"Awful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Octavius. His infatuation ended in a weakness difficult to comprehend in a successful Roman general. And never was infatuation followed by more tragic consequences. Was this madness sent upon him by that awful Power who controls the fate of war and the destinies of nations? Who sent madness upon Nebuchadnezzar? Who blinded Napoleon at the very summit of his greatness? May not that memorable defeat have been ordered by Providence to give ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... most terrible ordeal of persecution the history of mankind bears any record of. Only the strong of body, the cunning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. Like breeds like; and now the Christian world is paying, in tears and blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant ancestors upon a noble race. When the time came for liberty and fair ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... you," she said, "and that you were turned around. You must have had a hard tramp, for it's all of two miles from where you were to this cove, and an awful tangle all the ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... the top of a pair of steps with the phenomenon in an attitude; "Farewell!" on a transparency behind; and nine people at the wings with a squib in each hand—all the dozen and a half going off at once—it would be very grand—awful from ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... say I'm not so bad as some people, but I've never been a saint, you know. And the day I came here I was in an awful temper. I struck you, ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... may find a small picture of the Deluge or of the flaming Cities of the Plain. One of the specially short poems sees the universe overthrown and the good angels conquered. Another short poem sees the newsboys in Fleet Street shouting the news of the end of the world, and the awful return of God. The writers seem unconsciously to have sought to make a poem as large as a revelation, while it was nearly as short as a riddle. And though Francis Thompson himself was rather in the Elizabethan tradition of amplitude and ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... children as food. But the acme of distress was reached in the seventh year, when men sought to gnaw the flesh from their own bones. (55) To these occurrences the prophecies of Joel apply, for he lived in the awful days of the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... if I know it. Why, it would be awful to be left without a light, and without warmth. We might freeze to death—if ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... I had been having a most unfortunate day—six hours on a stand on the Boulevards, with the rain pouring all the time. It was simply awful. At midnight I had not made more than a franc and a half for myself, but I was so wet and miserable and the horse seemed so done up that I decided to go home. I did grumble, I can tell you. Well, I had just passed the corner of the Rue Picard, in the Rue du Chevaleret, ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Death waiting, as it were, at the bed-foot, as an awful witness of his words, the poor dying soul gasped out his last wishes in respect of his family;—his humble profession of contrition for his faults;—and his charity towards the world he was leaving. Some things he said concerned Harry Esmond as much as they astonished ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... natural lot, On womankind, till custom makes it light. I know the use of pain: bar not the leech Because his cure is bitter—'Tis such medicine Which breeds that paltry strength, that weak devotion, For which you say you love me.—Ay, which brings Even when most sharp, a stern and awful joy As its attendant angel—I'll say no more— Not even to thee—command, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... detached by the failure of its supports, came down along with some spars of the burning wood and fell against a rich screen just on the other side of Nero. The screen was thrown over on him; he struggled an instant to right himself and it, holding his lamp off at an awful angle towards Mr. Linden; then, nobody could tell how it was, Nero had saved himself and struggled out from the falling screen and burning wood, and Faith and the lamp lay under it, just at Mr. Linden's ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was a lost soul; neither should our little ones on arriving to years of religious understanding ever know that their mother was a lost soul. The midnight hour often witnessed many bitter tears of regret over the awful thought. So near perfect despair, I looked upon beast, bird, or even the most loathsome reptile, and grudged their happiness of living and dying without responsibility. These sad forebodings seriously affected my health, and my anxious husband and parents feared some serious disease was ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... awful," said Selincourt weakly. He got up and stood in the doorway. Despair is a terrible thing to watch. Not even Lawrence dared go near Bernard. It was the priest, inured to scenes of grief and rebellion, who came forward with the cold strong common sense of the Christian stoic. "But you will ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... ran on, it was with the fire glowing more brightly in his face, and the various objects growing more distinct, while there was something awful in the terrible silence that seemed to prevail, in the midst of which a great body of fire steadily rose, in company with a cloud of smoke, which was spangled with tiny flakes that seemed to be of gold. Tree, shed, barn, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... couple of prize fools of yourselves, and if I did what I ought to, I'd cut Henry off sharp this minute. But—guess I better make a fool of myself, so you'll feel more at home." He coughed explosively. "Besides, you're awful young, both of you—and damn it, if you don't cash in on it now, next thing you know you'll be wonderin' where the time's gone, anyway. No sense in robbin' you of the best months of your life, just because you ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... endured for years, Lust for velvet in their hearts, Pierced with Mammon's spears, All but a few fanatics Give up their darling goal, Seek to be as others are, Stultify the soul. Reapings now confront them, Glut them, or destroy, Curious seeds, grain or weeds Sown with awful joy. Hurried is their harvest, They make soft peace with men. Pilgrims pass. They care not, Will not ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... would be founded upon every new concession. "How would you like," he said to one of his officers, "to see Roman Catholic chaplains on board our ships of war?" While the question was in progress, he wrote with prophetic truth—"The times are awful, when the choice of two evils only is left, a threatened rebellion, or the surrender of our constitution, by the admission of Catholics into Parliament and all offices. I think even this will not satisfy Ireland. Ascendancy is their object. You may postpone, ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... curiosity and the interest of fresh insight into character. It was well worn, and had been carefully handled; it lay open easily anywhere, and in many places various marks of pencilling shewed that not only the eyes but the mind of its owner had been all over it. It was almost an awful book to Elizabeth's handling. It seemed a thing too good to be in her hold. It bore witness to its owner's truth of character, and to her own consequent being far astray; it gave her an opening such as she never had before to look into his mind and life and guess at the secret spring and strength ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... own case. In November I announced the preparation of the second Christmas Number of the Freethinker, the publication for which I paid the penalty of twelve months' imprisonment. Before, however, I deal fully with that awful subject I will redeem my promise to inform my readers of the nature of our indictment, and what were the actual charges preferred against us by Sir Henry Tyler on behalf ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... alone in such a presence. With all its grotesqueness and majesty of form and radiance of color, creation seemed in a whirl." When the reader thinks of grotesqueness, what images come to his mind? A Chinese joss, perhaps; a funny human face on the profile of a rock, but nothing so vast, so awful, so large as this. The word "majesty" suggests a kingly presence, a large man of dignified mien, or a sequoia standing supreme over all other trees in the forest. But a thousand men of majesty could be placed unseen in ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... to be grinding away at books, as you do; and you don't have half the fun I do, on shore here without any fellows to have larks with; but not having to powder your hair almost makes up for it. I don't mind it, in winter, because it makes a sort of thatch for the head; but it is awful, now. I feel just as if I had got a pudding crust all ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... roared at my joke, because it touched your bad golf complex. In fact you were really laughing at yourself and your own awful golf." ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... they're absolutely ruining everything! It would cheaper to pay 'em for their time and let 'em sit outside while we hire some regular persons to work! What they've done today is spoiling the whole scheme—the yard looks like a Swiss cheese—come and see—its simply awful!" ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... within me. But I am changed. Perhaps daily familiarity with death and pain and wretchedness, hourly contact with the paramount mystery of all, has broadened me, or benumbed me. I don't know. All I seem to see clearly—to clearly understand—is the dreadful brevity of life, the awful chances against living, the miracle of love in such a maelstrom, the insanity of one who dare not confess it, live for it, love to the uttermost with heart, soul, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... of mirth and feasting was hushed. The harps of the minstrels hung silent on the wall, and men spake in whispering voices, for the awful Moirai were at hand to bear Alkestis to the shadowy kingdom. On the couch lay her fair form, pale as the white lily which floats on the blue water, and beautiful as Eos when her light dies out of the sky in the evening. Yet ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Mrs. Fabian to the best room that opened from the large kitchen, and to their horror they saw that the sofa referred to was a hideous Victorian affair of walnut frame upholstered in awful ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... also by the deities, O thou who leadest an excellent life! And men and snakes, celestial choristers, Yakshas and Kinnaras followed the magnanimous saints,—desirous of witnessing that wonderful event. Then they came up all together near to the sea, of awful roar, dancing, as it were, with its billows, bounding with the breeze, and laughing with masses of froth, and stumbling at the caves, and thronged with diverse kinds of sharks, and frequented by flocks of various birds. And the deities accompanied ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his head over it and said that it would be cheaper to pull it down and build a new one; but as it was an old family house I could not do that. However, between ourselves, I don't think there will be much of the old one left by the time we have finished. It looks awful at present. I am building a new wall against the old one, so that it will look just the same, only it will be new. The windows are going to be made bigger, and there will be a new roof put on. Inside it will all have to come down, all the woodwork was so rotten that it was ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... better. We must offer an expiatory sacrifice to Oromasis, for, awful thought! in three days he would have to regenerate me, and the operation would be performed in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... engine out. And it did seem for a time that there was no 'if' in it." Cora jumped lightly out of the boat and was ready to greet the other girls. Soon a discussion of color and its causes was in progress, Cora maintaining that her cause of anxiety had been that awful engine ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... Fates, of awful empery! Never may I by Zeus be wooed— Never give o'er my maidenhood To any god that dwells ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... he said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words. The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful sight—children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew confused. "Then a patrol arrived and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... "Goodness, it's awful," exclaimed Walter. "I wish I had a clothes-pin on my nose. Smells just like as island of Limburger cheese set in a lake of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... mental labour, and yet couched in a violently controversial tone. Violent as it was, an editorial note witnesses that it was modified. It must have covered Pawkins with shame and confusion of face. It left no loophole; it was murderous in argument, and utterly contemptuous in tone; an awful thing for the declining years of a ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... said the neighbor. "But they're gone,—that's one thing certain. And who but a blood relation, that couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful Clifford? That's it, you may ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... awful, Paul stood a moment, with an expression of agony so horrible that for an instant even Hugh ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... awful here," said the Widow Weld. "Nothing to do but sew at the Red Cross shop; and no sugar ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... and, even then a schemer and an aspirant, the very sight of the room sufficed to call back all the hopes and visions, the restless projects and the feverish desires, which had now brought him to the envied state of an acknowledged celebrity and a shattered frame. There must have been something awful in the combination of those active remembrances with the cause which had led him to that apartment; and there was a homily in the serene countenance of the dead, which preached more effectually to the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... except for shoveling snow and carrying more coal I never knew when summer quit and winter come. There was no movies them days—a theater might come twice a winter, or sometimes a temperance lecturer that showed a picture of the inside of a drunkard's stomach, all redlike and awful. We didn't have much other entertainment. Of course we had church sociables now and then, or a surprise party on someone. Either way, the fun no more than paid for the extra cooking. I never seen nothing or went nowhere, and if when I ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... anything I ever saw. They are built in the most delightful glens of the mountains; they have plenty of water and grass at all seasons; they have cattle enough for their own use, and their superfluous grain purchases all their luxuries; and while the thunder rolls in awful grandeur over their heads, they can look from their tremendous precipices over all that wild and woody plain which extends from the Faleme to the Black River. This plain is in extent, from North to South, about forty miles: the range of hills ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... got my tongue loose from the roof of the mouth to which it was cleaving, I should have yelled aloud at this awful discovery. As it was I yelled silently. For of all terrors upon earth, sleep-walking was the one I dreaded the most. Not that I had ever walked myself, or, indeed, enjoyed the embarrassing friendship of any ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... of this battle was to put an end to the idea of a Northern invasion. Lee's veterans who went down in the awful charges of Gettysburg could ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... "Sakes alive! isn't this awful?" she wailed, making a clutch at Miss Vrain's arm. "You've done it, this time, Diana. Ferruci's dead, and your father alive, and I'm not a widow, and my father away I don't know where! I was told that the police were after ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... freedom revived the ancient and awful examples of the judgment of tyrants, and the Imperial culprits were deposed and condemned as the authors of the death of Constantine. But the severity of the conscript fathers was stained by the indiscriminate punishment of the innocent and the guilty: Martina and Heracleonas were sentenced ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... verdict pronounced over him and at that same moment, as he afterwards declared, he was seized with such terror of the supreme judgment of God, that he besought the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and of St. Philomena, and he implored the Almighty through them to vouchsafe to postpone the awful moment of his appearance before ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... bears, Historia, Mythologia, Fabula; With footstep tottering and unstable She dragg'd a large and wooden carved-table, Where, with wide sleeves and human mien, The Lord was catechizing seen; Adam, Eve, Eden, the Serpent's seduction, Gomorrah and Sodom's awful destruction, The twelve illustrious women, too, That mirror of honour brought to view; All kinds of bloodthirstiness, murder, and sin, The twelve wicked tyrants also were in, And all kinds of goodly doctrine and law; Saint Peter with ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... so sure about it," she said, with indignant spirit. "I'll never marry any stranger, unless he's awful rich—oh, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... "Quite some folks living here. Don't suppose they spend such a whale of a lot of time thinking about Milt Daggett and Bill McGolwey and Prof Jones. I guess most of these people wouldn't think Heinie Rauskukle's store was so gosh-awful big. I wasn't scared of Minneapolis—much—but there they didn't ring in mountains and an ocean on you. And I didn't have to go up on the hill and meet folks like Claire's relations, and figure out whether you shake hands catch-as-catch-can or Corinthian. Look at that ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... awful pause; after which all the company, as is usual in cases of difficulty, began to give separate and inconsistent counsel. Alexander ab Alexandro proposed they should send some one to compound with the Caterans, who would readily, he said, give up their prey ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... sun and its light. A great scientist, Doctor Steinmetz, says that light and electric waves are the same thing. Perhaps they are, though they surely work differently under different conditions. But if the sun has an awful lot of heat it can't send it ninety-five million miles—not in reason! The heat only makes light and that light travels through space. It reaches the atmosphere of our earth and is converted into heat again. Perhaps light ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... the thought of undertaking such an office unless he could feel decidedly that the highest and holiest motives were guiding him to it, and neither father nor mother dared urge their son to take on himself, from any desire to please them, so awful a responsibility. Yet none the less for this did Hubert love his Saviour, nor did he wish to decline his service, or shrink from bearing that cross which is laid on all who make a bold and manly profession of faith in ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... the Lovitz mountain by a furious tempest of rain and snow. The plain on which his army was encamped soon became a sheet of water, and many of his men and animals were drowned or frozen to death. Thunder, lightning, and hurricane combined to produce an awful scene, and there were moments when the whole world seemed on fire. The emperor took shelter under a large oak, but, fearing the tree might be thrown down by the furious wind, he soon made for open ground. Scarcely ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... used to buy yer ma dresses and hats when I went to the city," said he. "And she looked as good as the best—not for these days, but for them times." He looked critically at the portrait. "I bought them clothes and awful dear they seemed to me." His glance returned to his daughter. "Go get yourself up proper," said he, between request and command. "SHE wouldn't 'a ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... How awful of you! Never mind. I know how terribly easy it is to forget. And now you must come over to us instead. Falcon insisted that you would wish us to have lunch, so we did—a jolly good one, too. And Jack smoked one ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... on this the lower or inverted brick dome was laid. The whole fabric was on one of the terraces which were heaved up in some old geological cataclysm, when some lake gave way, and the Carrotook River was born. The level was higher than that of the top of the fly-wheels, which, with an awful velocity now, were circling in their wild career in the ravine below. Three of the lowest moonlets, as I have called them,—separate croquet-balls, if you take my other illustration,—had been completed; their ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... library with every sort of comfort and splendour about him, enjoying in dignified ease the society of mighty spirits from the past, in those works which have given and received an earthly immortality. His hand was upon Sallust; and having just been reading the awful lines which present in Catiline the type of almost every great conspirator, he raised his eyes and gazed on vacancy, calling up with little labour, as it were, a substantial image to his mind's eye of him whom the great historian ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... had her evening off; and then it was Wendy's part to put Jane to bed. That was the time for stories. It was Jane's invention to raise the sheet over her mother's head and her own, thus making a tent, and in the awful ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... dreading some awful calamity, and there, in the dim light of the stars, she found her son weltering in his blood, shed by his own hand for love of her. His dying eyes which he turned toward her still spoke ardent love, and he expired while endeavoring ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... and awful in the mishap that had befallen them, that for some minutes they stood upon the spot where they had settled without moving or addressing a word to one another. They gazed after the canoe. They knew that it was wrecked, although they could see nothing ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... lost, and Asshur came to be viewed simply as a celestial being—the first and highest of all the divine agents who ruled over heaven and earth. It is indicative of the (comparatively speaking) elevated character of Assyrian polytheism that this exalted and awful deity continued from first to last the main object of worship, and was not superseded in the thoughts of men by the lower and more intelligible divinities, such as Shamas and Sin, the Sun and Moon, Nergal the God of War, Nin the God ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the "Supplies." But sixty of the five hundred colonists were found alive—sixty haggard men, women, and children, hunger-crazed, huddled behind the broken palisades. Sadly suggestive must have seemed the names of the two vessels that appeared upon that awful scene—Patience and Deliverance. But the deliverance that they brought was of a poor sort. They had not on board provisions ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... like her, it was a'most as awful as seeing the dead come to life again. She had Mary's turn with her head; Mary's—poor creature! poor creature!" He whispered those words to himself, under his breath, his face turned aside, his eyes wandering over the ground at his feet, with a ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... require vast periods; and, according to my belief, at least half the earth's time of habitability had passed before man appeared. But we see Jupiter is admirably suited for those who have been developed somewhere else, and it would be an awful shame if we allowed it to lie unimproved till it produces appreciative inhabitants of its own, for we find more to admire in one half-hour than its entire present population during its lifetime. Yet, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... softly, forgetting at the awful moment that she possessed another name, "it has been voted that three of us perish by torture, but you are not in the list; you are named for a different fate. Is it still your wish that I ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... and time are constantly occupied with the duties of your command, which almost deters us from asking your attention to this matter, but thought it might be that you had not considered this subject in all of its awful consequences, and that on more reflection you, we hope, would not make this people an exception to all mankind, for we know of no such instance ever having occurred —surely never in the United States—and what has ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... those who perished was Captain Coles himself, Captain Burgoyne, the commander of the ship, and a son of the then First Lord of the Admiralty—Mr Childers. It is unnecessary to recall to the memory of the adult among my readers the deep feeling of pity and gloom spread by this awful disaster throughout ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... when he blew his horn? Did the awful mountains in the blood-red sunset dissolve as the walls of Jericho fell to a similar sound? Did the round, squat Tower vanish like a dream-phantom? Or was the sound of the horn the last breath of the hero? If we believe ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Robinson, after a short conversation with the beggar, told Mr. West that she had asked him to give her a farthing. "But as you gave her a two-penny piece," said he, "she has brought you the change." This instance of humble honesty, contrasted with the awful mass of misery with which it was united, gave him a favourable idea of the latent sentiments of the Italians. How much, indeed, is the character of that people traduced by the rest of Europe! How often is the traveller in Italy, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... it. She saw again in sharp vision the miserable woman fainting on the settle, the dwarf sitting, handcuffed, under the eye of his captors; she felt again the rush of that whirlwind of agony through which she had borne the wife's helpless soul in that awful dawn. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of all tyrants hereafter over any people who shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph! "What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss 'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope, seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... But to explain the awful question which immediately followed that gesture and exclamation—a question which I should have imagined to be impossible even in Varvara Petrovna, I must ask the reader to remember what that lady's temperament had always been, and the extraordinary impulsiveness ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... awful week he passed in his grandmother's care—a week that terminated in the arrival of still another new-comer, who, in course of time, developed into little Nance. It is not impossible that the remembrance of that black week tended to colour ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... moment of that time was full of deadly torture to me, deadly anguish? Ah, me, the very memory of it distresses me! Every one spoke to me as though our engagement was a certainty, and our marriage settled. Yet to me there came, very slowly, the awful conviction that you had ignored, or had forgotten the old ties. I fought against that conviction. I would not entertain it. Then came for me the fatal day when I heard you tell the Duchess of Aytoun that you had never ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... round about his palace a superb aristocratic town, inhabited entirely by his nobles, and the officers of his sumptuous Court. The people were rather hardly pressed, to be sure, in order to keep up this splendour; for his Highness's dominions were small, and so he wisely lived in a sort of awful retirement from them, seldom showing his face in his capital, or seeing any countenances but those of his faithful domestics and officers. His palace and gardens of Ludwigslust were exactly on the French model. Twice a week there were ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Pope received the intelligence some time afterwards, he thundered forth against Mr. Chaloner and the workmen the most awful and comprehensive curse. They were to be cursed most wholly and thoroughly in every part of their bodies, every saint was to curse them, and from the thresholds of the holy church of God Almighty they were to be sequestered, that they might 'be tormented, disposed ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... but opposite Lights; Caesar's Character is chiefly made up of Good-nature, as it shewed itself in all its Forms towards his Friends or his Enemies, his Servants or Dependants, the Guilty or the Distressed. As for Cato's Character, it is rather awful than amiable. Justice seems most agreeable to the Nature of God, and Mercy to that of Man. A Being who has nothing to Pardon in himself, may reward every Man according to his Works; but he whose very best Actions must be seen ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... who had the other team, they were lowered by means of an Alpine rope into the crevasse until they could get at the dogs. They, found the poor animals swinging round, snapping at one another and howling dismally, but in an awful tangle. The dogs were rescued a pair at a time and, fortunately for all concerned, they lay down and rested when hauled up to the surface by Uncle Bill and "Cherry." When all the animals were up and Scott and Meares themselves had regained safety, a dog ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... that speaks this quieting word? It is He who Himself felt the preciousness of the assurance during His own awful sufferings, that all were needed, and all appointed; that from Bethlehem's cradle to Calvary's Cross there was not the redundant thorn in the chaplet of sorrow which He, the Man of Sorrows, bore. Every ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... hev, but ye needn't allus be a-settin' other folks down. Mebbe Crankett ain't the whole world, but it's seed that awful case of Molly Capins, and the shipwreck of thirty-four, when the awful nor'easter ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the kimono wasn't nice, Mama," explained Hannah, "and 'course Cousin Carrie was awful good to send it to me, but—but Santy Claus is going to bring Virginia one ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... natural and justifiable indignation, Mrs. Darling at once sought Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Flight. "They had an awful scene, I'm sure," said she, "for his face was as black as a storm, and I knew how it would be. Some one's been blabbing and making matters infinitely worse than they really were. What do you suppose will happen when he and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... dawned on my startled sight What awful sighs broke on my listening ear! The anguish of the earth, augmented here A thousand-fold, made one continuous night. The sack I flung away in impious spite Hung yet upon me, filled, I saw in fear. With tears that rained from ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stopped at her own gate, catching her breath quickly. "She must have been burnt awful," she thought. "Poor soul!" she murmured, her sharp eyes softening with tears. ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... awful row in the Bazaar last night," said Mr. Ephraim Perkins to his spouse facing him across the breakfast table. "They killed a woman and burned ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... heard with fear afar, [87] Thunders through echoing pines the headlong Aar; Or rather stay to taste the mild delights Of pensive Underwalden's [U] pastoral heights. —Is there who 'mid these awful wilds has seen 340 The native Genii walk the mountain green? Or heard, while other worlds their charms reveal, Soft music o'er [88] the aerial summit steal? While o'er the desert, answering every close, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... felt herself seized by a strong arm and swung up behind Captain French on the gray horse. She was in a panic of terror, and would have cried and begged for mercy if she had not been in so much awe of her captor. She thought with awful apprehension of these stolen indentures in her little pocket. What if he should find ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... always been good pals, Mother, so I may as well tell you. Robin had just asked me to marry him. So I told him I was engaged to Hartley. He went on in the most awful way, and said that I was selling myself and that I would not be the first girl ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... his fear of failure with Arctura, but at times contemplated the thing as an awful possibility—not that he loved Forgue much. The only way fathers in sight of the grave can fancy themselves holding on to the things they must leave, is in their children; but lord Morven had a stronger and better reason for his unrighteousness: in a troubled, self-reproachful way, he loved the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... When, Maruts, who make (all things) tremble, you direct your awful (vigour) downwards from afar, as light (descends from heaven), by whose worship, by whose praise (are you attracted)? To what (place of sacrifice), to whom, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... conclusion that the beech grove people were afraid a new chief might turn out to be a bad Indian, too, and wear iron shoes like Vendonah. But they were wrong, because the real reason was that the tribe had led such an exciting life under Vendonah that they couldn't settle down to anything tamer. He was awful, but he always kept things happening—terrible things, of course. They hated him, but they weren't able to discover any other warrior that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little like ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... I walk by the vast calm river, The awful river so dread to see, I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth forever Are bridged by his thoughts ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... long before; nor aught availed him now To have built in Heaven high towers; nor did he scape By all his engines, but was headlong sent, With his industrious crew, to build in Hell. Meanwhile the winged Heralds, by command Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim A solemn council forthwith to be held At Pandemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called From every band and squared regiment ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... much the more positive was their association of the THUNDER-STORM as that which brings both warmth and rain with the renewed vernal life of vegetation. The impressive phenomena which characterize it, the prodigious noise, the awful flash, the portentous gloom, the blast, the rain, have left a profound impression on the myths of every land. Fire from water, warmth and moisture from the destructive breath of the tempest, this was the riddle of ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... of this lower world, and consider what a State, or a cluster of States, of marked and acknowledged literary and intellectual lead might do to color and shape that opinion to their will. Consider how winged are words; how electrical, light-like the speed of thought; how awful human sympathy. Consider how soon a wise, a beautiful thought uttered here,—a sentiment of liberty perhaps, or word of succor to the oppressed, of exhortations to duty, to patriotism, to glory, the refutation of a sophism, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... art! How long has it been since he introduced one of the Temple singers into our lady's hall to show what a piercing high note could be reached by a male voice? And he had the creature sing to prove his contention. I thought I should die! It was worse than awful; it ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... two men gaped at him, incredulous, an awful thing happened. With an appalling roar and a rending of steel and iron, the submarine halted abruptly in its headlong flight, reared upward at an acute angle and then fell forward with a tremendous crash. The adventurers were thrown violently ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg
... the poor girl an awful life with her meanness. Yet," added my father with a greater display of feeling than a man might naturally conceive for a mere relative, "she used to be such an original, dear, charming woman! I cannot think what has made her change so much. By the way, you didn't notice a secretary fellow ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their arms. We were so near to one party that they might have thrown their spears on board. BY this time we were flying past the shore with such velocity that it made us quite giddy; and our situation was too awful to give us time to observe the motions of the Indians; for we were entering the narrowest part of the strait, and the next moment were close to the rock, which it appeared almost impossible to avoid, and it was ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... out to her that Homer wouldn't be likely to come and collect all his things in the night in order to keep a date with an assassin, or even to have his leg broke. About the third day she guessed pretty close to the awful truth and spoke a few calm words about putting her case in the hands of ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Bloke turned blue and shivered, then hysterically laughed, And hurried, cackling shrilly, to the Owner's cabin aft; There in that awful presence, with lips aghast and pale, To the horror-haunted Owner he re-told the horrid tale:— "Boy Simpkins (Second Class, too!), I regret to let you know, Sir, Had the face to mutter 'Blast you!' to a First-Class ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... Persians. Phidias fashioned out of this a colossal image of the goddess Nemesis, the deity whose peculiar function was to visit the exuberant prosperity both of nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about eight miles from Marathon. Athens itself contained numerous memorials of her primary great victory. Panenus, the cousin of Phidias, represented it in fresco on the walls of the painted porch; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... pitiful—"and I walked right over all common sense and shipboard rules and discipline and everything and came here, fetching this to be stuck on to the wire, or whatever they do with telegrafts. But," he added, a waver in his tones, "she is so lord-awful pretty, I couldn't ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... percht on point of Time, betwixt the two Eternities, Whose awful secrets gathering round with black profound ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... lowered the burners a little and began on the coffee. Then she saw the point of the other stove, for she found she needed it for the bacon and biscuits. The actual work was not so complicated; the thing that appalled her was Pennington's insistence on the awful amount of food needed for the six men and herself. But, of course, as she reminded herself, there was a difference between cooking for Cousin Anna and herself on the maid's day out, or for Lucille and herself, and cooking for six hungry men who worked in the open air at reforesting. ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... betrothal. No one else knows aught thereof, not even Hermione. Themistocles refuses all further details. 'Glaucon lives,'—I can think of nothing else. Where is he? What does he? How soon will the awful truth go flying through Hellas? I trembled when I heard he was dead. But name my terrors now I know he is alive! Send Hiram. He, if any snake living, can find me my enemy before it is too late. And speed the victory ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... They broke and fled in awful confusion. The miserable fugitives were pursued and cut down by the keen swords of the cavalry, while from every eminence the cannon of the victors plowed their retreating ranks with balls. Henry himself headed the cavalry in the impetuous pursuit, that the day might be the more decisive. When ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the good intelligence between the magistrates and criminals, the strong inclination of the Chinese to lucre often prompts them to break through this awful confederacy, and puts them on defrauding the authority that protects them, of its proper quota of the pillage. For not long after the above-mentioned transaction, (the former mandarine attendant on the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Reformers than the honour paid to celibacy. They held that the doctrine of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the apostle Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scandals which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by espousing a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by fire during the reign of Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had reappeared ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sound a bit attractive," she said frankly. "I think you need an awful lot of patience. It's very kind of you to be interested, but I think I shall go back to Eldred's, for a time, ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... the sacred stillness that now reigned over the once stormy battlefield, where but a short while before the tread of struggling legions, the thunder of cannon, and the roar of infantry mingled in systematic confusion. But now the awful silence and quietude that pervades the field after battle—where lay the dreamless sleepers of friend and foe, victor and vanquished, the blue and the gray, with none to sing their requiems—nothing heard save the plaintive notes of the night bird or the faint murmurs of grief of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... "It was an awful night. The streets were running rivers, the wind rattling the shutters and flattening the umbrellas of everybody who tried to carry one—one of those storms that drives straight at the front of the house, drenching it from ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... said Sir Langham, "and I'm in it every night this voyage, for I've knocked off morphia and opiates—they were playing the deuce with my constitution, and I've strength of mind for anything when I fairly take hold. But it's awful. When d'you suppose ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Eyes of God! O Head! My strength of soul is fled. Gone is heart's force, rebuked is mind's desire! When I behold Thee so, With awful brows a-glow, With burning glance, and lips lighted by fire, Fierce as those flames which shall Consume, at close of ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... some more, after they git the barb well hooked, with the game fish kickin' up an awful row," chuckled Perk. "Huh! don't I know how impatience is my besettin' sin and ain't I always a'tryin' to curb it? That's why I'm crazy to work in double harness with you, brother, 'cause you hold me in when I feel like spreadin' myself brashly. Guess I know when I'm well ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Thurston had stumbled into his extempore prayer. Maggie found herself caught into a strange companionship with the people around her. Not now ecstasy nor the excitement of religious fanaticism nor the superstitious preparation for some awful events—none of these emotions now lifted her into some strained unnatural sphere—no, nothing but a strange sympathy and kindness and understanding that she had never known in all her life before. She felt the hunger, the passionate appeal: "Oh God come! Prove Thyself! We have waited so ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... the doctors said he would not get over it, then that if he got over it he would be an idiot; but finally their surgical skill and careful nursing were rewarded, and he came out well in every respect, except for an awful scar along one side of his head. In due time he moved into the Boys' School at St. John's, Waterloo Road (Mr. Davey, headmaster). In July, 1893, a tiny child was playing in the middle of Stamford Street when a hansom cab came dashing along over the smooth wood paving. Little John Clinton ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... Sand's and other pictures of a modified Arcadia in the French provinces, nothing but experience, which I cannot boast, could tell us; and the same may be said of Germinal, as to the mining districts which have since received so awful a purification by fire. That more and more important person the railway-man takes his turn in La Bete Humaine, and the book supplies perhaps the most striking instance of the radically inartistic character of the plan of flooding fiction with technical details. But there is, in the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... features were disfigured with gold leaf. But notwithstanding this, and the shrinkage of the flesh, I think the face was one of the most imposing and beautiful that I ever saw. It was that of a very old man, and his dead countenance still wore so calm and solemn, indeed, so awful a look, that I grew quite superstitious (though as you know, I am pretty well accustomed to dead people), and put the head down in a hurry. There were still some wrappings left upon the face of the second body, and I did not remove them; but she must have been ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... an awful rotter. The worst of it was that he had good instincts and when he went wrong, he went wrong in spite of 'em. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Revolution indicated a very much more important movement among peoples. It developed awful excesses. The wild declarations and extremes practiced by the Committee of Safety in the French Revolution were revolting to any man affected by ordinary humane considerations and had in fact a remarkable ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... often noticed on Alpine glaciers, only that these tremendous cracks in the surface are produced by the shrinkage of the crust consequent on cooling. Can we point out some analogies to this on the Earth? Certainly. The defile of the Jordan, terminating in the awful depression of the Dead Sea, no doubt occurs to you on the moment. But the Yosemite Valley, as I saw it ten years ago, is an apter comparison. There I stood on the brink of a tremendous chasm with perpendicular walls, a mile in width, a mile in depth and eight miles ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... you for the world. But look here, I want you to think better of what you said—about carrying the tale to Mr. West. There's an awful lot done by passing things over; you don't know! Let's return these articles—see, it's Cadbury's pillow and Trevelyan's coat, so neither of them set the trap—and let's agree to forgive and forget ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... doctrine, nor perhaps did they quite understand the eloquent little sermon which the Perpetual Curate gave them on Good Friday in the afternoon, between his own services, by way of impressing upon their minds the awful memories of the day; but they were as skilful in the variations of their young evangelist's looks, and as well qualified to decide upon the fact that there was "a something between" him and Miss Lucy Wodehouse, as any practised observer in the higher ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... hinges; yet the mere idea of such a contingency appalled her. Remembering her labour in unlocking the door from the outside, she doubted if she could open it from within were it once to close upon that awful vault. And all this time the lapping of the tide against the stone sounded louder, and she saw little spirts of spray flashing against the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... still unpublished, I should never have known where.—By the time these disastrous Carthagena tidings reached England, his Britannic Majesty was in Hanover; involved, he, and all his State doctors, English and Hanoverian, in awful contemplation on Pragmatic Sanction, Kaiserwahl, Celestial Balance, and the saving of Nature's Keystone, should this still prove possible to human effort and contrivance. In which Imminency of Doomsday itself, the small ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "All the time you ban in awful hurry, Captain Zim. Dis fog awful tick. Yas, we shall take her in if you say so—and maybe so pile her up on de rock. You ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... orders for Christmas cards at the newspaper counter one night (the popular remark of customers at this period was "Ain't the evenings drawing in something awful!") when a man rushed in and looked around in a dazed, frightened manner. He muttered indistinctly some explanation, and was going off, when Gertie ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... heavenly form of thine, Brightest fair, thou art divine, Sprung from great immortal race Of the gods, for in thy face Shines more awful majesty Than dull weak mortality Dare with misty eyes behold And live. Therefore on this mould Lowly do I bend my knee In worship of thy deity.[271] ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... deaf, for she continued peacefully on her way until the awful moment when, struck by the horse's chest as by a locomotive under full steam, she rolled ten paces off, turning three ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... home the happy Mr. Twitty burst out laughing. 'It do seem awful comical, Cap'n Abner,' said he, 'that, after all we said about comin' home, that me and her should be a-settin' on the back seat and you a-drivin' in front alone.' And when this remark was explained to Mrs. Twitty ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... paddle-box as the boat swept on. It certainly was a fascinating sight—this sloping rapid, hurrying on to bury itself under the crushing wheels. For a brief moment Jack saw how they would seize anything floating on that ghastly incline, whirl it round in one awful revolution of the beating paddles, and then bury it, broken and shattered out of all recognition, deep in the muddy undercurrent ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hear the birds sing, and along the seashore to gaze and wonder at the shells and seaweeds, eels and crabs in the pools among the rocks when the tide was low; and best of all to watch the waves in awful storms thundering on the black headlands and craggy ruins of the old Dunbar Castle when the sea and the sky, the waves and the clouds, were mingled together as one. We never thought of playing truant, but after I was five or six ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... mud had burnt the boots through before they could be pulled off, and the knee above had been severely hurt. Nothing could be done but ride on, and the brave little chap managed to stick on his pony, although in awful pain, until he reached home a day and a ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the window, raised her arm with a monitory gesture to the sky, and then all at once seemed to disappear as it absorbed in the watery moonshine. Grobey was as bold a bagman as ever flanked a mare with his gig-whip, but this awful visitation was too much. Boots, looking-glass, and table swam with a distracting whirl before his eyes; he uttered a feeble yell, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... misdemeanors. There is no crime that The Black One has not performed—faultlessly, as befits his nature. Therefore we imperfect beings model ourselves upon his perfections. And sometimes, The Black One rewards us by appearing before us in the awful beauty of his fiery flesh. Yes, Nephew, I have actually been privileged to see him. Two years ago he appeared at the conclusion of the Games, and he also ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... During that moment of awful suspense, strict discipline prevailed. The last persons to appear were the major and Mrs Bubsby and their two tall daughters. The former, with a blanket thrown over his head, making him look very much like a young polar bear, and the lady in her nightcap, with a bonnet secured ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston |
