"Dreadful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gloom gathered thickly around him. The old man clung to life with pathetic earnestness. Though life had been often melancholy, he never affected to conceal the horror with which he regarded death. He frequently declared that death must be dreadful to every reasonable man. "Death, my dear, is very dreadful," he says simply in a letter to Lucy Porter in the last year of his life. Still later he shocked a pious friend by admitting that the fear oppressed him. Dr. Adams tried the ordinary consolation of the ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... nothing. I was wondering how much I ought to give the cabman. I know it's utterly silly; but you don't know how dreadful such things are to me—how I shrink from having to deal with strange people. (Quickly and reassuringly.) But it's all right. He beamed all over and touched his hat when Morell gave him two shillings. ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... I cannot tell you more; the sequel of my fears is too dreadful to unfold! Even yet, my poor heart struggles to disbelieve it." Leah dropped her head for a moment, while a sigh escaped her tremulous ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... of thing I've been yearning to do," she decided. "Why, that's what our S.S.O.P. membership is for. Auntie said she hadn't found a correspondent for Private Hargreaves. I'll send him a letter myself. It's dreadful to think of him out in the trenches without a soul to take an ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and round, And through each hollow mind The Memory of dreadful things Rushed like a dreadful wind, And Horror stalked before each man, ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... right in, soon shall Britain Be humbled to the kneeling. Strength never quell'd, and sword and shield, And firearms play defiance; Forwards they fly, and still their cry, Is,[141] "Give us flesh!" like lions. Make ready for your travel, Be sharp-set, and be willing, There will be a dreadful revel, And liquor red be spilling. O, that each chief[142] whose warriors rife, Are burning for the slaughter, Would let their volley, like fire to holly, Blaze on the usurping traitor. Full many a soldier arming, Is laggard in his spirit, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... considerate conversation, "who condescended, in his desire of reconciliation, even below the royal dignity," that both parties were incensed the more, and resolved instantly to try their strength. The onset was made by the archers of Hotspur, whose tremendous volleys caused dreadful carnage among the King's troops. "They fell," says Walsingham, "as the leaves fall on the ground after a frosty night at the approach of winter. There (p. 174) was no room for the arrows to reach the ground, every one struck a mortal man." The King's ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hasn't spoken to Sally yet; and she says she never will: just to see her on the street, gives her a dreadful nervous headache, sometimes for two days. Mrs. Little's nerves are too much for her always: she ain't ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... and even brave Sir Sidney turns a little as the boat reaches the doomed ship, and the men are seen clambering up her sides. At that dreadful moment a huge cloud of smoke, balloon shaped, rises high above the Desespere, a sheet of flame shoots into the air, and yards, and masts, and spars, and men are seen high above all. A sound far louder than thunder ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... the outside story; and it reads like a dreadful quarrel. The notorious G. K. Chesterton, a reactionary Torquemada whose one gloomy pleasure was in the defence of orthodoxy and the pursuit of heretics, long calculated and at last launched a denunciation of a brilliant ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... denied that the radical method of reconstruction resorted to by Congress occasioned dreadful evils. Among other things it ignored the natural prejudices of the whites, many of whom were as loyal as any citizens in the land. The South, subjected to a second conquest after having laid down its ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... had so much reason to love my father,—I will leave you to imagine how I was affected by a catastrophe so dreadful, so unlooked-for. Much less could I suspect the cause of his despair; yet he had foreseen his ruin before my marriage; had resolved to defer it, for his daughter's and his wife's sake, as long as possible, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Miss Ruey, "he seemed greatly supported at the funeral, but he's dreadful broke down since. I went into Naomi's room this morning, and there the old man was a-sittin' by her bed, and he had a pair of her shoes in his hand,—you know what a leetle bit of a foot she had. I never saw nothin' look so kind o' solitary as ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... dreams; On his last night Rufus 'laid himself down to sleep, but not in peace; the attendants were startled by the King's voice—a bitter cry—a cry for help—a cry for deliverance—he had been suddenly awakened by a dreadful dream, as of exquisite anguish befalling him in that ruined church, at the foot of the Malwood rampart.' Palgrave: Hist. of Normandy and of England, B. IV: ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... that I am frightening you to no purpose," Fraisier continued. (La Cibot's feeling of repulsion had not escaped him.) "The affairs which made Mme. la Presidente's dreadful reputation are so well known at the law-courts, that you can make inquiries there if you like. The great person who was all but sent into a lunatic asylum was the Marquis d'Espard. The Marquis d'Esgrignon ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Sylvia's rampant session in school, involving the passage of the Greatest Common Divisor—far more dreadful than the passage of the Beresina—her blue rosettes at the recent Commencement, and the prospect of a long vacation, together with further miscellany appertaining to her age and sex, have strung the chords of her sentimental being up to the highest pitch. Feeling herself to be naturally ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... afresh, I have despised his Person, I have despised his Righteousness, I have counted his Blood an unholy thing; I have done despite to the Spirit of Grace. Therefore I have shut myself out of all the Promises, and there now remains to me nothing but threatnings, dreadful threatnings, fearful threatnings of certain Judgement which shall devour me ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... disbelieving in the nobleness of those who have gone before them, they learn more and more to disbelieve in the nobleness of those around them; and, by denying God's works of old, come, by a just and dreadful Nemesis, to be unable to see his works in the men of their own day; to suspect and impugn valour, righteousness, disinterestedness in their contemporaries; to attribute low motives; to pride themselves on looking at men and things as 'men who know the world,' so the young puppies ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... back, and again he wished himself safely back at the deacon's. New York seemed to him a very dreadful place. His head ached; his stomach was out of tune, ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... indeed," drawled Mrs. Cardross, laying aside her novel; and, placidly ignoring Hamil's protests: "Neville, you drag him about through those dreadful swamps before he is acclimated, and you keep him up half the night talking plans and making sketches. He is too young ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... in South England," he says, "to King Harry the Fourth, for shame. I wot you ben great lord-es two, I am a poor squire of land; I will never see my captain fight on a field, and stand myself and look on; But while I may my weapon wield I will fight both heart and hand." That day, that day, that dreadful day: the first fytte here I find, An you will hear any more of the hunting of the Cheviot, yet ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... be to see him!" said Francisca. "Just think, my friends, I have not seen him for seven years. Not since he was eleven years old. He has been on that cold dreadful island in the North all this time. I wonder has ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... worm-like meanness, and death in its plain, stupid loathsomeness. Two days out of this year live like fire in my mind. I went to my uncle Richard's funeral. There was cold meat and sherry on the table; a dreadful servant asked me if I would go up to the corpse-room. (Mark the expression.) I went. It lay swollen and featureless, and two busy hags lifted it up and packed it tight with wisps of hay, and ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... at the same time to the kings of Portugal, Aragon, Castile, and Sicily, telling them of the extraordinary information he had received respecting the Templars, and declaring his unwillingness to believe the dreadful charges brought against them. He referred to the services rendered to Christendom by the order, and to its unblemished reputation ever since it was founded. He urged upon his fellow-sovereigns that nothing should be done in haste, but that inquiry should be made in due and solemn legal form, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... regulation of the weather, and that the sun passed, from tropic to tropic, by his direction, represents, in striking colours, the sad effects of a distempered imagination. It becomes the more affecting when we recollect, that it proceeds from one who lived in fear of the same dreadful visitation; from one who says emphatically: "Of the uncertainties in our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason." The inquiry into the cause of madness, and the dangerous prevalence of imagination, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... make any change in the company. I thought the old man was gone by himself when he got this letter. He came over instantly in his chariot, from the cotton-mill office to the manse, and swore an oath, by some dreadful name, that I was a Solomon. However, I only mention this to show how experience had instructed me, and as a sample of that sinister provisioning of friends that was going on in the world at this time—all owing, as I do verily ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... been the result of a fall: it appeared that the stair-carpet was loosened at one point. But, in addition to this, there were injuries inflicted upon the eyes, nose and mouth, as if by the agency of some savage animal, which, dreadful to relate, rendered those features unrecognizable. The vital spark was, it is needless to add, completely extinct, and had been so, upon the testimony of respectable medical authorities, for several hours. The author or authors of this mysterious outrage are alike ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... a voice said, "He is sinking fast—they must be sent for at once." Then there were more people in the room, people whom I thought I had known once, long ago; but I was buried and crushed under the pain, like the thing beneath the heap of sickles. There swept over me a dreadful fear; and I could see that the fear was reflected in the faces above me; but now they were strangely distorted and elongated, so that I could have laughed, if only I had had the time; but I had to move the weight off me, which was crushing me. Then a roaring ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... must be that dreadful strange boy, Lance's friend,' sighed Geraldine, almost turning pale. Then, trying to cheer up, 'But it is only for the day, and Lance ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exalted idea of poetry, though a very bad one of poets. An anti-poetic Dominican was notorious for persecuting all verse-makers; whose power he attributed to the effects of heresy and magic. The lights of philosophy have dispersed all these accusations of magic, and have shown a dreadful chain of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... had regained his freedom, his chance of maintaining himself and his rapidly increasing family by his art seemed as far away as ever. By October 15th he is at his wits' end again, and writes in his Journal: 'The harassings of a family are really dreadful. Two of my children are ill, and Mary is nursing. All night she was attending to the sick and hushing the suckling, with a consciousness that our last shilling was going. I got up in the morning bewildered—Xenophon hardly touched—no money—butcher impudent—all tradesmen ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... deposit them within it, and the wind that whispers through the boughs will be their only requiem. But then they pay neither taxes nor tithes, are never expected to pull off a hat or to make a curtsey, and will live and die without hearing or uttering the dreadful words, 'God ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... and this morning we rode through the woods. We expected to be in the camp this afternoon, but as we were coming to the edge of the forest we heard the cannon and then the rifles. Through three or four dreadful hours, while we shook there in the woods, we listened to a roar and thunder that I would ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she murmured, in a voice as soft as the clear limpid river flowing at her feet, "the love that comes direct from the Divine is very powerful indeed, since, in spite of those dreadful words you have just uttered, I say to you without hesitation, almost without regret: Charles, I am here; Charles, I am ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... dreadful thing to hear that. He had never spoken so since his coming four years before, except once when he was in the purgative way, and the fiend came to him under aspect of a woman. But he had been in agony then, and he was quiet now. Before I ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... put off the question," he continued. "Thus far my life has belonged to you. How gentle, how sweet your control has been! I wish it could last forever. But that may not be. It is the Lord's will that I shall one day become owner of myself—a day of separation, and therefore a dreadful day to you. Let us be brave and serious. I will be your hero, but you must put me in the way. You know the law—every son of Israel must have some occupation. I am not exempt, and ask now, shall I tend the herds? or till the soil? or drive the saw? or be a clerk or lawyer? What shall I be? Dear, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... system of his. And admitting that whatever man does is done for his own interest, does it follow that gratitude is a folly, and virtue and vice identical? Are a villain and a man of honour to be weighed in the same balance? If such a dreadful system were not absurd, virtue would be mere hypocrisy; and if by any possibility it were true, it ought to be proscribed by general consent, since it would lead ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... these days. When I get out of this present scrape. And I hope you'll keep on copying my Sunday stuff after I leave. Nobody else would be so patient with my dreadful handwriting." ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... slumber stirred. In wild amaze, her soul aflame With fury toward the spot she came. When that foul shape of evil mien And stature vast as e'er was seen The wrathful son of Raghu eyed, He thus unto his brother cried: "Her dreadful shape, O Lakshman, see, A form to shudder at and flee. The hideous monster's very view Would cleave a timid heart in two. Behold the demon hard to smite, Defended by her magic might. My hand shall stay her course ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... on those same steps turned into a paving-stone, there would be more than sufficient to pave the streets of Naples anew; were every drop of sweat that has fallen upon them collected, there would be enough water to flood them. And yet now that this dreadful staircase has been superseded by a good macadamised road, every one seems to regret the change. Says the heavily laden contadina: 'The old way was the shortest;' says the artist: 'It was infinitely more picturesque; that new parapet ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... A dreadful idea seized him, he took the knife and advanced with it towards poor Miss Lucy. Dragging her from the chair, he threw her on the ground and began to cut away at her wax neck with his knife. As the chief part of the edge was blunted, he did not at ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... as did Abbey Kelley, but I thought this would surely be wrong. The church had silenced me so effectuately, that even now all my sense of the great need of words could not induce me to attempt it; but if I could "plead the cause" through the press, I must write. Even this was dreadful, as I must use my own name, for my articles would certainly be libelous. If I wrote at all, I must throw myself headlong into the great political maelstrom, and would of course be swallowed up like a fishing-boat in the great Norway horror which decorated ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... was discovered and dragged out within a few yards of him. The incarnate demons were a full hour murdering him, stabbing and hacking him with their pikes and cutlasses in parts of the body where wounds would be exquisitely painful but not mortal. The shrieks of the unhappy man were dreadful, the more so, as every one of his companions expected every moment to share his fate. The approach of night at length put an end to the dreadful scene, and the disappointed ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the little girl; "at least, I know I was there when that dreadful shock came and ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... which the Brahmins sometimes deceive the people, is as follows. They say that the god is afflicted with some dreadful disease, brought on by the distress which he has had, because the people do not worship him as much as they should. In such cases, the idol is sometimes placed at the door of the temple where they rub his forehead and temples with various kinds of medicine. ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... and again he killed them: and they continued to give, and he to kill, until he came to die, and the devil carried away his soul. 11. In three or four months, I being present, more than seven thousand children died of hunger, their fathers and mothers having been taken to the mines. Other dreadful things did I see. 12. Afterwards the Spaniards resolved to go and hunt the Indians who were in the mountains, where they perpetrated marvellous massacres. Thus they ruined and depopulated all this island which we beheld not ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... if to bolt the door, but I checked her with a gesture. Of what use would it be to bar the way of her who came so impulsively? The dreadful truth must be broken to her. It was a task that no third person might assume; let her hear it wrung from her ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Captain Carstairs, whom they beat off, wounding desperately one of his party. For this resistance to authority, they were declared rebels. The next exploit, in which Burly was engaged, was of a bloodier complexion, and more dreadful celebrity. It is well known, that James Sharpe, archbishop of St Andrews, was regarded, by the rigid presbyterians, not only as a renegade, who had turned back from the spiritual plough, but as the principal author of the rigours exercised against their sect. He employed, as an agent ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... heads the German army had pushed its course over the Saar, over the Rhine, over the Lauter; it sniffed at the frontier line; licked Wissembourg and the Spicheren with flaming tongues, shuddered, coiled, and glided over the boundary into the fair land of Lorraine. Then, like some dreadful ringed monster, it cast off two segments, north, south, and moved forward on its belly, while the two new segments, already turned to living bodies, with heads and eyes and contracted scales, struggled on alone, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... whether I loved him. Oh, Kate, I must tell it you all, though it is dreadful to me that I should have to write it. You remember how it came to pass when we were in Westmoreland together at Christmas? Do not think that I am blaming you, but I was very rash then in the answers which I made to him. I thought that I could be useful to him as his wife, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... nevir known what Peas of Mind was since I behaved in Such a Oudacious way w^h truly was the case I can't Deny to Such Gents as Yourselfs that were doing me such Good Fortune And Kindness to me as it would Be a Dreadful sin and shame (such as Trust I can never be Guilty of) to be (w^h am not) and never Can Be insensible Of, Gents do Consider all this Favorably because of my humble Amends w^h I here Make with the greatest Trouble in my Mind that I have Had Ever Since, it was all of the Sperrits ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... faultless before God. This righteousness, he also knew, was nowhere to be found except in the person of Jesus Christ. "My original and inward pollution,—that was my plague and affliction. THAT I saw at a dreadful rate, always putting forth itself within me,—that I had the guilt of to amazement; by reason of that I was more loathsome in mine own eyes than a toad; and I thought I was so in God's eyes too. Sin and corruption, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... your gory ashes stern and pale, Ye martyred thousands! and with dreadful ire, A voice of doom, a front of gloomy fire, Rebuke those faithless souls, whose querulous wail Disturbs your sacred sleep!—"The withering hail Of battle, hunger, pestilence, despair, Whatever of mortal anguish man may bear, We bore unmurmuring! strengthened ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... the sound of bells to hear. Often I wake from sleep: "Oh, hark! Help . . . it is coming . . . near and near." Blindly I reel toward the door; There the snow billows bleak and bare; Blindly I seek my den once more, Silence and darkness and despair. Oh, it is all a dreadful dream! Scurvy and cold and death and dearth; I will awake to warmth and gleam, Silvery seas and greening earth. Life is a dream, its wakening, Death, gentle shadow of ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... into a horrid little parlour, with a newly-lighted, smoking fire, a big Bible, and a ploughing-cup. Mrs. Ogden was a dissenter, so we had really no acquaintance, and, poor thing, had long been unable to go anywhere. She was a pale trembling creature, most neat and clean, but with the dreadful sallow complexion given by perpetual ague. She was very civil, and gave us cake and wine, to the former of which Dora did ample justice, but oh! the impracticability ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... before. This conversation showed me that I have become much more tolerant towards individuals. But though this or that person may be supported by moral sense alone, the world cannot dispense with religion. If it tries to—and it will—there are dreadful times before us. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... of the spoil and a battle took place between them, in the valley of the Adige above Verona, in which Tufa was slain. Frederic, with his Rugian countrymen, occupied the strong city of Ticinum (Pavia), where they spent two dreadful years, "Their minds", says an eye-witness,[55] in after-time the Bishop of that city, "were full of cruel energy which prompted them to daily crimes. In truth, they thought that each day was wasted which they had not made memorable by some sort of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... showed women, sewing. They were sewing at machines, and at hand-work, but not as women are accustomed to sew, with leisurely stitches, stopping to pat a seam here, to run a calculating eye along hem or ruffle. It was a dreadful, mechanical motion, that sewing, a machine-like, relentless motion, with no waste in it, no pause. Fanny's mind leaped back to Winnebago, with its pleasant porches on which leisurely women sat stitching peacefully at ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... blood leap up as he witnessed this, and in his young enthusiasm he longed to fight on the side of the royal prisoner and his nobles. On the evening of one dreadful day, during which the mob had done wild things, as Garth was passing on towards the Rue Saint Honore, he heard a faint voice on his left hand. It came from the figure of a man huddled in a doorway, who had been mortally wounded and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... over, I may venture out—Pox on't, I wou'd not be in this fear again, to be Lord Chief Justice of our Court. Why, how now, Cornet?—what, in dreadful Equipage? Your Battle-Ax bloody, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... in a dreadful fright, Maurice," she said; "but you saved me from the creature's claws ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... the very mountains. The Kingfisher was greatly frightened. She could not go back into the ark, for the little window was closed, and there was no land anywhere on which she could take refuge. Just think for a moment what a dreadful situation it was! There was nothing for her to do but to fly up, straight up, out of reach from the ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... mountains, and there lost their lives. He related this with great indifference, for every year people perish in the mountain regions, and this kind of death is not considered worse than any other. But dreadful thoughts began to rise in Susanna's mind. There was, however, no reason to anticipate misfortune, for the weather was lovely, and the journey, although difficult, went on safely and well. It was continued uninterruptedly till evening. As no Saeter could be reached before dark, they were to pass ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... the evening was occupied in completing our water and in endeavouring to get a shot at some pelicans, but although numerous they were too wary, and my feet were covered with such dreadful sores from bad diet and being constantly in the salt water that I could not walk to any great distance in search ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... are you plotting, wicked girl? It's impossible! Do you know what you're doing? It's dreadful, dreadful! ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... words of prophecy reveal Eternal counsels, deep designs; His grace and vengeance shall fulfil The peaceful and the dreadful lines. ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... in her eventful life. All went as usual on the journey until they had passed Santa Barbara on the morning of the fateful day, April 18, when vague rumours of some great disaster began to circulate in a confused way among the passengers. Soon they knew the dreadful truth, though in the swift running of the train they themselves had not felt the earthquake, and it was not long before concrete evidence confirmed the reports, for at Salinas they were halted by the broken Pajaro bridge. At that ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... towards the strict practices of the Friends, as being those most likely to be helpful to her newly-adopted life. A visit paid to some members of the Society at Colebrook Dale, intensified and confirmed those feelings. She says in her journal that it was a dreadful cross to say "thee," and "thou," instead of speaking like other people, and also to adopt the close cap and plain kerchief of the Quakeress; but, in her opinion, it had to be done, or she could not fully renounce the world and serve God. Neither could she ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... AEneas while he listened to this dreadful story, for he knew that Polydorus was one of the younger sons of Priam. Early in the war, his father, fearing that the Trojans might be defeated, had sent him for protection to the court of the king of Thrace. At the same time he sent the greater part of his treasures, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... unique powers of conversation. In vain did he discourse on the beauties of nature as displayed in the wooded valley and the towering hills, and the beauties of art as exhibited in the aviary and the new fir forest. Eva's thoughts were too much engrossed with the beauties of woman, and their dreadful ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... exclaimed Edith, again giving way to her fears, and grasping Telie's arm. "You are not like your father; if you betrayed me once, you will not betray me again. Stay with me,—yes, stay with me, and I'll forgive you,—forgive you all. That man—that dreadful man! I know him well: he will come—he has murdered my cousin, and he is,—oh Heaven, how black a villain! Stay with me, Telie, to protect me from that man; stay with me, and I'll forgive ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... palace. Alroy sallied forth at the head of these fresh troops. His presence decided a result which was perhaps never doubtful. The division of Abidan fought with the desperation that became their fortunes. The carnage was dreadful, but their discomfiture complete. They no longer acted in masses, or with any general system. They thought only of self-preservation, or of selling their lives at the dearest cost. Some dispersed, some escaped. Others ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... old, Ullin the son of Carbre: He came like a cloud from the hill; he hummed a surly song as he came, like a storm in leafless wood. He entered the hall of the plain. Lamderg, he cried, most dreadful of men! fight, or yield to Ullin. Lamderg, replied Gealchoffa, Lamderg is not here: he fights the hairy Ulfadha; mighty man, he is not here. But Lamderg never yields; he will fight the son of Carbre. Lovely art thou, O daughter ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... a bite of sudden fire at my heart, and I shuddered with a dreadful knowledge, like the captain of an unarmed ship, who, while the unconscious landsmen on board are gaily scrutinising a sail that like a speck has appeared on the horizon, shudders with the knowledge of what the speck is, and hears in imagination the yells, and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... office, a bottle at his elbow; or coming home, heavy and quarrelsome, from his business expeditions to Hepburn or Springfield; but the idea of his associating himself publicly with a band of disreputable girls and bar-room loafers was new and dreadful to her. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the ample place whither thou burnest to return.' 'Since thou wishest to know so inwardly, I will tell thee briefly,' she replied to me, 'wherefore I fear not to come here within. One ought to fear those things only that have power of doing harm, the others not, for they are not dreadful. I am made by God, thanks be to Him, such that your misery toucheth me not, nor doth the flame of this burning assail me. A gentle Lady[3] is in heaven who hath pity for this hindrance whereto I send thee, so that stern judgment ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... a help to people, if I can,' said Gladys, 'especially to working girls in Glasgow—to those poor creatures who sew in the garrets and cellars. I know of them. I have seen them at their work, and it is dreadful to me to think of them. Sometimes this summer, when I have been so happy, I have thought of some I know, and reproached myself with my own selfish forgetfulness. You see, if I do not help where I know of the need, I am not a good steward of the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... long velvet dressing-gowns, with lovely, long, pointed shoes, and carried swords nearly as big as themselves. I asked my governess if there were any barons left, and she told me that Lord B——, a great friend of my family's, was a baron. This was dreadful. Lord B—— was dressed like any one else, had no beard, and instead of beautiful long shoes shaped like toothpicks, with flapping, pointed toes, he had ordinary everyday boots. He never wore a velvet dressing-gown or carried a big sword, and no one could possibly imagine him as coercing ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... his agonizing throes, When on his ear the fatal news arose! Chill'd with amazement,—senseless with the blow, He stood a marble monument of woe; Till call'd to all the horrors of despair, He smote his brow, and tore his horrent hair; Then rush'd impetuous from the dreadful spot, And sought those scenes (by memory ne'er forgot), Those scenes, the witness of their growing flame, And now like witnesses of Margaret's shame. 'T was night—he sought the river's lonely shore, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... I rubbed my eyes. Could it be real? The sky was dark, and the daylight going fast. The mountain hung over us black and dreadful-looking. The wind whimpered up and down the hillside with a sort of cry in it. Everything was dark and dismal ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... wailed the girl. "And if—oh, he would despise us both—we are of the same blood! If it were not for this dreadful contest I might be so happy!" ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... and asked me if I would not give him some liquor! I asked if he had ever been in the habit of drinking it, and he said yes, that he bought it by the pint at camp! He belongs to the First South Carolina Volunteers, Colonel Higginson's Regiment. It is dreadful to think of such means of civilization being introduced among these poor ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... and gazes upon the mangled bodies of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. The neighbour who hears the dreadful story is quick to feel likewise, for the same thing may happen to him, and there is nothing so pitiless as fear. With the Puritan such gloomy and savage passions seemed to find justification in the sacred text from which he drew his rules of life. To suppose that one part of the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... or Toad Fish of Van Diemen's Land. (Communicated by James Scott, Esq. R.N. Colonial Surgeon). . . . The melancholy and dreadful effect produced by eating it was lately instanced in the neighbourhood of Hobart Town, on the lady of one of the most respectable merchants, and two children, who died in the course of three hours . ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... seemed, from the air, on to roofs, in and out of windows, from house to house, from corner to corner, was the humorous, pathetic, expectant, matter-of-fact, dreaming, stolid Russian soldier. He was to come to me, later on, in a very different fashion, but on this dreadful day in O—— he was simply part of the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... tried that in vain, and had almost broken her heart about it. She was always breaking her heart, more or less, about her charge, yet, strange to say, she survived that dreadful operation, and ultimately lived to ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... old captain, it might. Won't grandpa be sorry—if I tell him. Maybe I shan't, though I must hurry up an' find him, 'cause seein' that makes me feel dreadful lonesome, 'seems if. Oh! I do wish nobody ever need get hurted or terrible poor, or anything not nice! And—oh, oh, there's that very lady I run away from, what come to the Lane! Drivin' down in her very carriage and if——She mustn't see me! She must not—'less she's got him ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... though hope should be always deluded; for hope itself is happiness and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.—Johnson. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave. It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... Peter to the wood, but without Peter and his sister. The reason given was perfectly natural and conceivable. Mrs. Lascelles had preceded Lady Elfrida in entering the wood and taken another opening, so that Lady Elfrida had found herself suddenly lost, and surrounded by two or three warriors in dreadful paint. They motioned her to dismount, and said something she did not understand, but she declined, knowing that she had heard Mr. Atherly and the orderly following her, and feeling no fear. And sure enough Mr. Atherly presently came up with a couple of braves, apologized to her for their mistake, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... overflowed with happiness and sang all day long in my heart with joy. The last night of the holidays was a time of anguish. Upstairs the clothes were packed. Downstairs I helped them pack the "play-boxes," square deal boxes at sight of which tears sprang to my eyes and a dreadful pain gripped my heart. Oh, the pain of love at parting! there never was a pain so terrible as suffering love. The last meal: the last hour: the last look. There are natures which feel this anguish more than others. We are not ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Prodgit!' announced (and she was very often announced), misery ensued. I could not bear Mrs. Prodgit's look. I felt that I was far from wanted, and had no business to exist in Mrs. Prodgit's presence. Between Maria Jane's Mama, and Mrs. Prodgit, there was a dreadful, secret, understanding - a dark mystery and conspiracy, pointing me out as a being to be shunned. I appeared to have done something that was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit called, after dinner, I retired to my dressing-room ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... now, and she cowered in a trembling heap in the middle of her bed waiting for the door to open and let her father enter. But they continued down the hall without so much as pausing before her door, and now as her heart began to beat normally again, she heard Aunt Maria's voice saying, "There's a dreadful clutter to move if we take everything. Some of those boxes we brought from Dover have never been opened though we've been here two years now. Doesn't seem as if we had to take all that truck with us wherever we go. There hasn't been ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... was justified in his strictures. The war was entirely static. With fear of raids by marauding aircraft allayed, the only remaining uneasiness of the public had been whether the words "heavier than air craft" covered robot or V bombs. But when weeks had passed without these dreadful missiles whistling downward, this anxiety also went and the country settled down to enjoy a wartime prosperity as pleasant, notwithstanding the fiftyhour week, rationing, and the exorbitant incometax, as the peacetime panic had been miserable. In my own case Consolidated Pemmican ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... for a place to hang it. The little boy in the picture hung his on the door, but that was out of the question, for there was no nail there. He remembered finally a hook in the wall not far from the chimney. It was a dreadful place to go to, so near Two Eyes! but he mustered courage, especially when he considered how very convenient it would be for Santa Klaus. His heart went pit-a-pat as he stole over the floor; the boards under his feet creaked and every bone in his body seemed to be going off like ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... love and jealousy, with their sequel of rage and revenge. A female, about twenty-five years of age, who resided at a village in the neighbourhood of our settlement, had been guilty of an offence, probably infidelity to her husband, which subjected her to the dreadful penalty of having her hands cut off. Hoping to avert this punishment, she adopted the resolution, accompanied by her child, a fine and engaging boy of two years old, of entering our lines, and throwing herself on our protection. Captain Harrison ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... anyhow, it's no harm to thry." He immediately mounted the old table, and, stretching up, searched the crevice in the wall where it had been, but, we need not add, in vain. He then came down again, in a state of dreadful alarm, and made a general search for it in every hole and corner visible, after, which his agitation became ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... next six months at least, are, in our case, very hard to follow. They will but too probably sentence us to poverty, perhaps to actual want; but they must be borne resignedly, and even thankfully, seeing that my husband's forced cessation from work will save him from the dreadful affliction of loss of sight. I think I can answer for my own cheerfulness and endurance, now that we know the worst. Can I answer for our children also? Surely I can, when there are only two of them. It is a sad ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... am a fool? How do I know you are not lying to me about all this? It may be a trick to influence me. No, no! I am not such a simpleton. You promise me diamonds, and gold, and much love. You promise to take me away from this dreadful place on a ship, back to the world I worship. But you may be lying. I must have something better than ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... would not look at him. Yet, considering that circumstance, she described his personal appearance with wonderful vividness and accuracy. She indulged in the usual amount of stern remonstrance and indignation, that seem to be almost indispensable to the occasion. ALONZO asked why she called upon the dreadful man, and somewhat maliciously inquired if it was not for the express purpose of being shocked and horrified, thus affording a fine chance to moralize, and display the elevation of her own principles, and, in fact, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... and Accosting them thus. I can make Verses tolerably well; and I know how in my Descriptions to extend a mean Subject, and Contract a great one: I know how to excite Terror, and Compassion, and to make pitiful things appear Dreadful and Menacing. I will therefore go, and write Tragedies. Sophocles and Euripides answer'd him, Don't go so fast, Tragedy is not what you take it to be; 'tis a Body, composed of many different, and well-suited Parts, of which you will make a Monster, unless you know ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... weird and wonderful experience. I was really beginning to feel the heat dreadful after an hour, and was confident the blood must be galloping through my veins. Finally the good-tempered Finnish maid appeared to be of the same mind, for she fetched a pail of cold water, and, pouring a good drop on my head—which made me jump—she dipped her birch branches ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;—and now everything is so dreadful—there's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor boy disappointed as ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... see anybody—I am not fit to be seen," said Elsie, retreating in haste from the room; "and indeed, Jane, I wonder at you wishing to see him so soon after this dreadful news." ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... subjected to the alternative, either to become the wife of Don Carlos Alvarez, or else to be confined in a convent, perhaps be constrained or influenced to take the hateful veil? You alone can save her from this dreadful dilemma.' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... infamous deeds! ' Those writers did not consider that actions which are great in themselves, as is the case with the actions of rulers and of States, always seem to bring more glory than blame, of whatever kind they are and whatever the result of them may be. In more than one remarkable and dreadful undertaking the motive assigned by serious writers is the burning desire to achieve something great and memorable. This motive is not a mere extreme case of ordinary vanity, but something demonic, involving a surrender of the will, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... cheerful, but her heart had sunk. An icy hand seemed to have clutched it and tightened. She had heard the dreadful things that happened during Rocky Mountain blizzards. They must find the road. They ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... "Yes, it was dreadful, worse than anything yet." She uttered these words jerkily, walking up and down the room in excitement. "And I've just left the schoolhouse. The assistant superintendent was there to see me. He was kind enough, but he said it couldn't happen again. There ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... without mercy. Little Juliette Naude opened the window at this moment and was struck in the stomach by a bullet, which went through her body. The poor child died after twenty-four hours of most dreadful suffering. ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... name, my boy, and report at the lower works at 4 o'clock. Now, my men, we want to get to work and pull each other out of the hole, this dreadful calamity has put us in. It's no use having vain regrets. It's all over and we must put a good face to the front. At first it was intended that we should go up to the former site of the Gautier Mill and clean up and get out all the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the Odyssey, knows Persephone also, but not as Kore; only as the queen of the dead—epain Persephon—dreadful Persephone, the goddess of destruction and death, according to the apparent import of her name. She accomplishes men's evil prayers; she is the mistress and manager of men's shades, to which she can dispense a little more or less of life, dwelling in her mouldering palace on the steep ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... at six o'clock AM, we should have such sharp work before us to dress and get down to the refectory in the quarter of an hour allowed us for the operation, that unless I wished to lose my breakfast—a dreadful contingency considering the then empty state of my body—I should have precious little time ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by a flood of the Mississippi River, and him and me is all they is left of the Willockses, so we got to stick together. Besides, you see, he killed them two robbers, and the rest of the gang is laying for him; Brick, he feels so dreadful, he never having so much as put a scratch to a man's face before, for he wouldn't never fight as a boy, his conscience wouldn't rest if he was in civilization. He'd go right up to the first policeman he met and say, 'I done the deed. Carry ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... point of playing my best to a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who have come for the fault of those who have not. Still, I repeat it, constant repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for 700 nights ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Gertie waited for an advance; this did not come. Miss Loriner, at the command of Lady Douglass, furnished the hour, and a scream of dismay was given, followed by the issuing of orders. Henry must conduct them out of this dreadful Park; Henry must find a hansom with a reliable horse, and a driver of good reputation. Also Henry must come on to see his mother, and take her on to a tea appointment at Cadogan Gardens, thus saving trouble to Lady Douglass, who was ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge |
