"Thunderbolt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their topmost and more distant peaks melt imperceptibly into the tender blue of the heavens. This is the land of the Sons of Fire, and yonder amid the slopes of the nearest hills is the great kraal of their king, Umsuka, whose name, being interpreted, means The Thunderbolt. ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... spear. Then Glooskap asked, "Who shall sit in the stern and paddle, and who will take the spear?" Kitpooseagunow said "That will I." So Glooskap paddled, and soon the canoe passed over a mighty whale; in all the great sea there was not his like; but he who held the spear sent it like a thunderbolt down into the waters, and as the handle rose again to sight he snatched it up, and the great fish was caught. And as Kitpooseagunow whirled it on high, the whale, roaring, touched the clouds. Then taking him from the point, the fisher ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting suddenly in secret. Take the matter as you find it: ask no questions, utter no remonstrances; it is your best wisdom. You expected bread, and you have got a stone: break your teeth ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... mentioning—and my unflinching support can give it to him. That is my position, and I state it regardless of consequences." He paused, and with raised right hand, like the picture of Jove in the old academy mythology, launched his final thunderbolt. "Whom God hath joined," he proclaimed, "let no ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... too long over this colorless and commonplace picture of rural Western life, it is because I have felt an instinctive reluctance to recount the startling and most improbable incident which fell one night upon this quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt out of blue sky. The story I must tell will be flatly denied and easily refuted. It is absurd and fantastic, but, unless human evidence is to go for nothing when it testifies of things unusual, the story ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... Mr Longestaffe at Caversham like a thunderbolt. It was marvellous to him that his son should have been instigated to write a letter. The Melmottes must be very bad indeed,— worse than he had thought,—or their iniquities would not have brought about such energy as this. But the passage ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... If a thunderbolt had suddenly fallen before Kennedy's feet and cloven its sulphurous passage into the abyss, he could hardly have been more startled or more alarmed. Without a word he sat down half stupefied. Was any one else in the inner room? ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the mighty hero, King Dushyanta, Protector of the earth; who, at the head Of the celestial armies of thy son, Does battle with the enemies of heaven. Thanks to his bow, the thunderbolt of Indra Rests from its work, no more the minister Of death and desolation to the world, But ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... MY DEAR BAXTER,—The thunderbolt has fallen with a vengeance now. On Friday night after leaving you, in the course of conversation, my father put me one or two questions as to beliefs, which I candidly answered. I really hate all lying so much now—a new found honesty that has somehow come out of my late ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is the thunderbolt of God by which He strikes in a heap [hurls to the ground] both manifest sinners and false saints [hypocrites], and suffers no one to be in the right [declares no one righteous], but drives them all together ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... something, besides, that has had the temerity to attack you, and so has made a lawful target of itself. But against your friend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all over you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Dsing, the Pagoda-bearing King of Heaven, may be traced back to Indra, the Hindoo god of thunder and lightning. The Pagoda might be an erroneous variant of the thunderbolt Vadjra. In such case Notscha would be a personification of the thunder. The Great One (Tai I), is the condition of things before their separation into the active and passive principles. There is a whole genealogy of mythical saints and holy men who took part in the battles ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... had heard Mary's cry, for he held out his arms, and fell flat on the sand, as if struck by a thunderbolt. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... was far enough from the barn to prevent the shock of the thunderbolt from disabling us beyond a moment or two. Merton had fallen off his chair, but was on his feet almost instantly; the other children were soon sobbing and clinging to ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... about his beloved country, and in October, 1806, the thunderbolt fell in the rout of the Prussian army at Jena. Napoleon's victorious troops pressed on to Berlin and the Prussian court retreated with the tide of fugitives to Koenigsberg. Kleist was overwhelmed by the misery of this cataclysm, which, however, he had clearly foreseen and foretold. With a group ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... rose in a point. He was clad, in the Asiatic fashion, in a blue tunic, and wore round his legs, like the barbarians, red breeches, spangled with gold stars. On seeing him, Paphnutius recognised Marcus the Arian, and fearing lest a thunderbolt should fall from heaven, he covered his head with his arms, and grew pale with fright. At this banquet of the demons, neither the blasphemies of the pagans, nor the horrible errors of the philosophers, had had any effect on him, but the mere presence of the heretic quenched his courage. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... so will be the things that it writes down. And when kings and princes observe this marvellous science of poetry in wise, virtuous, and thoughtful subjects, they honour, value, exalt them, and even crown them with the leaves of that tree which the thunderbolt strikes not, as if to show that they whose brows are honoured and adorned with such a crown are not to be assailed ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... jumped down on the shoulders of the one nearest, and crushed him to the ground with his weight. His clenched fist caught the lieutenant between the eyes and stretched him on his back—the third man wisely drew aside to let this human thunderbolt pass by! ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... A thunderbolt would not have more transfixed me. I could not speak for a moment. Finally, I stammered that they were out ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of a man appeared, inside the circle of the dome. He had an angry, brutal face, and he wore a black tunic piped with silver, and black breeches, and polished black boots, and there was an insignia, composed of a cross and thunderbolt, on his cap. He held an ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... demented. But now I am free again, and now I shall speak the word; for now, Olof, we are standing on the mountain. Behold the people crawling on their knees before those two men seated on their thrones. The taller holds two keys in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other. That is the Pope. Now he hurls his thunderbolt, and a thousand souls pass into perdition, while the rest kiss his foot and sing Gloria Deo—but he who is seated on the throne turns about and smiles. Now behold his companion. He ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the lordly plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordained by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... it was so,' answered Elvira. 'The discovery of his deception came upon me suddenly, like a thunderbolt from the clouds of heaven, and I upbraided him for it in the bitterness of my heart, and he answered my reproaches at first with scornful laughter, and afterwards with a relation of the history of his past life, during which, to my utter astonishment and surprise, I learnt that ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... disputes and brawls with the Indians, which now and then reached the drowsy ears of Walter the Doubter and his council, like the muttering of distant thunder from behind the mountains, without, however, disturbing their repose. It was not till the time of William the Testy that the thunderbolt reached the Manhattoes. While the little governor was diligently protecting his eastern boundaries from the Yankees, word was brought him of the irruption of a vagrant colony of Swedes in the South, who had landed on the banks of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and now they're takin' aim. . . . Rat-tat-tat-tat! Oh here, says I, is where I join the game. And my right arm it goes swingin', and a bomb it goes a-slingin', And that "typewriter" goes wingin' in a thunderbolt of flame. ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship's side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; I saw a great flash of fire, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more than two minutes afterward until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek—such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thunderbolt had fallen it would not have created a greater sensation. The ladies at first grew indignant and uttered protestations. When they grew calmer, the corresponding secretary was ordered to furnish the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... afraid he's been rather wicked, you know. He's lived alone in the woods like a hermit without seeing a soul, and then, again, he's been a chief among the Indians, with Heaven knows how many Indian wives! They called him 'The Pale-faced Thunderbolt,' my dear, and 'The Young Man who Swallows the ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... seemed so far removed from him that he could not recognize them. He scarcely looked at us, and Madame, his wife, seemed neither less frigid nor more civil." On the fifth of September, nineteen days after the fete, the thunderbolt fell upon him. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... over-confident, Too like to ruin himself, and you, and me! Who else, with this black thunderbolt of Rome Above him, would have chased the stag to-day In the full face of all the Roman camp? A miracle that they let him home again, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... lasted until November twenty-second. On the morning of that day, while the ship was in the trough of the waves, and with topmasts shipped, it was struck by a squall of rain and hail, accompanied by great darkness. A thunderbolt, descending the mainmast, struck the vessel amidships. It killed three men besides wounding and maiming eight others; it had entered the hatches, and torn open the mainhatch, with a blaze of light, so that the interior of the ship could be seen. Another thunderbolt ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... an accomplice. They could not destroy the ship merely by staring at her! Somewhere, somewhere, concealed but not far distant, that accomplice must have awaited the first beam of the rising sun as the signal to hurl his thunderbolt, to ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... not questioned. The so-called heat-lightning, though apparently intangible, must therefore be regarded as a substance. Yet further in the remove we find the zodiacal light. Sunlight is but the same, in form of extreme tenuity. The thunderbolt passes from earth to cloud, and instantaneously changes its substantial form to one as tenuous as light; yet, in the transformation, this fluid has not lost its identity. Though unseen, it continues to exist ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Mountain came. It fell like a thunderbolt from the summer sky, that the people deluded themselves was to sail over them with never a cloud! The flood-tide of success, upon which they had been floating so gaily, was suddenly dammed and flowed back upon them in ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... our dinner. The split that had happened in the ice during the night showed by daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet wide at the seawards end, thinning to a width of three feet, never less, to where it ended, ahead of the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that showed as if a thunderbolt had fallen just there. I looked into this rent, but it was as black as a well past a certain depth, and there was no gleam of water. When we went over the side to roll our first barrel of powder to the spot where we meant to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to the figure of Trentanove, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... been driven from Olympus for an offense against Jupiter. Apollo had a son named Æs-cu-laʹpi-us, who was so skilled a physician that he could, and did, raise people from death to life. Jupiter was very angry at this. He feared that men might forget him and worship Æsculapius. He therefore hurled a thunderbolt at the great physician and killed him. Enraged at the death of his son, Apollo threatened to destroy the Cyclops, the giant workmen of Vulcan, who had forged the terrible thunderbolt. Before he could carry out his threat, however, Jupiter ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... dilated eyes, fiery as with a spark of actual flame. He could even feel the hot puffs of the creature's breath upon his cheeks, when all at once the horned head so close above his own swerved aside with a snort from the dead body of the wolf at his feet. The bull passed him like a thunderbolt, and he heard the infuriated stamping which fairly shook the ground in the thicket below, where this king of the herds paused to bellow and paw the earth, throwing clods high ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and started on our wild ride of rescue. Forty miles in forty minutes, with one slow down was our time. The old derrick and wreck outfit swayed to and fro like reeds in the wind, as we went down the track like a thunderbolt, but fortunately we held to the rails. There was scarcely a word spoken in the caboose, every one being intent upon holding on and thinking of the horrible scene we were soon to view. When we reached Truxton we found the track walker there, and after hearing his story in brief, we pulled ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... in flames again!" cried aunt Hannah, rushing through the porch, "and Nathan's chair empty. Is this thunderbolt ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... question was never put in an Arab town in the heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear sky has seldom fallen upon ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... suction of the wide current that leaps, jump after jump, over that foaming bed, our inclinations and our courage rose together to go down the formidable pass; and having full faith in the long-tried pilotage of our guide, Tom Shaw, down we went, rushing at times like a thunderbolt, then turned by a dab of the pole of our guide, on a rock, shooting off in eschelon, and then careering down another schute, or water bolt, till we thus dodged every rock, and came out below with a full roaring chorus of our ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... since everything was composed of three substances, contained the most sublime mysteries, which Jurgen duly communicated. We must remember, he pointed out, that Zeus carried a TRIPLE thunderbolt, and Poseidon a TRIDENT, whereas Ades was guarded by a dog with THREE heads: this in addition to the omnipotent brothers ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... I'd just finished Tom Paine's Age of Reason—a preacher's son down the pike stole it from a locked closet in his father's library and loaned it to me. But I'll admit the thunderbolt staggered me. I said to them—pretty shakily, I guess: 'Come on, let's begin again.' But the farm-hand said: 'I reckon I'll get on the safe side,' and began to pray—how he roared! And I laughed—how wicked and reckless and brave that laugh did sound to me. 'Bella and Ed didn't ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... Bristol. "All England was struck with alarm, and men's minds were agitated in various ways. Those who secretly or openly favored the invaders were roused to more than usual activity against the King, while his own partisans were terrified as if a thunderbolt had fallen." Stephen invested the castle of Arundel. But in the most romantic spirit of chivalry he permitted the Empress to pass out, and to set forward to join her brother at Bristol, under a safe-conduct. In 1140 the whole kingdom appears ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... lost intellectual powers which fallen man has never regained. Operating by the consent of natural laws, sinless man would have wrought endless miracles. The mind, winged like a seraph, and armed like a thunderbolt, would have breached the very citadel of knowledge and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and physical immortality. I believe they lost ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... words that stood out before her widening gaze. She remained as one transfixed, staring at them. It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... like a thunderbolt to the worshippers of the old gods. To bid a whole nation to give up at a word the religion which they had cherished from childhood and which their fathers had held for generations before them was too much to demand. The king brought together a concourse of the people and spoke ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... replied to the pope's legate that, once master of Naples, he should consider himself a feudatory of the Church, but till then he had no obligations except to God and his own conscience. Thus the avenging army fell like a thunderbolt upon the heart of the kingdom, before there was any thought of taking serious measures for defence. There was only one plan possible: the queen assembled the barons who were most strongly attached to her, made them swear homage and fidelity to Louis of Tarentum, whom ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the points where the chief difficulties met them. There the cab and van drivers turned into or crossed the great thoroughfare, all ignorant of the thunderbolt that was rushing on like a fiery meteor, with its lamps casting a glare of light before, and the helmets of its stern charioteers flashing back the rays of street-lamps and windows; for, late though the hour was, all the gin-palaces, and tobacconists' shops, and many of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... beauty, and grace, and meekness—all that was good and all that was dear besides;—when my sky was without a cloud, and the evening star shone through the blue sky upon the green tops of our cottage trees, with the serene lustre of a May-divinity—just then a thunderbolt fell upon my dwelling, and blackened the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Under this thunderbolt Dick almost collapsed. Fortunately, Tom's short memory kept him from recognising him in the matter any more than the other occupants of the seat. He nodded generally to the young gentlemen as a body—a most compromising nod, and one which included ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... heard of her much sooner, and no thunderbolt that ever rent the heavens could have startled him more than the manner of ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... had so long talked of going, it came upon him like a thunderbolt. It was like an attack of some violent fever that shakes a strong man and leaves him as weak as a child. The farmer, whose meals had been so hearty, could not relish his food. His breakfast dwindled to a pretence; his lunch fell ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... know as well as I do." "Done," said Mr. Jorrocks holding out his hand. "No—I won't do that," replied the man, "but I'll tell you what I'll do with you,—I'll lay you two to one, in fives or fifties if you like, that you knew before you axed, and that Thunderbolt don't win the Riddlesworth." "Really," said Mr. Jorrocks, "I'm not a betting man." "Then, wot the 'ell business have you at Newmarket?" was all the answer he got. Disgusted with such inhospitable impertinence, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... like Madame de Rochefide, women whose necks turn in a manner to give them a vague resemblance to the feline race, have souls of the same pale tint as their light eyes, green or gray; and to melt them, to fuse those blocks of stone it needs a thunderbolt. To Beatrix, Calyste's fury of love and his mad action came as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all natures, even the most stubborn. She felt herself inwardly humbled; a true, pure love bathed her heart with its soft and limpid ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... day was a reanimation of external Venice. But there was a thunderbolt in it; for about an hour before sunset, when the ladies were superintending and trying not to criticize the ingenious efforts to produce a make-believe of comfort on board for them, word was brought down to the boat by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... profound sorrow. Just at that moment I saw a man hurrying up the path which led into the village from the valley below. Almost breathless with exertion, he uttered a few words to the first he met. His communication flew like lightning among the crowd. They scattered in every direction, as if a thunderbolt had fallen among them. Masks were torn off and hastily concealed, dresses were changed, and the block and axe, and all the things connected with the representation, were carried away, while the people ran along the streets, and shut themselves ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of family resemblance to the freaks of lightning or the thunderbolt. Indeed, so striking is the similarity, that people have been prone to think, that, previously to an explosion, the steam in the boiler must have become in some inexplicable way charged with electricity like a thunder-cloud, and that the discharge must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... and, inspired by the desperation of our case, I stooped suddenly, and blew with all my force into that long, pendant ear. Beelzebub gave vent to one snort of mingled rage and terror, and then let drive, backing into that cluster of choice rascals like a very thunderbolt of wrath, cleaving his way by every lightning blow of those nimble legs, and tumbling men ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... was as a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Never was a surprise more complete; never was overwhelming disaster more sudden. They were paralyzed and unnerved. A score fell at the first fire, and though Cuyler succeeded in forming ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... request of mine was so intensely profound that when it had endured for a minute or more at its full tension I began to suspect that I had unwittingly committed some utterly unpardonable offence, and that all nature was breathlessly awaiting the fall of the avenging thunderbolt. For it was not only that every man present in that great open space seemed tongue-tied, they seemed to be not even drawing their breath; they were as absolutely motionless as so many statues; there was not even the faint sound ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... to go better; and it was about this time that Jehu was styled the Barrier Wonder, and Chinaman the Thunderbolt. "Our four ponies have suffered most," writes Bowers. "I don't agree with Titus that it is best to march them right through without a lunch camp. They were undoubtedly pretty tired, and worst of all did not go their feeds properly. It ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... up! though the grapeshot may rattle Or the full thunderbolt over you burst, Stand like a rock,—and the storm or the battle Little shall harm you, though doing their worst: Never give up!—if Adversity presses, Providence wisely has mingled the cup, And the best counsel in all your distresses Is the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... orders are to be obeyed. Let the paleface keep his mouth closed," he cried in the Indian tongue. The imperious command came as a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The missionaries behind Edwards stood bewildered, awaiting ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... have preserved, that once upon a time Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... settled state Kicks under foot the frowns of Fate, And in his fortunes, bad or good, Keeps the same temper in his blood; Not him the flaming clouds above, Nor Aetna's fiery tempests move; No fretting seas from shore to shore, Boiling with indignation o'er, Nor burning thunderbolt that can A mountain shake, can stir this man. Dull cowards then! why should we start To see these tyrants act their part? Nor hope, nor fear what may befall, And you disarm their malice all. But who doth faintly fear or wish, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... was a little frightened, perhaps half wished that she had not begun. Yet it was sweet to foresee the thunderbolt that would fall on her enemy's head. That her brother would suffer torments did not affect her imagination; she had never credited him with strong feeling for his wife; and it was too late ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... it known by Mr Ross and those who had lived in that land. It was a dreadful thunderbolt, the precursor of the fierce cyclone, the sudden storm that is coming upon them at the rate of something near a hundred miles an hour. Worst of all, four young people are out in it, in a couple of frail canoes, and who can tell what may happen ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... success upon their evil-doing. His purpose is, according to the succeeding words in the psalm, "to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth." This is a terrible, an appalling sentence, before which a heart may well be prostrated as from a thunderbolt. And ungodly hearts would be thus appalled were they not so hardened ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... direction of the Iroquois, there was a long and ominous silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the night between the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence a little above Montreal. Concealed by the tempest and the darkness, fifteen hundred warriors landed at La Chine, and ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... wives would have been delighted to do for their husbands' comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or feeling, or ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... There was no malice in the thunderbolt that he unleashed then. He simply told what he knew to be ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... its organ. When we see the flash of a cannon there is still time to avoid the shot; but as soon as we hear the sound there is not time; the ball has struck. We can estimate the distance of thunder by the interval between the flash and the thunderbolt. Make the child understand such experiments; try those that are within his own power, and discover others by inference. But it would be better he should know nothing about these things than that you should tell him all he is ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... vacuous folly which distinguish the noble and high-born chiefs of the race; but they lead lives almost as bad (were it but for the example), and are personally quite as useless. I am not going to arm a thunderbolt, and launch it at the beads of these little Pall Mall butterflies. They don't commit much public harm, or private extravagance. They don't spend a thousand pounds for diamond earrings for an Opera-dancer, as Lord Tarquin can: neither of them ever set up a public-house ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when I understood my real position, I had been afraid that my husband had married me only from compassion; but he soon proved to me that his love was as high, as pure and as noble as himself. I was very happy. But one day, in the midst of my exultant joy, a thunderbolt fell and shattered my peace to destruction forever! Oh, Doctor Rocke, my husband was murdered by some unknown hand in his own woods, in open day! I cannot talk of this!" cried the widow, breaking down, overwhelmed with the rush of ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... world:—an excellent saddle-horse; a first-rate jumper. He was not in my possession three weeks when I won the five pounds he cost me. My neighbour, Sir Edward, rode over here one morning on his famous horse Thunderbolt, and he thought proper to call my new purchase 'Beelzebub.' This rather provoked me; and I offered to bet him the sum I spoke of that I would pound him in twenty minutes; and this I did, in half the time, by jumping his own park wall, which is near six feet high. The horse must be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... he describes it in some passages of his letters, showing at the same time the firmness, dignity, and strength of mind that always distinguished him. For example, he wrote to Rogers, two weeks after this thunderbolt ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... of all this? Just what you would have supposed. She had led a life of simple, unbounded love and trust,—a buoyant, elastic gladness,—a dream of sunshine. No gray cloud had ever lowered in her sky, no thunderbolt smitten her joys, no winter rain chilled her warmth. Only the white fleeciness of morning mist had flitted sometimes over her summer-sky, deepening the blue. Little cooling drops had fluttered down through the leafiness, only ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unpromising atmosphere of national hostility the war came down on us, in July 1914, like a thunderbolt. In spite of grave warnings few or none in this country were at that moment giving a thought to it. On the contrary, we were thinking of all manner of immeasurably smaller things, for Great Britain, although governing more than one-fifth ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... the H. V. Alaeddin on hearing this became as if a thunderbolt had stricken him, and losing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and proves that the hand of Heaven directs us. Yes, London shall fall! We have received our commission from on high, and must execute it, regardless of the consequences. For my own part, I feel as little compunction to the task, as the thunderbolt launched from on high does for the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Moscow to St. Petersburg in spite of the opposition of the engineers, he continued: "An intelligent democracy says of slavery, or a law, or a creed, 'This is justice, or it is not'; the track of God's thunderbolt is a straight line from justice to iniquity, and the church or state that cannot stand it must get out of the way." Or take this illustration of his subject from Athenian life—which is itself Athenian, and very much in the vein ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... does in some of these critical months was absolutely amazing by its comprehension of details, the solution of vexed questions, the mastery of formidable difficulties, wonder was it his word sometimes cut like a sharp, quick blow, or that the stroke of his pen was sometimes like a thunderbolt. It was not the time for hesitation, or doubt, or even argument. He meant his imperiled country should be saved, and whatever by half-loyalty or self-seeking seemed to stand in the way only attracted ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... scarcely express the delirium of pure joy in which they had dreamed away their days and nights for the last few weeks—joy that both were too young and untried to know could not last for ever, could not indeed even last long—joy so elevated in its insanity as almost to tempt some thunderbolt of malignant fate to fall upon it with destroying force, even as the highly rarefied air sometimes draws on the whirlwind ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... speedily accomplished. All along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the mighty thunderbolt had been forged. Thousands of heavy guns were here planted in position, and millions of shells conveyed thither under cover of night. Countless trains carried war materials, tents, pontoons, cattle, provisions, etc. Finally the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... some now known to us.—O frightful thought! O horrible image! Forbid it, O Father of mercy! If it be possible, let no creature of thine ever be the object of that wrath, against which the strength of thy whole creation united, would stand but as the moth against the thunderbolt!"—Burgh's Speaker, p. 289. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... can settle everything up as far as possible. And after that—well, I've been thinking that perhaps Barker, of the San Francisco TELEGRAM might give me a start of some sort—" He rumpled his hair with a desperate gesture. "The thing's come on me like such a thunderbolt that I really haven't thought it out!" he ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Had he been stopped? I scouted the idea. Who could have stopped him, then? Probably the time seemed longer than it really was. Morton showed the strain, also. Other men looked drawn, haggard, waiting as if expecting a thunderbolt. Once in my roving gaze I caught Blandy's glinty eye on me. I didn't like the gleam. I said to myself I'd watch him if I had to do it out of the back of my head. Blandy, by the way, is—was—I should say, the Hope So bartender." I stopped to clear my throat ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... them alone The wisdom of the gods is known; Lest freedom's price decline, from far Zeus hurl'd the thunderbolt of war. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... air which is rare and swift mingles with that which is rare and in [slow] motion, is like the flame of fire issuing from a great gun and striking against the air; likewise the flame when it issues from a cloud strikes the air as it begets the thunderbolt. Therefore we will say that the spirit cannot produce a voice unless the air be set in motion, but since there is no air within, it cannot discharge what it does not possess; and if it wishes to move that air in which it is incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... pricked his horse deeply; it sprang to the struggle madly; crash! like a thunderbolt, steed and rider leaped upon the trooper. Then it was Jacqueline had murmured: "They have killed him!" not doubting for a moment but that he ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... represented as erect (the more usual form in England), and having the tips of all the principal feathers pointing upwards, as in No. 213. The Eagle borne as the Ensign of Imperial FRANCE was represented grasping a thunderbolt, in an attitude of vigilance, having its wings displayed, but with the tips of the feathers drooping, as they would be in the living bird; ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... had to put constraint on her. And 'twas only when I led her to this terrace, after the thunderbolt, and pointed out the scattered soldiery, that she came to herself, that at length she perceived that your God was the most powerful. "What," she cried, "'tis he, he, my Satni, who shakes the heavens and the earth for me! For me!" she murmured, ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... was not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in the development not merely of religious beliefs, temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs. The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely connected with the matters ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... artless tradition among the Indians, related by Irving, of a warrior who saw the thunderbolt lying upon the ground, with a beautifully wrought moccasin on each side of it. Thinking he had found a prize, he put on the moccasins, but they bore him away to the land of spirits, whence he ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and dolefully shook his head in response to all the coaxings and blandishments of the auctioneer. The hammer fell. "Name, please," was called; the lawyer's clerk passed up a slip of paper, and a thunderbolt fell on the company when the auctioneer read out, "Mr. Thomas Hankin." Hankin had bought the farms for L4700. "Cheque for deposit," said the auctioneer. A cheque for L470, previously signed by Hankin, was immediately filled in and passed up by ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... in stature, her eyes shone, her face expanded, her whole person quivered with pleasure. The Abbe Troubert opened a window to get a better light on the folio volume he was reading. Birotteau stood as if a thunderbolt had stricken him. Mademoiselle Gamard made his ears hum when she enunciated in a voice as clear as ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... dominating power That, all attempting, in a deathless hour Made earth-born Titans godlike, in revolt! — Fear is the fire that melts Icarian wings: Who fears nor Fate, nor Time, nor what Time brings, May drive Apollo's steeds, or wield the thunderbolt! ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... thunderbolt fallen in the midst of us, it could scarcely have produced greater confusion than did this speech of mine. Oaklands sprang upon his feet, regarding me with the greatest surprise as he asked "if I knew what I was saying?" while Cumberland, in a voice hoarse from passion, inquired, "What ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden harp. They meet—Ambulinia's countenance brightens —Elfonzo leads up the winged steed. "Mount," said he, "ye true-hearted, ye fearless soul—the day is ours." She sprang upon the back of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. "Lend thy aid, ye strong winds," they exclaimed, "ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered." "Hold," said Elfonzo, "thy dashing steed." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... accumulated teaching of ages—we to whose researches He is revealing year by year, almost week by weeks wonders of which they never dreamed—we whom He has taught to make the lame to walk, the dumb to speak, the blind to see, to exterminate the pestilence and defy the thunderbolt, to multiply millionfold the fruits of learning, to annihilate time and space, to span the heavens, and to weigh the sun— what madness is this which has come upon us in these last days, to make us ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... ascendant. The existing civil law of all European nations was founded on them. There was no government that had not adopted them and shown itself inclined to be entirely guided by them. The formal condemnation of the cherished ideas of the age was as a thunderbolt hurled against the social elements of the day. But why disturb their peace? They had no peace. They were already discordant. "Non esi pax impiis." Peace could not be born of unbelief. It could come only through the truth, even as health conquers disease by the most trying curative ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... no one had known of the disappearance of the will, except the lawyer and the secretary, it came as a thunderbolt. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... vain colossal England mows, With ponderous strength, the yielding foes; In vain fair Scotia, by her side, With courage flushed and Highland pride, Whirls her keen blade with horrid whistle And lops off heads like tops of thistle; In vain brave Erin, famed afar, The flaming thunderbolt of war, Profuse of life, through blood does wade, To lend her sister kingdom aid: Our conquering thunders vainly roar Terrific round the Gallic shore; Profoundest statesmen vainly scheme— 'Tis all a vain, ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... the Peninsula by General Napier. He had a genius for war which qualified him for every position in connection with it but that of leader in the field. The subtle and irreversible decisions of Napoleon followed his astonishingly quick apprehensions of facts, as suddenly as the thunderbolt follows lightning; but Soult, profoundly familiar with all the arts of war, and surpassing any of the great commanders with whom he was associated except only his chief, in the wisdom of his judgments, was yet so slow in his intellectual operations, so destitute ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... out among the men as the best part of their booty. There was not a wickeder place on God's earth at that hour than the island, and its sins, as I thought, should be blotted out by a thunderbolt ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... been to the homely, rustic soul, her companion, communicated as they went along the common road in the common daylight. "She said to the witness that she must go to France to the Dauphin, to make him to be crowned King." It must have been as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known in every development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him her secret purpose and determination. All her simple excellence the good man knew, and that ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... and the short-handled whips cracked like the sound of pistol-practise. Blind, unreconnoitered, grim—like a black thunderbolt loosed into the blackness—the two guns shot along a hollow, thundered up a ridge and burst into the fire-light up above the mutineers, in the last place where any one expected them. A howl came from the road that ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Madame de Granville ever tolerate the disorderly life into which her husband had drifted?" The sanctimonious woman accepted as facts these hints, which unluckily were not merely hypothetical, and Madame de Granville was stricken as by a thunderbolt. ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... since yesterday; the poor boy was in a state of deep affliction. With all the sympathy which he could bring into play, the prince told Colia the whole story without reserve, detailing the facts as clearly as he could. The tale struck Colia like a thunderbolt. He could not speak. He listened silently, and cried softly to himself the while. The prince perceived that this was an impression which would last for the whole of the boy's life. He made haste to explain his view of the matter, and pointed ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... come upon her so like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, almost benumbing all her faculties with the grief it had hurled upon her so remorselessly, that she could think of nothing else until Mr. Graves had come to her with that other fatal piece of news—the ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... not the remotest knowledge of the terrors threatening her household; a thunderbolt out of a Summer sky would have astonished her less than the indignities she endured when haled away from Eastbourne in the luxurious car which Wong Li Fu ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... red head from which the hat had dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt from each, and Red Reckless had done what any man must do before such a thunderbolt. He was flung backward, went down, and the two big bodies struck hard upon the bare floor. And above the crash of the falling bodies there were two other sounds, Big Bill's grunt, and the ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... dread, she who was supposed to rule and direct the lightning. Indeed, the bounteous rains which fell ensuring a full harvest after several years of drought, were universally attributed to the good influence of her presence in the land. In the same way when a thunderbolt struck the hut of a doctor who but a day or two before had openly declared his disbelief in her powers, killing him and his principal wife, and destroying his kraal by fire, the accident was attributed to her vengeance, or to that of the Heavens, who ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... moment, and the signal is given for half the party to fire. If they are not successful in laying him dead on the spot with this first volley, he springs like a thunderbolt upon the horses. The remainder of the party then fire, and seldom fail to put an end to him; but generally one or more of the horses are either killed or so wounded as to be destroyed in consequence; and sometimes, although rarely, one or more of the hunters share the same fate. So you observe ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... turned pale, and the men looked at each other anxiously, listening to hear if any damage had been done. But, as nothing transpired, their spirits revived. A few minutes afterwards word was brought that the Conventual Church had been struck by a thunderbolt, but this was not regarded as a very serious disaster. The bearer of the intelligence was little Jennet, who said she had been caught in the ruins by the storm, and after being dreadfully frightened by the lightning, had seen a ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Exults in Victory won, but mourns the Victor lost. Immortal Nelson! still with fond amaze, Thy glorious deeds each British eye surveys, Beholds thee still, on conquer'd floods afar: Fate's flaming shaft! the thunderbolt of war! Hurl'd from thy hands, Britannia's vengeance roars, And bloody billows stain the hostile shores; Thy sacred ire Confed'rate Kingdoms braves And 'whelms ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... following advantages, which the poet will not have: the first one is that he paints heaven where it is supposed to be, and the person, dress, and action or movement of Jupiter and his eagle with the thunderbolt; and he will paint fully the luxurious beauty of Venus, and her robe of gauzy raiment with all her graceful movements, so elegant and light and with such skill that, although she may not speak with her mouth, yet ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... a thunderbolt:—my comfort, however, still was that the officers were not suspected, and that it was their duty to visit my chamber several times a day, and examine what passed: from which circumstance I felt my hopes somewhat revive. Hence an adventure happened which is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... am delighted with your songs, I applaud your verses. Now celebrate the thunder that shakes the earth, the flaming lightning of Zeus and the terrible flashing thunderbolt. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... in Hawthorne's arms, before the latter could notify his family in Boston that he was ill. What a severe ordeal for a man who was strong and well, but to a person in Hawthorne's condition it was like a thunderbolt. Ticknor's son came to him at once, and together they performed the necessary duties of the occasion, and made their melancholy way homeward. Nothing, perhaps, except a death in his own family, could have had so unfavorable an effect ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and then, I can see that Army of Northern Virginia on the march. At its head rides one august and knightly figure, Robert E. Lee, the knightliest gentleman, and the saintliest hero that our race has bred. He is on old "Traveler," almost as famous as his master. On his right rides that thunderbolt of war, Stonewall Jackson, on "Little Sorrel," with whose fame the world was ringing when he fell. On Lee's left, on his beautiful mare, "Lady Annie," the bright, flashing cavalier, "Jeb" Stuart, ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... struck by lightning. If the Aryans, as some think, roamed the wide steppes of Russia or Central Asia with their flocks and herds before they plunged into the gloom of the European forests, they may have worshipped the god of the blue or cloudy firmament and the flashing thunderbolt long before they thought of associating him with the blasted oaks ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had passed, the young Helvia and her horse were seen prone upon the ground. The force of the lightning had stripped every garment and ornament from her body, and the dead steed lay a few paces off with its trappings riven and scattered around it.[831] Death by a thunderbolt had always a meaning, which was sometimes hard to find; but here the gods had not left the inquiring votary utterly in doubt. The nakedness of the stricken maiden was a riddle that the priests could read. It was a manifest sign that a virginal vow had been broken, and that some of the keepers ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... forgotten that in his entire emotional life Strindberg was an artist and as such a man of impulse, with the spontaneity and naivity and intensity of a child. For him love had nothing to do with respectability and worldly calculations; he liked to think of it as a thunderbolt striking mortals with a destructive force like the lightning hurled by the almighty Zeus. It is easy to understand that a man of such temperament would not be particularly suited for married life, where self-sacrifice and strong-minded patience may be ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... do not praise him or blame him for that. It was the only course open to a man of honor. I maintain that his silence then binds him to silence for ever. He has no right to ruin my life and the happiness of my wife by subtle threats, to hold those foolish letters over our heads, like a thunderbolt held ever in suspense. You are ambitious, I believe, Mr. Aynesworth! Get me those letters, and I will make you my secretary, find you a seat in Parliament, and anything else in reason that ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... der Werff, ex-burgomaster, and proclaim Lord Leicester, in the name of Queen Elizabeth, legitimate master of the city. A list of burghers, who were to be executed, was likewise agreed upon, at a final meeting of the conspirators in a hostelry, which bore the ominous name of 'The Thunderbolt.' A desire had been signified by Leicester, in the preliminary interviews at Utrecht, that all bloodshed, if possible, should be spared, but it was certainly an extravagant expectation, considering the, temper, the political convictions, and the known courage of the Leyden burghers, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and yet the museum contains some objects deserving of attention. There are two altars with wheels carved on them, both small, the largest only two feet three inches high, and that has on it not the wheel only, but the thunderbolt. These are altars to the Gaulish god of the sun. The second bears an inscription "et terrae matri." It was dedicated doubtless to the "sun and to the earth mother," but the first portion of the legend is lost. In the Avignon Museum is a statue of a Gaulish Jupiter ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... drawn, the most heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and warlike energy of his mind—his tenderness of affection—his loftiness of spirit—his frank, generous magnanimity—impetuosity like a thunderbolt—and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting even his imagination,—compose a character entirely original, most difficult ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of this possibility seemed to strike Rapperschwyll like a sudden thunderbolt from the clouds. His knees parted, and he almost sank to the floor. He put his hands before his eyes, and wept like a child, or, rather, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... like a thunderbolt upon the General-in- Chief. In spite of all his energy and fortitude, he was deeply distressed by the disasters which now assailed him. To the painful feelings excited by the complaints and dejection of his companions in arms was now added the irreparable misfortune of the burning ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... showed an arm that made the yeomen stare. But Robin, with his feet wide apart, stood firmly planted, waiting the other, smiling. Then the King swung back his arm, and, balancing himself a moment, he delivered a buffet at Robin that fell like a thunderbolt. Down went Robin headlong upon the grass, for the stroke would have felled a stone wall. Then how the yeomen shouted with laughter till their sides ached, for never had they seen such a buffet given in all their lives. ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... of the ruined man between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... for sorrow in consequence of that knowledge. As the final resting-place of all rivers is the ocean, even so the end of all embodied creatures is death. Those persons that know this well are never stupefied, O wielder of the thunderbolt! They, however, who are overwhelmed with Passion and loss of judgment, do not know this, they whose understanding is lost, sink under the weight of misfortune. A person who acquires a keen understanding succeeds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... they admired it. They could not believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... height. So you, transplanted from Europe to this stony soil, may end, if you do not seek support and do not humble yourself. You are among evil conditions, alone, elevated, the ground shakes, the sky presages a storm, and the top of your family tree has shown that it draws the thunderbolt. It is not courage, but foolhardiness, to fight alone against all that exists. No one censures the pilot who makes for a port at the first gust of the whirlwind. To stoop as the bullet passes is not cowardly—it ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... I command: say that he is thy son by one of the flower- faced nymphs who dwell in this forest-clad mountain, but if in thy folly thou speakest out, and boastest to have been the lover of fair-garlanded Cytherea, then Zeus in his wrath will smite thee with the smouldering thunderbolt. Now all is told to thee: do thou be wise, and keep thy counsel, and speak not my name, but revere the wrath of ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... Wrath of God, personified by a warrior armed with thunderbolts and lightning and setting forth to destroy the mountain. Then came the Angry Heavens, the Benignant Moon, Mars and Mercury ready to avenge the outrages done to God; Jove grasping a thunderbolt and about to hurl it against the comune, Venus anxious to overthrow the city, and Saturn whetting his golden scythe. The Sun is obscured, the Four Winds blow terribly, the Four Elements assist in the work of desolation, the Four Seasons threaten misery and affliction. Mount Eryx being ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... end of his fork into strips as thin as cigarette papers. The Governor, on the contrary, went through a pantomime expressive of perfunctory admiration, with exclamations of horror and compassion; while, in striking contrast to him, and not far away, Brahim Bey, the thunderbolt of war, in whom the reading of the article, followed by discussion after a substantial repast, had induced a refreshing nap, was sleeping soundly, with his mouth like a round O in his white moustache, and with ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... very badly at the house in Bakuracho[u]. The disaster of the arrest fell like a thunderbolt on the wretched little household. Day after day, hoping for the acquittal and release, one article after another went to the pawn shop. Reduced to absolute misery the house owner and the neighbours came to the rescue with a small sum raised ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the two great agencies of fire and water. The former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who drove his father's horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places, who in their turn are safer ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... answered—"Be not wroth, my lord the King, If thy faithful slave shall venture to observe one little thing; Valiant, doubtless, are thy warriors, and their beards are long and hairy, And a thunderbolt in battle is each ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... stranger,"—thus burst the song from the lips of the poet. "Vortigern wedded with the stranger; thence came the first wo upon Britain, and a sword upon her nobles, and a thunderbolt upon her palace. We wed not with the enslaved Saxon— the free and princely stag seeks not for his bride the heifer whose neck the yoke hath worn. We wed not with the rapacious Norman—the noble hound scorns to seek a mate from the herd of ravening wolves. When was it heard that the Cymry, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... that he, while yet a boy, fell in love with the orphan girl, and persuaded her brother Arymbas to consent to their marriage. The bride, before she consorted with her husband, dreamed that she had been struck by a thunderbolt, from which a sheet of flame sprang out in every direction, and then suddenly died away. Philip himself some time after his marriage dreamed that he set a seal upon his wife's body, on which was engraved the figure of a lion. When he consulted the soothsayers as to what this ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... within these pleasant shady woods, Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold, Under the climate of the milder heaven; Where seldom lights Jove's angry thunderbolt, For favour of that sovereign earthly peer; Where whistling winds make music 'mong the trees;— Far from disturbance of our country gods, Amidst the cypress-springs, a gracious nymph, That honours Dian ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... better, then," Tom admitted. "For the moment it came over me, like a thunderbolt, that Dalton might nip all our work in the bud by sending a cablegram. Still, couldn't ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... a thunderbolt, confirming his worst fears. He sat aghast, unable to decide whether Persis had lost her mind, or this was the delirium incident to some acute seizure. In tones of such unnatural gentleness that his sister started as they fell on her ears, he offered ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... imagine it to be. The people are not poor. They are well-to-do. Those who are poor are poor through their own fault. Only the guilty are punished, and if an unavoidable mistake does sometimes occur, it is like a thunderbolt—an accident, or the will of God. You have but one responsibility: to fulfil your task courageously and to retain the power that is given to you. You wish the best for your people and God sees that. As for the errors which you have committed unwittingly, ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... five o'clock when Pakenham, with the third division, fell like a thunderbolt upon the head of Maucune's troops. These, taken by surprise by this attack, on the part of an enemy whom they had thought to see in full flight, yet fought gallantly, and strove to gain time to open out into ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... wonder at my delay, my dear," he resumed, "but it was not my fault. I was at Madame de Rochecote's when I was informed that your messenger was at home waiting for me. I returned, and heard the frightful news. It was a thunderbolt. A friend of thirty years' standing! A thousand thunderclaps! I acted as his second when he fought his first duel. Poor Chalusse! A man as sturdy as an oak, and who ought to have outlived us all. But it is always so; the best soldiers always file by ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... he lightly waved his pipe in the direction of the serpentine family-party. A thunderbolt falling in their midst could not have been more effectual. The whole living mass looked stunned for a moment, and then rapidly disappeared among the reeds with loud hissing ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... liberal pursuits, such as science or music; the more we laboured at these things and delighted in them, the less ready should we be for renunciation and detachment. Must conversion then descend upon us from heaven like a thunderbolt? Far from it. We need not look for the principle of spiritual life in the distance: we have it at home from the beginning. Even the idea of infinite Being, though unnamed, is probably familiar. Perhaps in the biography of the human race, or of each budding mind, the infinite or indeterminate ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... a vain attempt to describe the sufferings of Robin Hays, from the moment when the news of Barbara's death fell upon him like a thunderbolt, and he quitted the presence of the Protector without the power of reply. He was sensible of only one feeling—awake to only one emotion—his heart echoed but to one sensation—his eyes burned within their sockets—all ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 0. in arrears at the date of the sale. The Collector ordered his head clerk to produce the ledger account of payments on account of the Shibprakash estates, and, sure enough, they showed a short payment of the amount stated. This was a thunderbolt for the appellant, whose pleader vainly tried to pick holes in the accounts, but was at last obliged to confess that a mistake had been made. The only course open to him was to sue for mercy. The Collector, however, was inexorable, and indeed he had no power ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... vpon a milke-white steed Rode first in ranke; on whose imperiall head A triple crowne was plac't, at which before Two matchlesse diamonds for worth he wore: On whose right hand Idalian Ganymed A massie scepter strongly carried: But on his left, swift-winged Mercurie A dreadfull thunderbolt (earths feare) did whurrie. Next Ioue, Apollo came: him followed Fame Baring a lawrell, on which sweet Sydneys name In golden letters, plainly to be read, By the Nine Muses had beene charrectred: On whose each side Eternitie and Praise Enroll'd ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Dunkard church. Stonewall Jackson launched a thunderbolt, grey as steel, all his men moving up as one, against the opposing, roaring sea. The sea gave back. Then Sumner called in ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... bluish lightning zigzagged across the horizon from the zenith, first blinding our eyes with its brilliancy for a second and then making the darkness all around the darker as the vivid glare vanished and the accompanying thunderbolt sank into the sea—providentially far off to leeward, where the full force of the tropical storm was spent, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... not always to the Prophet Ilya that the power once attributed to Perun is now ascribed. The pagan wielder of the thunderbolt is represented in modern traditions by more than one Christian saint. Sometimes, as St. George, he transfixes monsters with his lance; sometimes, as St. Andrew, he smites with his mace a spot given over to witchcraft. There ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... barrier of opaque, immaculate, impenetrable pearl. As you looked upon it the chief impression it gave you was one of immense thickness and crushing weight. It seemed so compressed and impermeable that one could not fancy how even a thunderbolt could shatter it, or the wildest blast of any hurricane dissipate its enormous depth. But as yet it had not enveloped the peaks themselves. On them the sun yet shone, and where the boys stood they were still bathed in the keen yet blue and sunny ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar |
