"Startle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... startle his proselyte, by insisting upon any topic which appeared particularly to jar with his habits or principles; and he blended his mirth and his earnest so dexterously, that it was impossible for Nigel to discover how far he was serious in his propositions, or ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... was absolute, a couple or more of prairie-wolves lurking in the vicinity, without the faintest note of prelude, would startle the calm of night with their peculiar commingling of barks, howls and wails,—a racket all their own. It was the habit of these night prowlers of the desert to come as near to the camp as their acute ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... chambers were cold and gloomy, and when she left her own little room to while away the tedious hours, and sat in one of them, she was still and motionless as their inanimate occupants, and had no heart to startle the echoes—hoarse from their long silence—with ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... less extent spring up within them. These doubts enter into the mind at first almost imperceptibly: they exist only as vague indistinct surmises, and by no means take the precise shape or the substance of a formed opinion. At first, probably, they even offend and startle by their intrusion: but by degrees the unpleasant sensations which they once excited wear off: the mind grows more familiar with them. A confused sense (for such it is, rather than a formed idea) of its being desirable that their doubts should prove well founded, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... companion stopped a minute—and in the pause we could hear the old trees wave very solemnly above us, and a nut, or burr, or sycamore ball, came rattling down the old kirk roof as we stood there in the graves, to startle us the more, and then ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... her annual holiday in the Highlands of Scotland, the land which is peculiarly dear to her. No sounds of widows weeping for their slain husbands and sons—no fierce battle-cries—no terrible wailings over slaughtered families and ruined homes—startle the still air. But, instead, the children sing the national anthem, as if they knew all that it means; and wherever, on this or the other side of the Tweed, the dear familiar face, with its crown of silvering hair, is seen, the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on the contrary he boldly asserts (Spectator, No. 135), "The same single letter 's' on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the 'his' or ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... pistol from his belt. "You won't hit me!" yelled Davis, gnashing his teeth and trying to startle the captain by rolling his eye-balls hideously. The latter fired, and whoever was looking at Davis at the moment saw a bloody star on his forehead where the bullet entered. The pirate suddenly grasped the handle of his hammer with both ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... cottage, although strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles, or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... examine the grounds of our belief in that order. With a vigour of logic rarely equalled, and with a confidence in its conclusions never surpassed, he disposes of this belief in a manner calculated to startle those who, without due examination, had come to the conclusion that the order of nature was secure. What we mean, he says, by our belief in the order of nature, is the belief that the future will be like the past. There is not, according ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... rose, and as he rose, a twig snapped beneath one of his great, padded paws. Like a shot from a rifle he charged upon the filly; but the snapped twig had been enough to startle the timorous quarry, so that they were in instant flight ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... matter of course. As the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. It takes a great deal to startle ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... ascertained. Unless I came down suddenly as a summer's storm upon them, the very people who were robbed by our messengers would not confess the robbery, fearing the ill-will of the men. It was necessary to startle them into the revelations which I required them to make for their own good. And I did startle them. I became thoroughly used to it, and soon lost my native bashfulness;—but sometimes my visits astonished the retiring inhabitants of country houses. I did, however, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way," she said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. "Now you just set there and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... Frederick, so- called the Great, and exalt him into a hero; or find in the cold heart and mean sordid soul of a Turner an ideal, because one of those strange physiological freaks that now and then startle the world, the artist's temperament and artist's skill, were his beyond those of any man of his age. But as our object here is to attempt placing her before the reader as asserting and illustrating the highest life of humanity, as a true preacher of the doctrine of the Cross, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... so to speak, if Mr. Narkom will lend us his motor to hurry us there? Could, eh? That's good. I think I'd like to have a look at that lion and, if you don't mind, an introduction to the parties concerned. No! don't fear; we won't startle anybody by revealing my identity or the cause of the visit. Let us say that I'm a vet, to whom you have appealed for an opinion, regarding Nero's queer conduct. All ready, Mr. ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Congress. Mr. Schneidekoupon was rich, and about thirty years old, tall and thin, with bright eyes and smooth face, elaborate manners and much loquacity. He had the reputation of turning rapid intellectual somersaults, partly to amuse himself and partly to startle society. At one moment he was artistic, and discoursed scientifically about his own paintings; at another he was literary, and wrote a book on "Noble Living," with a humanitarian purpose; at another he was ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... startled enough for me to suppose anything, and it spun away from your grasp very suddenly. Oh," he added, as he glanced it through, "rather ghostly, I must confess, or would be if one were inclined that way; but I imagined your nerves were stronger. Did the pronoun startle you?" ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Peruvian. I know it ees better for you, as vell as for myself, dthat you marry me. You haf nefer been so gentle and so gude as since I hold you near dthat baranca. But you did not like it! You loaf me, but you air like a vild deer; you air so easy startle, and so hard to hold. But I vill be zo gude to Blanca, I vill make her glad I vas so strong not to let her haf her own way. If you keess me and zay before God you marry me, I take you back to Casa 47—if not, Madame Steele ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... the look upon her face could not but startle him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, "Well, mother, you've never ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... themselves by day under the broad leaf-blades of Heliconiae and other plants which grow in shady places; others cling to the trunks of trees. While walking through the forest in the daytime, especially along gloomy ravines, one is almost sure to startle bats from their sleeping-places; and at night they are often seen in great numbers flitting about the trees on the shady margins of narrow channels. I captured altogether, without giving especial attention to bats, sixteen ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pass you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied by their fellows for their "good luck," startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too dear ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... runs all right," he answered. "Only I thought the announcement that the pole-star had thrown up its job might startle you a bit. But I see it doesn't. So far as practical results go, it accounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; or, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical matter is actually before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying, which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is forming a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as it comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the rules of morality, and ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... were not 200 sworn United Irishmen, and which Lord Edward Fitzgerald had altogether omitted from his official list of counties organized in the month of February. In that brief interval, the Government policy of provocation had the desired effect, though the explosion was of a nature to startle those who ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... supposed you had retired. I came for my scissors, and finding you here alone, thought I would startle you, but you have not told me yet of what you ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... task, and it was made the more difficult by the fact that the Malays began firing at him with their brass gun, a fact enough to startle the strongest nerves. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... your pardon, miss; I hope I did not startle you; but there is a young lady in the first-class compartment who, I take it, would be the better for a bit of company; and as I saw you were alone, I thought you might not object to change ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ways of human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the sedges of the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, "This one ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... at once be remarked that it would startle those unaccustomed to Freeland ideas to hear the amounts of these allowances. In the first year the maintenance unit reached 160L; therefore an unmarried woman or a widow received 48L; a married woman 24L; a family with three children and a wife 48L; an old man ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Flint's conscience got the better of him, and he rose and closed the window noisily enough to startle the speakers below, as he perceived with ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... He died in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... moved to and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillity which nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for food with a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through the aggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and present apprehension, she could still instinctively perform ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... and barns in the new town, they quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe that some of the latter, instead of having one stable-door have five or six,—a fact which puzzles you very much indeed. You observe further that the houses many of them have balustrades upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful adaptation ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... so much as the manner in which I received his confidences. He half expected to startle me by his boldness, but was himself confounded by my words. I told him that in my country self was the chief consideration, self-preservation the law of nature; death the King of Terrors; wealth the object of universal ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... some mighty genius of color who will deluge the sky with pyrotechnical symphonies! Color that will soothe the soul with iridescent and incandescent harmonies, that the harsh, brittle noises made by musical instruments will no longer startle our weaving fancies. Yet if Shelley had not sung or Chopin chanted, how much poorer would be the world today. But that is no reason why school children should scream in chorus: "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity," or that tepid misses ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Bell- mont, with his laborers, were in sight, though unseen by Frado. They paused to see what she was about to do. Should she by any mishap lose her footing, she must roll into the stream, and, without aid, must drown. They thought of shouting; but they feared an unexpected salute might startle her, and thus ensure what they were anxious to prevent. They watched in breathless silence. The willful sheep came furi- ously leaping and bounding far in advance of the flock. Just as he leaped for the dish, she ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... the indentures in the sand of his small, moccasined feet. He wondered whether it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with weirdly absurd hallucinations. So what happened in almost that same breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done. It was for a brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their peaks their gymnastics ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... began, "Canon Parkyn's compliments," but broke off; for the organist greeted him with a sound cuff and a "How many times have I told you, sir, not to come creeping up those stairs when I am in the middle of a voluntary? You startle me out of my senses, coming round ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Haviland Hicks, Jr., was actually returning to old Bannister; and he was bringing "The Prodigious Prodigy," whatever that was, with him. Knowing the cheery Senior's intense love of doing the dramatic and his great ambition to startle his Alma Mater with some sensational stunt, they could hardly wait for old Dan Flannagan's jitney-bus ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... shots, every one of which told, fired suddenly from a cover close to their rear, were enough to startle even the best troops, much more so our Mexican dons, who, already sufficiently inclined to a panic, now believed themselves fallen into an ambuscade, and surrounded on all sides by the incarnate diabolos, as they called us. The cavalry, who had not yet recovered the thrashing we had given ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... chamber of the Sangraal, Rowena IV was arranging the red samite cover around the Grail. She jumped when she saw him. "Marry! fair sir, ye did startle me. Methinketh ye be asleep ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... have stood in the Forum and seen the Coliseum. Penini says: 'The sun has tome out. I think God knows I want to go out to walk, and so He has sent the sun out.' There's a child who has faith enough to put us all to shame. A vision of angels wouldn't startle him in the least. When his poor little friend died, and we had to tell him, he inquired, fixing on me those earnest blue eyes, 'Did papa see the angels when they took away Joe?' And when I answered 'No' (for I never try to deceive him by picturesque ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... upon Phoebe, as though it had been something visible to startle her. It shook off her old English self for a moment, and she leaped to her ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... for ratification and agreement, Mary would set about her personification, shed her apron lest its damaged appearance convict her in older eyes, and speed toward her goal. But the mad bull's shrieks of protest and repudiation would startle every bit of chivalry for miles ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... trumpet extend the sense of the unbearable beyond all possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... a shot over the head of the fleeing man, then started in pursuit. The Indian slashed the tether of Buckey, Stacy Brown's mustang, and with a yell to startle the animal, leaped on ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Every distracting thought must be avoided, and the utmost care taken that no agitating topic is discussed in his presence. These precautions may do much; but should they have no effect, which I think possible; as a medical man, I should then recommend, what as a member of his family may startle you. My advice would be, that if it be ultimately found, that his feelings as regard this young girl, are such as are likely to prevent or impede his mind's recovery; why I would then at once allow him to make her any reparation he ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven that Margaret might have more ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... has been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to be told that he had ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Westphalia, and in which the solemn trial and execution of his own son and successor, with the transformation of the monarchy of the Tudors and Stuarts into a British republic, were simultaneously to startle the world. But it hardly needed the gift of prophecy to inspire James ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... descended to the breakfast room on the morning following her arrival in Sequoia, the first glance at her uncle's stately countenance informed her that during the night something had occurred to irritate Colonel Seth Pennington and startle him out of his customary bland composure. He greeted her politely but coldly, and without even the perfunctory formality of inquiring how she had passed the night, he came ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... like being startled," said Betty, pettishly. "Yes, you did startle me—you did—you did! And then you begin to contradict before I've said a word! I'm sure you've been contradicting all the way upstairs—and why don't you say 'How do you do?' ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all, it were most sweet to rest my head On the cold clod, and sleep the sleep of Death. But if the Archangel's trump at the last hour Startle the ear of Death and wake the soul To frenzy!—dreams of infancy! fit tales For garrulous beldames to affrighten babes! I have been guilty, yet my mind can bear The retrospect of guilt, yet in the hour Of deep contrition to THE ETERNAL look For mercy! ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... "land of Mizraim." Where nature is most tame and commonplace, man is tempted to his highest flights of audacity. As in the level Babylonia he aspired to build a tower that should "reach to heaven" (Gen. xi. 4), so in Egypt he strove to startle and surprise by gigantic works, enormous undertakings, enterprises that might have seemed wholly beyond his powers. And these have constituted in all ages, except the very earliest, the great attractiveness of Egypt. Men are drawn there, not by the mysteriousness of ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... dodging bricks hurled by a San Francisco earthquake, but never got quite used to rocks descending from a source altogether out of sight. Small wonder, after all! Later we were to experience more of this thing, and on a scale to startle ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... heard Miss Bax talking as it were an immense way off as he floated away on the wings of his dream—"that my views would startle ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... animates the nature of Holland with a varied and fantastic life, and by the act of reproducing it the struggle passed into their minds, and then, instead of imitating, they created. Then they themselves made the two elements contend; they increased the darkness to startle and disperse it with every manner of luminous effects and flashes of light; sunbeams stole through the gloom and then gradually died away; the reflections of twilight and the mellow light of lamps were delicately blended into mysterious shadows, which were ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... the situation is governed by Art. 19, the text of which has been several times set out in your columns, of the old Convention of 1799. This may startle those who are acquainted with what occurred at The Hague in 1907, and I have seen no reference to what must be the gist of the German argument on the point. They no doubt argue that the old Convention remains unrepealed ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... Crowl saw Edith get on the same train as himself, he determined to watch her, and startle, if possible, his small squad of admirers with a new proof of his right to lead as chief scandal- monger. The scene in the jewelry store thus became a brilliant stroke of fortune to him, though so severe a blow to Edith. (The number of people who are like wolves, that ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superstition. But look, how ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... God can express His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do it we shall miss ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and ran up to find it. There was no light in the room, and Virginia and Sir Roger were on the balcony. Of course, I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't find the fan at first, and I didn't like to startle them by suddenly switching on the light, so I—er—I overheard a little of the conversation. Sir Roger was telling her the story of that unfortunate Maxime Dalahaide—why, Marchese, how you must have loved him! The very mention of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle Plantation." Historically, it is linked on the one hand with that ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... meant to startle her by the sudden action, he amply succeeded. At the first sight of the murderous weapon she shrank back, and a horrified, but quickly suppressed shriek, burst from her lips. "Oh, no, no!" she moaned, flinging ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... you. The objections are not made by Tyndall or Huxley; but they are objections made by me, which I stated to them, and in which they agreed—Tyndall expressing the opinion that I ought to make them public. I name this because you may otherwise some day startle Tyndall or Huxley by speaking to them of their objections, and giving me as the authority for so affiliating them.—Very ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... came, Brussels was an imitation Paris— especially along the inner boulevards she was Paris at her best. And her great parks, her lakes gay with pleasure-boats or choked with lily- pads, her haunted forests, where your taxicab would startle the wild deer, are the most beautiful I have ever seen in any city in the world. As, in the days of the Second Empire, Louis Napoleon bedecked Paris, so Leopold decorated Brussels. In her honor and to his own glory he gave her new parks, ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... aspect of this matter which would perhaps startle those who think that all piety and orthodoxy reside in the rural districts; and that is, that the city, as it is, affords far greater encouragements to well developed piety than the country; and that if the church were fully awake to her ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... even now, when recounting, as he often did, the scenes of the battle field, his eye would burn with savage fire, lighting up his whole countenance with the fiercest kind of bravery, and often with a hideous yell that would startle our very souls, he would burst from the room and bound over the fields and forest, with the fleetness of a deer—making the woods ring with his frightful war-cry, until the blood seemed ready to curdle in our veins. He had also been one of the famous Tecumseh's braves; and ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Conroyal's lips tightened. "But the devilish cunning of it! They knew that whoever had the buckskin bag would not be apt to sleep with it on him; and they calculated that the sudden alarm of fire, coming when all were sound asleep, would so startle, that, for the moment, even the skin map would be forgotten and all would rush out to help put out the fire, and give them a chance to search the house. Cunning, but as devilish as it is cunning! Think ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... elms and oaks. Several graceful fawns, and a noble elk, were stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... sat watching her. She knew it was Richard who came in, for she had heard his voice in the hall, and greeting him quickly, arose and left the room, whispering: "If she wakes, don't startle her. Probably she will not ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with a deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... it, and it crept on slowly, slowly, like a living thing, and growing as it came, to my very feet. I cannot say how long I might have stood there, fascinated by it, had not something suddenly occurred to startle me into my senses again; for full upon the back of my right hand fell, with a sullen, heavy sound, a second drop of blood. It stung and burnt my flesh like molten lead, and the sharp, sudden pain it gave ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... did startle the poor old parish clergyman effectually by calling on him to publish the banns of marriage between Dermot Edward St. Glear Tracy and Lucy Percy Alison, both residing in this parish. He evidently ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gleams through the woods in the morning sun? Hear it nearer and nearer draw! It winds in and out in columns dun, And the trumpet-notes on the roused winds run, And they startle the soul with awe. Should you of the comrades black demand— That is Luetzow's wild ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... soon attracted all the birds of the neighbourhood—red-breasts, white-throats, black-caps, nightingales, fig-peckers of all sorts. And when a numerous company of them was gathered together Leo XIII, seated out of sight and watching, would suddenly clap his hands and startle the birds, which flew up and were caught by the wings in the meshes of the nets. All that then remained to be done was to take them out of the nets and stifle them by a touch of the thumb. Roast ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to escape. But we were too securely fixed there for his strength to be of any avail; our roots were the growth of years, and, besides, we clasped him so tightly—for unity is indeed strength—that at last the cowardly fellow roared aloud with mingled pain and fright; perhaps he thought to startle us, and make us lose our hold. But we knew better than that—we only gripped him the faster; but the noise aroused Dash, who came bounding to the spot (he was always unchained at night), and, flying at Mr. Reynard's throat, he soon pinned ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... and profoundest sense of the word believe, the pagans could not be said to believe in any gods: but, in the ordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, in all gods. As this proposition will startle some readers, and is yet closely involved in the main truth which I am now pressing, viz. the meaning and effect of a simple cultus, as distinguished from a high doctrinal religion, let us seek an illustration from our Indian empire. The Christian ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a bank of rough, broken ground, grown with coarse grass and bramble, and as we peeped over this bank the ruined house stood before us—so near as to startle me by its proximity. It must have been a large house originally—if, indeed, it was ever completed. Now it stood roofless, dismantled, and windowless, and in many places whole rods of brickwork had ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... weather, when even the hardiest soldiers were wrapping themselves up, he would go about in his shirt sleeves just as if it were summer; and very often he would be up before any one else in the camp was astir, and startle the first officer whom he saw coming out of his tent by crowing like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... exhibit all the symptoms of fear long before they can have any knowledge or experience of the disagreeable and the harmful effects of the things that frighten them. Thus a sudden noise will make the child start and tremble and even scream. And all through life an unexpected and loud noise is likely to startle us. An investigation has shown that thunder is feared much more than lightning. Children will laugh at the flashes of lightning, but will cower before ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... unreasonableness of her temper. Her daily tasks distress her sorely. She can no longer sit still and sew or read. Conversation no longer interests, or it even troubles her. Noises, especially sudden noises, startle her, and the cries and laughter of children have become distresses of which she is ashamed, and of which she complains or not, as her nature is weak or enduring. Perhaps, too, she is so restless as to want to be in constant motion, but that seems to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... one thing about you that is comforting," I sniffed. "You said precisely the same thing to me at three o'clock this morning. You never startle me by saying ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and with each petal decorated by an "eye" exactly like those on the great Cecropia or Polyphemus moths, so that their effect is that of a flock of gorgeous butterflies come to rest. They hover over the meadows poised. A movement would startle them to flight; only the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... and in quick succession, a heavy crushing pressure, either on the limbs or body, which had the effect, not only to startle them from their sleep, but caused ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... figure of speech to say that the world heard the crash. Hundreds, ay, thousands of miles did the sound of that mighty upheaval pass over land and sea to startle, more or less, the nations of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... their neighbors and the distresses of their country. Bubbles that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up by cunning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistants and instrument. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the earthquakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, the crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, prey on the savings ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... regaining the ledge, neither of the boys spoke, lest their voices should startle him, and make him fall; but now they both cried out, "Are ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... hiding the details in the thickets, and all the hot day, he had been thrusting his way through thicket after thicket, in obedience to the instructions of the foresters. He had struck trees with his short club and had grunted and squealed, to startle the khada into flight. A few of the ugly beasts had come out, charging into the open, to be run down and speared by ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of his heart, he will begin by sharing her pursuits only as a means to an end, for when love-making once steps in other pursuits are neglected, if not totally shelved, for the time being. This transition stage requires great tact. He must not startle her by too sudden a development. Some women may like to be taken by storm, to be married by capture as it were, but the average girl likes to have time to enjoy being wooed and won. She basks in the gradual unfolding of his love; she rejoices over each new ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... family—wives, sisters, sons and so forth, whose remains lie "in the vault beneath." After perusing these numerous testimonials to the truly wonderful virtues of an aristocracy whom we are permitted to survive, and after dropping some shillings in the charity-box, which rather startle us by the noise they make, we pass out of the cool abbey into the hot churchyard, and read on a lonely stone which stands in a corner by the gate that here lies the dust of Mary Ann Brown, "for thirty-five years faithful servant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until a step on the stair or the banging of a door below would startle her once more. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... declared slowly, "marks an epoch. What Naudheim said was remarkable because of what he left unsaid. Couldn't you feel that? Didn't you understand? If that man had ambitions, he could startle even this matter-of-fact world of ours. He could shake it ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have some partiality for living flies, but none for dead ones; but Susy does not trouble herself to apologize for Sour Mash's eccentricities of taste. This Biography was for us, and Susy knew that nothing that Sour Mash might do could startle us or need explanation, we being aware that she was not an ordinary cat, but moving upon a plane far above the prejudices and superstitions which ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... no longer divided him from Darrow, or Gideon Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the very law of his being, which was the law of order, of manners, of ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... impress a man of that sort. If the world had been full of such men, life would have probably appeared to Jukes an unentertaining and unprofitable business. He was not alone in his opinion. The sea itself, as if sharing Mr. Jukes' good-natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startle the silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently over the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment, and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, of course. He had been ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... us; but she is only connected with us as the road is with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge us forward in humble pursuit to ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... replied the artist, laying down his weapons and grasping Gibault's proffered hand with a sigh of evident relief, "I am well, excellently well. You did, indeed, startle me by your sudden appearance; but no harm is done, and where none was intended no apology is necessary. You are a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... ambiguities that we are to ascribe the comparative oblivion into which so remarkable a book has fallen; but also to the fact that its noteworthiness is perhaps more evident and relative to us than to our forefathers. It cannot but startle us to find doubts that we hastily look upon as peculiarly "modern," set forth in their full strength and wrestled with and overthrown by an unlettered recluse of the fourteenth century. In some sense they ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... seduce the reader into an utter debauch of spelling. But a sudden Maenad dance of the letters on the page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader—the printer's reader—to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this authority, begging his mercy, to let the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... What is there to startle thee in that? Have not a thousand galleys lain in Loch Etive since I built this ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... of window, and the height of the sun seemed suddenly to startle her. Her more gentle look suddenly vanished and one of irritability swiftly ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... he replied, "and I'm sorry, Ada, but cannot help it now. This will I say, however: I had no wish or intention to hear when I hid myself. My desire was only to startle thee and Hilda, and before I thought what thou wert talking of the thing was out, and now I have got it ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... composure, and thy heart dismay? Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed, Or startle Nero ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... leaves nothing for the perception of the hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... is an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where the right ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door had closed with vigor enough to startle the household. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... will kill herself," I answered, thinking that this resolve would startle Henriette. But when she heard it a disdainful smile, more expressive than the thoughts it conveyed, flickered on her lips. "My dear conscience," I continued, "if you would take into account my resistance and the seductions that led ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... "So sorry to startle you all," Norgate said apologetically. "Of course, you haven't seen the afternoon papers. It was my valet who was found dead in my rooms—a most mysterious affair," he added, his eyes meeting Selingman's. "The inquest is to be ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ambition is not to perform feats which startle the world and give him fame, but rather to live the life of the moderate and harmonious one; yet how often for lack of true discernment he fails! This middle path is not, however, hidden from the sincere ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but would be attended in the fields by whole ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... he murmured. "Forgive me, gnaedige Frau. It is a startle to think that perhaps you have given to the world ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... off, there's a man could Be happy here, Or one of the gods perhaps, were they Not of inhuman stature dire, As poets say Who have not seen them clearly; if At sound of any wind of the world In grass-blades stiff They would not startle and shudder cold Under the sun. When gods were young ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... is a charm and a joy. But their primary value to us is that they are among the rare beings who have possessed "the vision and the faculty divine," who, to quote Ruskin, can "startle our lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment." There is about them nothing incomprehensibly transcendental, nothing "unpractical," nothing aloof from the life we live—if we live it fully—but wholly the contrary. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... night, too much the ghosts come through Your crazy doors, to vex and startle me, Touching with curious fingers cold as dew Kissing with unloved kisses fierily That dwell, slow fever, through my veins all day, And fill my senses as the dead their graves. They are builded in ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... seen trotting one day about two bow-shots from the party. With characteristic eagerness Oliver Trench hastily let fly an arrow at them. He might as well have let it fly at the pole-star. The only effect it had was to startle the deer and send them galloping into ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and again I looked at Miriam, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... what he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... actually few birds. As you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make the vaulted arcades of the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... an explosion, differing much in sound from those which continued to startle the night, rang suddenly out of the distance. It arose from a spot on the confines of the orchard, and was sharp in tone—sharp almost as the human cries which followed it. Then the distant lights hastened ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... called out Spike, in a voice of thunder, loud enough to startle even Mrs. Budd and Biddy in ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... not so near as to startle her friend. A tall brass candlestick, with a lighted tallow candle in it, stood on the table in the parlor window; but the room in which Letty sat was unlighted save by the fire on the hearth, which gleamed brightly ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin |
