"Imminence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evening late in the Stone Age; the sun had gone down blazing over the plains of Thold; there were no clouds, only the chill blue sky and the imminence of stars; and the surface of the sleeping Earth began to harden against the cold of the night. Presently from their lairs arose, and shook themselves and went stealthily forth, those of Earth's children to whom it is the law to prowl abroad ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... relief this steadiness gives after our storm-tossed passage. One can only imagine the relief and comfort afforded to the ponies, but the dogs are visibly cheered and the human element is full of gaiety. The voyage seems full of promise in spite of the imminence of delay."[51] ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... a malady unknown to the physicians, Philippe expired," said he, "to the great astonishment of everybody, without either his pulse or his urine revealing the cause of his malady or the imminence of ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... do in a new and romantic country, where the imminence of a sordid, dreary future, when the soil will raise its own people and the crop will be poor, is mercifully veiled. The future then counts little in the face of the Past—the Past with its bearded strong men of other lands, bringing their power and vigour here to be moulded and directed by the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the full truth of the situation dawned upon him he gave up hope for his life and at first merely strove to wreak such havoc as he could. Yet while some of his faculties were completely numbed in the stress of that white-hot moment, others remained singularly clear. The shock of his surprise, the imminence of his peril, rendered him dead to any emotion save dismay, and yet, strangely enough, he remembered Rosa's pressing need for him and, more for her sake than for his own, fought to extricate himself from the confusion. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... most temporary of expedients, and that the immediate press of affairs once over, her marriage with Philemon was sure to be pushed to a conclusion. Already her mother's discussions of clothes, of linen, and of furniture were constant reminders of its imminence, and the mere fact that the servants of Greenwood and the neighbourhood accepted the matter as settled, made allusions to it too frequent for Janice not to feel that her bondage was inevitable. A dozen times a day ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Of the imminence of the danger he was perfectly aware. He had known from the first that Mr. Parker's concluding words were not an empty threat. His experience as a reporter had given him the knowledge that is only given in its entirety to police and newspaper men: that ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... very probable that the imminence of a general insurrection among the Southern Slav inhabitants precipitated the resolutions of the [Dual] Monarchy. He still clings to the hope that, after a first success of the Austro-Hungarian arms, but not before this, mediation might be able to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... pass, when, on their seasonal migration, the Nishinam camp for the night in the grove. They still live, and the war formula for life seems vindicated, despite the imminence of the superior life-makers, the whites, who are flooding into California from north, south, east, and west—the English, the Americans, the Spaniards, and the Russians. The massacre by the white men follows, ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London
... now gave way to the imminence of so important a loss; and she endeavored hastily to open the window of the opposite door. But this had been so effectually barricaded against the cold, that she failed in her purpose, and, immediately turning back to the other side, she called, loudly,—"Guard! guard!" The press of carriages, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... ignorance of what had happened in the keep; so great was the din that the struggle which had there taken place had passed unnoticed; and it was not until the fugitives, rushing out into the courtyard, shouted that the keep had been captured, that the besieged became aware of the imminence of ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... and terror contrasted with the stern and silent resignation of the sailors. Knowing the imminence of the inevitable danger, some of them stripped themselves of part of their clothes, waiting for the moment to make a last effort, to dispute their lives with the fury of the waves; others renouncing all hope, prepared to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... is true. In closest touch With European courts and cabinets, The imminence of dire and deadly war Betwixt these east and western emperies Is lipped by special pathways to mine ear. You may not see the impact: ere it come The tomb-worm may caress thee [Perceval shrinks]; but believe Before five more have joined the shotten years Whose useless films ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... in co-operation and in peace.) The provision as to the fisheries had settled for the time difficult questions leading, in past days, and over and over again, to dispute, collision, and sometimes the imminence of war. The free navigation of the St. Lawrence and of Lake Michigan had removed jealousies and fostered the idea of common interests in the great waterways to the ocean, while the results of trade had been so happy ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... this sudden shock. Never. He saw all his hopes dashed in an instant, his life's happiness destroyed forever, Henrietta lost to him. But the very imminence of the danger restored to him his energy. He mastered his grief, and said in an almost ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... ears of Holden, who instantly turned, and beheld the threatening looks and attitude of the savage. He comprehended, at once, the hostile purpose of Ohquamehud, and the imminence of his own danger, but betrayed not the slightest fear. His cheek blanched not. His eye lost none of its usual daring as he surveyed the assassin; nor did his voice falter, as, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... imminence of his peril, as now disclosed to him, Sir Walter had been reconsidering De Chesne's assurance touching my Lords of Arundel and Pembroke, and he had come to conclude—the more readily, perhaps because it was as he would have it—that ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... sovereign was apparently inspired by the full conviction that the prolongation of his life was of the utmost importance to the welfare of his people, and it may be fully believed that his unwillingness to admit the imminence of danger to his life came from an honest sort of public purpose. He gave his attention to the business of the State almost to the very last. All the time those who were immediately around the sinking sovereign knew quite well that the end was close at hand, and were already consulting ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and accidents which were always befalling her servants and officers of state, in their attempts to continue the etiquette and ceremony proper in attendance upon a queen, and from which even the violence of such a storm, and the imminence of such danger, could not excuse them. After a fortnight of danger, terror, and distress, the ships that remained of the little squadron succeeded in getting back to the port from ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... no spirit of weak self-deception. The shadow of the unknown had fallen upon her, and in its cold gray light the glitter and tinsel of the world had faded, but unselfish human love had grown more luminous. The imminence of death had kindled rather than quenched it. It was seen to be something intrinsically precious, something that might ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... paddlers leaped overboard in their dread, as the monster opened its huge jaws for a second bite, this time close to where the two boys and the king were seated, the latter seeming paralysed at the imminence of ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... into our boarding house, where, owing to the imminence of my departure, I had been restored to favour. I never did find out where he lived. We took our passage at the steamship office; we went to the variety shows and sang Oh, Susannah! with the rest; we strutted a bit, and were only restrained from ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Even in the West one felt its imminence. The Republican victory had been like a slap in the face to slave-holding democracy. Its strongholds were secretly arming, mobilizing, drilling. And though Lincoln wisely held his peace—warned all the States which hummed with wild secession talk that their aggression alone ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... you so, Virginia," he hastened to urge in extenuation of his suggested disloyalty. "I cannot see you sacrificed to his horrible mania. You do not realize the imminence of your peril. Tomorrow Number Thirteen was to have come to live beneath the same roof with you. You recall Number One whom the stranger killed as the thing was bearing you away through the jungle? Can you imagine sleeping in ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... oppose with violence my ministrations. But I shall pray for you, and I will return anon, when perchance your heart shall be softened by the near imminence of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the power of her love, that his, which had been put out of mind in the terror of that hour, reawoke and took the colour of her own. He too forgot the imminence of death in the warm presence of his down-trodden passion. She was in his arms as he had taken her during the firing, and he bent his head to look at her. The moonlight played upon her pallid, quivering ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England; there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... a deep breath, the very imminence of the danger restoring me to the use of my faculties. I changed my tone and ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... a show—or hit the high places? Would you? Well, well, well! Let's make a night of it! What do you say?" and he would fix me with a glistening, nervous and what was intended no doubt to be a reassuring eye, but which unsettled me as thoroughly as the imminence of an earthquake. But I was ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the imminence of their peril grew more distinct. A lofty iron-bound coast rose in front of them, and extended as far as the eye could reach on either hand. The seas broke with terrible force against its base, sending its spray ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... which was to convey him should know of his design. The galley, in obedience to orders, put off from the shore. The mariners endeavored in vain for some time to make head against the violence of the wind and the heavy concussions of the waves, and at length, terrified at the imminence of the danger to which so wild and tumultuous a sea on such a night exposed them, refused to proceed, and the commander gave them orders to return. Caesar then came forward, threw off his mantle, and said to them, "Friends! you have nothing ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... stood by on rusty wheels, and a view of some twenty or thirty artillery caissons parked under the trees. But it was at B———, sixteen kilometres from Nancy, and sixteen from the lines, that I first felt the imminence of the war. The morning train from Nancy had just stopped, to go no farther for fear of shells, and beyond the station the tracks of the once busy Nancy-Metz railroad advanced, rusty, unused, and overgrown with grass, into the danger zone. Far ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... moment the position of affairs presented better prospects than ever. The insurrection of the last winter had evidently failed only through Caesar himself appearing on the scene of action; now he was at a distance, detained on the Po by the imminence of civil war, and the Gallic army, which was collected on the upper Seine, was far separated from its dreaded leader. If a general insurrection now broke out in central Gaul, the Roman army might be surrounded, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... English crew lived up to the best traditions of their race. There was no panic, no fighting for places in the boats on the doomed ship. On the contrary, people refused to believe in the imminence of danger. The idea that the ship was unsinkable had been so borne in on them that even when summoned upon deck and ordered to put on life-belts, many of them refused. In the first boats gotten away from the ship, there were not many people. Some refused to climb down through the deep ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... passed, yielded to his impatience, and stood erect, in order to make greater progress. The moment his body arose above the shadow of the ground, it was seen, and the chase commenced. For a single instant, Birch was helpless, his blood curdling in his veins at the imminence of the danger, and his legs refusing their natural and necessary office. But it was only for a moment. Casting his pack where he stood, and instinctively tightening the belt he wore, the peddler betook himself to flight. He knew that by bringing himself in a line with his pursuers and the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... denouement of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... so much sound knowledge and cheerful spirits. Aramis was astonished at that lightness of character which permitted this serious man to retard with advantage the moment for more important conversation, to which nobody made any allusion, although all three interlocutors felt its imminence. It was very plain, from the embarrassed appearance of Monsieur, how much the conversation of the king and Madame annoyed him. Madame's eyes were almost red: was she going to complain? Was she going to expose a little scandal in open court? The king took ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Lee, seeing the imminence of the danger, made an attack upon the enemy in front of Petersburg, but was repulsed. He had now but 37,000 men with which to oppose an enemy of nearly four times that strength in front of him, while Sheridan's cavalry, 10,000 strong, threatened ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... She looked back at Jack. His eyes, too, were fixed on the veranda, and suspicion was struck to certainty by what she read in them. He was tense; he was white; he was triumphant. Too soon triumphant! In another moment the imminence of her terror passed by. The clasp was not that of a plighting. It was over; it denoted some lesser compact, one that meant, perhaps, success for her almost forgotten hope. But in Jack's eye she had read what was ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... privateers. Again and again I have heard the roar of the guns coming from far out over the waters. Seamen would tell us how they had left London and been engaged ere nightfall, or sailed out of Portsmouth and been yard-arm to yard-arm before they had lost sight of St. Helen's light. It was this imminence of the danger which warmed our hearts to our sailors, and made us talk, round the winter fires, of our little Nelson, and Cuddie Collingwood, and Johnnie Jarvis, and the rest of them, not as being great High Admirals with titles and dignities, but as good friends whom we ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Families gather about the Franklin stove, Pa and Ma gaping and rubbing their eyes—saying, "Oh, hum!" and making out that they are just plumb perishing for the lack of sleep. But the children cannot take the hint. They don't want to go to bed. The imminence of a great event nerves them in their hopeless fight against the hosts of Nod. They sit and stare with bulging eyes at the red coals and dancing flames, spurting out here and there ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... beginning of their acquaintance she became aware of a quiet indomitability in his character, the existence of which she had suspected all along without having actually sensed it. She saw now why men feared him. In his attitude, outwardly calm, but suggesting in some subtle way the imminence of deadly violence; in his eyes, steady and cold, but with something cruel and bitter and passionate slumbering deep in them; in the set of his head and the thrust of his chin, there was a threat—nay, more—a promise of volcanic action; ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... members of the cat tribe. In fact, he had just been disturbed by coming across the unexpected telegram, wherein Simmonds assured his lordship that the rejuvenated car would arrive at the College Green Hotel, Bristol, on Friday evening. At the very moment that he realized the imminence of Cynthia's disappearance into the void it was doubly disconcerting to be hailed by a woman who knew his world so intimately that it would be folly to smile vacantly at her ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance whatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before the next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was desperately hungry—more than six hours having passed since I had eaten anything—and ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the very air was palpitant with life. It hummed and buzzed unceasingly. Continually changing its intensity and abruptly variant in pitch, it impinged on his nerves and senses, made him nervous and restless and worried him with a perpetual imminence of happening. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... The imminence of the danger indicated by the young Englishman appealed so powerfully to Don Sebastian that he acted upon the suggestion which accompanied it without further delay, excusing himself to George for temporarily withdrawing himself, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... and amusements. The satrap of Media, Arbakes, saw him at his toilet, and his heart turned against yielding obedience to such a painted doll: he rebelled in concert with Belesys the Babylonian. The imminence of the danger thus occasioned roused Sardanapalus from his torpor, and revived in him the warlike qualities of his ancestors; he placed himself at the head of his troops, overcame the rebels, and was about to exterminate them, when ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... us. He had offered to bring him with him, but he had engaged some Zanzibari of his own and intended to make a shorter route to the north of our camp and then join one of the bands in charge of an Arab trader-some of Tippu-Tib's men really. He knew of the imminence of the rainy season and wanted, to return to Zanzibar before it set in in earnest. Judson's news—all his happenings, for that matter—interested the young Belgian even more than they did me, and before the week was out the two were constantly together—a ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... time the imminence of this survival of a lawless barbarism of which he had heard so much would have impressed Courtland; now he was only interested in it on account of the inconceivable position in which it left Miss Sally. Had she anything to do with this baleful cousin's return, or was she only to ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... anticipated by both of them; for many months, when they had stood close together, they had felt the imminence of surrender to the longing that ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... thought he could confidently rely on his ci-devant fellow-pupil's assent to wink at the forgery and hush up the matter. But this was his only chance. How was the money to be gained? He thought of Helen's fortune, and the last scruple gave way to the imminence of his peril and the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... imminence of Teddy's peril had previously thought of the dog or rabbit; but now, on a search being made, Puck was discovered shivering by the side of the river, having managed to crawl out somehow or other. As for the rabbit, which was only a young one ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... sexes in Oceanica is due to the murder of female infants, too early child-bearing, overwork, privation, licentiousness, and the violence of the men.[1004] The imminence of famine dictates certain positive checks to population, among which infanticide and abortion are widespread in Oceanica. In some parts of the New Hebrides and the Solomon groups it is so habitual, that in some families all children are killed, and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... horrors of this terrific scene, the agonised Clara preserved her consciousness. The very imminence of the danger endued her with strength to embrace it under all its most disheartening aspects; and she, whose mind had been wrought up to the highest pitch of powerful excitement by the mere preliminary threatenings, was comparatively collected ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence, like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath, straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that door. They heard ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... battle might therefore not only impair British participation but preclude that of the United States. Otherwise the two together would dissipate any lingering German hopes of victory; and the imminence of the danger counselled the taking of risks which had hitherto been eschewed. But the results of a naval defeat are not risked if they are likely to prove fatal, unless there is some chance of success; and Germany had some grounds for hope under ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... be said that fate was making sport of me, redoubling the ambiguity of the signs, the chief cause of my despair. Was the imminence of this attack explanatory of the agonized expression on my stepfather's face when he passed me in his carriage? Was it a cause, or merely the effect of the terror by which he had been assailed, if he was guilty, under his mask of indifference, while I flung my menacing words in his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... rolling war-cries sounded above all the din. The measured stamp of moccasined feet, the rush of Indians past the cabin, the dull thud of hatchets struck hard into the trees—all attested to the excitement of the savages, and the imminence of terrible danger. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... research after the symbol. He was naturally a cultivator of terror, one who loved to people the world with strange and indefinable powers. His dreams were innocent and agitating, occupied with supernatural terrors, weighed upon by the imminence of shadowy presentments. He trembled at he knew not what; in this he was related to the earliest poets of the world, and in his perpetual recurrence to symbol he recalls the action ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... life, once these men left the mission house of Notre Dame des Anges, that was without the slightest social intercourse, that was beyond the prizes of any earthly ambition, that was frequently in imminence of torture and death, and that was usually in physical discomfort if not in pain. Obscure and constant toil for tender hands, solitude, suffering, privation, death—these made up the portion of the messengers of ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... memory. He had acted in accordance with his lifelong beliefs, and had carried his point; but the present situation was different,—this was a case of imperative necessity, and every other interest or consideration must give way before the imminence of his child's peril. That the doctor would refuse the call, he did not imagine: it would be too great an honor for a negro to decline,—unless some bitterness might have grown out of the proceedings of the afternoon. That this doctor was a man of some education he knew; and he had ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... table, instead of the light and airy talk which might have been expected in the situation, the conversation assumed that grave and serious tone which denoted the imminence ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dismal and a dreadful sight, That desert in its cold, uncanny light; No soul but I alone to mark the fear And imminence ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... declared it would be inconsistent with his dignity to send a force out of the realm under the command of any one of lower rank than an earl. Wolsey replied that Sandys would be cheaper than an earl,[364] but the command was entrusted to the Earl of Surrey. Henry thought it unsafe, considering the imminence of a breach with France, for English wine ships to resort to Bordeaux; Wolsey thought otherwise, and they disputed the point for a month. Honours were divided; the question was settled for the time by twenty ships sailing while ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... made laws and ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care that they should be obeyed willingly and not through fear, being specially induced to adopt this course by the obstinate nature of the Jews, who would not have submitted to be ruled solely by constraint; and also by the imminence of war, for it is always better to inspire soldiers with a thirst for glory than to terrify them with threats; each man will then strive to distinguish himself by valour and courage, instead of merely trying to escape punishment. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... swaying poplars. Sara Lee drew a long breath. Here after all were rest and peace; love and gentleness; quiet days and still evenings. No more crowds and wounds and weary men, no more great thunderings of guns, no imminence ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stole of the fruit which was forbidden, God walking in the garden in the cool of the day—the accusing footsteps of God. His brain is staggered by an unchartered immensity in which he has no portion, which he can only watch. His individual worth to the universe is dwarfed by the imminence of the All: so nothing seems very serious which is only personal and, since all things which we apprehend must become in some sense personal, nothing is very important. The procession of human effort becomes a spectacle at sight of which Homeric laughter may sometimes ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... The imminence of the peril had cowed even the party of confiscation, and they offered no opposition to the issue, by Ginckle, of proclamations renewing the offers of William. Ginckle himself moved forward, immediately after the battle, and granted the most liberal terms to the garrisons of the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... enough to startle them, showing as it did the imminence of their danger, and that the blacks were probably coming in search of them, under the belief that they were in hiding. For one, evidently the leader, was in advance, with bow and arrow in hand ready to shoot, and his companions ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... based on fear, and that in turn upon their sin-convicted consciences. Christ prevailed over those haggling Jews by virtue of the eternal principle that right is mightier than wrong, and of the psychological fact that consciousness of guilt robs the culprit of valor when the imminence of just retribution is apparent to his soul.[353] Yet, fearful lest He should prove to be a prophet with power, such as no living priest or rabbi even professed to be, they timidly asked for credentials of His authority—"What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... prejudice, every citadel of reason rested now upon foundations that quaked, and would fall at the first shock. Doom was about him. As the silence rustles in the deadly hush of the storm that brings winter upon the forest, he waited unconscious as a leaf in the imminence of the autumn moment; and in such a stillness, awaiting a change of soul, he received a letter from Lizzie. It dropped from his hand, and such desire to go as comes on swallow and cuckoo came on him; he struggled for a moment, and was sucked down in ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... elicited from within and is to be sought for in ideas and not in particulars of sense. What a chance! A growing youth in seclusion. Such a magnificent seclusion! Where I could try him in my own alembic! Still I hesitated. The imminence of such good fortune made ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... usually locked the wire door behind her, only leaving it open when she went upstairs to fetch something and meant to return almost immediately. The mere fact of its difficulty increased Raymonde's zest for the adventure. Her wild, harum-scarum spirits welcomed the element of possible danger, and the imminence of discovery added an extra spice. For days she haunted the vicinity of the winding staircase, hiding in bedrooms and watching, in case Miss Gibbs went to her laboratory. Twice she watched the mistress pass through the wire door and lock it safely behind her, quite ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... birches, blurred gray and white against the fog-bound cedars. In the haze the airy trunks, because of their imminence, bore the reality of thought, but the sterner green sank in the distance to the faint avail of speech. It was well to be walking on the Plank Road toward seven o'clock of a June morning, in a mist which might yield fellowship in the same ease with ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... for some seconds without hearing anything, and was about to say so, when I thought I caught a faint sound, as of the creaking of a boom; and at the same instant the two look-out men on the forecastle, forgetting, in the imminence of the danger, their instructions to be silent, simultaneously shouted, in sharp ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... father's religious views, though they deeply affected my own, I shall speak only very shortly. He was, above all, a devout man. Pure in heart, he earned the promised blessing and saw God throughout his days on earth. The fatherhood of God and the imminence of the Kingdom of Heaven were no empty words for him. But, though he was so single-minded a follower of Christ and His teachings, he was no Pharisee of the New Dispensation; the sacerdotalism of the Christian Churches was as hateful ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a danger, the imminence of which Napoleon fully comprehended. He might escape from it; daylight had not yet appeared. He was at liberty to avoid this fatal engagement; to gain Orcha and Borizof by rapid marches along with Eugene and his guard; there he could rally his forces with thirty thousand French under Victor ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the Marquise, one must have formed no conception of this depraved though haughty spirit, if astonished at her persistence, in cold blood, and after reflection, in the perfidious plot which the imminence of her danger had suggested to her. She saw that the suspicions of the General might be reawakened another day in a more dangerous manner, if this marriage proved only a farce. She loved Camors passionately; and she loved scarcely less the dramatic mystery of their liaison. She had also ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... condition of the inner part of the wall laid bare by the cut. He exprest his fears to his superiors, but apparently no examination of the tower was made till the Thursday following. Even then the imminence of the danger does not seem to have been grasped. On Saturday, the 12th, a crack was observed spreading upward in a sloping direction from the cut above the roof of the Loggetta toward the northeast angle of the shaft, then crossing the angle and running up almost perpendicularly ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... protect us!" cried Middleton, catching Inez to his bosom, under the instant impression of the imminence of their danger. "There is no time to lose, old man; each instant is a ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... therefore, the head of the boat was directed, and the crew, seeing the imminence of the danger, rowed with all their might; and by dint of strenuous exertions, we made good our landing ere the ice closed in around us. A few minutes after not a speck of ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... flaming desert could be more welcome to the traveler dying with thirst than was this simple structure to the panting fugitives. Jack Carleton, with a recklessness caused by the imminence of his peril, flung his gun over into the enclosure, sprang upward so as to grasp the topmost log, and scrambled after it with the headlong impetuosity of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Mac and Potts knew. For the first time the Big Chimney men felt a barrier between them and that one who had been the common bond, keeping the incongruous allied and friendly. Only Nig ran in and out, unchilled by the imminence of the Colonel's withdrawal from ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... even more explicit in her description of the imminence of the danger to which the king and she are now exposed than she had been to her brother. As the time for attempting to escape grew nearer, the embassador became the more painfully impressed with the danger of the attempt. Failure, as it seems to him, will be absolutely ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... and soon the street he followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the first steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the rising wind proclaimed its imminence. As far as he could see, there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy hills. To the right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large, full-grown eucalyptus grove. Here all was noise and movement, the lofty, slender trunked ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... affects our people. I have never had the slightest misgiving concerning the wisdom or propriety of this arrangement, and am quite willing to answer for my full share of responsibility for its promotion. I believe it averted a disaster the imminence of which was, fortunately, not at the time generally ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... little less remote from actuality than the guardians of Plato or the labour laws of More. Among other questions that were never very distant from our discussions, that came apt to every topic, was the true significance of democracy, Tariff Reform as a method of international hostility, and the imminence of war. On the first issue I can still recall little Bailey, glib and winking, explaining that democracy was really just a dodge for getting assent to the ordinances of the expert official by means ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... said Warren, growing desperate in the imminence of the peril, and swerving his pony to the right; "Jack can carry us ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... situation now was that the submarine was passing from the port to the starboard quarter, and at any moment the 4-inch magazine and the remaining depth charges in the after part of the Dunraven might be expected to explode. The 4-inch gun's crew aft knew the imminence of this danger, but not a man moved although the deck beneath them was rapidly becoming red hot; and Captain Campbell was so certain of the magnificent discipline and gallantry of his crew that he still held on so that the submarine might come ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... the anger expired before Merlier's impassivity—he must as well curse a figure carved from granite, cast in lead. He grew, in turn, uneasy at the other's supernatural detachment; it chilled his blood like the grip of an unexpected, icy hand, like the imminence of inevitable death. The priest resembled a dead man, a dead man who had remained quick in the mere physical operations of the body, while all the machinery of his thoughts, his feelings, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... plainly indicated the imminence of the fit that Gaydon had been apprehensive about, and which questions of this character ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... August, he and his two sons paid a visit to Brussels at a time when the town was celebrating with festivities the holding of an exhibition of national industry, he was well received and was probably quite unaware of the imminence of the storm that was brewing. It had been intended to close the exhibition by a grand display of fireworks on the evening of August 23, and to have a general illumination on the king's birthday (August 24). ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... ordeal by British N.C.O.'s and officers. They had swamped their hatred and inherited bitterness in admiration. Their highest hope was that they might do as well as the British. "They're men if you like," they said. In the imminence of death, their feeling for these old-timers, who had faced death so often, amounted to hero-worship. It was good to hear them deriding the caricature of the typical Briton, which had served in their mental galleries ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... Isbel and his men sat their horses and looked about them and spoke low. Their advent had been expected, and the little town awoke to the imminence of the impending battle. Inside Meeker's house there was the sound of indistinct voices of women and the bustle incident to a ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... disturbances in the populous provinces of northern China, where are many of our citizens, and of the imminence of disorder near the capital and toward the seaboard, a guard of marines was landed from the Boston and stationed during last winter in the legation compound at Peking. With the restoration of order this ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... latter flowers Or the wild vine's wan wet rings Full of dew beneath the moon, And all day the nightingale Sleeps, and all night sings; There in cold remote recesses That nor alien eyes assail, Feet, nor imminence of wings, Nor a wind nor any tune, Thou, O queen and holiest, Flower the whitest of all things, With reluctant lengthening tresses And with sudden splendid breast Save of maidens unbeholden, There art wont to ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Georgia, men seemed more awake to the greatness of the change and to the imminence of its results. Inland Georgia, especially, showed keener and shrewder. Questions were more to the point; and many a quick retort was popped through the car windows at Staple's wonderful inventions. A strongly ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... OCTOBER 9th-10th) New boatmen, forty new towmen have been hired at immense increase of wages; say four shillings for the night: but have you much good probability, my General, that even for that high guerdon imminence of death can be made indifferent to towmen? No, you have n't. The matter goes this night precisely as it did last: towmen vanishing in the horrible cannon tumult; steersmen shrieking, "We will ground you on the Prussian shore;" very soldiers obliged to give it up; and General Rutowski ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... noticing us at all, or else mistaking the boat for some sea-creature, with which it designed to measure its strength. There was no time for any effort to avoid the danger; and even had there been, we were too much paralysed by its imminence, to make such an effort. The whale was scarcely twelve yards off—certainly not twenty. Behind it stretched a foaming wake, straight as an arrow. Its vast mountainous head ploughed up the waves like a ship's cutwater, piling ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... vigour; neither on the part of authority nor on that of the people had any act of violence called for violence in return; and yet the most extreme measures were openly discussed. In all quarters people proclaimed the imminence of revolution, the dictatorship of the King, and the legitimacy of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to Seneca's house he went to consult with the captain of the guard, who, though really one of the conspirators, had not yet been accused, and was still at liberty, though trembling with apprehension at the imminence of his danger. The captain, after hearing the case, said that nothing was to be done but to deliver the message. Silvanus then went to Seneca's villa, but not being able to endure the thought of being himself the ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... flushed and looked impatiently out of the door down the street. Not that the thought of the daily paper had not been all the time in the background of her mind, but having allowed her fancy to wander towards the attitude of the village and its prospective disturbance, she returned to the imminence of the daily paper again with a thrill of emotion. It was not one of the metropolitan journals which, as a body, the village subscribed for, nor was it one of the more widely known of those issued in smaller cities; it was an unpretentious sheet, neither ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Hugh tried to think of his injury, and to steel himself against his chief. But the roar of battle on the right, and the suspense and imminence of battle on the left, absorbed the attention of even this wounded and angry spirit, as, indeed, they might have absorbed that of any being not more or less than human. A private wrong, insupportable ...
— The Brigade Commander • J. W. Deforest
... ravenous; the advantages she had enjoyed during the absence of her domestic Argus had made her cravings more equable, and she accepted the edible suggestions of the Sepoy with an approach to placid satisfaction that hinted at the imminence of repletion. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder |
