"Ponderous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those dim alcoves, far withdrawn, He turned with measured steps and slow, Trimming his lantern as he went; And there, among the shadows, bent Above one ponderous folio, With whose miraculous text were blent Seraphic faces: Angels, crowned With rings of melting amethyst; Mute, patient Martyrs, cruelly bound To blazing fagots; here and there, Some bold, serene Evangelist, Or Mary in her sunny hair: And here and there from out the words A brilliant tropic ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... denying his Lord and weeping bitterly, Jesus crowned with thorns, Pilate in his judgment-hall, the Saviour staggering beneath the cross, the Crucifixion itself, the Resurrection and the Ascension, are all shown with the crude realism of the Middle Ages. There are penitents bearing ponderous crosses on their shoulders, or carrying in their hands the whips, the nails, the thorns, the veil of the Temple rent in twain, a picture of the darkened sun, and other symbols of the Passion. At the end, amidst torches and incense and solemn chanting, the Host is exhibited for the ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... objects is to abolish with a firm hand the inveterate vices of Spanish administration, substituting a more simple and expeditious system of public administration for that superfluity of civil service and ponderous, tardy and ostentatious official routine, I hereby declare ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... ox to come under. It also obeys, treading deliberately with its heavy feet, and waiting patiently for the boy's small fingers to fasten the weighty bow with a clumsy bow-key. Then the boy lifts the ponderous cart-neap and attaches it to the ring in the yoke—a labor that causes his heart to "beat like a tabor;" and thus the beasts are wedded to their daily toil. Occasionally, however, the ox will not come under at all, but will require the boy to follow it about the barnyard, dragging ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... realized in a dream; but a slight peculiarity in the formation of this dream will put us on the track of the powerful helper from the unconscious. These ever active and, as it were, immortal wishes from the unconscious recall the legendary Titans who from time immemorial have borne the ponderous mountains which were once rolled upon them by the victorious gods, and which even now quiver from time to time from the convulsions of their mighty limbs; I say that these wishes found in the repression are of themselves of an infantile origin, ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... whose earnestness of manner carries the conviction of his sincerity, and even against our will we are moved by elegant sentences and pleasing tones. The orator will continue to be a power, though in a different way. Conditions have changed, and the ponderous periods and elaborate figures that characterized the orators of classic epochs are giving place to the plain, lucid diction and the simple, true-hearted tones of the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... society of these shrewd, practical men, for from being so much with the French judges, I had become accustomed to associating with men double or treble my own age. There was nothing corresponding to the gaiete francaise about them, though at times a ponderous playfulness marked their lighter moments, and flashes of elephantine jocularity enlivened the proceedings of the Club. I picked up some useful items of knowledge from them, for I regret to admit that up to that time I had no idea what a bill of lading was, or a ship's manifest; after a while, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... deer for two or three days, stopping only to take nourishment, or snatch a little rest at night. His hands were scarred and callous. When in the palace, his passion for violent exercise drove him to the forge, where for three or four hours he would work without intermission, with a ponderous hammer fashioning a cuirass or some other piece of armor, and exhibiting more pride in being able to tire out his gentle competitors, than in more royal accomplishments.[1230] We have no means of tracing ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... Official Symphony, and of military bands up to the perfected concert organizations headed by a Sousa or a Gabriel Pares. It would embrace with like inclusiveness the history of the pipe organ through its stages of evolution from the ponderous instruments with men straddling unwieldy bellows to the marvel installed in Festival Hall, and it would embrace the history of the art of organ music up to such exemplars as our own Clarence Eddy, John ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... majestic than she had ever been—clad in a black silk gown, from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out, upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and ruin have driven to deeds of desperation, are not, with all their temptations, more desperate in their way than are the sons of Corruption in theirs, without any temptation at all. The numerous and ponderous facts, the clear and forcible arguments, by which they have been assailed, leave them no means of defence.—They have been driven to the wall, beaten, subdued. They dare not show themselves, in the field of dispute. They, therefore, resort to false ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... cavalier than the Puritan fashion; his long blue cloak over his clerical gown, his bands, his knee-breeches,—objected to by a fastidious young lady, as "short pantaloons,"—his square shoe-buckles, and his ponderous cane. His person was somewhat short and thick, whence "lewd fellows of the baser sort" sometimes irreverently called him the "The Jack of Clubs." But he was a really good man, with the most powerful ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure, regards the Bible as the word of God. The army does not question the infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Constitution has been termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes of Marx. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... (He strikes the first chord) Please don't put a lot of sentimentality into the opening words. They should be reserved and ponderous. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... it has been enabled to do its work. In this library there is a certain number of thousands of volumes—a great many volumes, as there are in most public libraries. There are books of all classes, from ponderous unreadable folios, of which learned men know the title-pages, down to the lightest literature. Novels are by no means eschewed,—are rather, if I understood aright, considered as one of the staples of the library. From this ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... extended also to other German aestheticians. By a curious accident, he found himself at Zurich in the company of Theodore Vischer, that ponderous Hegelian, who laughed disdainfully at the mention of poetry, of music, and of the decadent Italian race. De Sanctis laughed at Vischer's laughter. Wagner appeared to him a corrupter of music, and "nothing in the world more unaesthetic than the Aesthetic of Theodore ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Norman esquire, answered not, until the Netherlander fortunately recollected his Anglo-Norman title of butler. This, his regular name of office, was the key to the buttery-hatch, and the old man instantly appeared, with his gray cassock and high rolled hose, a ponderous bunch of keys suspended by a silver chain to his broad leathern girdle, which, in consideration of the emergency of the time, he had thought it right to balance on the left side with a huge falchion, which seemed much too weighty for his old arm ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes and they rested on a remarkable-looking young man about her own age who stood gazing in an embarrassed, helpless sort of way at the row of ponderous volumes ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... clattering of hoofs upon the stony way, while they wound in and out amongst ponderous blocks of granite and ironstone, trusting to the leading horses, whose riders were warned of danger in the darkness by the sentries stationed here ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast. The broad circumference Hung on his ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... weakness, turned her back upon the stage and loudly declared that such a lifelike exhibition was "too disagreeable to look at." Off the stage, however, the personality of Mrs Siddons was transformed. A handsome woman, though of ponderous build, her conversation was singularly dull, and she spoke in a slow, sententious manner as though declaiming a set speech, which peculiarity gave rise to many ludicrous ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... happened to verge somewhat toward a complacent mood upon this occasion, smiled grimly at his wife's commendation, and even unbent so far as to indulge in some ponderous attempts at wit with Laura concerning her "magnificent offer," and asserted that if she had been "like his wife, she would have jumped at the chance of getting hold of such a crude, unreformed specimen of humanity. Indeed," concluded he, "I did not know but that Mrs. Arnot was bringing about the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... alone, Our poets found a work for more than one; And therefore two lay tugging at the piece, With all their force, to draw the ponderous mass from Greece; A weight that bent even Seneca's strong muse, And which Corneille's shoulders did refuse. So hard it is the Athenian harp to string! So much two consuls yield to one just king. Terror and pity this whole poem sway; The mightiest machines that can mount a play. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... oxen of India and Java; compare the Indian rhinoceros with that of South Africa; and notice the hippopotamus family, from South Africa, as well as a diminutive specimen of the Indian elephant, and a half-grown elephant, from Africa. Having noticed these ponderous creatures, the attention of the visitor will be next attracted to the Llamas, which are arranged in the first two wall-cases. Of these, the wild are generally brown, and the tame of mixed colours. The next fourteen wall-cases are filled with specimens of the different species ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... them as authorities. Still, they have the merit of giving general statements to general readers, of supplying facts in their regular order, and probably, of inducing the multitude, who would shrink from the formalities of Hume or Gibbon in solemn quartos and ponderous octavos, to dip into pages having all the look and nearly all the slightness of the modern novel. At all events, if they do nothing else, they employ the time of pens, which might be much worse occupied; and that pens are often much worse occupied, we have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... cottage, with a broad window opening on to a lawn, beyond which Clarissa saw the blue mill-stream. It was not a bad room at all: countrified-looking and old-fashioned, with a low ceiling and wainscoted walls. Miss Level recognised the ponderous old furniture from the breakfast-room at Arden—high-backed mahogany chairs of the early Georgian era, with broad cushioned seats covered with faded needlework; a curious old oval dining-table, capable of accommodating about six; and some slim Chippendale coffee-tables ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... lives, they should fight at least on a perfect equality. Steel against stone was a mean advantage. Parrying Tu-Kila-Kila's first desperate blow with the haft of his own hatchet, he leaped aside half a second to gain breath and strength. Then he rushed on, and dealt one deadly downstroke with the ponderous weapon. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... the driver the woman stalked up the store steps. She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried considerable flesh. She could carry this well, however, and did. Her traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode, but in no extreme. This well-bred, haughty, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... destruction. In our island various cherished antiquities have been often most unnecessarily swept away in constructing these race-courses for the daily rush and career of the iron horse. His rough and ponderous hoof, for example, has kicked down, at one extremity of a railway connected with Edinburgh (marvellously and righteously to the dispeace of the whole city), that fine old specimen of Scottish Second-Pointed architecture, the Trinity College Church; while, at the other extremity of the same line, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... though his jokes were always appreciated by his correspondent, yet Hamilton seldom ventured on anything of the same kind in reply; indeed his rare attempts at humour only produced results of the most ponderous description. But never were two scientific correspondents more perfectly in sympathy with each other. Hamilton's work on Quaternions, his labours in Dynamics, his literary tastes, his metaphysics, and his poetry, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... see, so loved of men, Hanging their boughs in every glen. O'erburthened with their fruit and flowers: A plenteous store of food is ours. See, Lakshman, in the leafy trees, Where'er they make their home. Down hangs, the work of labouring bees The ponderous honeycomb. In the fair wood before us spread The startled wild-cock cries: Hark, where the flowers are soft to tread, The peacock's voice replies. Where elephants are roaming free, And sweet birds' songs are loud, The glorious Chitrakuta see: His peaks ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Sophia, and as she had never molested him, could talk to her, so he straightway became engrossed in the logical and theological aspects of the theory; and Mrs. Dusautoy could hardly suppress her smile at this unconscious ponderous attempt at a counter flirtation, with Saturn and Jupiter as ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... boy (he was now eleven), was some weeks before he shook off the shyness with which his schoolfellows' loud voices and rough ways and his masters' ponderous gravity had at first overwhelmed him. Little by little he grew used to the work, and learned some of the tricks by means of which punishments were avoided; his schoolfellows found him so inoffensive they left off ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... are three apparent reasons, and one of them is aesthetic. So to clothe the body that its fineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aim of all costume, but before our time the mean had never been struck. The ancient Romans went too far. Muffled in the ponderous folds of a toga, Adonis might pass for Punchinello, Punchinello for Adonis. The ancient Britons, on the other hand, did not go far enough. And so it had been in all ages down to that bright morning when Mr. ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Stenches rose up on the damp, dank air, and throughout the night, through the opening of a window, I seemed to gaze out to a disconsolate eternity—gaping, empty, unsightly. Waking from my dozing at the hour when judgment sits upon the hearts of men, I sat in ponderous judgment upon all to whom the bungling of the previous day was due. There were the rats and mice, and cats and owls, and creaks and cracks—no quiet about the place from night to morning. Then came the barking of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... indicating seats to the young Americans, crossed to a ponderous safe, toyed with the combination lock, threw open the door and then brought out a ledger that he deposited on one of the flat-top desks. Five minutes later his daughter Francesca ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... allowed the worst of the miserable shock to spend itself, she summoned the stern energy for which she was famous, and going with slower steps than usual to the next room, she unlocked the desk of the ponderous secretary and seated herself to write. Before many minutes had passed the letter was folded, and sealed, and addressed, and the next evening Nan was reading it at Oldfields. She was grateful for being asked to come on the 5th of June to Dunport, and to stay a ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... mysteries of the toilet. One eminent savant, in this department of philosophical wisdom, absolutely published a bulky volume on the principles of hair-dressing, and followed it—so highly was it prized—by a no less ponderous supplement. This was the time when the cuisine of nobles was as famous as their toilets, and when recipes for different dishes were only equalled in variety by the epigrams of ribald poets. It was a period not merely of degrading follies, but of shameless exposure of them,—when ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... line in double quick time, the artillery galloping up to take possession of every advantage of the ground, until the infantry again occupied the advanced position; thus mutually supporting, the artillery and infantry arrived within three hundred yards of the ponderous batteries of the works. Here a terrible fire opened upon the advancing force, before which many fell, and few believed, who could see what was passing, that Stacey and his brigade would ever reach the intrenchments of the enemy. The troops of Brigadier Wilkinson were well ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the engravings of Clarke's marbles, and read the account of how these ponderous marbles had been transported to England. We saw the marbles themselves. The famous enormous head of Ceres must have belonged to a gigantic statue, and perhaps at a great height may have had a fine effect. It is in a sadly mutilated condition; there is no face; the appearance of the head in front ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... his character; and that was the habit in which he constantly indulged, of deploring the past, without making any very strong efforts toward amendment in the future. He was one evening seated in his room; a ponderous volume lay open on his study-table, and for a time he vainly tried to fix his attention thereon, till finally he closed the book, and leaning back in his chair, his brows contracted, and the lines about his mouth grew tense, as if his thoughts were anything but ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... the purest gold. We compare a man of gigantic stature to a tower: not that he is any thing like so large, but because the excess of his size beyond what we are accustomed to expect, or the usual size of things of the same class, produces by contrast a greater feeling of magnitude and ponderous strength than another object of ten times the same dimensions. The intensity of the feeling makes up for the disproportion of the objects. Things are equal to the imagination, which have the power of affecting the mind with ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the lakes, those midland oceans, lie, Columbus turn'd his heaven-illumined eye. Ontario's banks, unable to retain The five great Caspians from the distant main, Burst with the ponderous mass, and forceful whirl'd His Laurence forth, to balance thus the world. Above, bold Erie's wave sublimely stood, Look'd o'er the cliff, and heaved his headlong flood; Where dread Niagara bluffs high his brow, And frowns defiance to the world ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... laying a weight in one of the scales, which was inscribed by the word Eternity; though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, poverty, interest, success, with many other weights, which in my hand seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance, nor could they have prevailed, though assisted with the weight of the sun, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... up the delusion, he sent off a detachment to harass the retreat of his ponderous adversary and fill his ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... felt it in her, to swing down and down to the very opposite pole from that serene altitude. She admitted that, from a utilitarian point of view, she was making a vast mistake. As things were, Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Allan, laboriously spinning their ponderous families on their own axes, in a reverent spirit, had chosen the better part. But Hadria did not care. She would not settle down to make the best of things, as even Algitha now recommended, "since there she was, and there ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... and the Savannah. As shown by Allen, the buffalo, "prior to the year 1800," spread eastward across the Appalachians(34) and into the priscan territory of the Siouan tribes. As suggested by Shaler, the presence of this ponderous and peaceful animal materially affected the vocations of the Indians, tending to discourage agriculture and encourage the chase; and it can hardly be doubted that the bison was the bridge that carried the ancestors ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... Though the ponderous wheels of Juggernaut no longer go crushing over the bodies of prostrate victims, the assembled crowd rush to the car with almost appalling fury and excitement. Pilgrims, however, come in vast numbers ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... forms she saw among these fish-girls—forms which had been left as the great God of nature made them, uncrippled by torturing stays and tight vestments. How easy their carriage! with what rude grace they poised upon their heads their ponderous baskets, and walked erect and firm, filling the air with their mournfully-musical cry! The great resemblance between these people and the Bavarian broom-girls, both in features and costume, impressed her with the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... in the hollow, so damp and so cold, Where oaks are by ivy o'ergrown, The gray moss and lichen creep over the mould, Lying loose on a ponderous stone. Now within this huge stone, like a king on his throne, A toad has been sitting more years than is known; And, strange as it seems, yet he constantly deems The world standing still while he's dreaming his dreams,— Does this wonderful toad in his cheerful abode In the innermost ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... ousted humility, with the result that philosophy became not light but darkness. Let me quote from the great twelfth century philosopher, Hugh of St. Victor, who deserves a better fate than sepulture in the ponderous tomes of Migne: ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... trembling and ashamed, from out the street Strong men he called, and faint with jealousy He caused them bear the ponderous, moveless feet Unto the chamber where he used to lie, So in a fair niche to his bed anigh, Unwitting of his woe, they set it down, Then went their ways beneath his ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... fine book of synonyms, for as certainly as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls, delivered with ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers and magazines, which she read and remembered. And she danced! When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking; perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen, and frequently was seen, waltzing on the ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... set of Edwards's treatises, in eight ponderous volumes; their leaves yellow with age, and cut only here and there at irregular intervals. "Freedom of the Will" and "The Nature of Virtue" jostled "Original Sin;" and "The History of Redemption" leaned up against "God's Last End in ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Harding his first lesson, and we had quite a gallery for our foursome, including Miss Harding and Miss Lawrence. Wallace was to play with Harding against Carter and me, but the chief interest centred in whether Wallace could effect any improvement in the playing of his ponderous pupil. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... a story such as this should be episodical, lapsical, disconnected. Its inception lies in two countries, and of different people. And it is, in its beginnings, a story of contrasts. So one may be permitted again to say: At a time when pompous, ponderous, white-whiskered, black-suited old Dr. DeLancey was engaged in bringing to the daughter of Kathryn Blair a posthumous baby brother that, in the mystery of things, turned out after all to be a sister, a stranger chanced to be riding at dusk through the deep shades of the Bois du Nord, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... working member until committees fought for him. It surprised his colleagues to see this elegant young man, with such fine abilities, so modest and so laborious—to see him ready on the dryest subjects and with the most tedious reports. Ponderous laws of local interest neither frightened nor mystified him. He seldom spoke in the public debates, except as a reporter; but in the committee he spoke often, and there his manner was noted for its grave precision, tinged with irony. No one doubted ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... of the dinner was so delightfully whole-hearted that even Roberta forgave her everything, down to her absurd enthusiasm over a ponderous psychology lecture and the very dull reception that followed it. At the latter, to be sure, Mary acted exactly like her old self, for she sat in a corner and monopolized Dr. Hinsdale for half an hour by the clock, while her little friends, to quote Katherine Kittredge, "champed their ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... many a counsel of them of old, if thou shrink not back nor weary to learn of lowly cares. Above all must the threshing-floor be levelled with the ponderous roller, and wrought by hand and cemented with clinging potter's clay, that it may not gather weeds nor crack in the reign of dust, and be playground withal for manifold destroyers. Often the tiny mouse builds his house and makes his granaries underground, or the eyeless mole scoops his cell; ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... began Brasher—I must own that his manner is a little ponderous—"is of a scientific, I may say also, and at the same time, of a judicial nature. Our object is the Pursuit of Truth and the Advancement ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Adams Sawyer sat in his library reading a ponderous legal document. It was full of knotty points requiring deep thinking, and the Hon. Nathaniel was breathing deeply and thinking deeply when the door was opened quietly and a young girl looked in. She stood for ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... when the Argonauts, as these fifty brave adventurers were called, had prepared everything for the voyage, an unforeseen difficulty threatened to end it before it was begun. The vessel, you must understand, was so long and broad and ponderous that the united force of all the fifty was insufficient to shove her into the water. Hercules, I suppose, had not grown to his full strength, else he might have set her afloat as easily as a little boy launches his boat upon a puddle. But here were these fifty heroes, pushing and straining ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... this society probably suggested topics for the Rambler, which appeared at this time, and caused Johnson's fame to spread further beyond the literary circles of London. The wit and humour have, indeed, left few traces upon its ponderous pages, for the Rambler marks the culminating period of Johnson's worst qualities of style. The pompous and involved language seems indeed to be a fit clothing for the melancholy reflections which are its chief staple, and ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... hefted many a heavier piece than this," said young Mark, frowning, equally with the exertion and with the instigations of his aspiring spirit, as he held out the ponderous weapon in a single hand; "we have guns that might tame a wolf with greater certainty than any barrel of a bore less than my own height. Tell, me grand'ther; at what distance do the mounted warriors, you so ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Altar; Roman Invasion—F. Lamayer (Vertical line in action; dignified, measured, ponderous); The Flock—P. Moran (The horizontal, typifying quietude, repose, calm, solemnity); The curved line: variety, movement; Man with Stone—V. Spitzer (Transitional Line, Cohesion); The Dance—Rubens (The ellipse: line of continuity and unity); Swallows—From the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... was by no means gratified by the ponderous prancings of his imitator. We learn from Boswell that when the great man met Captain Cook at a dinner given by the President of the Royal Society, he said that he "was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... me out as the object of her ponderous Palatine sarcasms. She exaggerated my style of dress, my ways and habits. She thought to make fun of my little spaniels by causing herself to be followed, even into the King's presence-chamber, by a large ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Dockyard gates we are summoned to give the pass-word by the vigilant guard before we are allowed to pass the ponderous portal. Those who have read Captain Marryatt's delightful story, "Peter Simple," and I should hope there are few sailors who have not, will perhaps recall the amusing scene which took place on this ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Dogana at Venice and the Giralda at Seville. As the hands on the clock-face at last pointed to ten and twelve respectively, the little chime of bells struck up a merry tune, while the bronze man with the hammer raised his ponderous arm and deliberately struck ten mighty blows, to the great delight of the spectators. This curious and ingenious piece of mechanism, which had been cunningly devised by one Lintlaer, a Fleming, highly amused and interested ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... groups. It was built by Hiro, the first king of Raiatea, who, deified after death, became the god of thieves. The Papara marae was made of coral, but the quarried mountain rock was laid at the foundation, and these ponderous, uneven stones being patched with coral, in time the blocks had become tightly cemented together. A lime-kiln was along the land side of this marae of Oberea, and for years had furnished the cement, plaster, and whitewash of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... they thrust the ponderous cheese, And the loaves of wheat and rye; None stinteth him for lack of ease— For each a stintless welcome sees In the Baron's ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... and in the angle betwixt them rises the promontory, on two sides a natural fortress. Land among the walnut-trees that formed a belt between the cliffs and the St. Lawrence. Climb the steep height, now bearing aloft its ponderous load of churches, convents, dwellings, ramparts, and batteries,—there was an accessible point, a rough passage, gullied downward where Prescott Gate (in 1871) opened on the Lower Town. Mount to the highest ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... had not moved when Mr. Mangles came up to say good-night. Miss Julia P. Mangles bowed in a manner which she considered impressive and the world thought ponderous. Netty Cahere murmured a few ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... whistles through its silent chambers, like sweet music, calling into life that ponderous mechanism, until it appears ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... exaggerate your misfortune. A priest whose hair has grown white in the exercise of his functions is not a boy; you will be understood by him to whom every passion has been confided for nearly fifty years now, and who weighs in his hands the ponderous heart of kings and princes. If he is stern under his stole, in the presence of your flowers he will be as tender as they are, and as indulgent ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... November, 1855, he reached Kalai, a place eight miles west of the Falls. On arriving at the latter, he found that this natural phenomenon was caused by the sudden contraction, or rather compression, of the river, here about 1000 yards broad, which urges its ponderous mass through a narrow rent in the basaltic rock of not more than twenty-five yards, and down a deep cleft, but a little wider, into a basin or trough about thirty yards in diameter, lying at a depth of thirty-five yards. Into this narrow receptacle the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... foolishness, Pushed horse across the foamings of the ford, Whom Gareth met midstream: no room was there For lance or tourney-skill: four strokes they struck With sword, and these were mighty; the new knight Had fear he might be shamed; but as the Sun Heaved up a ponderous arm to strike the fifth, The hoof of his horse slipt in the stream, the stream Descended, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... with ponderous gravity. Martin's style was making clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all vivacity of expression from ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... whom you may call the banqueteers, give solemn, stately dinners immediately before going to bed; another perform a hybrid entertainment, between the English tea-party, and the Continental soiree, where you may enjoy your Bohea and Souchong, play long small whist, and occasionally listen to ponderous harmonies solemnly performed. A third are the formal rout-givers, the white-kid-and-slipper, orchestra-and-programme, dance-and-sit-down-to-supper folks; so like home that it only requires Gunter's men to fancy oneself in Baker ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond doubt the Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in full view of that grand old building—a castle of the olden times—kept, so far as possible to elegance or comfort, in its ponderous mediaeval grandeur. But Madam Art had softened all its ruder features. Plate-glass was sunk into those thick walls; circular rooms in those twin towers, commanded a splendid view of the valley, over which the castle was built. The broad stone terrace connecting the towers, and fronting the ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... defect in his character; and that was the habit in which he constantly indulged, of deploring the past, without making any very strong efforts toward amendment in the future. He was one evening seated in his room; a ponderous volume lay open, on his study-table; and for a time he vainly tried to fix his attention thereon, till finally he closed the book; and leaning back in his chair, his brows contracted, and the lines about his mouth grew tense, as if his thoughts were anything but pleasing. ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... who had passed their lives in solitude and abstinence nor ever held converse with man or womankind, neither did they appear in Harran at any time save for the obsequies of the reigning race. In front came one of these greybeards steadying with one hand a huge and ponderous tome which he bore upon his head. Presently all the holy men thrice compassed the Mausoleum, then standing on the highway the eldest cried with a loud voice, "O Prince, could we by dint of orisons and devotions ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... work—archaeology?" He smiled again to hide a twitch of regret. "Why, I'm afraid it hardly produces a living wage; and I've got to think of that." He coloured suddenly, as if suspecting that Miss Hicks might consider the avowal an opening for he hardly knew what ponderous offer of aid. The Hicks munificence was too uncalculating not to be occasionally oppressive. But looking at her again he saw that her eyes ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... wealth surpass The unsunn'd gold of Ind or Araby, Though with many a ponderous mass You crowd the Tuscan and Apulian sea, Let Necessity but drive Her wedge of adamant into that proud head, Vainly battling will you strive To 'scape Death's noose, or rid your soul of dread. Better life the Scythians lead, Trailing on waggon wheels their wandering ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... shook his ponderous chain, Loud and fierce howled the tiger, impatient to stain The bloodthirsty arena; Whilst the women of Rome, who applauded those deeds And who hailed the forthcoming enjoyment, must needs ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... you, Boyne?" Anson lunged at me in his ponderous way. "The rest of us thought 'twas a poor joke, but Knapp and Whipple had both seen ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... youth sat down again, and the pow-wow went forward. It was daylight again when Nevil returned to Wanaha. For Indian pow-wows are slow moving, ponderous things, and Little Black Fox was no better than the rest of his race when deliberations of grave import ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... moved up the roofed-over Street of Bazaars. Not in all the range of the old man's vision was to be seen a living human being. For the chief city of the Philistine country Ascalon was nerveless and still. At times immense and ponderous creaking sounded in the distance, as if a great rusted crane swung in the wind. Again there were distant, voluminous flutterings, as if neglected and loosened sails flapped. Idle roaming donkeys brayed and a dog ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the military instructor has the whole world as his workshop. His notebook should be as ready to receive some especially apt saying by a new recruit as the more ponderous words uttered by the sages. And it should contain, not less, comments on techniques and methods used by other speakers and instructors, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... nation, is in the position of the naturalist who rises from such a work as the Systema Naturae, or the Regne Animal, to concentrate his attention on some special section or subsection of the sciences of Zoology and Botany. If having done this he should betake himself to some ponderous folio, bulkier than the one which he read last, but devoted to a subject so specific and limited as to have scarcely found a place in the general history of organized beings, the comparison is all the closer. ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... flowery land,' that it is not surprising to hear of the Chinese having begun to use paper-money as currency in the second century preceding the Christian era. At that time, the coinage of the Celestials was of a more bulky and ponderous nature than it is at the present day; and we may easily believe that a people so cunning and ingenious, would contrive not a few schemes to avoid the burden of carrying it about; as the man did, who scratched the figure of an ox on a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... His ponderous declaration: "I write by the light of two eternal truths, religion and the monarchy," was a sort of cheap-jack recommendation of the so-called philosophy in his Comedie Humaine. His Catholic orthodoxy, if orthodoxy it were, savoured more ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... was a steel hull whose sides, opposed to the jaws of the ponderous masses, would have been crushed like an eggshell in a vise. Unlike a wooden ship, the gentlest contact would have sprung her plates, while any considerable collision would have pierced her as if she had been built of paper. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... they proceed: the sage Ulysses then Arose, and with him rose the king of men. On either side a sacred herald stands, The wine they mix, and on each monarch's hands Pour the full urn; then draws the Grecian lord His cutlass sheathed beside his ponderous sword; From the sign'd victims crops the curling hair;(121) The heralds part it, and the princes share; Then loudly thus before the attentive bands He calls the gods, and spreads ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... facetiousness of the simile, for verily, that guide or that courier or that dragoman never yet lived upon earth who had in him the faintest appreciation of a joke, even though that joke were so broad and so ponderous that if it fell on him it would flatten him out like a postage stamp—the dragoman laughed, and then, emboldened by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that a massive safe stood behind the counter in a corner at the rear of the store. The ponderous door was open, for mother and daughter had frequent cause to use the repository. Within the steel structure all the stamps, government funds and daily cash receipts were deposited at the close of the ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... his desk hung a tinted map of the metropolis. Upon a table at his elbow were piled ponderous tomes depicting the Bronx in all its beauty, and giving details of suburban sewers. Other volumes contained maps of the fashionable residential district, showing every consecrated block and the exact location as well as the linear dimensions of every awesome residence and ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... accorded to, the great firms of Melmotte & Co, of London, and Fisker, Montague, and Montague of San Francisco. Mr Fisker's arms were waved gracefully about. His head was turned now this way and now that, but never towards his plate. It was very well done. But there was more faith in one ponderous word from Mr Melmotte's mouth than in ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... They glued themselves together, face to face, and Don Mario felt every rut and every rock in the road. Nor was the merchant any less heavy in mind than in body, for he was both very rich and very serious, and nothing is more ponderous than a rich, fat man who takes his riches and his fatness seriously. In disposition Don Mario was practical and unromantic; he boasted that he had never had an illusion, never an interest outside of his business. And yet, on the day this story opens, this prosaic ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... with fatal difficult industry, contrived to burn them out. Austria was once full of Protestants; but the hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; we, with our dull obstinate Cimburgis under-lip and lazy eyes, with our ponderous Austrian depth of Habituality and indolence of Intellect, we prefer steady Darkness to uncertain new Light!"—and all men may see where Austria now is. Spain still more; poor Spain, going about, at this time, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... upon elementary principles do not throw much light on the difficulties surrounding the border-land between mathematics and philosophy. (See INFINITESIMAL CALCULUS.) His Sermons have long enjoyed a high reputation; they are weighty pieces of reasoning, elaborate in construction and ponderous in style. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... mounted to the lunar sphere, Since all things lost on earth are treasured there, There heroes' wits are kept in ponderous vases, And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. There broken vows and death-bed alms are found, And lovers' hearts with ends of riband bound, The courtiers promises, and sick man's prayers, The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... in a high and ponderous good humour, but he stayed to reflect for a moment, with his head on one side, to ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... blazing from the gilded roof, are seen Bright lamps, and torches turn the night to day. Now for the ponderous goblet called the Queen, Of jewelled gold, which Belus used and they Of Belus' line, and poured the wine straightway, And prayed, while silence filled the crowded hall: "Great Jove, the host's lawgiver, bless this day To these my Tyrians and the Trojans all. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... mere, saw two men approaching across the green, in a straight line, from a boat that was moored at the water's edge. They were carrying between them something which, though not very large, seemed ponderous. ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... our ancestors dwelt in rooms smaller, or darker, or smokier, than those we now cram ourselves into. Nothing at all of the kind; they knew what ease was, better than we do. They had glorious bay-windows, and warm chimney-corners, and well-hung buttery hatches, and good solid old oak tables, and ponderous chairs: had their windows and doors been only a little more air-tight, their comforts could not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... big, florid man, who moved about a committee hearing chamber with the ponderous smoothness of a luxury liner. He was never visited by a single doubt about the rightness of his chosen course—no matter how erratic it might appear to an onlooker. His faith in his established legislative procedures and in the established tenets of Science was complete. Since he wore the shield ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... and fingers of the two hands will meet over the length of its one volume. There are more small collections; but we pass on to the first work to which the name of Encyclopaedia is given. This is a ponderous Scientiarum Omnium Encyclopaedia of Alsted,[455] in four folio volumes, commonly bound in two: published in 1629 and again in 1649; the true parent of all the Encyclopaedias, or collections of treatises, or works in which that character ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... desk behind caught him. Straightening himself up, and grappling the panther with all his strength as he would a man, he turned with it and bent it over the sharp edge of the ponderous desk, lower, lower, trying to break its back. One of the fore feet was beginning to tear through his clothing, and straightening himself up again, he reached down and caught this foot and tried to bend it, break it. He threw himself with all his force upon the floor, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... probably take the trouble of consulting these huge volumes, for the purpose of ascertaining the truth of this charge. Even our duty, as editors, cannot impel us to the task; satisfied, as we are, that, since these ponderous folios at that time loaded every toilette, Dryden can hardly have taken more from such well-known sources, than the mere outline of the story. Indeed, to a certain degree, the foundation of the plot, upon a story in the "Cyrus," is admitted by the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... more important than men. This particular horse did not attract with beauty. At first glance he seemed ugly. But he was a giant, black as coal, rough despite the care manifestly bestowed upon him, long of body, ponderous of limb, huge in every way. A bystander remarked that he had a grand head. True, if only his head had been seen he would have been a beautiful horse. Like men, horses show what they are in the shape, the size, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... you going?" said she. There was no answer—the door closed after them; but in a moment she was startled and terrified by a loud and heavy crash, as if some ponderous body had been hurled down the stair. Much alarmed, she started up, and going to the head of the staircase, she called repeatedly upon her husband, but in vain. She returned to the room, and with the assistance of her daughter, whom I had occasion ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... a homemade pung was wending its way slowly along the road leading to the river. Holding the reins was Sammy, a queer little figure, wrapped from head to foot, bravely maintaining his precarious position on six inches of the end of the board seat. Towering above him, broad-shouldered and ponderous, sat Mrs. Stickles, the very embodiment of ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... and time that rough walk in the ponderous suits across the broken terrain of the asteroid was a short one, measured by the beating of his own heart, Dane thought it much too long. There was no sign of life by the air lock of the bubble—no move on the part of the men stationed there to come ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton |
