"Petrifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to her with a smile of the extremest self- complacency, after hoping, in a low voice, he had the honour of seeing her well, exclaimed, "How wretchedly empty is the town! petrifying to a degree! I believe you do not find yourself at present ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... day she had fainted in the courtroom she had shed no tears, and, we may almost add, had uttered no word. Unlike the marble of antiquity awakening into life, she might have been compared to a living woman petrifying into stone. Every ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... room, and,, brushing past Mrs. Crewe, seated herself immediately by her elbow. Mrs. Crewe, not admiring this familiarity, moved away, giving her at the same time a look of dignified distance that was almost petrifying. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... lived on it, are confined to purify themselves from the dross contracted in their first stage of existence; and it flowed in black waves, for ever bubbling along the cave, the extent of which had never been explored. From the sides and top, water distilled, and, petrifying as it fell, took fantastic shapes, that soon divided it into apartments, if so they might be called. In the foam, a wearied spirit would sometimes rise, to catch the most distant glimpse of light, or taste the vagrant breeze, which the yawning of the rock admitted, when Sagestus, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... with the bones of the men whose flesh she has devoured; in one story she offers a human arm, by way of a meal, to a girl who visits her. But she is also represented in one of the stories[178] as petrifying her victims. This trait connects her with Medusa, and the three sister Baba Yagas with the three Gorgones. The Russian Gorgo's method of petrifaction is singular. In the story referred to, Ivan Devich (Ivan ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... the 'Giaour' Smart, Christopher Smith, Sir Henry ——, Horace, esq., his 'Horace in London' ——, Mrs. Spencer. See 'Florence.' ——, Miss (afterwards Mrs. Oscar Byrne), dancer Smyrna, Lord Byron's stay at Smythe, Professor Socrates Sonnets, 'the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions,' Sorelli, his translation of Grillparzer's 'Sappho' Sotheby, William, esq., his tragedies his 'Ivan' accepted for Drury Lane Theatre similarity of a passage in 'Ivan' ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Laurance felt that he was approaching some offended and avenging Fury, that he was drifting down to ruin, powerless to lift his hand and stay even for an instant the fatal descent; that he was gradually petrifying, and things ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... done any better, I'd like to know? I've always used to get up with the lark, till I came under the petrifying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lapse of ages, or a freak of Nature, who might have chosen to imitate, in stone, her usual handiwork of flesh. Perhaps it was the least unreasonable idea, suggested by this strange spectacle, that the moisture of the cave possessed a petrifying quality, which had thus ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... afterwards penetrated with a flinty substance. In this case, with whatever different substances the woody body shall be supposed to have been penetrated in a state of solution by water, the regular structure of the plant would still have remained, with its vacuities, variously filled with the petrifying substances, separated from the aqueous menstruum, and deposited in the vascular structure of the wood. There cannot be a doubt with regard to the truth of this proposition; for, as it is, we frequently find parts of the consolidated wood, with the vascular structure remaining perfectly ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... theological writer of Weimar, and as such, his impression upon theology and religion in general was decided. Though he opposed the Kantian philosophy, because of its petrifying tendency, his antagonism was counteracted by others of the Weimar celebrities. Goethe and Schiller eclipsed all other names in their department of thought, and were the culmination of the new type of literature. Herder might preach, but it was only to a comparatively ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Coleridge says: "And when at last the poor thing is toiled and hammered into fit shape, it is in general racked and tortured prose rather than anything resembling poetry." Though Lord Byron wrote a few himself he defined the sonnet as "The most puling, petrifying, stupidly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... which the mountains themselves might be somewhat diminished in size. But that water has been the main cause of these effects is proved by the existence of fossil remains of aquatic and other animals on many mountains." Avicenna also explains the nature of petrifying or incrusting waters, and mentions aerolites, out of one of which a sword-blade was made, but he adds that the metal was too brittle to be of any use. A mere catalogue of some of the works of Avicenna will indicate the condition of Arabian attainment. 1. On the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... unpublished things concerning the volcanoes of the Andes, about currents, etc. And all this at the age when one begins to petrify! It is very rash! May this letter prove to you and to Madame Agassiz that I am petrifying only at the extremities, —the heart is still warm. Retain for me the affection which I hold ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... may be culled out specimens of all the fishes, fruits, and trees, which abounded in Britain before the birth of Noah; and the traveller may consequently handle fish which swam, and fruit which grew, in the days of the antediluvians, all now converted into sound stone, by the petrifying qualities of the soil in which they are imbedded. Here are lobsters, crabs, and nautili, presenting almost the same reality as those we now see crawling and floating about; branches of trees, too, in as perfect order as when lopped from their parent stems; and trunks of them, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... it. It proved to be made of copper, a fact which they ascertained by scraping the corroded metal away, leaving the pure copper beneath. They attempted to withdraw the javelin, but could not move it. The body, in petrifying, had closed around it like a vice—the hand holding it in a position slanting downwards, as if in that direction he had attempted to draw it from the wound. On examining the rubbish that Sidney had pulled off him, they found a helmet, precisely similar to the one found by Edward and Anne ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... not something that suddenly and finally takes shape, a petrifying of emotion that for a season in courtship flourishes. It gets its vitality through a growth process, continues with life, a spreading of an affection always forward-looking; anything else is an indication of a faltering marriage. In the beginning love announces the awakening ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... receive, if possible, in her own body the deadly shaft? Pride and defiance dissolve in the depths of maternal love. The more than earthly dignity of the features are the less marred by the agony, as under the rapid accumulation of blow upon blow she seems, as in the deeply significant fable, already petrifying into the stony torpor. But before this figure, thus twice struck into stone, and yet so full of life and soul,—before this stony terminus of the limits of human endurance, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... of my body would obey my wishes, not a breath came to my lips; and the old woman, bending over me between the curtains, fixed her stony stare upon me with a strange unearthly smile. I wanted to call for help, I wanted to drive her from me, but her petrifying stare seemed to fascinate and paralyse me, just as that of the serpent fixes the little bird ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Again he saw nothing. The laughing disturbance of the air, too, had ceased; but the atmospheric throb was now twice as distinct as before, and its rhythm had become double. There were two separate pulses; one was in the time of a march, the other in the time of a waltz. The first was bitter and petrifying to feel, but the second was gay, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... member who held herself augustly aloof being Lady Puffle. She remained secluded in her cabin, or occupied an isolated position on deck, appearing at dinner with a brave show of appetite, diamonds and airs, paralysing her neighbours with a petrifying stare. Occasionally she accorded a bow or "Good morning" to her sole and necessary acquaintance, the ship's doctor, whom she informed that in her position she was debarred from mixing with the crowd—as later, in Rangoon, these people ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... The young man whose life we then despaired of has recovered." And with more of this, Mr. Hall told Julia's secret, while Mrs. Anderson, between her anger and her rapt condition of mind, seemed to be petrifying. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... commerce carried on, manufactures of crockery, cloth and silk stockings. But in the natural curiosities of the environs of Clermont there is a great deal to interest the botanist and mineralogist and above all there is a remarkable petrifying well, very near the town, where by leaving pieces of wood, shell-fish and other articles exposed to the dropping of the water, they become petrified in a short time. This water has the same effect on dead animals and rapidly converts them into stone. I have myself ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... from my hand, and my eyes followed it. I shrunk back, as if to avoid some petrifying influence that approached me. My tongue was mute; all the functions of nature were at a stand, and I sunk upon the floor lifeless. The noise of my fall, as I afterwards heard, alarmed my uncle, who was in a lower ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... night-cap on, an old jacket and trousers, a pair of shoes in rags attached to his legs with a rope's end, no shirt, no stockings, nor any other attire; the face was climate-struck, it had braved the equator and the pole, the battle and the breeze, the scorching heat and the petrifying cold,—it was, as might be expected, thin, and moreover almost lost in a profusion of hair on each cheek, so that it would be difficult for the oldest acquaintance to recognise the features after long absence; nature had made the lips ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... rises in Sierra Morena, and empties itself into the Mediterranean, near Huelva, having the name of Tinto given it from the tinge of its waters, which are as yellow as a topaz, hardening the sand and petrifying it in a most surprising manner. If a stone happen to fall in, and rest on another, they both become in a year's time perfectly united and conglutiated. This river withers all the plants on its banks, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... nose-piece of his helmet was pushed up to allow him to speak plainly,—and most plainly did he speak, I can assure you, all the way down stairs, keeping his right eye glaring upon Popham in one corner of the buttery, and at the same time petrifying Whelpdale with his left. From father to son, the Disseisins had always been famous for the manner in which they could straddle their eyes; and in Sir Godfrey the family trait was ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... old Hecla's cloudy height, When o'er the dismal, half-year's night He pours his sulph'rous breath, Hast known my petrifying wind Wild ocean's curling billows bind, Like bending sheaves by ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... come in sight. The rich orange of the central building contrasts with the paler yellow of its two companions, while the glowing colour of all three is splendidly relieved against green vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their material is travertine—a calcareous stone formed by the deposit of petrifying waters, which contains fragments of reeds, spiral shells, and other substances, embedded in the porous limestone. In the flourishing period of old Poseidonia these travertine columns were coated with stucco, worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... terrible spells of depression. Shelley, who wrote vaudeville turns in the concrete cell, was a chronic pessimist. St. John, a young magazine writer, was an anarchic disciple of Nietzsche. Masson, a painter, held to a doctrine of eternal recurrence that was petrifying. And Hall, usually so merry, could outfoot them all when he once got started on the cosmic pathos of religion and the gibbering anthropomorphisms of those who loved not to die. At such times Saxon was oppressed by these sad children of art. It was inconceivable that they, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... river.—Ver. 313. Possibly the Hebrus is here meant. The petrifying qualities of some streams is a fact well ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... quotations from his address at Johns Hopkins are especially worthy of attention as a part of his message to Americans. "It has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work them. A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace. Trustees have sometimes made a palace and ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... tipmost top of a six-foot redwood. And to complete it all his horse stumbled upon several large broods of half-grown quail, and the air was filled with the thrum of their flight. He halted and watched the young ones "petrifying" and disappearing on the ground before his eyes, and listening to the anxious calls of the old ones hidden in ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... eyes there was bewildering depth; a sense of coldness that was positively benumbing, and which was reminiscent of the blue petrifying waters of the Ural Lakes; a magnetism that was paralysing, that held in complete obeisance both mind and limb, and was comparable to nothing so nearly as the hypnotic influence of the tiger or snake, but ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... world is just to the north of this lovely Southland. It would seem as though the aesthetic oyster that lines its home with the tinting of heaven and has caught the "tears of angels," petrifying them as permanent souvenirs, loves to make its home as near to this earthly paradise ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... the lady, hearing it, advanced to him, and, pulling off a mask, discovered a face which he had never seen before. The Gorgon's head, according to the fables of antiquity, never had a more instantaneous or petrifying effect, than that which this countenance produced upon the astonished youth. His eyes were fixed upon this unknown object, as if they had been attracted by the power of enchantment, his feet seemed riveted to the ground, and, after having stood motionless ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
