"Startling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it as "three-fifths built" in 1879. That, of course, is the dominant unit in the view from Camden. Otherwise there are few outstanding elements. The gradual rise in height of the buildings, from Front Street gently ascending up to Broad, gives no startling contrast of elevation to catch the gaze. The spires of the older churches stand up like soft blue pencils, and the massive cornices of the Curtis and Drexel buildings catch the sunlight. Otherwise the outline is even and well-massed in a ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... voice rang out in the silence, startling all. With the sound, Sir Gaheris threw up his hands in a gesture of despair. He turned to the executioner, who stood beside a cauldron of fire, and pointed to ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains." From the moment when Young Toots's voice was first heard, in tones so deep, and in a manner so sheepish, that "if a lamb had roared it couldn't have been more surprising," saying to Little Dombey with startling suddenness, "How are you?"—every time the Reader opened his lips, as speaking in that character, there was a burst of merriment. His boastful account always called forth laughter—that his tailor was Burgess and Co., "fash'nable, but very ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... are those which were taken over from Jewish life, since the Old Testament still more widely appeals to us than the New. But those Jewish ideas regarding society have been inherited in turn from the far more ancient Babylonian civilization. It is startling to find how much that we have thought distinctively our own has really come down to us from that great people who ruled the land of the two streams. We need not be ashamed of anything we can trace back so far. It is from no savage ancestors that it descends ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... seems that a sudden rise of temperature had melted the vast deposits of snow in the mountains of the Tyrol and other high ranges which send down their tributary waters to the Danube. A telegram from Passau announced the startling news that the waters of the Inn had risen eleven feet since the afternoon of the previous day, and further news came that the Danube had risen twelve and a half feet in the same time. Following close upon this came intelligence of a disastrous ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... startling in that? They are nothing but a couple of lubberly tradesmen. A furrier and a grocer, who deny the use of baptizing unconscious children, and who are simple-minded enough to oppose the forcing of irrational creatures into ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... and Samaria with its foundations exposed, and its "stones poured down in heaps" into the valley below. It has further, within the last few years, stolen into the deserts of the Hauran, through the old vigilant guard formed around that region by the Bedouin Arabs, and there—(as if in startling contradiction to the dead and buried cities of Syria, etc.)—it has—as was equally predicted—discovered the numerous cyclopic cities of Bashan standing perfect and entire, yet "desolate and without any to dwell therein,"—cities wrapped, as it were, in a state of mortal trance, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... remained the question of Naples, the formation of a Federal Constitution for Germany, and several matters of minor political importance, none of which endangered the good understanding of the Powers. Suddenly the action of the Congress was interrupted by the most startling intelligence. On the night of March 6th Metternich was roused from sleep to receive a despatch informing him that Napoleon had quitted Elba. The news had taken eight days to reach Vienna. Napoleon had set sail on the 26th of February. In the silence of his exile ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... far more insight might have been perplexed by the fact that Clarence was exemplary at church and prayers, family and private,—whenever Griff would let him, that is to say,—and would add private petitions of his own, sometimes of a startling nature. He never scandalised the nursery, like Griff, by unseemly pranks on Sundays, nor by innovations in the habits of Noah's ark, but was as much shocked as nurse when the lion was made to devour the elephant, or the lion ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for literature. In 1753 he wrote another essay for the Academy of Dijon, on the "Origin of the Inequality of Man," full of still more startling paradoxes than his first, in which he attempted to show, with great felicity of language, the superiority ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... was carried out without anything resembling a hitch. Mrs. Leroux went through with her part in the comedy, in the dreamy manner of a somnambulist; and the duplicate Mrs. Leroux, who waited at the appointed spot, had achieved so startling a resemblance to her prototype, that Mr. Soames became conscious of a craving for a peg of brandy at the moment of setting eyes upon her. However, he braced himself up and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... interruption, during which Professor Challenger was heard from the Press box to ask leave from the chairman to put Dr. Illingworth into the street.) A year ago one man said certain things. Now four men said other and more startling ones. Was this to constitute a final proof where the matters in question were of the most revolutionary and incredible character? There had been recent examples of travelers arriving from the unknown with ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... be kind at all, to Chadwick Newsome. Would Chad also be in perpetual evening dress? He somehow rather hoped it—it seemed so to add to THIS young man's general amenability; though he wondered too if, to fight him with his own weapons, he himself (a thought almost startling) would have likewise to be. This young man furthermore would have been much more easy to handle—at least for HIM—than appeared probable in respect ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... hinterlands, which are not Italian. "Italy is neglecting Triest in favour of Venice," says the dispatch. In Rieka, where the situation was even worse, "an honest plebiscite, even if confined to the Italian part of the city, would give a startling result. The Italians of Rieka are convinced that their existence depends on good relations with the Yugoslavs. They wish the town and port to be independent under the sovereignty of the League of Nations. This I have recently ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... hour that seemed an eternity the oncoming ship drew near, and he knew with a sudden, startling certainty that it was the Adelaide—and Ruth Allaire—coming on, through into ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the half-breeds, who had taken his horses from Mrs. Clunie's barn. What he did with them after he took them was not clear to himself then, for his memory merely served him in flashes. But all of it returned to him later, in startling realism. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... the flame. The ring was quite round, as the wind had driven the flame in one direction after another, and the effect of the great golden flame lying prone upon the earth, swaying and swirling with the wind in every direction, was most startling. The great beast Apollyon, minus the smoke, seemed to have come forth from his lair again. The cost of piping is now estimated, at the present extremely low prices, with right of way, at L1,600 sterling per mile, so that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... useful, able, eloquent men, applying, explaining, illustrating, and preparing the way for schools and commerce and the newspaper. Finally comes a man with a genius for boldness more than for anything else, so that he has a pleasant feeling of himself only when he gives himself the sense of being startling, novel, venturesome, and therefore goes off in his thought as in a balloon: and of such man,—being daring, ingenious, agile, and not being profound,—this will be the unfailing characteristic, that he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... conclusion must be startling indeed to those who know the ancient world only through the medium of Greek and Roman literature. To the Greek and to his admiring master, the Roman, all outside races were simply barbarians, at once despised, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... scenes and incidents are startling, and if the book should fail to change certain notions in regard to spiritualism, it certainly will confound sceptical thinkers and ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... real bombshell that hit the class, of course, but the effect was almost as startling. First, there were murmurs, then a hubbub of voices, last ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... even Mr. SMILLIE. If you are a poet, and we are all poets nowadays, you dream yourself into a punt on the Sonning backwater, wondering if the summer was ever so amazing before, nearly being shipwrecked on a sandy spit, startling moorfowl or it may be dabchicks, sending a frisson into the fritillaries, losing and regaining your punt-pole, always believing that the next bend —— Mr. FILSON YOUNG must really ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... hands. It looked, however, as though it would be extremely difficult to keep them away. Mr Gainsborough was obviously a man who would not waste his chance of a funeral; he might be fenced with till then, but it would need startling measures to ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... had been proud of its legal talent in the past it had now reason for revising its opinion. Burlingame was frittering away the effect of his inquiry by elaboration of details. What he gained by the main startling fact he lost in the details by which the witness scored. He ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Sir Christopher Wren. This is unlikely, but the design of the tower is familiar to anyone acquainted with London City and dates, with the remainder of the fabric, from 1717. The red-brick walls relieved by white stone are a little startling at first in such an out-of-the-way village, but their effect is not unpleasing, and when the church is entered its fine proportions will be admired by anyone not slavishly bound to the worship of "Gothic." The powers ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... Kentuckian felt no misgiving, but within fifty yards the trail underwent the startling change—the footprints being separated by ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... very startling, and from time to time little shudders of dread ran through me, but at the same time there was so much novelty and excitement, that I don't think I felt very much alarmed. In fact, I found myself hoping once that the Indians would come back, so that I could see how they behaved now that ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... on up a deep valley. At the bottom ran a stream of fine water, from which the water-casks were filled. The valley, scarcely a hundred yards wide at the entrance, gradually widened. We climbed up the wild rocks, ascending higher and higher, startling a number of goats, which scrambled off leaping from crag to crag; some of them fine-built old fellows with long beards, who looked as if they must have been well acquainted with Robinson Crusoe himself. We frequently had to turn aside to avoid cascades, which ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... the crushing conviction that it has never once been granted you to win a soul to God. And you see another man marked by inconsistency and impetuosity, banqueting every day upon the blest success of impressing and saving souls. All that is startling. And then comes sadness and despondency; then come all those feelings which are so graphically depicted here: irritation—"he was angry;" swelling pride—"he would not go in;" jealousy, which required soothing—"his father went ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... no playmates, so he did not know that boys often dig out the inside of a "pumpkin-jack," and in the space thus made put a lighted candle to render the face more startling; but he conceived an idea of his own that promised to be quite as effective. He decided to manufacture the form of a man, who would wear this pumpkin head, and to stand it in a place where old Mombi would ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... case, sir, and I obtained my information while off duty," replied Paul, with some embarrassment; for he had thought of communicating his startling discovery to Captain Gordon, and had only been deterred from doing so by the fear of ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... the startling fact broke upon him that the face of Deerfoot was toward him, and he was in the act of drawing a third arrow to the head: He had whirled about almost at the same instant that the Pawnee leveled his gun. To say the least, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Italy had passed, and it was now completely night, dark and starless, which made more startling the sudden appearance of several blazing torches, borne by masked and hooded figures attired in black, who struck loud and repeated blows on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... still afternoon, and the sound of the creek rang across the shadowy birches with an almost startling distinctness. That end of the line had, however, nearly reached the verge of the prairie. Presently another sound that rapidly grew louder reached my ears. It was the rhythmic beat of approaching hoofs, and for no very definite reason it brought ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... still intensely cold. As we went along, Oo-koo-hoo's breath rose like a cloud of white smoke fifteen or twenty feet in the air before it disappeared. Only the faintest whisper of scuffling snowshoes and scrunching snow could be heard; the sound of the occasional snapping of a twig came as a startling report compared with the almost noiseless tread of the hunter. A little cloud of powdery snow rose above the dragging heels of his snowshoes, and, whirling about, covered the back of his leggings with a coating of white. Onward he strode, twisting through the tangled ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... stood propped against the end of the open grave. Then, standing up to his neck in the earth at the opposite extreme of the excavation, as he looked at the coffin upon which the moonlight now fell with a full illumination he was thrilled with a sudden terror to observe upon it the startling apparition of a dark human head—the shadow of his own. For a moment this simple and natural circumstance unnerved him. The noise of his labored breathing frightened him, and he tried to still it, but his bursting lungs ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... very defect in his memoir. He had cut the great cases into a dry recital. There was no longer in them any pressure of a human impulse. The glow of inspired detail had been dissected out. Everything startling ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... says he will have the 'crow's nest' lowered and let you go up in it if you like," was the startling announcement which roused her ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... as it was, it had less than a thousand white inhabitants, but the overland route to the Pacific ran across it, and there was sure to be a rapid immigration into it so soon as it should be thrown open to settlers. What was both new and startling was a clause permitting the inhabitants of the Territory, whenever it should be admitted to statehood, to decide for themselves whether they would have slavery or not. The eighth section of the Compromise Act of 1820 provided that slavery should never exist anywhere in the Louisiana ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... youngster! I ain't no brother o' him," said Josh, shaking his head. "There, don't you mind," he continued, clapping his strong hand on the boy's shoulder, and then catching hold of him with his short deformed limb, an act that looked so startling and strange that the boy leaped back ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... The startling realisation may be due in part to a mere literary trick. We meet with artifices like those by which De Foe cheats us into forgetfulness of his true character. One of the best known is the insertion of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... books; but as soon as I came to study them I found that (except for what was drawn from the printed Tennessee State histories) they were extremely untrustworthy. Oral tradition has a certain value of its own, if used with great discretion and intelligence; but it is rather startling to find any one blandly accepting as gospel alleged oral traditions gathered one hundred and twenty-five years after the event, especially when they relate to such subjects as the losses and numbers of Indian war parties. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... from the throng, From all the heart would fain forget, This narrow valley and the song Of its small murmuring rivulet, The flitting to and fro of birds, Tranquil and tame as they were once In Eden ere the startling words Of man disturbed their orisons, Those little, shadowy paths that wind Up the hillside, with fruit-trees lined And lighted only by the breaks The gay wind in the foliage makes, Or vistas here and there that ope Thro' weeping willows, like the snatches Of far-off ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... consternation for mother and daughter, on a certain day when Clara brought home the startling news that the company was to be transferred to Columbus, Ohio, for the remainder of the season. It was a great event in the young actress's life, as it meant leaving her mother and standing alone. But as she confesses: "I felt every now and then my ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the actors in its scenes, tells of miracles. Such stories are found in the traditions written down long after the events narrated, by men who knew nothing of the facts at first hand. Exceptions to this rule occur alone in such startling events as the mysterious calamity that befell Sennacherib; which strongly impressed the imagination of the people and naturally gave rise to exaggerations that ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... an excited bark from the dog, and the quick rush of feet along the deck; Courtenay's voice reached them with a new and startling note in it. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... chiefs of the Pawnee-Loups, when this bargain was made?" suddenly demanded the youthful warrior, a look of startling fierceness gleaming, at the same instant, athwart his dark visage. "Is a nation to be sold like the skin of ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the way, and from a sheltered grotto beyond fell a mingled sound of laughter and running waters. But Actaeon would not turn back. Roughly pushing aside the laurel branches that hid the entrance of the cave, he looked in, startling Diana and her maidens. In an instant a splash of water shut his eyes, and the goddess, reading his churlish thought, said: "Go now, if thou wilt, ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... there was a marshalling of every charm, real or borrowed (more correctly bought), in view of the hoped-for conquests of the evening, and it would seem that not a few went on the military maxim that success is often secured by putting on as bold a front, and making as great and startling display, as possible. But as fragrant, modest flowers usually bloom in the garden with gaudy, scentless ones, so those inclined to be bizarre made an excellent foil for the refined and elegant, and thus had their uses. There is little in the world that is not of value, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... this note of sternness needed. It may be recalled that, some time ago, the columns of a well-known religious weekly contained a discussion as to which are morally the most perilous years of a man's life. The conclusion reached therein was startling, but bore the test of reflection. We have generally assumed that "the dangerous years" are those of early manhood, the years that lie between leaving school and marriage. In those years the youth has probably left the Sunday School behind ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Why had she fought with him before and wasted so much precious time? As a matter of fact, he broke off his whistle as the startling truth flashed on him, he might quite easily have forgotten all about her in the interval, and then ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... passages, up long and winding staircases—all bare and cold; through vast gloomy rooms, the walls and floors of which were of black oak, the former richly carved, and in places hung with ancient tapestry, displaying the most grotesque and startling devices. The windows, long, narrow, and pointed, with trellised panes, were at so great a height from the ground that the light was limited, and whilst certain spots were illuminated, many of the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... medicine bottles were arranged in a row, and the "eccentric Oscard" was studying the labels with a feverish haste. One bottle—a blue one—bore two labels: the smaller, of brilliant orange colour, with the word "Poison" in startling simplicity. He took this up and slowly drew the cork. It was a liniment for neuralgic pains in an overwrought head—belladonna. He poured some into a medicine-glass, ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain; new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down, like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations; and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter awhile in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, and pass away, To darkle in the trackless void; yet Time, Time the tomb builder, holds ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Onondago raised his figure, and the look he fastened on my uncle, were both fine and startling. As yet he had said nothing beyond the salutation; but I could see he now intended ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... he felt that he was on the verge of a discovery. Here was evidence of a lady in the case, which might lead to a startling development. Perhaps Crewe was right in declaring that Birchill was the wrong man, he said to himself. Perhaps the murderer was not a ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... further agitation by the appearance of The Revolution in 1868 in New York, which was hailed by the women of California (as elsewhere) as the harbinger of a brighter and better era. Its well filled pages were eagerly read and passed from hand to hand, and the effect of its startling assertions was soon apparent. Mrs. Pitts Stevens had about that time secured a proprietary interest in the San Francisco Mercury, and was gradually educating her readers up to a degree of liberality to endorse ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Party System and the views contained in it we shall deal in a later chapter. Here we are concerned solely with Mr. Belloc's view of the development of England and especially with that most startling and original view which he expounds in The Servile State as to the origin of ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... above me was full of rocks and trees. From this direction came a startling noise, which caused me more concern than anything I had thus far heard. It sounded much like a huge animal stretching himself, and giving a great yawn which ended in a scream. I knew this for the voice ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... ages have had ideals and aspirations, coupled, in some cases, with a limited knowledge of social practice, but social changes have come upon mankind for the most part, as a meteor comes upon the earth's atmosphere—unexpected and unheralded, startling those who have seen it by the suddenness of its appearance. Nor has there been any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill a different point of view with regard to these matters. On the contrary, ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... ring's accompaniment, though the child of a creative brain—the burning emanation from some Apollo-stricken votary of "the lying nine," imbued with all his stern morality, is strictly "true." This startling fact is not left wrapped in mystery. The veriest sceptic cannot, in imagination, grave a fancied double meaning on that richest gift. No—the motto follows, and seems to say—Now, as the champion of Giles Scroggins, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and quickness of all kinds. Alda was delighted with her pretty caressing ways and admiration of the wonderful new sister. She was of quieter, more docile mood than these two, though aspiring to their companionship; for it was startling to see how far she had left Theodore behind. He was still in arms, and speechless, a little pale inanimate creature, taking very little notice, and making no sound except a sort of low musical cooing of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to her downtown office early next day. He found her surrounded by her strongest allies, already in conference as to the best means of pursuing their crusade which had aroused Chicago with the startling news of The Raid of Mary Randall on the Cafe Sinister, headlined ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... there is a more startling phase of this moral question. It is not impossible to show that actual violence is done to ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... great column of boulders that towered above her, and that seemed to say, "I am very old. I have seen many springs and many winters, and have looked down on many sleeping maids, and where are they now? All dead—all dead," and an old baboon in the rocks with startling suddenness barked out "all dead" ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... in front, which we had been steadily approaching for some time. At last we reached the top, and here a scene burst upon us which was rather startling. The hill was high enough to command an extensive view, and the first thing that we saw was a vast extent of woods and water and smoke. By-and-by we were able to distinguish each. The water was the river, which could be seen for miles. Up the river toward the left the smoke arose in great ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... sir," says the woman, in such a sudden way, and in such a cracked voice, that it was quite startling to hear her. "Chilly weather, ain't it, sir? Please to walk in. You come from good Mr. Forley, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... your pardon," but I was choking with laughter and could not speak. But I could act, for I rapidly changed the nozzle back to my right hand, and directed it down at the spot I had selected for my attack, and as the clear, bright jet of water struck the smouldering cargo the effect was startling. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... a kind of gratitude for the author's plainness mingles, as we read, with the nausea proper to the business. I shall quote here a verse of an old student's song; worth laying side by side with Villon's startling ballade. This singer, also, had an unworthy mistress, but he did not choose to share the wages of dishonour; and it is thus, with both wit and pathos, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With startling suddenness, a panel disappeared noiselessly into the red velvet draped wall, and in the aperture so formed a good-looking ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a laugh. "Just like themselves." The idea of a Dissenter setting up to be as well educated, and as capable of forming an opinion, as a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman, was too novel and too foolish not to be somewhat startling as well. Mr. May was aware that human nature is strangely blind to its own deficiencies, but was it possible that any delusion could go so far as this? He did laugh a little—just the ghost of a laugh—at the idea. But what is the use of making any serious opposition to such a statement? ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... brick partitions had been put up that happily interfered with the spread of the fire and allowed all the operatives a chance to escape. The fire finally reached an elevator. It then darted with startling rapidity to the top of the building, shooting up like an arrow sent by a destructive hand below. The flames were now spreading every-where in the highest story. People gathered from the town, and the engines ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... most gorgeous of all flowering trees, as distinguished from creepers, is the sea-loving pohutu kawa. When the wind is tossing its branches the contrast is startling between its blood-red flowers and the dark upper side and white, downy under side ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... was "told off" to go below with the firemen. Down he went, through one narrow hole after another, past deck after deck of iron grating—down, down, down—till at last, as he emerged from a dark passageway, a very startling scene burst upon him. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Miss Broadhurst?" said Lady Catherine, determined, if possible, to turn the conversation into a commonplace, safe channel; for she had just felt, what most of Miss Broadhurst's acquaintance had in their turn felt, that she had an odd way of startling people, by setting their own secret little motives suddenly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... generalization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a relief to be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of a cross street. His way lay through a territory of startling contrasts of wealth and squalor. The public part of it—the street and the sidewalks—was equally dirty and squalid, once off the boulevard. The cool lake wind was piping down the cross streets, driving before it waste paper ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and then grading into dull reds and duller greys. The sun, on the other hand, bathes everything in its genial glow so completely that all nature is permeated with it, and there are no intense contrasts, no absolutely black and striking shadows, except in caverns and holes, to form startling contrasts. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... How old are you? Nineteen. Have you reckoned the number of minutes that have elapsed since your birth? The number is startling: nine millions, three hundred and thirty-three thousand, two hundred.... Each of those minutes has flown to GOD; GOD has examined them and weighed them, and for them you ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... I restricted myself to relief from local congestion and irritation by calling forth the emission of mucus, rather than by seeking pleasure. At the same time, I sought to discover what manipulation of the clitoris would lead to. The habit grew upon me with startling rapidity, and I became more or less its slave, but I suffered from no very great ill effects until I started in search of more discoveries. I found that I was a complete ignoramus as to the formation of a woman's body, and by experiments ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... mother ever let you out," said Ezra, in a bewildered fashion. In fact, the vision of Ephraim Thayer out with a sled, coasting, at eleven o'clock at night, was startling. Ezra remembered dazedly how he had heard his mother say that very afternoon that Ephraim was worse, that the doctor had been there last Saturday, and she didn't believe he would live long. He looked at Ephraim standing there in the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... certain remarkable evidence which Prof. Barrett had obtained from a subject in the mesmeric trance, giving what appeared to be indubitable proof of some supernormal mode of transmission of ideas from his mind to that of the subject. The facts were so novel and startling that Prof. Barrett asked for a committee of experts to examine the whole question and see whether such a thing as "thought transference," independently of the recognised channels of sense, did really exist. This was the first time evidence of this kind had been brought before a ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... minimum necessary for tolerable human existence? I know that many people think it impossible, but my answer is that the fixing of a limit below which wages shall not fall is already not the exception but the rule in this country. That may seem a rather startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the case of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does not allow the rates of pay even of its humblest employes to be decided by the scramble for employment. The State ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... sense, necessarily more wholesome than our modern and reasonable morality. It is more wholesome for this reason, that it can contemplate the idea of success or triumph in the hopeless fight towards the ethical ideal, in what Stevenson called, with his usual startling felicity, "the lost fight of virtue." A modern morality, on the other hand, can only point with absolute conviction to the horrors that follow breaches of law; its only certainty is a certainty of ill. It can only point to imperfection. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... compared the public crimes of this minister—startling crimes, European crimes, if so we may say—with the private and unknown crimes with which Milady had charged him, Felton found that the more culpable of the two men which formed the character of Buckingham was ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a more startling imprint on the memory-film than the main purport of any great adventure, whether it be a polar expedition, a new discovery, or such a stupendous undertaking as that in which ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... even more complete. These districts occupied by the Germans and whose machinery has been methodically destroyed or taken away by the enemy, were, industrially speaking, the very heart of France. They were the very backbone of our production, as shown in the following startling figures: ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... meant by the author to be a startling cry of "DANGER!" Different from "THE MAN-TRAP," as dealing with another aspect of the temperance question, its pictures are wholly unlike those presented in that book, but none the less vivid or intense. It is given as an ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... stairway, and slowly descending, with steps that were meant to be stately (and which might have been so, had not the stairs been so steep, and the little legs so short) was the figure of a child: a little girl about ten years old, with a face of almost startling beauty. Her hair floated like a cloud of pale gold about her shoulders; her eyes were blue, not light and keen, like the old man's, but of that soft, deep, shadowy blue that poets love to call violet. Wonderful eyes, shaded by long, curved lashes of deepest black, ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... her, with pleasure, but with a strange sort of slight sadness and misgiving too. There was something almost startling in the little girl's extreme love for the bird, and it made her cousin wish it could be ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... eyes from the ground where she had cast them. Those slow full looks, intense, tragic, fixed, had a startling effect of which she was wholly unconscious. Edgar felt his own grow dark and tender as he met hers. If the soul and mind within only answered to the mask without, what queen or goddess could surpass ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... home with his mother, but after complaining to him of Susannah's conduct in having made a startling display of her vexation in the women's place behind the screen, she had leaned on him and fallen fast asleep. Her head was on her son's shoulder when they reached home, and Orion's anxiety for the mother ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... startling thing about this little incident of a woman's death is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon it and rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years of age should die of ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... second and third interviews with Mme. M— had to be postponed until the 30th of March and the 6th of April following. At each of these sittings, the details of the vision and of the road taken became clearer and clearer and were given with startling precision, so much so that, by pursuing step by step the indications of the medium, the man's friends ended by discovering the body, dressed as stated, lying in the middle of a coppice, just as described, close to a huge stump of a tree all covered with moss, which ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... as he continued to stare at her. She was flushed with sleep, and grimy with sweat and smoke and dirt. The grey shirt-sleeves, rolled up above the elbows, showed her scratched forearms, and on one hand, hanging across her knee in the abandon of sleep, with startling incongruity gleamed a diamond ring. The beautiful chestnut hair had escaped from its fastenings, and hung in tumbled masses, and there were ragged tears here and there in the borrowed raiment. Never, thought Stane ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... cry to general apprehension, but it of course implies that the credit of the borrower must be first-rate, or his security of the most satisfactory nature, and that it is not the principal who goes into the market, but only the principal's broker. 'Have you money to lend to-day?' is a startling question often asked with perfect nonchalance in the Stock Exchange. If the answer is 'Yes,' the borrower says, 'I want L10,000 or L20,000.'—'At what security?' is the vital question that ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... filled with moments of such excitement, of such pride in one's fellow-countrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of laughter and good-fellowship, that one supposed he might return after even twenty years and recognize every detail of the ground. But a shorter time has made startling and confusing changes. Now a visitor will find that not until after several different visits, and by walking and riding foot by foot over the hills, can he make them fall into line as he thinks he once knew them. Immediately around San Juan Hill ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... awakened herd; and throwing up my rifle, I tried to imagine the entire animal from the little of it that I saw, aimed for the spot among the grass which I pictured as being just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle broke in upon the stillness of the night with startling effect. I heard the thud of the bullet, instantly followed by a savage snarl that ended in a moan, and as the smoke drifted away I caught a momentary glimpse of a great, tawny, black-spotted form writhing convulsively in the air from its death spring and then collapsing ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... rousing out of my lethargy had been so slow, this change in my chances seemed to come upon me with a startling suddenness—when in reality, I suppose, I might have seen signs of it a good while sooner than I did see them had my mind been clear. But the actual end of my adventure, the resolving of my hopes into a glad certainty of rescue, really ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... while. However, the shades of mauve, and all the variants of purple, which are set forth so alluringly in the windows are enough to tempt an anchorite, and no more decided color attracts us, as blues and greens seem crude and startling beside these soft shades, which came in with the half-mourning for King Edward and are still affected ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... sentiment and story with which she weaves them into unity. The receptacles of beer, tea, cider and shaving-soap that figure in her woodcuts are old friends we are glad to see again, and none the less so for the somewhat startling duty they are made to perform in the illustration of aesthetic culture. We learn secrets about them we never dreamed of before. We are told where they came from, have explained to us the mystic meaning of their designs, and are pointed to the stamps on their bottoms or some other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... detached itself, and burned before her, vivid and startling; and in all its terrible reality slipped between her and the visible world on which she was staring. It was this: to embrace the Catholic Faith meant the renouncing of Hubert. As a Protestant she might conceivably have married a Catholic; as a Catholic it was inconceivable ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the journey continued through a rough mountain region, abundantly supplied with game, consisting of deer, rabbits, and partridges, which was brought in by the Indian hunters. But now there came back startling news, for one of the negro's guides appeared, pallid with fright, telling how Stephen had reached Cibola, where he had been seized, plundered, and imprisoned. Farther on two more Indians were met, covered with blood and wounds, who said that they had escaped from the slaughter of all their ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... possible that this address soothed the pride of his troops. It certainly deluded neither his own people nor the South. The immediate effect of his strategic manoeuvre was startling. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... long hair. "I was once called Don Pedro Garcia," said he; "tell me," he added, as all four of us rose involuntarily at this startling announcement, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... my easy-chair, and dreaming of the good times which I hope are coming, when there fell upon my ears a most startling scream. It was the voice of my Maria Ann in mortal agony. The voice came from the kitchen, and to the kitchen I rushed. The idolized form of my Maria Ann was perched upon a chair, and she was flourishing an iron spoon in all ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Edwin's father was an Arctic explorer. Write under sketch, "The old man had many a startling adventure in the silent land ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... his gardens, regarding past, present, and future with equal indifference, like one of those listless animals which lie sluggish, and torpid so long as you supply them with food. While he thus loitered languid and indolent in the woods of Aricia,[95] he received the startling news of Lucilius Bassus' treachery and the disaffection of the fleet at Ravenna.[96] Soon afterwards he heard with mixed feelings of distress and satisfaction that Caecina had deserted him and had been imprisoned by the army. On his insensate nature joy had more effect than trouble. He returned ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... the future,—for the immediate future,—were very startling. Grace was to go over at once to Plumstead, whither Edith had been already transferred from Cosby Lodge. That was all very well; there was nothing very startling or impracticable in that. The Framley ladies, having none of those ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... gives advice it is always something as startling as an epigram, and yet as practical as the Bank of England. I said to him, 'What disguise will hide me from the world? What can I find more respectable than bishops and majors?' He looked at me with his large but indecipherable ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... the Secret Room, but Prester Kleig had scarcely appeared from it than someone started the radio signal which informed the frenzied, waiting world of the west that information, exact if startling, would now ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... call "living," and the possibility of bringing about this passage in the chemical laboratory without the use of materials already elaborated by previously existing "living" material. The announcement was immediately made in some "newspapers" that "startling revelations" were to be made by the President, that he was "to throw a bomb-shell" into the camp, etc. He did nothing of the kind. He gave an admirable and clear statement of the progress during recent years towards the realisation of the construction ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like these should keep them devoutly folded like a virgin martyr—that a man with so intent and startling an expression of face should sit patiently on his seat and contemplates people with an unwinking stare, like a god, or a god's statue. His quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it fitted so poorly with ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... of character we have "characters," usually exaggerations of some trait, so pushed forward as to become caricatures. Consistency to human nature is not insisted on in plot, but there must be startling and unexpected incidents, mechanical devices, and a great deal of what is called "business," which clearly has as much relation to literature as have the steps of a farceur in a clog-dance. The composition of such plays demands literary ability in the least degree, but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... contrived to pick up some stray arms and ammunition with which she had supplied her Carlist friends, and, waiting for some opportune moment, had made a sudden rush, like Gideon upon the Midianites, with the startling results above described. ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... cheek spoke of the three pounds she had lost since he had first helped her with her difficulties, and the eleven pounds before that. The hand upon the Turkey-red cloth was of such transparent thinness that you were sure you could see the lamplight shining through. Her eyes were startling, they were so full of other-worldly sweetness and so ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... tell the truth, and they do," said Pennington, "here comes a short, thick man riding a long, thick horse and he—the man, not the horse—bears a startling resemblance to our friend, ally, guide and sometime mentor, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... right in the world to be there; bearing herself a little proudly, for a sudden thought of Mr. Carlisle came over her. Mr. Rhys was lying on the couch, as she had seen him before; but she was startled at the paleness of his face, made more startling by the very dark eyebrows and bushy hair. He raised himself on his elbow as she came in, and Eleanor could not refuse ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... and more painful scene—the Acordada, or public jail; a great solid building, spacious, and well ventilated. For this also there is a Junta, or society of ladies of the first families, who devote themselves to teaching the female malefactors. It is painful and almost startling to see the first ladies in Mexico familiarly conversing with and embracing women who have been guilty of the most atrocious crimes; especially of murdering their husbands; which is the chief crime of the female prisoners. There are no bad faces amongst them; and probably not one who ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... August first. A startling change had come over the city since I had left it only a few weeks before. Feverish activity everywhere prevailed. Reservists streamed in by thousands from all parts of the country to report at headquarters. Autos ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... flattering tide may trust, Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?— Careening under startling blasts The sheeted towers of sails impend; While, gathering bale, behind is bred A livid ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... startling thing in the illuminated room on the ground-floor was a dressing-gown, of the colour, between heliotrope and purple, known to a previous generation as puce; a quilted garment stuffed with swansdown, light as hydrogen—nearly, and warm ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... startling as they were on the whole, did not greatly interrupt the course of instruction which my father himself had undertaken to give us children. He had passed his youth in the Coburg Gymnasium, which stood as one of the first among German educational institutions. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... red clovers in January if you give your order in October. Great bunches of flowers, of a pure scarlet unmixed with any other color, are very fashionable, and the effect in a softly-lighted room is most startling and beautiful. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... cities known and loved by Americans has the war wrought such startling changes as in Venice. Because it is a naval base of the first importance, because it is almost within sight of the Austrian coast, and therefore within easy striking distance of Trieste, Fiume, and Pola, and ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... present compilation is to form a readable and instructive volume—a volume of startling incident and exciting adventure, which shall interest all minds, and by its attractions beget thirst for reading with those who devote their leisure hours to things hurtful to themselves and to community. We have endeavored to be authentic, ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... sense told me Collins was gone, just as I could have gone myself, without sound or warning. Yet even then I paused instead of going after him. First, because I had no desire to give my reason for dismissing him next morning; second, because I had a startling, ghastly thought that I'd heard Macartney's quiet, characteristic footstep moving away,—and if a hard, set-eyed man like our capable superintendent had been out listening to what a girl said to Collins, as I had, I didn't know how in the devil I was to make him hold his ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... though madame failed to appear, did we ever remember to blame any one, for presently through the open window near which we sat there came the sound of voices from the room above, and a drama began of such startling interest that we could ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... copper, with pump and stop-cock; and with this he was able to pump out air almost as easily as water. Thus, in 1650, the air-pump was invented. Continuing his experiments upon vacuums and atmospheric pressure with his newly discovered pump, he made some startling discoveries as to the enormous pressure exerted ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... moment, only a moment, then lifted the head which, during that pause, had drooped, and stood erect at the full height of his stature, startling his father by the change that had passed over his face; lip, eye, his whole aspect, eloquent with a resolute enthusiasm, too grave to be the flash of a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you if I've much of your imperence, my young dandy!" was the somewhat startling rejoinder. "I'll bundle the pack of you out of the house, that I will, if you can't keep a civil ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... until eight o'clock the next morning and then wakened with startling suddenness. Somebody was saying in a harsh, gruff voice, "Here, you two, wake up. I want to ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Himself and the Twelve from these remoter prospects of bliss to the nearer future of trial and separation. The solemn warning to Peter follows with startling suddenness. Why should they be fighting about precedence when they were on the verge of the sorest trial of their constancy? And as for Peter, who had, no doubt, not been the least loud-voiced in the strife, he needed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... special providence that there were no more, for many principal men were going aboard at that time, & some were in a boat near the ship, & others were diverted by a sudden shower of rain, & others by other occasions." The good Governor makes this startling record the occasion for mentioning "other examples of like kind." Yet the especial providential significance which both he and Endecott could assign to such a calamity would need a readjustment in its interpretation, if compelled to take in two other conditions under which the mysterious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... ocean to the seething turmoil which Franklin found in the colonies must have been a startling transition. He had come home an old man, lacking but little of the allotted threescore years and ten. He had earned and desired repose, but never before had he encountered such exacting, important, and unremitting labor as immediately ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... asylum green with envy. The square made by old Deacon White, composed of pieces of blue, green, scarlet, and purple silk fastened together as one would sew the leather on a baseball, came next to the dainty square of the town milliner's covered with embroidered butterflies and startling cupids. Nor were the others found wanting in variety. It ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... was her way of working off her excitement in view of the adventure she knew they were to pass through; and indeed a very startling adventure was to crown the incidents of ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... abruptly terminated at this point by a flock of wild ducks, which, ignorant of the presence of the two youths, swept close past their heads with a startling whirr. The artist leaped backwards, and March, partly in the exuberant glee of his heart and partly to relieve his own startled feelings, gave utterance to a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... it might well, I say, be supposed, that such true and acute observation would suggest similar ideas, and perhaps even the same method of defining them. Yet when this similarity is frequent instead of occasional, when the unusual peculiarity of the sentiment renders it startling and suspicious, then the above supposition becomes too extensive even for prejudice to admit. Such however is the case here, and so the matter stands between Shakspeare and the ancient dramatists. Even some of the machinery ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... Meanwhile, Manston continued visibly before her. He, though quiet and subdued in his bearing for a long time after the calamity of November, had not simulated a grief that he did not feel. At first his loss seemed so to absorb him—though as a startling change rather than as a heavy sorrow—that he paid Cytherea no attention whatever. His conduct was uniformly kind and respectful, but little more. Then, as the date of the catastrophe grew remoter, he began to ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... "After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was going to tell you when Morgan came to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... It is a startling fact, but a fact nevertheless, that two-thirds of the girls who are ruined fall through the influence of dancing. Mark my words, I know this to be true. Let me give you two reasons why it is so. In the first place I do not believe that any woman ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... to a subject and then turn for relaxation to a lighter aspect, so I had for years been interested in a stock called Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates. It wasnt a highpriced issue, nor were its fluctuations startling. For six months of the year, year in and year out, it would be quoted at 1/16 of a cent a share; for the other six months it stood at 1/8. I didnt know what pemmican was and I didnt particularly care, but if a man could invest at 1/16 he could ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore |
