"Sensational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a salad fork and a dessert spoon still untouched beside our plates. It would have been thoughtful if Ruth had waited and lit her fuse when the finger-bowls came on. It seemed a shame to me to waste two perfectly good courses, and unnecessarily sensational to interrupt the ceremony of a Sunday dinner. But it was impossible to sit there through two ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... idea of the wild life of the Western Islands in those rough days, reminding one not seldom of Sir Walter Scott's Lord of the Isles. It is full of incident and sensational adventure."—The Guardian. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... That would be delightful. Cecily, you will read your Political Economy in my absence. The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... peculiarly pervasive "sense of place," for which his landscape is of course famous, and which in these dreams was emphasized through a subtle ominousness of atmosphere. You perceived what the place stood for, its sensational elements, and you began vaguely to imagine the kind of event for which it would form a suitable background. In his pictures the element was a sort of dream-infusion, as though in each scene the secret goddess, the Naiad of the spot, must have stood close to him ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... books. Among these books were four treasure troves that set my boy's imagination on fire. They were Stanley's Adventures in Africa, Dr. Kane's Book of Polar Explorations, Mungo Park, and, most amazing of all, a huge, sensational book called Savage Races of the World ... this title was followed by a score of harrowing and sensational sub-titles in rubric. I revelled and rolled in this book like a colt let out to first pasture. For days and nights, summer and winter, I fought, hunted, was native to all the world's savage ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... involuntarily, and they sat in paralytic silence as the figure made its stately and sensational progress along ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Dick Shannon, Bud's "city cousins," seemed to realize, as did the young rancher, his mother and sister, that something was wrong. Prepared as Nort and Dick were for strange and sensational happenings in the west, they sensed that this was out of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... joining his uncle's ship he was made captain of the Agamemnon. At the siege of Calvi in 1794 he was wounded in the right eye and lost the sight of it. Three years afterwards he lost his right arm while commanding an attack on Santa Cruz, and although he had put so many sensational events into his life up to that time, it was not until the battle of St. Vincent that he began to attract attention. He had been promoted Rear-Admiral before the news of the battle was known, and when the news reached England the public enthusiasm was irrepressible. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help, which she begs, if the irreparable is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... corridor towards the big wide staircase in the distance. There was smoke coming along the passage, a smell of burnt wood, and then a woman's voice giving out a bloodcurdling shriek of "Fire!" That was quite enough notice for me. Two minutes afterwards I was downstairs in the hall of that sensational establishment. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Many sensational accounts of these Parsee burial rites have been printed. Nearly every writer lays stress on the fact that pieces of the dead bodies are dropped by the vultures within the grounds or in the streets outside. This is an absurdity, as the ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... Browning was, like every other intelligent Aryan, interested in the Jews; but if he was related to every people in which he was interested, he must have been of extraordinarily mixed extraction. Thirdly, there is the yet more sensational theory that there was in Robert Browning a strain of the negro. The supporters of this hypothesis seem to have little in reality to say, except that Browning's grandmother was certainly a Creole. It is said in support of the view ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... consuls. In the autumn the senate had found legal means of depriving Caesar of two of his legions. Talk of a compromise was dying down. Pompey, who had been desperately ill in the spring, had regained his strength. He had been exasperated by the savage attacks of Curio. Sensational stories of the movements of Caesar's troops in the North were whispered in the forum, and increased the tension. In the autumn, for instance, Caesar had occasion to pay a visit to the towns in northern Italy to thank them for their support of Mark Antony, his candidate ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... week before, and had learned on arriving that Dredge's lectures were stirring the world of science as nothing had stirred it since Lanfear's "Utility and Variation." And the incredible outrage was that they owed their sensational effect to the fact of being an attempted refutation of ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... wretchedly familiar. The true realist is such a man as Parent du Chatelet; exploring all that most tries the senses and the sentiments, and reporting all truthfully, but soberly, chastely, without needless circumstance, or picturesque embellishment, for a useful end, and not for a mere sensational effect. ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... immoral. (a) It rests on the old idea of retribution. (b) It tends to weaken the sacredness of human life. (c) It endangers the lives of innocent people. (d) Executions and the sensational newspaper accounts which follow ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... poor, or more unlike the fussy impertinence of the philanthropists who think themselves born "to expose" Boards of Guardians. His aim throughout was to co-operate with the Guardians in giving, not less, but greater effect to the Poor Laws, and in resisting the sensational writing and reckless abuse which aim at undoing their work. "The gigantic subscription lists which are regarded as signs of our benevolence," he says truly, "are monuments of ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... come to his most brilliant, at least his most sensational, discovery. Examining Jupiter minutely on January 7, 1610, he noticed three little stars near it, which he noted down as fixing its then position. On the following night Jupiter had moved to the other side of the three stars. This was natural enough, but was it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... passed the frontier without difficulty, he will reach Pekin, he will marry Zinca Klork. Decidedly there is a want of excitement. I cannot get anything out of the corpse of Yen Lou! and the readers of the Twentieth Century who looked to me for something sensational and thrilling. ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... to echo this attempting, clanging and complicated society; and this stream did not flow like a full river, making large or sweet melody, but like a mountain torrent thick with rocks, the thunderous whirlpools of whose surface were white with foam. Changing and sensational scenery haunted its lower banks where it became dangerously navigable. Strange boats, filled with outlandish figures, who played on unknown instruments, and sang of deeds and passions remote from common life, sailed by on ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... fight over the compromise measure in Congress the Northern papers printed sensational accounts of a rupture between President Taylor and Messrs. Toombs and Stephens. According to this account the Georgia congressmen called on the President and expressed strong disapprobation of his stand upon the bill to organize the Territory of New Mexico. ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... of 1891 came a curious episode in my life, to which, as it was considerably discussed in the newspapers at the time, and as various sensational news-makers have dwelt upon it since, I may be permitted to refer. During several years before,—in fact, ever since my two terms in the State Senate,—various people, and especially my old Cornell students ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of view seemed to be that Bamberger was quite mad since his daughter's death, and had built up a sensational but clumsy case, with the help of the man Feist, whose evidence, as a confirmed dipsomaniac, would be all but worthless. It was possible, Van Torp said, that Miss Bamberger had been killed; in fact, Griggs' evidence alone would almost prove it. ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... has employed to bring about his present celebrity in that salubrious suburb. He has never, it appears, written a book, collaborated in a review, appeared in a night-club, lunched at the Bitz, sat on a committee, or been summoned as a witness in a sensational divorce case. His record, I fancy, must be one of the most thoroughly unique in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... and interesting story of the time of the Great Plague of 1665; it recites the many adventures through which the hero passed in London, and later in Dorsetshire, where a number of sensational encounters with smugglers and pirates are described. Mr. Bevan knows how to win the attention of boys, and this story will be found to be written ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... own name, and that is filled from cover to cover with stories and anecdotes, and illustrated talks and latest news on sports, and—oh, hundreds of things you want to know about—all written by the biggest boys' authors in the country. And pictures! Say there are hundreds of them! Beats sensational ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be. It has entered into the general conception of the existence of all chiefs of state. It's almost conventional—especially since so many presidents have been assassinated. Now let us take an outrage upon—say a church. Horrible enough at first ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... tender cruelty was when the passion to anatomize him beset her. The ground of it was, that she found him in her likeness, adoring as she adored, and a similar loftiness; now grovelling, now soaring; the most radiant of beings, the most abject; and the pleasure she had of the sensational comparison was in an alteregoistic home she found in him, that allowed of her gathering a picked self-knowledge, and of her saying: 'That is like me: that is very like me: that is terribly like': up to the point where the comparison wooed her no longer with an agreeable ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... exempt from these sensational periods. There are times when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems to condense itself into one big chance, and stand out before him like a salmon on the top wave of a rapid. He sees that his luck hangs by a single strand, and he cannot tell whether it will ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... and Broadway, as he came out of the subway tunnels, he bought a copy of the News and glanced quickly through the headlines. But, as always, there was little sensational news. Mars was doing pretty well for himself, of course: there were two wars going on in Asia, one in Europe and three revolutions in South and Central America. That last did seem to be overdoing things a bit, but not seriously. Forrester shrugged, wondering vaguely when the United States was going ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... into our confidence. I own to you I claim some credit for myself in this discovery. It was in long reflecting over the ills of Ireland that I came to see that where the malady has so much in its nature that is sensational and emotional, so must the remedy be sensational too. The Tories were ever bent on extirpating—we devote ourselves to "healing ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... is simply my plea for patience with our enterprise even at the times when we can't send home sensational figures. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' and the essence of our utility, as of that of any ambulance corps, is just to be there, on any and every contingency, including the blessed contingency of a temporary drop in the supply of the wounded turned ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with Bar Harbor. And they hinted that so far as they were concerned the voyage might continue at any moment without protest. Han brought back a newspaper that afternoon containing a vivid and highly sensational account of the attempted robbery of the Alfred Henry Drummond "cottage." The three read it with much interest, and especially that portion of it which stated that "the local police force is investigating and has every expectation of making arrests within ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... doctor," said she at length, as soon as she could manage to speak, "your tale is highly sensational and amusing, but I really think that you ought to consult a clairvoyant, and not a matter-of-fact person like me, about the fate of George ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... vast, confused building the colour of sand or brown heather honey, with carved mushrbiyeh work lending an Eastern charm to windows, balconies, and loggias, and enough green, flowery garden to give a sensational effect of contrast with the tidal wave of desert poised ready, it would seem, to overwhelm palms and roses. Clustered near, the tiny mushroom village which huddles under the shelter of Cheops' Pyramid. Beyond, the immense upward sweep of golden dunes, culminating ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... with the German Legation with a view to securing a cancellation of the Kiaochow lease, the ultimatum which Japan dispatched to Germany on the 15th August, 1914, completely nullified his tentative proposals. Yuan Shih-kai had, indeed, not been in the slightest degree prepared for such a sensational development as war between Japan and Germany over the question of a cruiser-base established on territory leased from China; and although he considered the possibility of sending a Chinese force to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a good one, and some very clever performers were amongst its members. The play at length commenced, and appeared to create great interest and command attention. The lady admitted that the characters were well represented, and the drama very creditably got up. At length came a very sensational portion of the play. That part where Maria Martin is enticed into the Red Barn by Corder. In this exciting scene, Maria, as if having a presentiment of her fate, stands still and refuses to move. She appears in a state of stupor and Corder ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... stage, there was a predetermining cause for which there was a much better case. The whole business began with the problem of black labour. I have not attempted in this book to deal adequately with the question of the negro. I have refrained for a reason that may seem somewhat sensational; that I do not think I have anything particularly valuable to say or suggest. I do not profess to understand this singularly dark and intricate matter; and I see no use in men who have no solution filling ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... age, and an advertising age is a sensational age. Religion itself—the staid, the demure—shares in the general tendency. She preaches in the style of the auction room, she beats drums and shakes tambourines in the streets, she affects criminals and dotes on vice, she bustles about the reformation ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... him. The young official who arrested him—he was the Junior Public Prosecutor—presided at these operations with immense zeal. Being young and obscure, he thirsted to make a name for himself, and opportunities were few in that little town. To be put in charge, therefore, of this sensational case, was to behold opening out before him the rosiest prospects for the future. His name, which was Meyer, would flare up in flames of glory from the ashes of Axel's honour. Stralsund, ringing with the ancient name of Lohm, would be forced to ring simultaneously with the less ancient and not in ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... fruit till nearly six years later. In January 1887 the 'Edinburgh Review' contained a strong article on 'The Literature of the Streets,' in which the proposal was definitely made for the issue of wholesome fiction and good works of good writers, sensational and otherwise, in penny booklets. Eight or nine years later the idea was taken up by at least two publishers; such penny books are now issued by thousands, and, together with the countless number of halfpenny and penny periodicals, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... buildings are to be discoloured by coal-smoke; but so is all fine sculpture, whatsoever; and the whiter, the worse its chance. For that which is prepared for private persons, to be kept under cover, will, of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless there be a governing school addressing the populace, for their instruction, on the outside of buildings. So that, as I partly warned you in my third lecture, you can simply have no sculpture in a coal country. Whether ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the avenging spirit that guided him to definite conclusions was real, and with the thought of "divorce, public and sensational divorce," buzzing in his head, combined with another of State policy lurking in the background, he set sail for France, and created wild excitement in domestic and Directorial circles by unexpectedly landing ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... novels which have made so great a reputation for their author relate the least sensational of histories in the least sensational way. 'Sense and Sensibility' might be called a novel with a purpose, that purpose being to portray the dangerous haste with which sentiment degenerates into sentimentality; and because of its purpose, the story discloses a less ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and the hardest sort of hard work went on daily inside the inclosed field. A small army of graduates had returned to coach the different players, and the daily papers were filled, according to their wont, with columns of sensational speculation and misinformation regarding the merits of the team and the work they were performing. Out of the mass of clashing "facts" contained in the daily journals but one thing was absolutely apparent: to wit, the work of the Harwell Eleven ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... "Yes, she wrote a story in a highly sensational style and brought it to me to read. She was going to send it to her paper, then mail copies of the edition in which the story appeared to a number of girls here. She had a long list, which she showed me, and wanted me to promise ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... they get it without taking it? For years people have been stalled off with promises. Socialism may not be progress, but the threat of the red flag is certainly the inspiring force of all reform. You've got to be sensational to ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was no doubt the grass, our ally to such good purpose in the war, had definitely slowed down; now it was looked upon as a fixture, a part of the American heritage, a natural phenomenon which had outlived its sensational period and come to be taken for granted. Botanists pointed out that Cynodon dactylon, despite its ability to sheathe itself against a chill, had never flourished in cold areas and there was no reason to suppose the inoculated grass, even with its abnormal metabolism, could ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the camp for some weeks a certain sensational evangelist—a man of some power, but of unhappy disposition apparently. At any rate he had been in much trouble with the city authorities. He had been called a "hypocrite and fake" in the public press, and had been prosecuted for disturbance of the peace. ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... good news indeed, and now my readers know how it came about that the sensational Spoelstra case was published in London in pamphlet form (in three successive pamphlets, for the evidence was found to be too bulky for one) during the war. The first pamphlet reached Harmony in safety through the post, the second and third, though duly dispatched, failed to reach their ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... very evident that she did not care for serious attentions from any one. She was, however, of a decidedly romantic nature, and Harrison pondered deep and long as to the best method of gaining her affections. Late that evening he was reading a sensational novel, when suddenly he laid it down and a far-away ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... accusations have been raked out of the ashes of the past by modern historians, whose literary fame rests on bringing to light what is new rather than what is true. The character of a woman and a queen so admired and honored in her day, should be sacred from the stings of sensational writers who poison their darts from the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... in which tragic and comic scenes are intermingled. A farce is a short comedy distinguished by its slight thought and ridiculous caricature or extravagance. A melodrama is a drama with a romantic story or plot, and sensational situations and incidents. An opera is a musical drama, the higher forms of which are known as grand opera, and the lower or farcical ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... to be your attitude; that your wild utterances of a month ago have now been vindicated as fulfilled prophesies? And I suppose you intend to exploit this—this coincidence—to the utmost. The involvement of Blanley College in a mess of sensational publicity means nothing to you, ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... a most inopportune 'Haw-haw' from that blockhead Spenser Hale, completely spoiling the dramatic situation I had elaborated with such thought and care. It is little wonder the English possess no drama, for they show scant appreciation of the sensational moments in life. ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... (1768-1823), after a life of wild sensual excesses, finally found refuge in the Roman Church and as a popular and sensational preacher aroused Vienna with drastic sermons and clownish antics. Of his various plays, The Sons of the Valley (1803) and the Cross on the Baltic (1806) deserve mention for their religious and mystic subject-matter, for which Werner himself has attempted an explanation, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... more than ordinarily successful in establishing themselves among the few contemporary painters whose performances are worth watching, they have not sprung suddenly into notice by some special achievement or by doing work so sensational that it would not fail to set people talking. There has been no spasmodic brilliancy in their progress, none of that strange alternation of masterly accomplishment and hesitating effort which is apt at times to mark ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... tango, the sensational revue, for the Russian ballet, was at its height when Madame Vatrotski's name first appeared on the hoardings ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... take me for? Do you think I am going about advertising this? If I can sneak out without that fellow Baxter jumping on my back I shall be satisfied. You can take it from me that there won't be any sensational exposures if I can help ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... it by my bed's being jolted—not a pleasant thing that night. I must have started. And it was the quiet voice of the Virginian that told me he was sorry to have accidentally disturbed me. This disturbed me a good deal more. But his steps did not go to the bunk house, as my sensational mind had suggested. He was not wearing much, and in the dimness he seemed taller than common. I next made out that he was bending over Dr. Mac Bride. The divine at ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... their tastes. Mr. Beckett had a party of Yorkshire squires, chiefly fox-hunters and lovers of an outdoor life, at Kirkstall Grange when he heard that Oscar Wilde was in the neighbouring town of Leeds. Immediately he asked him to lunch at the Grange, chuckling to himself beforehand at the sensational novelty of the experiment. Next day "Mr. Oscar Wilde" was announced and as he came into the room the sportsmen forthwith began hiding themselves behind newspapers or moving together in groups in order to avoid seeing or being ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... being sensational, this charming story of love and war is sure to appeal with force to ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of begging and borrowing, the money was scraped together for the opening expenses of the exhibition, and Haydon composed a sensational descriptive advertisement in the hope of attracting the public. The private view was on April 4, when it rained all day, and only four old friends attended. On April 6, Easter Monday, the public was ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the meeting of the Congress a sensational disclosure revealed to the world that it met; only to register ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... "Lucky boy! 'Tis for YOU that she whimpers!" And I noted with joy Those sensational simpers: And I said "This is scrumptious!"—a phrase I had ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... remarkable series of wonder workings or "miracles" which He evidently employed to attract the attention of the public and at the same time to perform kindly and worthy acts. Not that He used these wonder-workings as a bid for sensational interest or self-glory—the character of Jesus rendered such a course impossible—but He knew that nothing would so attract the interest of an Oriental race as occurrences of this kind, and He hoped to then awaken in them a real spiritual interest and fervor, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... he, "I always said that our old friend Mascarin would make his mark in literature. As soon as his pen touches the paper the business man vanishes; we have no longer a collection of dry facts and proofs, but the stirring pages of a sensational novel." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... forced upon Prussia. Gambetta and the Republicans felt that they had every cause for fear when matters had taken this turn. Relying upon Marshal Leboeuf's assurances that "everything was ready," they saw the prospect of a short sensational campaign like that against Austria in 1859, to be followed by some high-handed stroke of home policy that would sweep most of them into prison or exile. Gambetta could not refrain from bitterly upbraiding Ollivier. "You will find that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... was packed. It was evident that many were there, not for the service, but for what promised to be a sensational after-meeting. Members of the Athletic Club were scattered through the room, and the same dogged determination was on their faces as on the night of the ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... made to the sensational character of many of Miss Braddon's earlier novels, her place is certainly in the ranks of the "born" story-tellers. Although still in the prime of life, she has been before the public for thirty-seven years. Her books have been produced ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the two young officers started for the front, and the next morning the Richmond papers came out with a sensational heading, "Alleged Gross Act of Treachery and Ingratitude by ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... developed by the historians of successive generations. I hope to be able to prove in the continuation of my Greatness and Decline of Rome, that the history of Caesar's family, as it has been told by Tacitus and Suetonius, is a sensational novel, a legend containing not much more truth than the legend of Atrides. The family of Caesar, placed in the centre of the great struggle going on in Rome between the old Roman militarism, and the intellectual civilisation of the Orient, between nationalism and cosmopolitism, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... book has recently appeared in Germany. Its title is unpretentious. Aus einer kleinen Garnison ("A Little Garrison") does not sound very sensational. The book, besides, was written by a simple lieutenant, Bilse by name. There was apparently nothing to arouse public attention in ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Not spectacular, this—not sensational—not even unusual. Common enough little hills, as the world goes, with the usual ragged-edged village between them and the river, peopled by human beings entirely usual both in their outer and inner ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... had for many years been attended by the abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit, my act was rather to be commended than condemned. The discussion before the Presbytery lasted for two days and produced a wide and rather sensational interest over the country. The final vote of the Presbytery, while withholding any censure of my course under the circumstances, was adverse to the practice of permitting women to address "promiscuous audiences" in our churches. Two or three ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... to the drawing room with her heart big with pride. He had mentioned Hansen and Germaine, but he KNEW that he could trust her! The event was sensational enough, was horrifying enough. But back of the excitement lay the joy of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... kind of happy family at the Hagen; the tone of the coterie was that of the easiest intimacy into which every newcomer slid quite naturally. Thus when on the 31st July there was a somewhat sensational arrival, the stolid landlord had not turned the gas on in the empty saal before everybody knew and sympathised with the errand of the strangers. The party consisted of a plump little girl of about eighteen with a bonny round face and fine frank eyes; ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... the particulars of any measure contemplated by the Spanish Government, but these must be obtained from reliable sources and before they have been made public. Local subjects should be eschewed, except they bear on politics, or on anything transcendental and of a "sensational" character likely to interest the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Rome. I had a splendid inspiration for Messalina's face. But my hand was paralyzed when I thought of the idiotic comments such a picture would occasion in England. One fellow would say I had searched through history in a prurient spirit for something sensational; another, that I read a moral lesson of terrible ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... was a reporter on an evening newspaper of sensational and lying habits. His work was chiefly in the police courts; and in his spare hours at night, when not too tired or too empty, he wrote sketches and stories for the magazines that very rarely saw the light of day on their printed and paid-for sentences. On this ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Everywhere one heard, "We were 4,000 in one village, and only 143 escaped;" "There were 30 of us, and now only a few children remain;" "All the men are killed." These were things one saw for oneself, heard for oneself. There was nothing sensational in the way the women told ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... date of the confession, and contained, rather triumphantly outlined in blue pencil, full details of the murder of a young woman by some unknown assassin. It had been a grisly crime, and the paper was filled with details of a most sensational sort. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... escaped the sensational scenes that attended the suppression of the Japanese problem in the Assembly, nevertheless Japanese bills and resolutions, with attending debates, made their appearance there. Caminetti, for example, introduced a duplicate of the Johnson anti-Japanese School bill, which was referred to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... just a bit of sensational fiction," growled Herr Krauss, "and I dare say brought the author a couple of hundred dollars. They pay high rates for that sort of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... berth and better society at headquarters, but he declined to accept a detail. He became an exciting mystery to a knot of us imaginative young cubs, who sorted up out of the reminiscential rag-bag of high colors and strong contrasts with which the sensational literature that we most affected had plentifully stored our minds, a half-dozen intensely emotional careers for him. We spent much time in mentally trying these on, and discussing which fitted him best. We were always expecting ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... news-bill at the entrance announced "Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman," and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. Once or twice ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to make a sensational connection between the loss and a controversy which is now going on with a foreign government is greatly to be deplored and is emphatically asserted to be utterly baseless. It bears traces of the jingoism of those 'interests' ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... and FENDALL, is a clever sensational story, spun out into two volumes, which can be devoured by the accomplished novel-swallower in any two hours' train journey, and can be highly recommended for this particular purpose. It would have been better, because less ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... sale of sensational novels and school books, this is no great matter; but for a didactic work, offered to the public without advertisement, and in the face of the almost universal opposition of the book-selling trade, it means not only that, as an author, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... found an eager crowd assembled in and about the large library at Fair Oaks, drawn by reports of the sensational features developed on the preceding day. The members of the household occupied nearly the same positions as on the preceding afternoon, with the exception of the secretary, who had entered the room a little in advance of the others and had seated ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the sensational news was through half of Thrums, of which Monypenny may be regarded as a broken piece, left behind, like the dot of quicksilver in the tube, to show how high the town once rose. Some could only rejoice at first in the down-come of Jean Myles, but most blamed the smith (and himself among them) ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... insisted on them disembarking, even if they meant to re-embark at once. They, went ashore. The facade of the palace-hospital stretched majestically to the left of them, in sharp perspective, a sensational spectacle. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... nothing sensational about his sermons. He was a drab man, who still hesitated before uttering any very pronounced view upon any subject; but he thought deeply, and even that super-critic, Elder Concannon, had begun to praise the ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... the author, and a writer of more exciting and sensational detective stories cannot be found at ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... celebrated and popular writer, familiarly known as OLIVER OPTIC, seems to have inexhaustible funds for weaving together the virtues of life; and, notwithstanding he has written scores of books, the same freshness and novelty run through them all. Some people think the sensational element predominates. Perhaps it does. But a book for young people needs this, and so long as good sentiments are inculcated such books ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... alien environment we confronted a pair of friends from whom we had last parted twenty years before in the woods beside Lake George, and whose apparition at once implied the sylvan scene. So improbable, so sensational is life even to the most bigoted realist! But if it is so, why go outside of it? Our friends passed, and we were in the shadow of the Parliament Houses again, and no longer in that of the forest which did not know ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... twenty feet ahead of them a man sprang into the middle of the road and leveled a revolver at them! In one electrified instant they saw that the fellow wore a mask and a slouch hat and looked for all the world like a brigand straight out of some sensational ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... is by far the most amusing and picturesque, the sale of pedigree stock is much more sensational. When the shorthorn mania was at its height, and the merits of Bates and Booth blood were hotly debated, when such phrases as "the sea-otter touch," referring to the mossy coat of the red, white, or roan shorthorn, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... necessary to hold an inquest, that there was some little doubt as to the precise cause of his death, and that the inquest was accordingly adjourned until the medical men could tell something of a more definite nature. Nothing sensational crept out into the town; no bold-lettered headlines ornamented the afternoon editions. An hour before noon Marshall Allerdyke entrusted his cousin's body to the care of certain kinsfolk who had come over from Bradford to take ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... two hours he had so heard them. Obviously the "old man" was pacing the deck, a pretty sure sign of rough weather present or expected. Mr. Cahoon was troubled, also disappointed. He would have liked to talk interminably concerning the sensational news of Miss Snowden's inheritance; he had not begun to exhaust the possibilities of that subject. Then, too, he was very anxious to learn where Captain Sears had been all day, and why. He tried in various ways to secure attention. But when, after singing ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... him that she was doing fairly well in journalism, and had attempted sensational fiction, but that none saw more clearly than she how worthless and contemptible her sort of work was, and none longed more sincerely than she to produce good work, serious work.... However, she ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... is broken; the title-deeds of our opinions, the reason of our practices, are demanded. Our very right to exist as a distinct society is questioned. Our old literature—the precious journals and biographies of early and later Friends—is comparatively neglected for sensational and dogmatic publications. We bear complaints of a want of educated ministers; the utility of silent meetings is denied, and praying and preaching regarded as matters of will and option. There is a growing desire for experimenting upon the dogmas and expedients ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... remove it. Sometimes you have to stop and crawl under wires. Then you wonder what the trench is like in really wet weather. You hear a shell burst at no great distance. You pass two pages of The Strand Magazine. Perhaps thirty yards on you pass a cigarette end. After these sensational incidents the trench quiets down again and continues to wind endlessly—just a sandy, extremely narrow vertical ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Maxwell), born in 1837, published her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent, in 1860. She has written a large number of sensational works of fiction, very popular with an uncritical class of readers. Perhaps her best-known book is Lady Audley's Secret (1862). It would be well for the student to refer to the scenes in Guy Mannering which Stevenson calls ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was nothing sensational about Mr. Ladley's return. He came at eight o'clock that night, fresh-shaved and with his hair cut, and, although he had a latch-key, he rang the door-bell. I knew his ring, and I thought it no harm to carry ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... time for lunch," said Rnine. "The tragedy will not be enacted before two or three o'clock. And I have an idea that it will be sensational." ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Mr. Van Roon undertook to motor from Canton to Siberia last winter, but met with unforeseen difficulties in the province of Ho-Nan. He fell into the hands of a body of fanatics and was fortunate to escape with his life. His book will deal in particular with his experiences in Ho-Nan, and some sensational revelations regarding the awakening of that most mysterious race, the Chinese, are promised. For reasons of his own he has decided to remain in England until the completion of his book (which will be published simultaneously in New York and ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... not be ready for half an hour, the three lads excused themselves, and hurried across the street. They found Hooker Montgomery still alone, reading a sensational newspaper. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... and delicately sensual sculpture;—veiled nymphs—chained slaves—soft goddesses seen by roselight through suspended curtains—drawing room portraits and domesticities, and such like, in which the interest is either merely personal and selfish, or dramatic and sensational; in either case, destructive of the power of the public to sympathize with the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sometimes on the sheets of my bed. Human bodies, dismembered and gory, were one of the most common of these. All this may have been due to the fact that, as a boy, I had fed my imagination on the sensational news of the day as presented in the public press. Despite the heavy penalty which I now paid for thus loading my mind, I believe this unwise indulgence gave a breadth and variety to my peculiar psychological experience which it otherwise would have lacked. For with an insane ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... was tinctured with blood around the vessel'; and how Maynard sailed into Bathtown with the gory head, black beard and all, hung at his jibboom end; all this is written—in the books in which it is written; which need not be read now, however sensational, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... ago Chicago was on the eve of one of its periodical "vice crusades," of which more later. Sensational stories had been published in several newspapers, to the effect that no fewer than five thousand Jewish girls were leading lives of shame in the city, a statement which was received with horror by the Jewish population of Chicago. A meeting of wealthy and ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... wondered why another Cervantes did not ridicule our border romances by describing a second Don Quixote's adventures on the prairies. We are pleased to notice, that in the new series of Frontier Tales, by Lee & Shepard, there is an agreeable absence of sensational writing, of that maudlin sentimentality which make the generality of such ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... This sensational experience must conclude the evidence respecting the lights, for the present. One more selection has, however, been made, which is deferred to the special chapter on Mr. Stainton Moses' experiences as a whole. The present chapter must be ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... show no signs of exhaustion. And presently the municipal music of Castrovillari, specially hired for the occasion, ascends an improvised bandstand and pours brisk strains into the night. Then the fireworks begin, sensational fireworks, that have cost a mint of money; flaring wheels and fiery devices that send forth a pungent odour; rockets of many hues, lighting up the leafy recesses, and scaring the owls and wolves ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Pharisees and Scribes grumbling about John being such a sensational preacher. "It won't last." And when Herod had John the Baptist beheaded, they would say, ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... of Turkish atrocities at Sassoun are sensational and exaggerated. The killing was in a conflict between armed Armenians and Turkish soldiers. The grand vizier says it was necessary to suppress insurrection, and that about fifty Turks were killed; between three and four hundred Armenian guns were ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... made a more insidious assault, injuring a man's credit, his standing as a conservative financier, his ability to inspire "confidence": valuable possessions to the President of the Fourth National Bank, and already indefinably impaired by the sensational family matter last spring.... ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... me. I walked down into the street and bought a paper. There it stared me in the face on the middle page: "Tragedy at Campden Hill: Well-known Barrister Murders his Wife. Sensational Details." ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... I dipped into all composers, and found that the houses they erected were stable in the exact proportion that Bach was used in the foundations. If much Bach, then granted talent, the man reared a solid structure. If no Bach, then no matter how brilliant, how meteoric, how sensational the talents, smash came tumbling down the musical mansion, smash went the fellow's hastily erected palace. Whether it is Perosi—who swears by Bach and doesn't understand or study him—or Mascagni or Massenet, or any of the ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... The sensational robbery at the close of the Thanksgiving bazaar was too bold to have been forgotten, and the news of the recovery of the hard-earned money was a matter of delight to the public-spirited citizens of the little ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... coward and bully, the "wife" a worthy mate to both of them. The plot shows traces of hasty construction, otherwise it is difficult to account for the "man's" intense astonishment at inheriting a title from his cousin, and the farfetched clearing up of a sensational West-End murder. My "Co." fancies that the peerage given to the "man," and the vendetta of the Polish Countess, both introduced rather late in Vol. II., must have been after-thoughts. However, the end of the story is both novel and entertaining. The feeble, fickle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... waves of suspicion and excitement which occasionally pass over the public mind in regard to the custody of the insane, occurred in 1858. Sensational articles appeared in the papers, and novels were written to hold up those connected with the care and treatment of the insane to public obloquy. The author himself did not escape animadversion, and was represented in a newspaper as a brutal mad-doctor using a whip upon an ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... success. It lacks the grace and dignity of Hawthorne's mature style, but it has an ingenious plot, a lively action, and is written in sufficiently good English. One would suppose that its faults would have helped to make it popular, for portions of it are so exciting as to border closely on the sensational. It may be affirmed that when a novel becomes so exciting that we wish to turn over the pages and anticipate the conclusion, either the action of the story is too heated or its incidents are too highly ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... so from the first. It's intuition that's all! I'll take care of you, upon my word! . . . I'll insert a little item about you in our next issue. Later, give a few details under a sensational headline, next, a longer article about the new star on the horizon of dramatic art," he sped on. . . . "You will sweep them off their feet . . . the directors will tear you away from each other, and in about a year or two ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to be feared, however, that this prejudice has narrowed many preachers down to a pulpit style almost devoid of warmth and action. In their endeavor to avoid the dramatic and sensational, they have refined and subdued many of their most natural and effective means of expression. The function of preaching is not only to impart, but to persuade; and persuasion demands something more than an easy conversational style, an intellectual statement of ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... in the expectation of finding a sensational "exposure" of Bolshevism and the Bolsheviki will be disappointed. It has been my aim to make a deliberate and scientific study, not an ex-parte indictment. A great many lurid and sensational stories about the Bolsheviki have been published, the net result of which is to make ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo |
