"Petrify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am not above and beyond it as you are. America may stand for freedom, but it has an unimancipated soul and there is a perpetual affectation, a caution, a suspicion, a lack of independence that does simply petrify life and crush feeling. You may say it is a small world, I don't know, but it is ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... depraved propensities, which led to his embruing his hands in blood, his ingratitude to his patrons and benefactors, (but chiefly to Pope,) and his degraded misemployment of talents which might have raised him to the capital of the proud column of intellect of that day,—all conduce to petrify the tear of mingled mercy and compassion, which the misfortunes of such a being might otherwise demand. Nevertheless, as was lately observed by a respectable journal, "there must have been something good about him, or Samuel Johnson would not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... episode is plain: If soldiers wish to petrify the nation, Let them—when leave permits—no more disdain To join a Roach or Perch Association, Cull giant gooseberries, and strive to gain Prizes for Blind-fold Pig Delineation. Thus only—not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... Gorgon, having power to petrify my tongue. I am not afraid of him; and my respect for your feelings is much stronger than my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. But this story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's head must rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that may petrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when the dazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has come the cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and, on a wider scale, the sight of the pain ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... deplore and guard against those influences which can change the sincere and loving child into the deceitful and selfish man-that cover the spring of genuine feeling with the thick rime of worldliness, and petrify the tender chords of the heart into rough, unfeeling sinews? The man should not be, in all respects, as the child. The child cannot have the glory of the man. If it is not polluted by his vices, it ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... thought, all objects of devotion, are made thus liable to perpetual revision, if only that belief shall not petrify into habit, but remain the reasonable conviction of a reasonable soul. The change of times and the change of conditions change also the appearance of things which in themselves are the same which they always were. Facts supposed once to be as fixed ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... gratuitous legislation. Accordingly, one evening, when an inspired cobbler was holding forth to an assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter suddenly made his appearance with his ominous walking staff in his hand, and a countenance sufficient to petrify a millstone. The whole meeting was thrown into confusion—the orators stood aghast, with open mouth and trembling knees, while "Horror!" "Tyranny!" "Liberty!" "Rights!" "Taxes!" "Death!" "Destruction!" and a host ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... within himself Tus-ka-sah noted the old warrior's gaze fix spellbound upon Amoyah, the hands of Altsasti petrify, the bead in one, the motionless thread in the other. The eyes of the more remote of the group, who were seated on rugs around the fire, glistened wide and startled, in the shadow, as Amoyah proceeded to relate how ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... explored the interior. I can conceive of nothing more overpoweringly terrible to an unsuspecting family of birds than the sudden appearance above their domicile of the head and neck of this arch-enemy. It is enough to petrify the blood in their veins. Not finding the object of his search, he came streaming down from the nest to a lower limb, and commenced extending his researches in other directions, sliding stealthily through ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a step, and stared at her in dead silence. The declaration he had just heard—a declaration which he well knew, as I well knew, Madame Fosco would not have ventured to make without her husband's permission—seemed to petrify him with surprise. The Count stood by, and looked at his wife with ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins |
