He never once looked at her, and after a while he went away to Canada. She set the clock on the back landing to Canadian time, so that she might always know what he was doing abroad, and then straightway forgot all about him. Her moods followed each other rapidly, and were all of them overpowering and all sincere, but it was not until a year afterward that she fell in love, in the church vestry, with the pretty boy who stood opposite to her ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... their Elizabethan stupidities from the immortal groups of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. We ourselves have not yet overtaken the chief minds of this age; and the gulf that separated them from those overpowering numbers in their own time, to whose edicts they were compelled to pay an external submission, was broad indeed. The difficulty of establishing an understanding with this power was the difficulty. They ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... afternoon. I was powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me again and again. I can compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the overpowering nausea of the Channel passage—only my agony was of the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Sir, fellows quacking themselves and one another; when they get frightened, and with good reason, come to us and expect miracles; but as in this case, the quantity was not very much, 'tis not, you see, overpowering, and he may do if he takes what I'll ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... remained uncaptured, General Leman maintained that, strategically, Liege had not fallen. He thus held in check the armies of Von Kluck and Von Buelow, when every hour was of supreme urgency for their respective onsweep into central Belgium and up the Meuse Valley. The Germans presently brought into an overpowering ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... traveler, Frederick Law Olmsted. "The whole river," he says, "gushes up in one sparkling burst from the earth, with all the accessories of smaller springs,—moss, pebbles, foliage, seclusion, etc. Its effect is overpowering. It is beyond your ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... into the corridor, were gangsters, followers and friends of Dopey Jack. Only an overpowering show of force preserved the orderliness of the court from their ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... horror, and Ispirizade felt his limbs turn to stone and the light of day grow dim before his eyes in the presence of that dreadful figure which regarded him and pointed at him. It was, as it were, a dumb curse—a dumb, overpowering spell, which left it to God and His destroying angels to give expression to his wishes, and read in his heart and accomplish that which he himself was incapable ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... and I, better informed than any lamp post could be as to the prior sequence of events, would know at a glance it was no parsnip we beheld, but Mr. Algernon Leary, now suddenly enveloped, through no fault of his own, in one of the most overpowering predicaments conceivable to involve a rising lawyer and a member of at least two good clubs; and had we but been there to watch him, knowing, as we would know, the developments leading up to this present situation, we might have guessed what was the truth: That Mr. Leary was hot bent upon ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... intelligence and perfect holiness, to which all the charms and graces of mere form immediately become subordinate, and, though the beauty remain, its agency is comparatively negative under the overpowering ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Stover had never been accused of standing in awe of anything or anybody; but at the present moment, as he balanced from foot to foot, calculating the unending distance of the stone flags, he was suddenly seized with an overpowering impulse to bolt. And yet the group at the steps were only mildly interested. An urchin pillowed on the knees of a Goliath had shifted so as languidly to command the approach; a baseball, traveling back and forth in lazy flight, had stopped ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... relieved their mouths and throats were so dry that even brown sugar would not dissolve on their tongues. Many were delirious, and all had drawn fresh blood from their horses. Despite repeated vomiting, some drank their own urine. They were nearly all suffering from overpowering dyspnea, two were dead, and two were missing. The suffering was increased by the acrid atmosphere of the dry plains; the slightest exercise in this climate provoked a thirst. MacLoughlin, the surgeon in charge of the S.S. City of Chester, speaks of a young ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... were voices talking in a sort of mill patois concerning matters which she did not understand. But nobody, not even Gwendolyn, spoke to her, and a sudden, overpowering dismay seized her stout heart and made her head reel. Then she made a misstep and her foot slipped through the space between two stairs. This brought the hurrying procession to a standstill, and recalled attention ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... not precisely overpowering, it is very sweet and pleasing; one sees that a great talent has been at ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Seyton (for concerning the opinion of Dame Fleming he was indifferent) of inconsistency in being displeased with him on account of the natural consequences of an order of their own. Why did they send him to hear this overpowering preacher? The Abbot Ambrosius, he recollected, understood the weakness of their Popish cause better, when he enjoined him to repeat within his own mind, aves, and credos, and paters, all the while old Henry Warden preached ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... believed the jewels to be the same that I brought to you yesterday," the young man said, with an earnest directness which convinced the gentleman that he spoke the truth. "I see now," he continued, "that they are not; and"—a feeling of faintness almost overpowering him as he realized all that this experience would cost him, aside from his pecuniary loss—"I have been outrageously deceived and hoodwinked, for I have already advanced the sum you named to the woman who wished ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... absolute and unconditional interdiction of this article among these people as the first and great step in their melioration. Halfway measures will answer no purpose. These can not successfully contend against the cupidity of the seller and the overpowering appetite of the buyer. And the destructive effects of the traffic are marked in every page of the history of our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... strong ammoniacal smell of the guano was so overpowering, combined with the fearful noise the penguins made—all screaming and chattering together, as if the denizens of the monkey house at the Zoological Gardens, which Fritz had once visited when in London, had been suddenly let loose amongst the parrots in the same establishment— that ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... The Soldier had an overpowering longing to see the Princess again, and so the dog came in the middle of the night and fetched her, running as fast as he could. But the lady-in-waiting slipped on india-rubber shoes and followed them. When she saw them ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... of fact there is no such remembrance.—But it is not an absolute rule that something of which we were conscious must be remembered; how then can the absence of remembrance prove the absence of previous consciousness?—Unless, we reply, there be some cause of overpowering strength which quite obliterates all impressions—as e.g. the dissolution of the body—the absence of remembrance does necessarily prove the absence of previous consciousness. And, moreover, in the present case the absence of consciousness ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of human destiny seem more than ever to move by forces which tend to no particular point. There is a drift, tremendous and overpowering, due to nobody in particular, but to hundreds of millions of small impulses. Achilles is dead, and the turn of the Myrmidons ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... lassitude impossible to describe; it was overpowering, and I had no choice but to yield to it. I dropped back in my chair, leaned forward on the table, and instantly fell into a heavy sleep, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... nothing more depressing than a calm in the tropics,—a raging sun overhead, around an endless expanse of dead sea, and a feeling of utter helplessness that is overpowering. What if this should last? what a fate! The Rime of the Ancient Mariner comes to our mind. Come storm and tempest, come hurricanes and blizzards, anything but an endless stagnation. For some hours we watched earnestly the horizon to the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... moonlight night. The line of trees in the Close were in flower, and their sweetness was overpowering. He did not stay there, however, but wandered out into the city, with his hat pushed back from his forehead, and his hands in his pockets. The gas was not lighted in the streets as the moon was near the full; and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor", but using *quotient* emphasizes that it was bad luck overpowering good luck (or someone else's good luck overpowering ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... travelers. He is flying through space at the rate of not less than a hundred and sixty millions of miles in a year, and the earth and her sister planets are his fellow voyagers, which, obeying his overpowering attraction, circle about him as he advances. In other words, if we could take up a position in open space in advance of the sun, we should see him rushing toward us at the rate of some 450,000 miles a day, chased by his whole family of shining worlds and the vast swarms of meteoric ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... a long and wide street, in which not a single living figure appeared to break the perspective. Solitude is never so overpowering as when it exists among the works of man. In old woods, or on the tops of mountains, it is graceful and benignant, for it is at home; but where thick dwellings are, it ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... overpowering force of seasoned soldiers, horse and foot, marched with Argyll, not to Edinburgh, but down Gala to Tweed; while Montrose had withdrawn from Kelso, up Ettrick to Philiphaugh, on the left of Ettrick, within ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... to write again, lest my last letter should give you too much pain. If you are really oppressed with overpowering and involuntary melancholy, you are to be pitied rather ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... moment for his purpose. Mrs. MacOubrey, Borrow's stepdaughter, was in the humour to sell her father's manuscripts and books. They were offered to the city of Norwich; there was some talk of Mr. Jeremiah Coleman, M.P., whose influence and wealth were overpowering in Norwich at the time, buying them. Finally, a very considerable portion of the collection came into the hands of Mr. Webber, a bookseller of Ipswich, who later became associated with the firm of Jarrold of Norwich. From Webber ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... personally taken up the contract—Kiva my host, Fika a fine young fellow, and Wiki, another noted elephant hunter. These three Fans, the four Ajumba and the Igalwa, Ngouta, I think will be enough. Moreover I fancy it safer not to have an overpowering percentage of Fans in the party, as I know we shall have considerable stretches of uninhabited forest to traverse; and the Ajumba say that the Fans will kill people, i.e. the black traders who venture into their country, and cut them up into neat pieces, eat what ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... and then through Upper Thames Street toward Temple Bar. It was no time to scold her, since I was sure that she knew quite as well as I could tell her the folly and the recklessness of what she had just done. I also believed there must have been an overpowering motive back of it all, and that being true, I knew that nothing I could say would in any way induce her to repent at present or forbear in future. I might bring her to regret, but regret is a long journey from repentance. If her heart had gone so far beyond her control as to cause ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Caesarea, Scythopolis, and Damascus, by the infuriated Syrians, who organized a kind of Palestinian Vespers, convinced the people that they were engaged in a war to the death. The Herodian party, as the royal house and its supporters were called, endeavored to preserve peace, by dwelling on the overpowering might of Rome and the inevitable end of the insurrection, but in vain. In fear the priests withdrew to their duties in the Temple, and did not venture out till the Zealots were for a time dislodged. The Roman legate of Syria, Cestius ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... The afternoon grew toward evening before he pulled steadily home, crawling away from the roarers against the cruel green, watching the ominous cloud with some such grim humor as if under observation by an overpowering but baffled enemy. ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... during the scorching hours of noon; the short scrub that clothed them was redolent of that peculiar Calabrian odour which haunts one like a melody—an odour of dried cistus and other aromatic plants, balsamic by day, almost overpowering at this hour. To aid and diversify the symphony of perfume, I lit a cigar, and then gave myself up to contemplation of the heavenly bodies. We passed a solitary man, walking swiftly with bowed head. What was ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the captain stepped back. He must do something—he must speak to some one. He must take some advantage of this wonderful, this overpowering discovery. But before he could bring his mind down to its practical workings, Maka had clutched ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... board out of his berth at two in the morning, and had dragged him on deck, saying that he must throw him overboard and drown him, as the only way of saving his soul. The watch on deck had had great difficulty in overpowering Mr. Van Torp, who was very strong. With regard to the late Miss Bamberger the witness thought that Mr. Van Torp had killed her to get rid of her, because she was in possession of facts that would ruin him if they were known and because she had threatened to reveal them to her father. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... a sign from you to approach, to throw herself at your feet." Then she tripped towards the door as quickly as she was able in her heavy clothing, and called out on the outside of it that the king would admit Madelon Cardillac; and she came back into the room weeping and sobbing with overpowering delight ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... telegrams, strangers arriving on this errand and that—she was acutely aware of the heavy, silent man who, without doing anything in particular, gave her the almost morbid impression of dominating the scene. As an actual fact he almost effaced himself, but to her excited fancy he was omnipresent, overpowering. She thought of him now not so much as a python as in the form of a huge bloated spider in the middle of an invisible web, spinning, watching, closing in. She was ready to believe he was always watching her, spying on her movements, reading her secret thoughts. There were moments when she had ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... who keep the tables, or from those who would not scruple to plunder others; and I now entreat you not to return to that place—and am sorry, very sorry, that ever I took you there. To me, the excitement is nothing—to you, it is overpowering. You are a gamester, or rather, you have it in your disposition. Take, therefore, the advice of a friend, if I may so call myself, and do not go there again. I hope you are not seriously inconvenienced by what you have ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... with the interests and passions of daily life would perforce be of the feeblest, it would tend more and more to cast off the fetters of meaning that it might do freer service to the jealous god of visible beauty. The overpowering rivalry of speech would rob it of all its symbolic intent and leave its bare picture. Literature has favoured rather the way of the ear and has given itself zealously to the tuneful ordering of sounds. Let it be repeated, therefore, that for the traffic of ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... The Countess was gay and brilliant; kind also, with a tenderness that seemed to throw out feelers for friendship. To me she spoke only when I addressed her directly; her attention was all for Elsa. In Elsa's eyes, not skilled to conceal her heart, there was, overpowering all other expression, a curiosity, a study of something that interested and puzzled her, a desire to understand the woman who talked to her. For Elsa had heard something; not all, but something. She ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... fort and a brigantine at Niagara. When he reached the head of Lake Ontario, his vessel excited the admiration of the savages; while the Falls of Niagara no less raised the wonder of the French. Neither had before seen the former so great a triumph of human art; nor the latter, so overpowering a spectacle of nature. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Elza. She felt abruptly that her warning was futile, felt an overpowering desire to run. Run somewhere—anywhere, away from the lurid sight she was facing. Or run perhaps, to the Great City; to race with that black cloud of death; to run fast and far, and burst into our palace to ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... value. For if the facets were ill-matched, and the points of light so ever little out of perfect harmony, all the lustre of the jewel would be loose and wavering, and the central fire dulled; instead of answering, as it should, to all possibilities of gaze, and overpowering any eye intent on its deeper mysteries. We laughed at the Squire's dissertation; for how should he know all these things, being nothing better, and indeed much worse than a mere Northmolton blacksmith? He took ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... brought by Boche was a pot of pansies, and his wife's was mignonette; Mme Lerat's, a lemon verbena. The three furnaces filled the room with an overpowering heat, and the frying potatoes drowned their voices. Gervaise was very sweet and smiling, thanking everyone for the flowers, at the same time making the dressing for the salad. The perfume of the flowers was perceived above all ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... skin that put five dollars into a boy's locker. Another time I shot one that sailed over me; when he came down, there was a ruffed grouse, still living, in his claws. Another time I could not touch one that I had killed for the overpowering odor which was in his feathers, showing that Mephitis, the skunk, never loses his head when attacked. But Kookooskoos, like the fox, cares little for such weapons, and in the spring, when game is scarce, swoops for and kills a skunk wherever he finds him prowling away from ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... overcomes these difficulties. When, in the hands of a master, they are forced to bend under the onward and impetuous sweep of the passionate rhythm, compelled to sing the tune of the overpowering emotions—the chords of the spirit quiver in response. The heart recognizes the organic law of its own life: the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising again in ever-renewed exertion, to sink again in ever-new repose; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... my dear—this news is overpowering—it is almost too good to be true," interrupted the deacon, nearly as much unmanned by this intelligence of his good fortune as he had previously been by his apprehensions. "Yes, it does seem too good to be true; read ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... noticed that the trees are not nearly so dark as in the photograph. If they were, they would be overpowering in so large an area of white. It was thought better, also, to change the direction of the light, so that the dark ivy, instead of acting contradictorily to the effect, might lend character to the shaded side. The lower portion of the nearer tower was toned in, partly to qualify the vertical ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... Christian tradition. But is there anything in it? Can we receive it simply on the authority of the primitive Church? Can we realise any such connection between death and sin as makes it a truth to us, an intelligible, impressive, overpowering thought, that ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... old Arthur, sure," he said. Then his head drooped again. Fatigue was overpowering him. St. Clair and Langdon put a hand on either shoulder and held him erect, but Harry was so far sunk in lethargy that he was not conscious of their grasp. Men looked curiously at the three young officers riding rapidly forward, the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... behind the trees that bordered the road, and then got up and walked into the sitting-room, where he found his mother pacing the floor. Her anxiety and her impatience to learn what it was that brought Kelsey to the house were so overpowering that she could not ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... believer in ghosts, but he came nearer to a fear of the dark that night than ever before in his life. He brought his horse close to the fire for company, and was careful not to turn his back upon the dead. A corpse lying peacefully would not have produced this overpowering horror. He had seen battle-fields, but this pile of mangled limbs conquered even the hardened campaigner. He shivered each time his memory went back to what he had first looked upon—the charred ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... dear—I heard it long ago. Your father was a forger! What do you suppose I care? He probably had some overpowering temptation and yielded, never dreaming but he would be able to make it right. You can't make me believe that any parent of yours was actually bad! And besides, if he was, it ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... ferocity of determination, which was stiffening and transforming the whole soul. She could waver still—as she had wavered in that despairing, anguished moment with Lucy in the Embassy garden. But the wavering would soon be over. A jealousy so overpowering that nothing could make itself heard against it was closing upon her like a demoniacal possession. Was it the last effort of self-preservation?—the last protest of the living thing ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was a possible chance for a mate's berth, and perhaps the skipper would not get bail, after all. In that case I thought I could hardly manage better, for my fear of the little mate was not overpowering. I was not exactly of a timid nature,—a man seldom rises to be mate of a deep-water ship who is,—but I always dreaded a brutal skipper on account of his absolute authority at sea, where there is no redress. I had once ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... that the formation of the volunteers in respective States and by the Governors of such States raises a great difficulty in organizing and preparing reserves. But talent and genius reveal themselves by overpowering difficulties considered to be insurmountable. And Halleck is a man both of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... and serpents done in bronze hung from the ceiling, while on a raised dais at the farther end of the room was an enormous squatting figure of the seven-handed god. Before it, in braziers, fire gleamed, giving off a heavy, pungent odor that was almost overpowering to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... over us by our feelings, or by our habits. Checked for a time by an adherence to our resolutions, they gradually recover their former strength, until they again break forth, and we yield to their overpowering influence. A few days after I had made the resolution, I found myself, like the sailor, rewarding it by writing more indefatigably ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... dialogue having taken place between Jules and the newcomer, the keys were handed through the cage, the door opened and the lift was set once more in motion. And a few minutes later, Sally, suddenly aware of an overpowering sleepiness, had switched off her light and jumped into bed. Her last waking thought was a regret that she had not been able to speak at length to Mr. Ginger Kemp on the subject of enterprise, and resolve that the address should be ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... him stood the Chief of the Police, Zaniloff, a short burly man who wore a dark green uniform and held his sheathed sword lightly in his left hand. These latter looked up when the door opened, but the doctors took no notice whatever. There was an overpowering odor of anaesthetics in the room although the windows had been ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... contralto notes brought full meed of meaning, although the words were German; low, deep, uncertain at first—the ponderings of love, of devotion, of doubt—then swelling loud and full and free at the end; love justified, undying, triumphant, overpowering. ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... forced their way along the Graded road in the centre of the position. On the first sound of firing the inlying picket of the 24th Punjaub Infantry doubled out to reinforce the pickets on the road, and in the water-gorge. They only arrived in time to find these being driven in by overpowering numbers of the enemy. Hundreds of fierce swordsmen swarmed unto the bazaar and into the serai, a small enclosure which adjoined. Sharpshooters scrambled up the surrounding hills, and particularly from one ragged, rock-strewn peak called Gibraltar, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Josias, all were pious"; that "Zaccheus he did climb the Tree our Lord to see"; and that "Vashti for Pride was set aside"; and still with many a sympathetic shudder and tingle do I recall Captivity's overpowering sense of horror, and mine, as we lingered long over the portraitures of Timothy flying from Sin, of Xerxes laid out in funeral garb, and of proud Korah's ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field |
