"Shock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the French. The night after the news of the disaster had reached the capital he appeared at an evening gathering at the house of Countess de N—, the wife of an officer on the marshal's staff. As he entered, a perceptible shock was felt; electricity was in the air; many turned away from him, and an officer remarked in audible tones, as I asked the reason of the flutter: "O, ce n'est rien; c'est seulement le colonel, . . . qui aime mieux s'amuser a Mexico que de se ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... clay to the presence of its God. Reasoning from analogy, which, in this connection, where both experience and revelation are dumb, is the only basis we can rest upon, such a passage would be to the soul instant annihilation; the shock would be too great for even its enlarged susceptibilities. It must become gradually accustomed to the new sights and sounds, and so pass slowly up from one stage of perception and knowledge to another in regular gradation, to the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... court-martial found him not guilty, Frederic sent him to the fortress of Spandau. This was the first estrangement between Chasot and the king; and though after a time he was received again at court, the friendship between the king and the young nobleman who had saved his life had received a rude shock. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... change in his personal appearance. He looked in the glass and was startled by his own reflection. Owing to the agony of the shock she had given him, his face was still grey and drawn. The poor fellow tried to smile, and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... spike was used to anchor Trudeau while he drove another, at his longest reach. Then the second spike became his anchor, and so on, until enough spikes had been set to lace the boat down against any sudden shock. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... shack the whispering was so loud the entire camp had been placed on the alert. There would be no need for us to go into shack after shack, watching surprise and shock come into ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... established mentality, and compelled us to seek new adjustments and support in the chaotically disorganized world. The psychical upheaval was most violent in the English-speaking peoples, where the military shock was least direct; for here a nation of civilians embraced suddenly the new and amazing experience of battle. Here too, the imaginatively sensitive minds who interpret life through poetry, and most of all the youngest and freshest among them, themselves shared in the glories and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... remember for her that she was still beneath the shock of her dismay at her betrayal of herself; still breathless at that rout from her prepared positions; not yet assured her banners were unsullied in their withdrawal to her second line; not yet convinced it was no rout but a withdrawal, wise ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Destournier, catching him by the arm with both hands and giving a swing, as he was pacing the gallery, deep in his new plans. "It is so full of amusement for me. And I can't understand how she can do it. Jules Personeau is such a stupid! And that great shock of hair that keeps tumbling into his eyes. It is such a queer color, almost as if much sitting in the sun was ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... interested faces. But for all that his words were prophetic. Archie did not forget the Spec.; he put in an appearance there at the due time, and, before the evening was over, had dealt a memorable shock to his companions. It chanced he was the president of the night. He sat in the same room where the Society still meets—only the portraits were not there: the men who afterwards sat for them were then but beginning their careers. The same lustre of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experienced that sickly feeling of the diaphragm which sometimes comes from a sadden shock. Mr. Worthington had it now as he hurried up the street, and he presently discovered that he was walking in the direction opposite to that of his own home. He crossed the street, made a pretence of going into Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have passed it on to the accident man. Or you could have said that I'm to be seen riding in the Row evidently none the worse for my recent shock. ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... or private life, to adhere to opinions once entertained, in spite of experience and better knowledge, and against their own convictions of their erroneous character. Nevertheless, Sir, it must be acknowledged, that what appears to be a sudden, as well as a great change, naturally produces a shock. I confess that, for one, I was shocked when the honorable gentleman, at the last session, espoused this bill of the administration. And when I first read this letter of November, and, in the short space of a column and a half, ran through such a succession of political movements, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... rushed beneath the inky sky, driven by the awful squall behind it. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, I saw the black shape of the whale-boat cast high into the air on the crest of the breaking wave. Then—a shock of water, a wild rush of boiling foam, and I was clinging for my life to the shroud, ay, swept straight out from it like ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... lost, and immediately went to give the prince information. He addressed him with an air, that sufficiently shewed the bad news he brought. "Prince," said he, "arm yourself with courage and patience, and prepare to receive the most terrible shock that ever ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... myself to stand the shock of his exclamatory reply. But be that what it will, it cannot affect me so much, as the apprehensions of what may happen to me next Tuesday or Wednesday; for now those apprehensions engage my whole attention, and make me sick ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and carried a piece of the border without breaking his lance. In the second course Quinones encountered the German in the top of his plastron, without piercing it, and the lance came out under his arm-pit, whereupon all thought he was wounded, for on receiving the shock he exclaimed Olas! and his right vantbrace was torn off, but the lance was not broken. The German encountered Quinones in the front of his helmet, breaking his lance two palms from the iron. In the third course Quinones encountered the German in the guard of his left gauntlet, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a woman of great natural abilities, which developed early; suffered from injury to her spine; went to Torquay for her health; witnessed the death by drowning of a brother, that gave her a shock the effect of which never left her; published in 1838 "The Seraphim," and in 1844 "The Cry of the Children"; fell in with and married Robert Browning in 1846, who immediately took her abroad, settling in Florence; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pestilence raged abroad in the country now, and the people of the port, who had so far escaped the evil, were loth to let it enter among them at last, and had not yet recovered from the recoil of their first shock and shiver at thought of it in their waters—waters than which none could have fostered it more kindly, full as they were in their shallow breadth of rotting weeds and the slime of sewers. Perhaps the owner of some pale face looked ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... with him. Brown took a more statesmanlike view of the situation. "We will let him go after he has owned up to Madame Carthame what a fraud he is," he said. The Count winced when this sentence was pronounced, but he uttered no remonstrance. The shock of the discovery had ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... unsettled population in the North led them to send to Congress an ever-changing succession of unmeritable and sometimes shady people. The eventual stirring of the mind of the North which so closely concerns this biography was a thing hard to bring about, and to the South it brought a great shock of surprise. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... glorious thing to be an author,—to touch the electric wire of sentiment, and know that thousands would thrill at the shock,—to speak, and believe that unborn millions would hear the music of those echoing words,—to possess the wand of the enchanter, the ring of the genii, the magic key to the temple of temples, the pass-word to the universe of mind. I once had such visions ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Paris he had longed to bask in such a sunshine as this, tempered by the fragrant breezes from the mountain-side. He was transported now to hear the blows of the axe in the woods, and the shock of the falling trunks, as the hewers of the logwood and the mahogany trees were at their hidden work. He was charmed with the songs of the cultivators which rose from the hot plain below, where they were preparing the furrows for the indigo-sowing. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... him like a trumpet blast. When a man is in the habit of giving unsolicited counsel to everyone he meets, it is as invigorating as an electric shock to him to ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... eight, or nine, or even fifteen thousand inhabitants from the various cities; while the prices of the ordinary aliments of life rose to a height, which put them above the reach of the poorer classes of the community. In addition to these physical evils, a fatal shock was given to commercial credit by the adulteration of the coin. Under Henry the Fourth, it is computed that there were no less than one hundred and fifty mints openly licensed by the crown, in addition ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... he cried, with a guilty chuckle; "so I shall run away and finish dressing. I leave you to receive the first shock of Kalonay's enthusiasm alone. I confess he bores me. Remember, the story Madame Zara told them in the yacht is the one she told us this morning, that none of the old royalists at the capital would promise us any assistance. Be careful now, and play your ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... away a little. "He is very polite and agreeable, and it was very pleasant to have him always ready to take me out when I wanted to go, but I never felt perfectly easy in his company; I was always afraid I might say something dreadful; something that would shock his wonderful goodness. But Christine seemed perfectly at home. How bright and lovely she looked! I will not allow evil thoughts to triumph over me. I will not be vexed simply because she eclipsed ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... flash, sudden as the change of one second to another, there broke upon me a sound that will never leave my ears. It was as if a volcano had burst forth, or an earthquake had instantly tumbled a whole city into ruins. A fearful shock, like a sudden explosion, filled the air. I saw faintly through the thick mists the masts of the ship reeling over, and I saw no more;—vessel and iceberg and the disappearing boat were buried in chaos. The whole side of the berg nearest the vessel ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... was not part of the bargain, fidelity has to do with the sex relationships, which do not concern us. One would not ask a secretary to become a nun, on account of one. One would only ask her to behave decently, so as not to shock the world's idea of the situation she was supposed ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... hundred feet below. He rolled over and over. He plashed into shallow pools. He bounced over miniature waterfalls like a rubber ball. The wind was knocked out of him. He was blinded and dazed by water and shock, and he gathered fresh speed with every yard he made. He had succeeded in letting out half a dozen terrified yelps at the start, and ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... Their ancestors were the Saracens who gained a great empire in Europe and Asia. Their hardihood and powers of endurance are brought to the highest pitch by the rigours of desert life, while owing to their lack of nervous sensibility the shock and pain of wounds affect them less than civilised troops. And in addition their religion teaches that all who die in battle against the infidel are transported straight to a paradise teeming with material and sensual delights. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... as the beginning of 1517 Erasmus had written to Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, in the tone of one who has accomplished the great task. 'Well then, take you the torch from us. The work will henceforth be a great deal easier and cause far less hatred and envy. We have lived through the first shock.' ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... that had preceded. Never before had the squalls followed each other with such rapidity; never had the billows been so tumultuous. Our ship, smitten by them, at every instant seemed about to break asunder under the shock of the impact. In the twinkling of an eye our foremast snapped and fell overboard, and all the barricading that we had erected to break the force of the wind was smashed. Even our anchors were lifted from the catheads despite the strength of the ropes which held them. It was ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... gender lolling at length. His employment had been rolling up, into the form of a coiled snake, the long lash of his horsewhip, and then by a jerk causing it to unroll itself into the middle of the floor. The first words he said when he had digested the shock, contained a magnanimous declaration, which he probably was not conscious of having uttered aloud—"Weel-blude's thicker than water—she's welcome to the cheeses and the hams just the same." But when the trustee had made ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... irreproachable. Should she, however, perceive, on the part of her employers, or on that of the persons who frequent the house, any irregularity of morals, any tendency to what would offend her modesty, or shock her religious principles, she should immediately give us a detailed account of the circumstances that have caused her alarm. Nothing can be more proper—don't ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the occupants of the chamber produced a shock of surprise, which manifested itself in so sudden a change of manner and bearing in the two young men, that it would have been ludicrous to any looker-on. The two hats came down from the two heads with a spring-like ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... one minute three messages were sent to summon Avaux to the ruinous chamber in which the royal bed had been prepared. There James, half dressed, and with the air of a man bewildered by some great shock, announced his resolution to hasten back instantly to Dublin. Avaux listened, wondered, and approved. Melfort seemed prostrated by despair. The travellers retraced their steps, and, late in the evening, reached Charlemont. There ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the soul of my soul !-and 'tis wonderful to me, my dearest Fredy, that the first shock did not join them immediately by the flight of mine-but that over-that dreadful, harrowing, never-to be-forgotten moment of horror that made me wish to be mad—the ties that after that first endearing period have shared with her my heart, come to my aid. Yet I was long incredulous; ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... wrists, as if he was holding hard against a considerable force. The end of the peach branch began to quiver and turn. Cameron reached out a hand to touch it, and was astounded at feeling a powerful vibrant force pulling the branch downward. He felt it as a magnetic shock. The branch kept turning, and at length ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... log to the effect that, on such and such a date at such an hour, in latitude and longitude so and so, the weather at the time being fine, with a moderate breeze from S.W., the schooner Pomona had experienced a terrific shock of earthquake with an accompanying disturbance of water which nearly swamped the ship. This entry he signed in the presence of the mate, secured that officer's signature to it also, and then, reviving his courage with a glass of grog stiff enough to float a marlinespike, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... instrument, in its simplest form, consists merely of a basin filled with some viscid liquid, which, on the occurrence of a shock of an earthquake of sufficient force to disturb the equilibrium of the building in which it is placed, is tilted on one side, and the liquid made to rise in the same direction, thus showing by its height the degree of the disturbance. Professor J. Forbes has invented an ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... computer or peripheral device that has been designed and built to military specifications for field equipment (that is, to withstand mechanical shock, extremes of temperature and humidity, and so forth). Comes from the olive-drab 'uniform' paint used for ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... would feel it deeply—because of having been interested in Leila since they went out in their Perambulaters together. But I could see it was a shock to him. He got up and stood looking in the fire, and his ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of the intruder fixed themselves in the yielding bark. The weight of the monster bird upon the very branch which his little victim had chosen for a home caused it to bend almost to the breaking point, and the hanging nest, agitated by the shock, swung low near the end of the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... young man, with ferocious eyes and a face like a lion's. Rather than further expose themselves to their arrows, our men chose to engage them in a hand to hand combat. Rowing stoutly, they pushed their barque against the canoe of the savages, which was overturned by the shock; the canoe sank, but the savages, throwing themselves into the water, continued while swimming to shoot their arrows with the same rapidity. Climbing upon a rock level with the water, they still fought with great bravery, though they were finally captured, after one had been killed and the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Proteus, and as much a failure in all her transformations as was that wondrous sea-god when Odysseus laid hold of him. One day a serial began in one of the French magazines. At that time I used to read serial stories, and I well remember the shock of surprise I felt when I came to the description of the heroine. She was so like my friend that I brought her the magazine, and she recognised herself in it immediately, and seemed fascinated by the resemblance. I should ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... The shock of this sudden and totally unexpected disclosure was such that Mr. Walters leaned against the doorway for support. "It can't be possible," he exclaimed at last, "not dead!" "Yes, dead, I regret to say—he was shot through ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... told me so yourself," Austin reminded her. "You told me distinctly that it was for your own pleasure and not for mine that you were going to invite them. So that argument won't do. And you were perfectly right. If you find intellectual joy in the society of Mrs Cobbledick and Shock-headed Peter——" ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... rejected: there is no God; material Nature stands out alone, self-sufficing, dominis privata superbis. The book suggests how the Lucretian theory of development might have led to the idea of Progress. But it sent a chilly shock to the hearts of many and probably convinced few. The effective part was the outspoken and passionate indictment of governments and religions as causes of most of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... attention was directed by Yaqui to the rifle, and so to the purpose of the climb. A little cold shock affronted Gale's vivid pleasure. With it dawned a realization of what he had imagined was lacking in these animals. They did not look wild! The so-called wildest of wild creatures appeared tamer than sheep he had ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... dictated by Howard's grandmother. It contains only a few words, which were written evidently by some friend, who adds that the poor old lady is greatly prostrated, and it is feared will never recover from the shock of his death." ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... visibly, and showed the desperate shock he had just sustained. His inward agony was forcing out on his slanting forehead a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... was not aware what was the matter with him, poor fellow, for, in spite of the encouragement of Francois Darbois, Jean would say nothing. He realized the shock that it would be to Esperance. She liked him so much as a friend! On the long walks they took, with Genevieve Hardouin and Mlle. Frahender, she had very often frankly confided to him that she did not want to think about getting married ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... arm was here;— And not to us, but to thy arm alone, Ascribe we all.—When, without stratagem, But in plain shock and even play of battle, Was ever known so great and little loss On one part and on the other?—Take it, God, For it ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... was not yet consciously suffering; nor was he thinking at all. True, he had a dim, persistent impulse to action—or why should he be at the station?—but for the clearest expression of his condition it is necessary to borrow a culinary symbol; he was jelling. But the state of shock was slowly dispersing, while a perception of approaching anguish as slowly increased. He was beginning to swallow nothing at intervals and the intervals ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... me he was returning to Pretoria with his temporarily incapacitated chief, General Ian Hamilton, who was suffering from a broken collar-bone, incurred by a fall from his horse. Expecting to find the General in a smart ambulance carriage, it was somewhat of a shock to be guided to a very dilapidated old cattle-truck, with open sides and a floor covered with hay. I peeped in, and extended on a rough couch in the farther corner, I perceived the successful General, whose name was in everybody's mouth. In spite of his unlucky accident, he was full of life and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... their devastations in one of those sudden floods winch resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river-water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forwards by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then the movement is accompanied with a roar louder ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... or sound of their shock, The waves flowed over the Inchcape Rock; So little they rose, so little they fell, They did not move ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... clean tables and pleasant interior were attractive. The boys stamped the newly fallen snow from their feet, and opened their coats to the genial warmth. Then they turned to meet the waiter and glanced up with something of a shock. Luigi Malatesta stood before them and addressed ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... loud church bell resounded from one of the towers, sending a visible shock over the assembly ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... the shock of his ill news better than Gilbert had expected. There is good material even in the weakest of womankind when the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... been wide awake he would have killed the bear, but being sleepy, the shock and the surprise of the attack and the pain in his trunk frightened him so that he ran out into the ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... her of the disastrous incident and that failure was a certainty; a sort of shame had made him recoil from telling her to her face; it was easier to be casual in writing than in talking; the letter had at any rate tempered for both of them the shock of communication. Now, he was out of humour with her because he had played the ass with an ass of an examiner—not because she was directly or indirectly responsible for his doing so; simply because he had done so. She was the woman. It was true that she in part was indirectly ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... moment out of sight of the ladies above and considered ourselves. It came to us with a sudden shock that we ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... assistant, and watching the mate's operations with much interest. "But no," he added presently; "a boy with such eyes and such a face could never be so afflicted! I've seen scores of deaf-mutes, and you could never mistake their countenances. I know what it is, he has received such a shock to the system that it has ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... more, New Netherland becomes New York; Fort Orange and its dependent hamlet assumes the name of Albany. A century of various fortune succeeds; the scourge of French and Indian war is rarely absent from the land; every shock of European policy vibrates with electric rapidity across the Atlantic; but the year 1756 finds a population of 300,000 in your growing province. Albany, however, may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the twelve ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... with the cramp in the leg, the method to drive it away, is to give the parts affected a sudden, vigorous and violent shock, which he may do in the air as he swims ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... so little to break me," he said. "You know how fragile I am. The least shock is sure to ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... treasure-ships, like the flota of Spanish galleons, the sinew of war may perhaps be cut by a stroke; but when its wealth is scattered in thousands of going and coming ships, when the roots of the system spread wide and far, and strike deep, it can stand many a cruel shock and lose many a goodly bough without the life being touched. Only by military command of the sea by prolonged control of the strategic centres of commerce, can such an attack be fatal;[245] and such control can be wrung from a powerful navy only by fighting ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... for supper, we were obliged to steam on to reach a village a few miles above. When we meet those who care not whether we purchase or let it alone, or who think men ought only to be in a hurry when fleeing from an enemy, our ideas about time being money, and the power of the purse, receives a shock. The state of eager competition, which in England wears out both mind and body, and makes life bitter, is here happily unknown. The cultivated spots are mere dots compared to the broad fields of rich soil which is never either grazed or tilled. Pity that ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... not a very rude shock to his sensuous ease, however, when on January twenty-seventh, 1807, Napoleon received the news of Bennigsen's march. In a general way he had been aware for some days that the enemy was moving, but he believed they had no other intention than to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Italy was about to fail her through the very independence of her local centers, which Guicciardini rightly recognized as the source of her unparalleled civilization and wealth. The one thing needful in the shock with France ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... who would not "shock modern views of the Universe" (p. 157) must thus think of the Deity. And so Atheism acquires a new meaning. "It is," we read, "a disbelief in the existence of God—that is, a disbelief in any regularity in the Universe to which a man must conform himself under penalties" (p. 27); a definition ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... burst into a peal of girlish laughter. "Pardon me, dear Madame Zattiany. We are used to it in your case, now that we have got over the shock, but it does seem too funny. And Europe almost manless. What—what ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... tearful face, with its expression of profound grief and pity, was too real for her story to be a dream. He, David Chantrey, the rector of Upton, whom all men looked up to and esteemed, had a wife, who was whispered about among them all as a victim to a vile and degrading sin. A strong shock of revulsion ran through his veins, which had been thrilling with an unquiet happiness all the day. There was an inexplicable, mysterious misery in it. If he had come home to find her dead, he could have borne to look upon her lying in her coffin, knowing that life could never be ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... for ears polite to hear the particulars of the first toilet of a neglected, abused child. In fact, in this world, multitudes must live and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves of their fellow-mortals even to hear described. Miss Ophelia had a good, strong, practical deal of resolution; and she went through all the disgusting details with heroic thoroughness, though, it must be confessed, with no very gracious air,—for ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... own tricks of imageing might do: seeing him as he was then, the hour would be revived,—she would certainly feel him as he lived and breathed now. Thus she fancied, on the effort to get him to her heart after the shock he had dealt it, for he had become almost a stranger, as a god that has taken human ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gone to hear a college friend preach, took advantage of the lovely autumn day to walk home, which was about ten miles. He made his way slowly, enjoying every foot of the road, little contemplating the shock he was to receive at his ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... anti-renters' conflict with the old patroons. He stopped to see the Shaker villages, and then drove on among the rich farms, taking great pleasure in explaining to his town-bred wife the difference between wheat and rye as it stood in the shock, feeling for once the superiority of one whose early life has been passed in the country. He happened to remember that he had a cousin over in Weston, and though he had not seen her for many years, he proposed ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... "I don't want to shock the preacher, Peter,"—Mrs. Falkner's beautiful face was wistful—"I'd like to have his faith. I sure-gawd would! But! I just want to make him see that to folks like us in Lost Chief who read and think and look at these hills a lot, the Bible never ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... speech, or attempted to make another. On entering the back door he had struck his brazen head-piece against the lintel; the shock had broken the clasp, and his head was consequently bare. As he pulled at the cloak, Henri raised his right arm powerfully, and drove the butt-end of the pistol which he held, right through his skull, and scattered his brains upon the staircase. The ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... barred his escape; and now, recovered from the first shock of this fearful affront to their god, the priests ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... blast The shatter'd mast, The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock. The breaking spout, The stars gone out, The boiling strait, the monster's shock." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... defeated by a far smaller majority than either friends or enemies had expected, and has pledged himself to fight the battle again. Here, then, the League and their stanch friends have sustained an unexpected and serious shock. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... always comes with that little shock of recognition. It's happened before, and when you get near to it again you know what it is. You keep on wanting to get near it, wanting it to happen again. You may lose it the next minute, but you know. Lawrence knew what it was. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... guiding my steps along the walls; and once, as I recollect, seeking the diagonal of a room, I bisected a quadrille with such ill-directed speed, as to run foul of a Cork dandy and his partner who were just performing the "en avant:" but though I saw them lie tumbled in the dust by the shock of my encounter—for I had upset them—I still held on the even tenor of my way. In fact, I had feeling for but one loss; and, still in pursuit of my cane, I reached the hall-door. Now, be it known that the architecture of the Cork Mansion House has but one fault, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... are by no means uncommon. A slight shock was felt in 1861 at Magomero; on asking the natives if they knew the cause of it, they replied that on one occasion, after a very severe earthquake which shook boulders off the mountains, all the wise men of the country assembled to talk about it and came to the following conclusion, that ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the steps, and they went in to a rather dreary evening service with a sparse congregation and a bored-looking choir, who passed notes and giggled during the sermon. Allison and Leslie sat and wondered what kind of a shock it would be to them all if the Great Companion should suddenly become visible in the room. If all that about His being always present was true, it ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... by her companion's evident mortification, and said with a smile, "If others speak so in the island, of course I must too; and you say it does not shock you." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... away to a window and stepped out on the balcony for a breath of air; he was beginning to comprehend the under side of his great joy, and it had come with a shock, on this very day which he had thought would have been filled with a rush of gladness. He grasped the cool marble of the parapet and tried to reason with himself; he suddenly foresaw that many days ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the shock of recognition brought him to his senses,—temporarily. He was even able to indulge himself in a quiet, sobering grin at his own folly. He passed the policeman with a nod and a cool word in response to the man's good-natured, "Good-night, sir." Number 9 was on the other side of the street; ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... pretty sharp. I thought it best not to shock her Grace by too great a stretch into the night. As it is you will have time to go to bed for an hour or two before you dress. That's what I do when I am in time. You'll be right ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... fair sized fortune. It struck me that a girl would have to search a good while before discovering an equally desirable husband. But I was surprised to find that this was not the general opinion in the neighborhood. Radnor's reputation, I learned with something of a shock, was far from what it should have been. I was told with a meaning undertone that he "favored" his brother Jeff. Though many of the stories were doubtless exaggerated, I learned subsequently that there was too much truth in some of them. It was openly said that ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Puffington was thoroughly disgusted. He was sick of hounds and horses, and Bragg, and hay and corn, and kennels and meal, and saddles and bridles; and now, this absurdity seemed to cap the whole thing. He was ill-prepared for such a shock. The exertion of successive dinner-giving—above all, of bachelor dinner-giving—and that too in the country, where men sit, talk, talk, talking, sip, sip, sipping, and 'just another bottle-ing'; more, we believe, from want of something else to do than from any natural inclination ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... exercise, never speed to the utmost. A five-mile gait is quite sufficient. The run should be closed with the same moderation with which it was begun, and the girl should never stop short, as this sudden arrest of action gives a most undesirable shock to the heart. ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... exaggerated vehemence; for the result (if it is not slavery) is, that a people passes from its savage to its heroic age, on its way to some permanence of civilization. It must always have taken a good deal to break up the rigidity of savage society. It might be the shock of enforced mixture with a totally alien race, the two kinds of blood, full of independent vigour, compelled to flow together;[1] or it might be the migration, due to economic stress, from one ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... physical suffering, felt the cords shock against her flesh, she was conscious of a strange uplifting of spirit. This, then, this smarting, blinding thing called pain, was the force that would drive the will to do evil ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these: it is not the suspension, but the utter destruction of the reasoning powers; it is the total imbecility which, as medical people well know, frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us—a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness—each equally purposeless and causeless; her ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... When what is strongly built, no chink Or yawning rupture can the same devour, But fix'd it stands, by her own power And well-laid bottom, on the iron and rock Which tries and counter-stands the shock And ram of time, and by vexation grows The stronger; virtue dies when foes Are wanting to her exercise, but great And large she spreads by dust and sweat. Safe stand thy walls and thee, and so both will, Since neither's height was rais'd by th' ill Of others; since no stud, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... price. I've had dealings with a good many of these shy, sensitive souls who shrink from mentioning the dollar, but when it came down to the point of settling the bill, they usually tried to charge a little extra for the shock ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... further dread to us, will require half the Mississippi squadron to watch it. I am apprehensive that the turrets of the monitors will defy any efforts we can make to destroy them. Our prestige will receive a shock from which it will be long in recovering; and if the calamities I dread should overtake us, the annals of this war will not present so dire a one as will have ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... if necessary with right good will. Each unit caught a gleam of fire from the old Irishman's eye as he looked them over on December 28th and 29th, while "L" Company came up to take over the front so as to relieve the men for their preparations for the shock of the battle. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... two feet solidly planted, this Hanniston man felt ready for any shock that Dave Darrin could ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... it if I brought her to you to-day, if I brought her here now?" asked Archie, beseechingly. "If I go and get her, and she comes with me, will the shock harm you?" ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... sap will waste. It is old wood that bleeds when the knife is put into it. I always hesitate to advise re-shaping an old specimen if it is so contorted that over half of the old wood must be cut away. It is a great shock to a growing plant to lose half or more of its wood. It sometimes kills it, particularly if injudiciously watered. If severe cutting is required do it while the pot shrubbery is nearest at rest, and a little before renewed growth may be expected again. Usually this is about the ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... the tiniest lakelets and ponds. Here are found pools and springs of every degree of heat. Some are boiling cauldrons into which the unwary fall now and again to meet a death terrible, yet—if the dying words of some of them may be believed—not always agonizing, so completely does the shock of contact with the boiling water kill the nervous system. Many pools are the colour of black broth. Foul with mud and sulphur, they seethe and splutter in their dark pits, sending up clouds of steam and sulphurous fumes. Others are of the clearest green or ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... most abnormal kind is in progress during the war. Imports from Europe have fallen greatly, while exports are enormously increased. Old industrial establishments have been converted to different and temporary uses. The conclusion of the war must bring a new readjustment that must cause a severe shock to some enterprises—and this must have been so under ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... blocked the mouth of the bayou was gone forever and the way lay open before them. Adam Colfax recovered from the shock ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... under her aunt Christina, in the nunnery of Rumsey. This princess Henry purposed to marry; but as she had worn the veil, though never taken the vows, doubts might arise concerning the lawfulness of the act; and it behoved him to be very careful not to shock, in any particular, the religious prejudices of his subjects. The affair was examined by Anselm in a council of the prelates and nobles, which was summoned at Lambeth; Matilda there proved that she had put on the veil, not with the view of entering into a religious ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... received an ugly wound where the sharp claw of the dying cougar had raked him from his right shoulder almost down to the waist line, his youthful vitality enabled him to throw off the shock of it ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... stare, through half-closed eyes, showed death in life, blankly returning her look. The shock had struck Carmina with a stony calm. She had not started, she had not swooned. Rigid, immovable, there she sat; voiceless and tearless; insensible even to touch; her arms hanging down; her clenched hands resting on either side ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... The shock of the defeat was deep and painful to the administration and the people of the North. Up to late Sunday afternoon favorable reports had come to Washington from the battle-field, and every one believed in an assured victory. When a telegram came about five o'clock ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... always assume when we see a war set on foot by many against one, that this one, if he have strength to withstand the first shock, and can temporize and wait his opportunity, is certain to prevail. But unless he can do this he runs a thousand dangers: as did the Venetians in the year 1508, who, could they have temporized with the ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)
... aspect of these cliffs is so wild and horrid, that it is impossible to behold them without terror. The spectator is apt to imagine that nature had formerly suffered some violent convulsion, and that these are the dismembered remains of the dreadful shock: the ruins, not of Persepolis or Palmyra, but of ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... Comedie Humaine can be admired only as one may admire a forceful mass of things, when it is looked at from afar, through an atmosphere that softens outlines, hides or transforms detail, adds irreality. In such an ambience certain novels that by themselves would shock, gain a sort of appropriateness, and others that are trivial or dull serve as foils. But, at the same time, we know that the effect ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... this year's transactions on the continent, we may observe, that on the sixteenth day of November the queen of Poland died at Berlin of an apoplexy, supposed to be occasioned by the shock she received on hearing that the French were totally defeated at Rosbach. She was a lady of exemplary virtue and piety; whose constitution had been broke by grief and anxiety conceived from the distress of her own family, as well as from the misery to which she saw ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... experience left its mark on her. She was never again quite the merry, thoughtless, utterly fearless child she had been. I tried, however, to take the good with the ill, remembering that thorough-going childhood cannot last for ever, that the shock possibly helped to soften and modify a nature that might have been too daring for perfect womanliness—still more, wanting perhaps in tenderness and sympathy for the weaknesses and ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... energies, his elastic temperament, and his splendid constitution had all of them, long before this, been cruelly overtaxed and overweighted. Unsuspected by any of us at the time, he had, there can be little doubt of it, received the deadliest shock to his whole system as far back as on the 9th of June, 1865, in that terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, on the fifth anniversary of which fatal day, by a strange coincidence, he breathed his last. His intense vitality deceived himself and everybody else, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Redway had shut off steam and was slowing down under ordinary air, when all at once there was a dull deafening roar, and then for me—oblivion. I was only stunned and when I regained consciousness looked around and saw the men slowly regaining their feet. Redway was not killed, but the shock and concussion of the detonation of the dynamite made him lose his speech and he was bleeding profusely at the nose and ears. The cowcatcher, headlight and forward trucks of the engine were blown to smithereens, but fortunately the boiler did not burst and there she stood ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... She noticed with sharp wonderment that Yellow Rufe was not among the foremost; but she was given no time to surmise, for the mob pressed on until she was forced either to risk an advance or give ground. A little shock rippled through her when she turned swiftly to see how Milo fared, and found him gone. The mob saw it, too, and seethed ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... He could never account for the fact, that he left the candles burning in the room behind him and went forward into the darkness, except by supposing that his wits had gone astray, in consequence of the shock the apparition had occasioned them. — When he reached the gallery, there was no light there; but somewhere in the distance he saw, or fancied, a ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... from the fearful shock of the famine, after thousands of deaths from hunger, and thousands shipped off to America at 4 l. 10 s. a head. Mr. Trench's son, Mr. Townshend Trench, the pictorial illustrator of his father's book, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... were all wags before him, and he has inherited with the inn a large stock of songs and jokes, which go with it from generation to generation as heirlooms. He is a dapper little fellow, with bandy legs and pot belly, a red face with a moist merry eye, and a little shock of gray hair behind. At the opening of every club night he is called in to sing his "Confession of Faith," which is the famous old drinking trowl from "Gammer Gurton's Needle." He sings it, to be sure, with many variations, as he received ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... sight of his father was undoubtedly a shock—he looked so worn and old. But in the cab he seemed hardly to have changed, still having the calm look so well remembered, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the passage; then, turning quickly, slammed and bolted the door, just as the first of the creatures rushed against it, with a sudden shock. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson |
