"Overwhelming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who have to be forgiven for treating their facts—atmospherically. But that John, a man of science, enlisted under the banner of truth, should back this assertion of his wife's, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, really required resignation to put up with; argued a blindness, an infatuation, which seemed to his sister hardly decent. Because after all, facts were facts, and you didn't alter them by pretending that they did ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a planetary disk not plotted on the map of stars. It was the sought-for world. It would seem easy to find a world seventy-six times as large as the earth, and easy to recognize it when seen. The fact that it could be discovered only by such care conveys an overwhelming idea of ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... his child, in a somnambulistic attack, he imagined that he saw a wild beast rise up from the floor and fly at his child, a babe of eighteen months. He sprang at the beast and dashed it to the ground, and when awakened, to his horror and overwhelming grief he found that he had killed his beloved baby. A similar record has been reported of a student who attempted during the night to stab his teacher; the man was disarmed and locked up in another portion of the building; but he had not the slightest remembrance of the events ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... things that my notable sister holds in especial abhorrence,—untidy housekeeping, sentimental demonstrations between married people, and crying babies; and here they all were in an avalanche, overwhelming, not only herself, but a most prepossessing young man, who, for all I knew, was viewing me with a critic's eye, as a possible sister-in-law, and wondering how far certain ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... thorns and other emblems in evidence. These marks or signs, Paul instructs, all Christians as well as himself must exhibit, not painted on a wall but branded in their flesh and blood. They are made when inwardly the devil affrights and assails us with all manner of terrors and overwhelming afflictions, and at the same time outwardly the world slanders us as heretics, laying her hand to our throats whenever possible and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... involuntary thrill and breathlessness, a deepened sense of the divinity which so orders these things. He may have the same feeling at the crises of life, at birth, disease, and death. He may sense on occasion that overwhelming and infinite power of which Job becomes aware, as he listens to the voice out ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... canvas. Old Kentucky was on her feet that night in San Jose. It was indescribable. Flashes of spiritual illumination, explosive bursts of eloquent declamation, sparkles of chastened wit, appeals of overwhelming intensity, followed like the thunder and lightning of a Southern storm. The church seemed literally to rock. "Amens" burst from the electrified Methodists of all sorts; these were followed by "hallelujahs" on all sides; and when the sermon ended with a rapturous flight of imagination, ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... was the overwhelming stillness of the building, possibly a natural alertness indicative of her fear, that allowed Jinnie to catch the echoes of footsteps at the farther end of the corridor. But before she got to the door, a key grated in the lock, and the man who had brought her there was standing ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... give place to the delights of life. They had, with submissive humility, repressed all discontent and disaffection, all envyings and enmities; they chatted and laughed, while every one knew or suspected that they were standing on a volcano, whose overwhelming eruptions might be expected at any moment, and yet every one feigned the most perfect innocence and unconstraint. The ladies scrutinized each other's magnificent and costly toilets, jesting and exchanging amorous glances with the gentlemen displaying ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... than thunder's winged force, All-powerful gold can spread its course, Thro' watchful guards its passage make, And loves thro' solid walls to break: From gold the overwhelming woes That crush'd the Grecian augur rose: Philip with gold thro' cities broke, And rival monarchs felt his yoke; Captains of ships to gold are slaves, Tho' fierce as their own winds and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... November 29th was the grandest and most manifold. I give a description as exactly as possible, for its overwhelming magnificence still presents itself to me as if it had been yesterday. When the sun had set about a quarter of an hour there was not much afterglow, but I had observed a remarkably yellow bow in the south, about 10 degrees ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... campaign in the very midst of their operations. At last with Halleck, and still more with Grant in authority, there were movements ordered that had some relation to each other and a general plan of operations, and then the overwhelming strength of the North began to turn the scale. Thomas was called on by Rosecrans, as he had been by Buell, for advice, but he was obliged to act independently too; and then, as at Stone River, he showed an energy and a capacity that ought to have secured his earlier promotion. At Chickamauga he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... pinnace, while Mr. Bellew, with another party, had boarded her at the stern. Several of the Chinese fought stoutly, but the greater part lost heart at seeing themselves attacked by the "white devils," instead of, as they expected, overwhelming them by their superior numbers. Many began at once to jump overboard, and after two or three minutes' sharp fighting, the rest either followed their example or were ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... hung drearily on snow-crowned, distant hilltops. The deadly gray of the sky suggested laden clouds bearing every threat known to the elements. They were traveling fast, treading each other's heels, and overwhelming each other till the gloom banked deeper and deeper. It was the mockery of an early spring day. It had all the appearance of the worst depths of winter, except that the intense cold had given place to a fierce ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... a throb of intense, overwhelming pride. The black flag had been overmatched by the good flag. In the last resort, those who lived right had proved themselves more than equal to those who lived wrong. Law and order were superior to piracy and chaos. Forgetful of his own safety, he hoped that the sloop would overtake ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... laying bare their necks and throats, bid them drain the blood that remained in them. Some were found with their heads plunged into the earth, which they had excavated; having thus, as it appeared, made pits for themselves, and having suffocated themselves by overwhelming their faces with the earth which they threw over them. A living Numidian, with lacerated nose and ears, stretched beneath a lifeless Roman who lay upon him, principally attracted the attention of all; for when his hands were powerless to grasp his weapon, turning from rage to madness, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... of the genus homo, it has always seemed to me, is an overwhelming desire to give advice. Through several weeks of toil, we were treated to a most liberal education on marine matters. It appeared that we had been laboring under a fatal misunderstanding regarding the ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... into line on the leading section, and concentrate its fire on the villages forming the keys to the enemy's position, in front of his right and left wings respectively; each battery opening its fire on arriving at half-range distance. The effect was overwhelming. ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... du Chatelet followed the example of that King of France who left the Duke of Orleans unavenged; she chose to forget the insults received in Paris by Mme. de Bargeton. She would patronize Lucien, and overwhelming him with her patronage, would completely crush him and get rid of him by fair means. Petit-Claud knew the whole tale of the cabals in Paris through town gossip, and shrewdly guessed how a woman must hate the man who would not love when she was fain ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... was that of wonder that he was alive; so overwhelming was the din, so incessant the rain of shot, it seemed to him a marvel how any one could remain alive ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... death.... It was an ideal end. GOD Who had permitted her to suffer so sorely in body, and to be often visited in old times—by dread of death and of "death-agonies," parted the waves of the last Jordan, and she "went through dryshod!"... The sense of her higher state is so overwhelming, one cannot indulge a common sorrow. For myself I can only say that I feel as if I were a child again in respect of her. She is as much with me now, as with any of her children, even if I am in Jamaica or Ceylon. Now she knows and sees my life, and I have a feeling ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... switch to a more personal topic of conversation but he did not know how to accomplish this feat. There was plenty of interest but it was more clinical than passionate; he was not stirred to yearning, he felt no overwhelming desire to hold Martha's hand nor to feel the softness of her face, yet there was a stirring urge to make some form of contact. But he had no idea of how to steer the conversation towards personal lines that might lead into something that would ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... ran up her spine. She had an overwhelming sense of impending danger and stepped swiftly away from the edge of the aperture; then turned about, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... high-browed, high chiefess face and head; Bella's hair, high-piled, intact, sparkling the silver of the years, ringleted still and contrasting definitely and sharply with her clean, slim, black brows and deep brown eyes. And Martha's glance, in modest overwhelming of modesty by what she saw, dropped down the splendid breast of her and generously true lines of body to the feet, silken clad, high-heeled-slippered, small, plump, with an almost Spanish arch ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... those high latitudes is soon followed by an overwhelming weariness; for the breath soon fails, and the strongest are forced to rest at ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Royal Horticultural Society is a booklet of about 30 pages, containing an excellent historical introduction by W. T. Stearn, a summary or abridged version of the Code, and the full text. It is of necessity somewhat technical in its phraseology, and in places its jargon is overwhelming. Recently, Dr. John S. L. Gilmour, Director of the Cambridge Botanic Gardens, and formerly Director of the R. H. S. Trial Gardens at Wisley, published a very lucid and down-to-earth interpretation of the principle provisions of the Code. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... of the military training of the men, evolved in an age of patriarchal bureaucratic government, had remained pedantically the same, counting on an ever-present patriotism. Meanwhile, in place of the previous overwhelming preponderance of country recruits, a fresh element had now been introduced: the strong social-democratic tendencies of the industrial workers, who, it is true, did not compose the majority of the contingents, but who, with their ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... desert among the Arab tribes. In those days the name of England was respected, although not fairly understood. There was a vague impression in the Arab mind that it was the largest country upon earth; that its Government was the emblem of perfection; that the military power of the country was overwhelming (having conquered India); and that the English people always spoke the truth, and never forsook their friends in the moment of distress. There was also an idea that England was the only European Power which regarded the Mussulmans with a friendly eye, and that, were ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the American cause alone remains to be mentioned. The "Confederacy," a thirty-two-gun frigate built in 1778, was captured by the enemy in 1781. She was an unlucky ship, having been totally dismasted on her first cruise, and captured by an overwhelming force on ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... French coming up from the south-west, and they would return and tell the enemy that a blow now would open the road to Amiens and the sea. He had plenty of strength for it, and presently he would have overwhelming strength. It only needed a spear-point to burst the jerry-built dam and let the flood through ... They would return in twenty minutes, and by noon we would be broken. Unless—unless the miracle of miracles happened, and ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... and an apparently inexhaustible stock of grenades. The tale of the German losses was high. One communication trench packed with men was raked from end to end with a British Lewis gun till it was a graveyard. On this occasion the British artillery was overwhelming in amount and volume; shells were not spared, and they fired ten to the Germans' one. Within less than a mile and a half there ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.' Johnson's Works, viii. 333. 'The main of life is indeed composed of small incidents and petty occurrences.' Ib. ii. 322. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 199) says:—'Human felicity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... conviction, absolute, overwhelming, which rushed upon him, had well-nigh led to an explosion of wrath, and perhaps some terrible scene which might have fulfilled some of old Sophy's predictions. This, however, would never do. Dick's face whitened with his thoughts, but he kept still ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... raises again the vexed question of Tourgeniev's position. It is notorious that Tourgeniev is much more highly appreciated outside Russia than in it. One is, of course, tempted to say that Russians cannot judge their own authors, for there is a powerful and morally overwhelming cult for Tourgeniev in France, Germany, and England. I have myself said, sworn, and believed that "On the Eve" is the most perfect example of the novel yet produced in any country. And I am not sure that I am yet prepared to go back on myself. However, it is ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... tenderness towards Mrs. Yarrow, and involve her and bear them together heavenward. It was not passion, it was not love, he perceived well enough; it was the utterance of a vital conviction that she had saved him from an overwhelming subjective horror, and that in her sweet objectivity there was a security and peace ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... nor Lars Peter heard a word of these rumors. Ditte heard it at school through the other children, but did not repeat it. When her mother was more than usually considerate, her hate would seethe up in her—"Devil!" it whispered inside her, and suddenly she would feel an overwhelming desire to shout to her father: "Mother stifled Granny with the eiderdown!" It was worst of all when hearing her speak lovingly about the old woman. But the thought of his grief stopped her. He went ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Captain MacTurk, in the very act of bullying two pseudo Highlanders, for having presumed to lay aside their breeches before they had acquired the Gaelic language. The sounds of contempt and insult with which the genuine Celt was overwhelming the unfortunate impostors, were not, indeed, intelligible otherwise than from the tone and manner of the speaker; but these intimated so much displeasure, that the plaided forms whose unadvised choice of a disguise had provoked it—two raw ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... which took place between the government at home and that of Van Diemen's Land, is very interesting. Although numbers of natives were shot and taken prisoners in the skirmishing, which was going on at intervals for several years, nothing seems fully to have impressed them with the idea of our overwhelming power, until the whole island, in 1830, was put under martial law, and by proclamation the whole population commanded to assist in one great attempt to secure the entire race. The plan adopted was nearly similar to that of the great hunting-matches ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... fingers on one. Then came a sudden rush of water, caused by a sharp decline in the level of the sluiceway, and Jack was torn from the cross-piece. At the same time his plank was swept from under him, and he was buried in an overwhelming rush of water. Over and over he was rolled along the bottom of the flume. Then he was tossed to the surface. For an instant he had a glimpse of Nat also struggling in the murky flood, on which the moon ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... had gone everyone looked secretly at the others, to see how they had taken the mention of the word 'drive'—the word which had become famous, and acquired an overwhelming importance, as the only official—so to speak—news in connection with the vague and sinister rumour clinging to the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dreaded aunt was to be asked to come again—not for a fortnight only, but for many fortnights; and not as a guest, but as head and mistress of them all, to manage them, to order them about, to make them do as she chose. Oh, it was overwhelming, appalling, too appalling ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... might stop, Robert, my lad, to exult over their victory and to celebrate it with songs and dances, but the French leaders, whose influence with them is now overwhelming, will push them on. They will want to reap all the fruits of their great triumph by the river. I've often told you about the quality of the French and you've seen for yourself. Ligneris, Contrecoeur, De Courcelles, St. Luc and the others will flame ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... weeds grew in the neglected corners of her nature, the moment she came in contact with any of her kind in whatever condition of sadness or need, the pent-up love of God—I mean the love that came of God and was divine in her—would burst its barriers and rush forth, sometimes almost overwhelming herself in its torrent. She would then be ready to die, nothing less, to help the poor and miserable. She was not yet far enough advanced to pity vulgarity in itself—perhaps none but Christ is able to do that—but she could and did pity greatly ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... sons, and virtuous, lovely daughters. To be the mother of such, one might perhaps pour out one's life in draughts so copious that the fountain should run dry; but world-stirring people are extremely rare. One in a century is a liberal allowance. The overwhelming probabilities are, that her sons will be lawyers and shoemakers and farmers and commission-merchants, her daughters nice, "smart," pretty girls, all good, honest, kind-hearted, commonplace people, not at all world-stirring, not at all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... a systematic endeavor to subdue the whole country, laid siege to Ataspa; and although the details of the investment of the city are far from complete, the imperfect records of the event show that the force of the enemy was so overwhelming that the inhabitants of the ill-fated city saw at once the futility of a prolonged resistance and resolved to do or die without delay. Accordingly, a small guard was left behind to kill the women and children and set fire to the town, and the rest of the doughty little ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking, uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... control over her countenance, she has absolutely no right to discuss her husband with his bachelor friends. It is unkind; for it causes them to feel like social outcasts and lumbering brutes and Peeping Toms. If they know the husband well, it positively awes them; for, after all, it is a bit overwhelming, this sudden glimpse of the simplicity, and the credulity, and the merciful blindness of women in certain matters. Besides, a bachelor has no business to know such things; it merely makes him ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a fourth appearance of Schott, the popular feeling exploded in hisses and calls for the soprano. He retired unabashed, but Mme. Materna, answering the next call, was tumultuously greeted. So far as the overwhelming majority of the patrons of the house was concerned, Herr Schott's cake was now dough. Foolishly he, or his friends for him, proceeded to anger the directors from whom they were expecting favors. It was given out that he had submitted a proposition concerning ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... seem likely to prove overwhelming, I usually find myself clutching at my original respectability—"Sir, although the force of circumstances has brought me thus low, I am by birth and education a gentleman. Having told you this, I trust that you will remember it, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from Nature's fertilizing watering-can is worth more than weeks of irrigation. Rain water has a quality of its own which well or tank water cannot supply. Plants respond to it at once by adopting a cheery, healthy aspect. It had another equally valuable character in that it destroyed the overwhelming bugs. How it destroyed them I don't know: perhaps it drowned them; anyway they disappeared ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... deserve the forgiveness of their past transgressions. These joined with the Cavaliers; their united efforts bore down all opposition; and, in most places, their adversaries either shrunk from the contest, or were rejected by overwhelming majorities.[1] ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... sight of him—and a simultaneous crack on the nose that sent him reeling towards the open window, through which he darted the instant he could recover balance, leaving the field equally divided, four to four in point of numbers, but otherwise with overwhelming advantage on the side of the clear heads and ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain, was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part, proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The real campaign was waged in ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... state that it held two pictures of the same Winnie as though each hemisphere of the brain were occupied with its own vision. I was kissing Winnie's sea-salt lips in the light of the moon at the cottage door, and I was kissing them in the morning radiance by Knockers' Llyn. And yet so overwhelming was the mighty tide of bliss overflowing my soul that there was no room within me for any other emotion—no room for curiosity, no room even ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... skilfully stuffed the great-winged albatross that flounders helplessly when the wind fails. Days of strong breezes, when we tried to beat to windward under a straining main-to'gal'nsail; ever a west wind to thwart our best endeavours, and week-long gales, that we rode out, hove-to in the trough of overwhelming seas, lurching to leeward ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... a sort of stab at my heart. The thought that I might have seen her, and had not seen her, and should never see her—that bitter thought stung me with all the force of overwhelming reproach. 'She is dead!' I repeated, staring stupidly at the hall-porter. I slowly made my way back to the street, and walked on without knowing myself where I was going. All the past swam up and rose at once before me. So this was the solution, this was the goal to which that young, ardent, brilliant ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... to some purpose. I found Eric almost dumb with fury. Giles had refused to believe his assertion of innocence, and he had no proof. Leah's statement had been overwhelming, and bore the outward ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Emory sent Thomas across the road into the ravine and the wood beyond, and bade him stand fast at all hazards. But the time was too short. Thomas, after a desperate resistance, was forced back by the overwhelming masses of Kershaw, yet not until this tried brigade had left a third of its number on the ground to attest its valor. About the colors of the 8th Vermont the fight was furious. Again and again the colors were down; three bearers were slain; before the sun rose two men out of three had fallen, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... lindens which led to the shrine of a plaster Virgin, a first and almost imperceptible rustle, a presentiment of verdure, so to speak, ran through the branches, and the three almond trees in the kitchen-garden put forth their delicate flowers. The young poet was invaded by a sweet and overwhelming languor, and Maria's face, which was commonly before his inner vision upon awakening, became confused and passed from his mind. He seated himself for a moment before a table and reread the last lines of a page that he had begun; ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... us than him. Thought at that moment was an intolerable flash that burst on him for an instant, and then left all in darkness. He clung to the shattered corridor for support. Constance seemed touched and surprised by so overwhelming an emotion, and the habitual hypocrisy in which women are reared, and by which they learn to conceal the sentiments they experience, and affect those they do not, came to ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... number had increased to twenty-five thousand. These figures are certainly too large. Pitt's estimate of the population of Upper Canada in 1791 was only ten thousand. This is probably much nearer the mark. The overwhelming majority of these people were of very humble origin. Comparatively few of the half-pay officers settled above Montreal before 1791; and most of these were, as Haldimand said, 'mechanics, only removed from one situation ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... ages. But, a few pages further on, we find the poet in a mock Palinodia deprecating the vengeance of the sorceress, who, he says, has already sufficiently punished him by turning through her charms his flaxen hair to hoary white, and overwhelming him by day and night with ceaseless anxieties. He feels himself through her powerful magic tortured, like Hercules in the envenomed shirt of Nessus, or as if he were cast down into the flames of Aetna; nor does he hope that she will cease compounding a thousand deadly ingredients against ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... mind thus cultivated continued through life; so that, however complicated his tasks and overwhelming his cares, he found time to do everything, and to do it well. He had acquired the magic of method, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... over. It had rolled with the fury of a cyclone from Belfort to Mons. Nearly two million men had been engaged, and the British Army had emerged from the contest covered with glory, having for three days maintained an unbroken front in the face of an overwhelming superiority in numbers. Never had he been more proud to be a British soldier than he was that day. The Regiment had added yet another branch to its laurel wreath. It had more than sustained its ancient traditions for endurance and courage. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... capitalists and corporations to acquire outlying regions of public land in mass, by whatever means, legal or illegal." In the same report he further stated, "At the outset of my administration I was confronted with overwhelming evidence that the public domain was made the prey of unscrupulous speculation and the worst forms of land monopoly." [Footnote: Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for October, 1885: 48 ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... not a reproductive craftsman. His blocks were conceived as original engravings, not as imitations of tones and textures created in another medium. If wood engraving advanced in the direction of commercialism to fill an overwhelming mass need, it was only because he had given it a technical basis. But it had greater artistic potentialities, as proved by Blake, Calvert, and Lepere, among others, and has found new life in the engravers ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... stage-struck. Is he, taking averages, the intelligent, alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is he the young fellow with ideas in him, and a yearning for hard and difficult work? Is he the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and beau, the human clothes-horse, the nimble squire of dames. The youths of more active mind, emerging from adolescence, turn to business and the professions; the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of genuine distinction, men who have actually done difficult ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... never experienced this jealous, overwhelming tenderness for anything human. He loves his mother with all a son's respect, and has a peculiar sympathy for her. If his father were alive he knows they would be good comrades to stand by each ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... that he had committed no crime. He was very earnest as he spoke and so serious that I knew something terrible had happened. He declared again and again that he loved me and that if I loved him I would go with him and ask no questions. It was all so overwhelming that I begged him to leave me, to let me ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... before they perceived, to their horror, three Spanish vessels coming towards them. It was impossible for a very large ship, manned by an extremely small crew, to sail away from those fully equipped vessels, and as to attempting to defend themselves against the overwhelming power of the antagonists, that was too absurd to be thought of even by such a reckless fellow as Bartholemy. So, when the ship was hailed by the Spanish vessels he lay to and waited until a boat's ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... aside, or a chapter of the Exposition suspended in their favor; or that a man, who had seldom leisure to talk to his children, must sit up an extra hour to talk to them. And yet, amidst the pressure of overwhelming toil, his vivacity seldom flagged, and his politeness never. Perhaps the severest thing he ever said was an impromptu on a shallow-pated student who was unfolding a scheme for flying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... voices of Henstead did not reach. Unhappily however, as events proved, the victory of Henstead had in the end to be regarded not as the inauguration of a triumphant campaign but as a brilliant exploit performed in face of an overwhelming enemy. To be brief, the Government was beaten, somewhat badly beaten, the great cry was a failure, and there were many casualties in the ranks. Marchmont kept his seat by virtue of personal and hereditary popularity; but Dick Benyon, who had been considered ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... when that god seemed to be establishing his authority over the entire civilized world was one of the critical phases in the moral history of antiquity. An irresistible invasion of Semitic and Mazdean conceptions nearly succeeded in permanently overwhelming the Occidental spirit. Even after Mithra had been vanquished and expelled from Christianized Rome, Persia did not disarm. The work of conversion in which Mithraism had failed was taken up by Manicheism, the heir to its cardinal doctrines, and until the Middle Ages Persian ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... remember that I've got you covered; don't make any false moves." He prodded the prostrate form of the by now glaring fiend before him. The stench of the place was nearly overcoming him, and again he felt an overwhelming desire to dash madly from that den of evil, and once more breathe God's fresh air. Under the stimulus of several shoves the Professor finally won to his feet and stumbled up the stairs. Jimmie was taking no chances and kept the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance, than by the Whigs of Carolina during that Revolution. The whole State, from the mountain to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens,—black and smoking ruins ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... inquiries he had discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to—they understood. All right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... that conference begin overwhelming fear swept out of his soul all other emotions. He no longer had eyes for that girl in the gallery. Not even love and the promise she had made availed to stay him. Panic allowed him no time for planning an excuse or framing a lie. In playing for the stakes he ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... literature which extends from the great Augustans down to Statius and Quintilian? Even if we set aside Juvenal and Suetonius as a rhetorician and a gossipmonger, that only makes the weight Tacitus has to sustain more overwhelming. It is hardly possible to overrate the effect of a single work of great genius; but the more we study works of great genius the more certain does it appear that they are all founded on real, though it may be transcendental, truth. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Eachin: "were Catharine to look kindly on the earnest love I bear her, it would carry me against the front of the enemies with the mettle of a war horse. Overwhelming as my sense of weakness is, the feeling that Catharine looked on would give me strength. Say yet—oh, say yet—she shall be mine if we gain the combat, and not the Gow Chrom himself, whose heart is of a piece with his anvil, ever went to battle so light as I shall do! One strong ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... force to civilize. She is the natural colonizer of the world. In the short space of three centuries, America, sprung from her loins, has become a giant offspring, a new era in the history of the human race, a new birth whose future must be overwhelming. Of later date, and still more rapid in development, Australia rises, a triumphant proof of England's power to rescue wild lands from barrenness; to wrest from utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's surface wasted from the creation of the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... anything out of the Pope's wife; she learnt upon coming in that during her absence Ivan Kouzmitch had held a council of war, and that Palashka had been locked up. She suspected that her husband had deceived her, and she immediately began overwhelming him with questions. But Ivan Kouzmitch was ready for this onset; he did not care in the least, and he boldly ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... made no reply. She was too greatly overcome to utter a word so sudden and overwhelming had been the change during the last few minutes. Her form trembled from the vehemence of her emotion, and then the tears, which for so long had been restrained, came to her relief, and, sinking upon the ground, ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... as themselves, besides that they were stung into threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride and military abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish Sultan. The forces, and more especially the artillery, of Russia, were far too overwhelming to permit the thought of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even with a less dilapidated state of their resources than they could reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In their speed lay their only hope—in strength of foot, as before, and not in strength of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... if he knew who the Subaltern might be, and what object of overwhelming importance he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... DEAR NORFLEET: I am in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day (rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who was supposed to have been lynched ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... I know that this love of mine for you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my soul. And to have known it with all its misery,—for misery there must be; misery, Jasmine, there is—to have known it, to have felt it, the great overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it so terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's ambition. With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came that which gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to open ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Lucerne; for Felix must have set off already, and would be on his way to the far-off valley among the Swiss mountains, where he believed his father's grave lay, and where his mother had met her death. Phebe's heart was wrung for him, as she thought of the overwhelming and instantaneous shock it would be to him and Hilda, who did not even know that their mother had left home; but her dread lest he should judge it right to lay his mother beside this grave, which had possessed ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... plead in excuse? Why this, as I suggest—'You cite an extreme instance. But, while granting English Literature to be great, we would point out that an overwhelming majority of our best writers have modelled their prose and verse upon the Greek and Roman classics, either directly or through tradition. Now we have our own language gratis, so to speak. Let us spend our pains, then, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... to say, the instinct to rule; the instinct to submit to be ruled; and the instinct for liberty. You know, too, that the instinct to submit is the strongest, the instinct to rule is next, and that the aspiration for liberty is the weakest. Hence you know the overwhelming majority of men have ever been willing to be slaves; masters have been next in number; while the few have struggled ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... who spent our time chanting the rhyme of Bernard of Morlaix, there might seem to be a reason in our madness. To make a Hell of earth is doubtless a useful method of rendering more joyous the transition to Heaven, and less overwhelming the transition to Purgatory. Yet the mediaeval monks burnt no coal and were careful to live in beautiful sites and fine air. The prospect of Purgatory made them epicures in the fine things of Earth. Now we, apparently, care not a snap for any Hereafter. It is therefore a curious psychological ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... If his sense of overwhelming defeat made for despair, he was conscious of his nature being effectively appealed to from another direction. If he had that evening determined to throttle his ambition and write poetry no more, he seemed to have become aware of the stirring of a new motive for existence. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... same Christian language. But these are only two in a hundred writers who, for more than half a century, have been educating Germany in aggressive ideas, and, speaking from personal acquaintance with their works, I should say that the overwhelming majority of them are Christians. Not a single Socialist, and not a single well-known Rationalist, has contributed to ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... betrayed to the enemy by this woman whose lies you accept as if they were gospel. Brunow confessed to me barely six-and-thirty hours ago that he acted as her agent in that villainous transaction. Is that a woman whose bare word is to be taken against the overwhelming proof an ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... roared through the belfry windows beneath. I cannot describe the eager exhilaration which filled me; but I guessed that the impulse which bids men fling themselves from such heights is not a morbid prepossession, not a physical dizziness, but an intemperate and overwhelming joy. It seems at such a moment so easy to float and swim through the viewless air, as if one would be borne up on the ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... envy at the lawless liberty I enjoyed, not only with regard to my actions, but to my conscience; revelling in a deficiency of forethought and blindness of consequences, as truly delightful for the present, as overwhelming and deplorable ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... power in this new dominion of his lord. Great or small, each manor thus granted was granted on condition of its holder's service at the King's call; a whole army was by this means encamped upon the soil; and William's summons could at any hour gather an overwhelming ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... order was given to march as usual. Two days later, we had reached Will's Creek, where we found Lieutenant Ward and his men awaiting us. He stated that there were not less than a thousand French at the forks of the Ohio. It was sheer folly to advance with our petty force in face of odds so overwhelming, and a council of the officers was called by Colonel Washington to determine what course to follow. It was decided that we advance as far as Red Stone Creek, on the Monongahela, thirty-seven miles this side the Forks, ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... to temporarily cut back food intake, eating only what does not cause toxemia. These foods I classify as cleansing, such as raw fruits and vegetables and their juices. If the symptoms are extreme, are perceived as overwhelming or are actually life-threatening, detoxification can be speeded up by dropping back to only dilute raw juices or vegetable broth made only from greens, without eating the solids. In the most extreme cases hygienists use their most powerful medicine: ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... face with her hands again, as if the passion which had sustained her through these disclosures lost itself in an overwhelming sense of shame and grief, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that, with an overwhelming run of good-luck, there MIGHT be one chance of success in a thousand, he pretended to yield entirely to the doctor's wishes; but, in order to still put off the journey, he opened the most varied series of subterfuges. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Coleridge; even his career wins a secret homage of tears and smiles in right of its marvellous transitions from gloom to sudden light, in right of its entire simplicity, and of its eccentric consistency. Already in early youth, swimming against a heady current of hindrances almost overwhelming, he had by solitary efforts qualified himself for any higher situation that might offer. But, just as this training was finished, the chances that it might ever turn to account suddenly fell down to zero; for precisely ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Archbishop of Canterbury. M. de Chateauneuf went thither with the firm resolve to say no word to her on what had happened; but as soon as she saw him, Elizabeth, dressed in black, rose, went to him, and, overwhelming him with kind attentions, told him that she was ready to place all the strength of her kingdom at Henry III's disposal to help him put down the League. Chateauneuf received all these offers with a cold and severe expression, without saying, as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chief cause of wars. That is a statement which requires a very great deal of qualification. It is, indeed, possible that the great hordes of warlike barbarians from the North and the East which invaded Europe in early times, sometimes more or less overwhelming the civilized world, were the result of a rise in the birth-rate and an excess of population beyond the means of subsistence. But this is far from certain, for we know absolutely nothing concerning the birth-rate of these invading peoples either before or during the period ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... how we all felt for you in your great trial, such an overwhelming, overpowering misfortune; and then your darling child's death too, it all seems to have come upon you like an avalanche. Well, you have the best comfort. I came upon such a nice verse for you this morning, 'David encouraged himself in ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... sparks! They're fire! They burn! They burn! Take the wheels away from me! They're grinding me like corn—oh, Lord! it's heavy, it's heavy! There, there! It crushes me! Now, now it's over. This is—death—" And he sank back, oppressed by a sudden, and overwhelming load of oblivion. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... military. That is why my heart goes with my head. It is true that the Anglo-American army will come in overwhelming numbers, but they may be overwhelming numbers that will not overwhelm. As we know, the British commanders have not adapted themselves as well as the French to wilderness, campaigning. Their tactics and strategy are the same as those they practice in the open fields of Europe, and it puts them ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brother any bodily harm. My emotions were too conflicting for me to know just why I had come at all into the night to meet him. Now it was against him that the violence of my anger would vent itself. Now it was against myself, and I cursed myself for an idle, dreaming fool. Then came over me, overwhelming me, a sense of my own utter loneliness, and against it Tim stood out so bold and clear-cut and strong; that I felt myself crying out to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from me. I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to each other, ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... her that she could scarcely walk, and Mary had persuaded her as she came down to go in and take glass of water. The gentlemen rose when she came in; she immediately recognised McShane, and the sudden rush into her memory of what might be the issue of the meeting, was so overwhelming, that she dropped into a ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James II. no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... heard by Phil Evans, who was then in the bow, where Frycollin was overwhelming him with piteous pleadings to be put ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... thoughts and beliefs St Paul once more points the converts to Jesus Christ; or rather, he once more bids them remember that in Him they are, and that their safety, their life, is to stay there, recollected and resolved. There is the point of overwhelming advantage against error, and against sin; and only there. "Standing in the Lord," in remembrance and in use of their vital union with Him, they would be armed alike against the pharisaic and the antinomian heresy. Counterfeits and perversions would be seen, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... the fire,—a face,—the very one these live fingers had just been tracing in yonder church-yard. Its eyes were open now,—large, luminous, earnest, with a wave of solid pride sweeping on through the irides and almost overwhelming the pupils. The mouth,—oh, those lips! ever uttered they a prayer? They look, trembling the while, so unutterably unforgiving! When they come to stand before the I AM, will they ever plead? It is hard to think the Deity maketh such souls. Doth He? I looked a little farther on in the fiery ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... had returned to Downside in the morning. Brave as she was, she did not wish to encounter Sir Ralph. Sir Ralph exhibited no overwhelming grief at the loss of his eldest son; his thoughts seemed immediately ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... accord with his estimate as to what was right. True, he was accused of treason for speaking in support of the king's right to proclaim war or peace, but three days thereafter he defended himself against the charge, and with overwhelming success. He was a leader who worked prodigiously. In addition to his duties as a member of the Assembly, he was also publisher and editor of a paper first called the Journal des Etats-Generaux, later the Lettres a mes Constituants, and at last the Courrier de Provence. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... the expenditure of public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. But the results of extravagance are ruinous. The property of the country, like the freedom of the country, belongs to the people of the country. They have not empowered their Government to take a dollar of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... future generations. The feebleminded are notoriously prolific in reproduction. The close relationship between poverty and ignorance and the production of feebleminded is shown by Anne Moore, Ph.D., in a report to the Public Education Association of New York in 1911. She found that an overwhelming proportion of the classified feebleminded children in New York schools came from large families living in overcrowded slum conditions, and that only a small percentage were ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... further this overwhelming document. It pursues its way through mire and filth to its most lame and impotent conclusion. After all this, the abbot was not deposed; he was invited merely to reconsider his doings, and, if possible, amend them. Such was Church discipline, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... twilight had come, like mist, over the distant hills; but the peaks were still bathed in the sunset's glow. She began to have a real and overwhelming longing for camp and rest. And in the midst of her dejection the dark man in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... when it fell into the hands of the enemy. Palm Sunday 1405 was the date of this event, but it was not till the end of Lent 1423, almost exactly eighteen years after, that James came back. The calamity seemed overwhelming to the nation and to all who were not pledged to Albany throughout Scotland. It was the death-warrant of poor old King Robert in his retirement. He lingered out a weary year in sickness and sorrow, and when the anniversary of his son's loss ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... employ. "Well," said he, "Come in and take thy breakfast, and get warm, and we will talk about it; thee must be cold without any coat." "Come in and take thy breakfast, and get warm!" These words spoken by a stranger, but with such an air of simple sincerity and fatherly kindness, made an overwhelming impression upon my mind. They made me feel, spite of all my fear and timidity, that I had, in the providence of God, found a friend and a home. He at once gained my confidence; and I felt that I might confide to him ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... heart, entire and overwhelming despair. When released from her prison, she might hurry back to the castle. But who would believe a story so wild, so improbable, as that which ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... that morbid fascination that sometimes seizes upon those who stand on great heights,—an overwhelming impulse to plunge downward. His only salvation was to look up. He would look ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... he had left the cottage until the present, Joey had had but one overwhelming idea in his head, which was, to escape from pursuit, and by his absence to save his father from suspicion; but now that he had effected that purpose, and was in a state of quiescence, other thoughts rushed upon his mind. First, the scenes of the last few hours presented ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... insist on details, where all was vast and surprising and prosperous. I hazard nothing in saying that the management of the finances of the civil war was the marvel of Europe and the admiration of our own people. For a great part of the wisdom, the courage, and the overwhelming force of will which carried us through the stress of this stormy sea, the country stands under deep obligations to Mr. Chase as its pilot through its fiscal perils and perplexities. Whether the genius of Hamilton, dealing ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... morning he was surprised at his appearance. He was paler than ever, tired, but his eyes shone with an inhuman fire. It looked as though he were filled with an overwhelming joy. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... spontaneous perfection, he wrote Boule de Suif. His master's joy was great and overwhelming. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... this morning. Later on in the day you will announce that the enchanter has shown me how to defeat the wicked Euralians; you will dwell upon the fact that this victory, as assured by him, involves an overwhelming sacrifice on my part, but that for the good of my people I am willing to endure it. Then you will solemnly announce that the sacrifice I am making, have indeed already made, is nothing less than—— What are all ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... the far shade of the laurel trees dropped instantly from Miss Bibby's horizon and, the horrors of the situation overwhelming her, she flew after ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... back at him. "It lends itself so easily to fraud that the temptation among the little people must be overwhelming—the more because trickery is often more accurate than real revelation. I will confess to you that this is the rock upon which my powers and my mission seem sometimes most likely to split. But I console ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... incorporated into Indonesia in July 1976 as the province of East Timor. An unsuccessful campaign of pacification followed over the next two decades, during which an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 individuals lost their lives. On 30 August 1999, in a UN-supervised popular referendum, an overwhelming majority of the people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia. Between the referendum and the arrival of a multinational peacekeeping force in late September 1999, anti-independence Timorese militias - organized and supported by the Indonesian military - commenced ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... allies. But had the British Government taken a decided part in support of the Spaniards, a material change might have been produced in the aspect of affairs. Spain, who has now to contend with France alone, might in that case have had to contend with other and more overwhelming forces. Without pushing these considerations farther, enough surely has been said to indicate the expediency of adhering to that line of policy which we successfully pursued at Verona; and of endeavouring, by our example as well as by our influence, to prevent ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... fixed. He had horrible experiences, apart from the snake-nightmares, nowadays. One night when he awoke and lay staring up at his mosquito-curtain in the blessed light of the big room-lamp (always provided in India on account of rifle thieves) he had suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of fear. He sat up. God!—he was in a marble box! These white walls and roof were not mosquito-netting, they were solid marble! He was in a tomb. He was buried alive. The air was growing foul. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... County Commissioners of Arapahoe County, in which Denver is located, ordered an election in August, 1867, to vote on the proposition of issuing two hundred thousand dollars in bonds in favor of such a branch line. The election resulted in an overwhelming majority in favor of it, eleven hundred and sixty for to one hundred and fifty-seven against. The County Commissioners in their negotiations with the Union Pacific people coupled with the proposition certain conditions as to the route which the ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... that he had fallen in at the same time as I; and though once or twice I had heard him whining, I did not realise that he was also in danger; in fact the horrible overwhelming selfishness of the desire for self-preservation had swept away everything but the thought of how I was to get ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... had been reduced, which he could only characterise as that of one who, once blithe, gay, happy, and active, was now a complete physical and mental wreck, to whom if he could see no prospect of coming relief, the gloom of life appeared to stretch away as a vast wilderness, with a prospect of such overwhelming depression, that he could only conclude his evidence with the significant but heartrending warning that he could face it no longer! The Witness here fairly broke down, and, bursting into a hysterical fit of weeping, had to be led from the room by a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... darkened houses seen through the window of the brougham, a world mercifully unconscious and unreproachful. It wouldn't, like the world she had just left, know sooner or later what she had done, or would know it, at least, only if the final consequence should be some quite overwhelming publicity. She fixed this possibility itself so hard, however, for a few moments, that the misery of her fear produced the next minute a reaction; and when the carriage happened, while it grazed a turn, to catch the straight shaft from the lamp of a policeman in ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... act and words, with the overwhelming disclosure, seemed to force upon Telly the belief that in some unknown way it meant the ending of her present home life. For one instant she looked at him, and then the tide of emotion swept her to his side and kneeling there she thrust the ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... wickedness, Abraham persistently interceded that it be spared. Its wickedness proved, however, too great for pardon. Lot, who, true to his nomad training, hospitably received the divine messengers, was finally persuaded to flee from the city and thus escaped the overwhelming destruction that felt upon it. What was the possible origin of this story? (Hist. Bible I, 87.) What are the important religious teachings of this story? Were great calamities in the past usually the result of wickedness? Are they to-day? Do people so interpret ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... whole band—men, women, and children— uttered an overwhelming shriek, and turning round, fled in mad confusion from the spot. Some of the warriors turned, however, ere they had gone far, and sent a shower of spears at us, one of which went ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Link appeared, half running, half blown by the tempest up the road. Vinnie watched them from the window, and saw the enormous sloping pillar of dust and leaves, and torn boughs, whirling above their heads, and overwhelming everything in ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... mortals, by liberal gifts of petun, or collars of beads, or ears of maize, or skins of animals. When their feet stood upon the edge of the mighty cataract, then was the most valued dog precipitated, then was the most valued drink poured into the overwhelming torrent, to appease the angry spirit of the abyss. And thus, performing their duties to the Great Master and their fellow-creatures, lived ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... are unserviceable in every way, since they may be lost either by the treachery of those to whom you commit their defence, or by the overwhelming strength of an assailant, or else by famine. And where you seek to recover a State which you have lost, and in which only the fortress remains to you, if that fortress is to be of any service or assistance to you, you must have an army wherewith to attack the enemy who has driven you out. ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... planters and freedmen, which sympathized with the aims of their fellow commons of the mother country. Prominent among these must have been a small number of Virginia Puritans, who had for some years been subjected to mild persecution. The overwhelming sentiment of the colony had long been for strict uniformity in the Church "as neere as may be to the canons in England", and several statutes had been passed by the Assembly to suppress the Quakers and Puritans.[342] In 1642, Richard ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... of circumstances makes all the difference between a spy and a savior. The deed that he would once have cursed his wife for stooping to, perhaps have beaten her for, was now an occasion for overwhelming her with thanks. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... frightened you? God knows I did not mean to. Or was it yesterday, sweetheart, did I hurt you? Truly, dear one, I did not mean to. I said that you were cold—I did not blame you—I did not think of blaming you; but my love for you is so great, so overwhelming, that it is hard to be patient. I hunger so for the touch of your lips. Forgive me, sweet, forgive me. See! now I ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... be urged as an overwhelming argument that there must be some essential distinction between species and varieties inasmuch as the latter, however much they may differ from each other in external appearance, cross with perfect facility, and yield perfectly fertile offspring. With some exceptions, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... overwhelming pity and love for her drowned every other thought. Right or wrong, she was doing what she believed to be her job; and now he had come and made things a thousand times harder ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... formidable than I had expected—on the summit of a mountain rising abruptly 2,000 feet above us, and only approachable by a narrow, steep, and rugged path, flanked on either side by precipitous spurs jutting out like huge bastions, from which an overwhelming fire could be brought to bear on the assailants. The mountain on the enemy's right did not look much more promising for moving troops, and I could only hope that a way might be found on their left by which their flank could be turned. The country, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered—the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks—if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... in a state of mutiny, having placed the admiral and all the officers under arrest. To avoid them altogether was impossible, and before long a frigate bore down to us. Should our real character be discovered, we must be captured by an overwhelming force. Still Sir Harry remained calm and self-possessed as ever. As the frigate approached, he ordered all the officers below, and giving the speaking-trumpet to Stanley, the quartermaster, told him to reply as he might direct. The frigate hailed and inquired ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... problem of problems is nothing more than democracy beating itself helplessly against the color bar,—purling, seeping, seething, foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black and brown ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is not the psychology of the individual. Ask every man in West Sussex separately whether he would have bread made artificially dearer by Act of Parliament, and you will get an overwhelming majority against such economic action on the part of the State. Treat them collectively, and they will elect—I bargain they will elect for years to come—men pledged to such an action. Or again, look at a crowd when it roars down a street in anger—the sight is unfortunately only too rare ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... Chedis, who were together rushing at that single hero. With large numbers of foot-soldiers and steeds and cars, and with showers of arrows, O scorcher of foes, they overwhelmed that single warrior, viz., Bhishma the son of Bhagirathi, that scorcher of foes, like the clouds overwhelming the maker of day. Then in that battle between him and them, which resembled the battle between the gods and the Asuras in days of old, the diadem-decked (Arjuna), placing Sikhandin before him, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... state which, if it could be continued, would cause that individual to be judged insane. If the delirium that occurs in the course of certain diseases should be continued, the patient would be judged insane. In severe cases of Graves' disease the patient is insane. Individuals under overwhelming emotion may be temporarily insane. Every clinician has seen great numbers of cases in which insanity is a phase of a disease, of an injury, or of an emotion. The stage of excitation in anesthesia is insanity. The only difference between what is conventionally ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... might come with sudden overwhelming power, and hurl you to destruction! What a terrible thing for this magnificent frame of yours, this glorious handiwork of the Creator, to be hurled to swift destruction, and for the soul that animates it to ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... 250 copies were struck off—at the expense of the Society of Arts. Laugier has recently executed a very elaborate print of Leander, just in the act of reaching the shore—(where his mistress is trembling for his arrival in a lighted watch-tower) but about to be buried in the overwhelming waves. The composition of the figure is as replete with affectation, as its position is unnatural, if not impossible. The waves seem to be suspended over him—on purpose to shew off his limbs to every degree of advantage. He is perfectly canopied by their ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... own gate before he saw Viola, seated on the porch. Involuntarily he slackened his pace. A sort of panic seized him. Was she waiting there to question him? He experienced a sudden overwhelming dismay. What was he to say to her? How was he to face the unhappy, stricken,—but even as he contemplated a cowardly retreat, she arose and came swiftly down the path. He groaned ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... imaginable. For the whole queer place was simply sprinkled with gold. Gold—gold everywhere; large nuggets of it, as big as one's fist! Not embedded in rock, not scattered through sand, but lying loose upon the surface of that unbelievable orange snow! It was overwhelming. ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... favorite spots, for as yet that great, overwhelming regard for the old stone crosses, which came to her afterward, had not grown into a live passion. Her present pilgrimages were short, her shrines those of Nature's building. Much she loved the arm of ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... absence of eight years, that I should not know it. Altered, indeed, I found it, but not quite so evidently improved. It struck me that there was a vast expansion of mediocrity that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow everything that once stood prominent as more excellent. This was perhaps no more than a natural consequence of the elasticity and growth of a young, vigorous community, which, in its agregate character, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper |
