"Awful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she glanced timidly up to the scaffolding where her romance had been acted, she felt at home and happy, in spite of the crowd of people who swarmed about her and separated her from the things she loved. In the background stood the solemn and awful associations of the last few weeks, the mysteries and terrors of death, drawing her from thought of earthly things to visions of another world. Full of these deep feelings, saturated with the elixir of love, Esther succumbed to the first notes of the church music. Tears of peaceful delight ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... rustled slightly. Presently I saw a faint thread of light before me. The chief warder, followed by his three men, was approaching cautiously. But he had failed to close his dark lantern properly. The convicts had seen that faint gleam, too. There was an awful savage yell, a turmoil on the dark path, shots fired, blows, groans: and with the sound of smashed bushes, the shouts of the pursuers and the screams of the pursued, the man-hunt, the warder-hunt, passed by me into the interior ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... His chum nodded agreement. "Too awful much, sometimes. Why, he used to come into a rest billet almost every day after we'd come there all shot to bits with only a corporal's guard o' the whole battalion, muddy and tired and sleepy; yes, and what's the first thing we hear, but begad, we've all to shine up and get spic and ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... servants listened breathlessly, with their eyes fixed upon the bed of their sick master. They heard the terrible question, and an awful silence ensued. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... "You're taking some awful chances, Vall," he said, at length. "The way you plan doing it, the advantages will all be with the nighthound. Those things can see as well at night as you can in daylight. I suppose you know that, though; ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... counterpane. The other—a tall, heavy-looking woman—was standing bolt upright by the window. Neither spoke nor stirred, and the kneeling woman did not even raise her head at the noise of his entrance; the other, with eyes utterly expressionless and awful, supported herself with one hand against the wall, and gazed at him speechlessly. Awestruck by this sight, Elliot had to pause a moment before he ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the Prince, "it's misery beyond belief. On the day she took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful, astonishingly awful!" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... young Stuart cared for Miss Delamar, however, was an open question, and a condition yet to be discovered. That he cared for some one, and cared so much that his imagination had begun to picture the awful joys and responsibilities of marriage, was only too well known to himself, and was a state of mind already suspected ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... sunk eyes some awful mystery, And wept we knew not why. There was a grace Of radiant joyful hope upon his face, Most unaccustomed, and which seemed to be All foreign to his wasted frame; and yet So heavenly in its consolation we Smiled through the tears with which our lids were wet. His ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... wonder, would you have made of that? Some telephone conversations are easy to construct, but this to me was a puzzle. What had Anderson been up to? It must be an awful moment, I have often thought as I read divorce and other cases, when a friend is suddenly turned into a witness; and I had the feeling that that might be my lot now. Those clever cross-examining devils, they can get anything out of you. If Anderson ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... into annihilation, There Is No One On The Engine!" At this I sprang from my seat in horror, and looked round at the faces of the persons in the carriage with me. No one of them had spoken, or had heard those awful words. The lamplight from the dome of the carriage flickered on the forms, about me. I looked from one to the other, but saw no sign of alarm given by any of them. Then again the voice out of the air spoke to me,—"There is but one way to be saved. You must leap out of the train!" ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... you're paying him," came Eliza's muffled voice. She freed herself from Murray's embrace and rearranged her hair with tremulous fingers. Surreptitiously she wiped her eyes. "You gave us an awful fright; it's terrible to be evicted in winter-time." She tried to laugh, but the attempt ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... I know! I know what you have incurred by defending me! I know the awful penalty laid upon a military officer who lifts his hand against his superior. Don't ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they're jamming the sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... longer drenches With "coal-black wine" his throttle. But slakes the drouth of his awful mouth With pulls ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... The awful spectacle at Mount Sinai portrayed the proper use of the Law. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt a feeling of singular holiness possessed them. They boasted: "We are the people of God. All that the Lord hath spoken we ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... They then set fire to the piles of wood which were round the stake, which were too far from him to burn him, and I could not imagine what they intended to do, but you may conceive that I was in a state of awful suspense and anxiety, as I was well convinced that his fate, whatever it might be, would ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and our own appetites.... On ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... way, but beware that you tell nobody any thing about us, for if you do, carracho!" He then discharged his trombone just over my head, so that for a moment I thought myself shot, and then with an awful shout, they both galloped away, their horses leaping over the barrancos, as if ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... battle's crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns' mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the wrong in ours. One wrong cannot excuse another. That murder is worse than arson does not make a hero of the rascal who fires our homes. If Allah were more cruel than Jehovah, that would be no palliation of the awful crimes of the Old Testament. That slaves have better clothes than savages cannot make noble traffic in human blood. A choice of evils is often necessary, but it does not make either of them a good. But there is no book which tells of a more infamous monster than the Old Testament, ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... mouth, coolly pressing forward amidst engines of destruction on every side. But hers was a courage greater than theirs. She not only faced death at the hands of stealthy assassins and howling mobs in her loyalty to truth, duty, and humanity, but she encountered unflinchingly the awful frowns of the mighty consecrated leaders of society, the scoffs and sneers of the multitude, the outstretched finger of scorn, and the whispered mockery of pity, standing up for the lowest of the low. Nurtured in the very bosom of slavery, by her own observation and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "It was awful for him to get up that report about another party," answered the girl. "Of course I didn't think it was true—that is, not what he said about you ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... thrown out in the Senate (I think the Senate) by a small majority. Though we have nothing to do with Hanover, this violence will, no doubt, render him still more odious here than he was before, and it would be an awful thing if the Crown were, by any accident, to devolve upon him. The late King's desire to effect this change affords an indisputable proof of the sincerity of his constitutional principles, and it is no small praise that he was satisfied ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... what man is great? alas! no one, For thou alone art great! through earth's vast bounds. When wide thy awful voice in Heaven resounds, The gods fall prostrate to our Holy One; When on the earth thy voice afar resounds, The genii[16] bow to thee and kiss the dust. In thee, O Samas! do I put my trust, For thy great love and ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... out into the deep;' The awful depth of a world's despair; Hearts that are breaking and eyes that weep; Sorrow and ruin and death are there. And the sea is wide; And its pitiless tide Bears on its bosom away. Beauty and youth, In relentless ruth, To its dark abyss for aye. But the Master's ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... in the memory of the conquered Corsican, so Ashtabula was burned into the brain of Bradish. Out of that awful wreck he crawled, widowed and childless. For a long time he did not realize, for his head was hurt in ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... the giant porter to Flibberti- gibbet." Carey stopped to laugh. "But then I never thought of their going on to present themselves to Ellen in the middle of a mighty and solemn dinner party! All the grandees, the county people (this in a deep and awful voice), sitting up in their chignons of state, in the awful pause during the dishing-up, when these five little wretches, in finery filched from the rag bag, appear on the smooth lawn, mown and trimmed to the last extent for the occasion, and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... becoming part of the planet. Many people in my day believed that after death their souls would enter stately trees, and spread abroad great branches, dropping dead leaves over the places on which they had stood while on earth. This might be the last step in the awful tragedy of the fall and involution of a human soul. In this way, those who had wasted the priceless opportunities given them by God might be mercifully obliterated, for it seems as if they would not be needed in the economy of ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the evidence was completed, of a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording. The English were a stern people—a people knowing little of compassion where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful and solemn horror of evil things,—a feeling which, in proportion as it exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... &c. v.; alarming; formidable, redoubtable; perilous &c. (danger) 665; portentous; fearful; dread, dreadful; fell; dire, direful; shocking; terrible, terrific; tremendous; horrid, horrible, horrific; ghastly; awful, awe-inspiring; revolting &c. (painful) 830; Gorgonian. Adv. in terrorem[Lat]. Int. "angels and ministers of grace defend us!" [Hamlet]. Phr. ante tubam trepidat[Latin]; horresco referens[Latin], one's heart failing one, obstupui steteruntque comae ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... austerities. And it is said that from antipathy to Indra he created a son having three heads. And that being of universal form possessed of great lustre hankered after Indra's seat. And possessed of those three awful faces resembling the sun, the moon, and the fire, he read the Vedas with one mouth, drank wine with another, and looked with the third as if he would absorb all the cardinal points. And given to the practice of austerities, and mild being and self-controlled, he was intent upon a life of religious ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... battle's sound, Was heard the world around: The idle spear and shield were high up hung; The hooked chariot stood, Unstain'd with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... to utter some awful Latin imprecation, which so aroused the superstition of the sentinel that he made no further opposition, which perhaps saved his life, for the retainers of Aescendune were meditating instant violence, indignant at the delay and the outrage to ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... one day in the coal mine, deathly sick. The air at times was awful. I laid down just outside the car track. I thought I was going to die and felt distinctly pleased at the prospect. Some one reported me to the superintendent. He evidently knew the symptoms, for he came with ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Bosola with Ferdinand in the house of murder and madness, while their spotted souls yet flutter between conscience and distraction, hovering for an hour as with broken wings on the confines of either province of hell. One pupil at least could put to this awful profit the study of so great a model; but with the single and sublime exception of that other design from the same great hand, which bares before us the mortal anguish of Bracciano, no copy or imitation of the scene in which John dies by poison has ever come near enough to evade the sentence ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in whisper so awful that I, for one, nearly trembled. "Misfortune!" she repeated. "Hush! Silence! Not a word! I must ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Out into the awful storm the two men plunged a few moments later. There was no thought of their own comfort in their minds. They had heard a cry—the cry of a human being, and they were prepared to lend such aid as lay in their power. They did not pause to wonder at a voice ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... gone, she says, since that awful summer, but she has enough left, goodness knows! And when she begins to go around with a lump in her throat, all I have to do is to threaten to return to Sunnyside, and she is frightened into a semblance of cheerfulness,—from which you ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... acquaintances, and the pride with which her more successful companions will look down upon her. These and other features in the picture become so fearful to contemplate, that she resolves to embrace the first opportunity to escape so awful a dilemma. She will engage herself as soon as practicable, lest she should outstand her day, and be left in the dread condition of an "old maid." ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... thing. Garry wa'n't a-bitin' on ye none. He's hurt bad, Garry is, an' he needs a nuss the worst way, Garry does. An' so I come an' got ye." He guffawed over his wit. "If ye'll behave I'll let loose o' ye a mite, an' we'll stroll along a matter of a few mile to whar Garry's waitin' awful impatient." ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... on the top of a pair of steps with the Phenomenon in an attitude; 'FAREWELL,' on a transparency behind; and nine people at the wings with a squib in each hand—all the dozen and a half going off at once—it would be very grand—awful from the ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... quailed; her sweet voice never faltered; she had thought for everyone but herself. Again and again with her own hands she snatched some follower from a danger unseen by him, but which a moment later would have been his death. She herself stood unmoved in the awful tumult. She even smiled when Dunois and La Hire would have drawn her from the hottest ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... have gone with us on this drive to—what is the place?—to Cervara. You know it was arranged yesterday morning. In the evening he was to have dined with us. But he never came, and this morning arrives this awful thing. Oh dear, I 'm so excited! Would ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... runs out. The latter can be arranged by siphonage with a rubber tube. While this method requires more care, and running hot and cold water, it is the most comfortable treatment for these cases, usually attended by awful suffering, and at the same time it is most ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... though it would be idle to pretend that my grip on the situation was quite the grip I would have liked it to be, I did not despair of arriving at a solution. A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have thrown in the towel at once and ceased to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... nothing more; and when the julep appeared on a silver tray, he left the room and went upstairs to where Betty was waiting. "He's awful, there's no use mincing words, he's simply awful," he remarked ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... nati,' of no particular account for valour, skill, or prosperity. The ghosts of such persons continue their insignificance, and are nobodies after death as before; they are ghosts because all men have souls, and the souls of dead men are ghosts; they are dreaded because all ghosts are awful, but they get no worship and are soon only thought of as the crowd of the nameless ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... false, telling me that here was happiness; but perceiving all the barriers that divided us, I understood the vastness of their pettiness, and these difficulties terrified me more than the prospect of happiness could delight me. At once I felt the awful reaction which casts my expansive soul back on itself; the smile you had brought to my lips suddenly turned to a bitter grimace, and I could only strive to keep calm, while my soul was boiling with the turmoil of contradictory emotions. In short, I experienced that gnawing pang to which twenty-three ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... caused a general gloom to prevail in the financial world, I was asked by a gentleman if I had the courage to join him in a speculation, my reply was I would see to-morrow." "I fear," Mr Montefiore observes, "this day's awful lesson ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... servants a guinea for my health, and was content enough to escape into a house where my birth-day not being known could not be mentioned. I sat up till midnight was past, and the day of a new year, a very awful day, began.' Pr. and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... to old Bottle Green, all right," said Griffin reassuringly. "Her bark is a whole lot worse than her bite. She's a trump at heart, though she is awful ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... had his will, Would bar us from the skirts of Pindus old. No more the classic laurel should be prized, But the rough leaflets of our native oak Alone should glisten in the poet's hair; Yet did himself, with spirit unreclaim'd From first allegiance to those early Gods, Lead up to Golgotha's most awful height With more than epic pomp the new Crusade. But let him range the bright angelic host On either hill—no matter. By his grave All gentle hearts should bow them down and weep. For where a hero and a saint have died, Or where a poet sang prophetical, Dying as greatly as they greatly lived, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the German chemical attack. They stood and fell unprotected before the early German clouds and unprotected again before the vile contact of mustard gas. The awful price they paid for our safety demands that we do more than rest contented with the sacrifice. It is an imperative and patriotic duty to the fallen, to the future of the race, and to the Empire, that, faced once again with modern ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... the constant play Of Wit's resistless archery cleared their way?— That mocking spirit, worst of all the foes, Our solemn fraud, our mystic mummery knows, Whose wounding flash thus ever 'mong the signs Of a fast-falling creed, prelusive shines, Threatening such change as do the awful freaks Of summer lightning ere the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the legislature had placed at his disposal, for the suppression of a criminal and unprovoked insurrection. The case contemplated by congress had clearly occurred; and the President was urged by considerations the most awful, to perform the duty imposed on him by the constitution, of providing "that the laws be faithfully executed." The long forbearance of government, and its patient endeavours to recall the deluded people to a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... influence of being so much with you. If you keep it up for another week, you'll have to send me off to New York to get secularized. I say, Clarice, how long do you mean to go on in this way? It's all very nice for me, but how about Hartman? He's not frivolous; he takes Life in awful earnest. What do you propose to do with him after you've got him—I should say, after the fatal dart has transfixed his manly form, and he falls pierced and ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... of a pistol hard by, followed immediately by another and, as I lay deafened and half-dazed, the floor quivered to the soft, vicious thud of leaping, swift-trampling feet, and on the air was a confused scuffling, mingled with an awful, beast-like worrying sound. And now (though I was broad-awake and tingling for action) I constrained myself to lie still, nothing stirring, for here (as I judged) was desperate knife-play, indeed more than once I heard the faint click ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of the giant band, Lassen Peak, is semi-active to-day. At least two others, Mount Rainier and Mount Baker, offer evidences of internal heat beneath their mail of ice. And early settlers in the northwest report Indian traditions of the awful cataclysm in which Mount Rainier lost two thousand ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Two precious villains—Carbon and Azote— They have perplexed me heretofore; but now The thing is plain enough. This morning, ere I left my chamber, all the mystery stood Asudden in an awful revelation! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... out, taking her awful secret with her, and turning over I fell asleep again on my pile of straw. "If ever I have a dollar I'll give it to her so she may stop walkin'," ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... anarchy of a superannuated empire, strong only to punish and impotent to defend, were at this time convulsing the provinces in every point of the compass. Rome herself had been menaced repeatedly. And a still more awful indication of the coming storm had been felt far to the south of Rome. One long wave of the great German deluge had stretched beyond the Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... secretly hoped and suspected she would refuse. The drum-major was called in, one Gideon Greatbatch by name—a long, straight-haired, sallow-faced personage, of some note among the brethren for zeal and impiety. By this we mean that awful and profane use of Scripture phraseology with which many of these gifted preachers affected to interlard their everyday discourse, attaching a ludicrous solemnity to matters the most trivial ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... sun went down. The bright little narrow gleam under the eyelids of the dead stared slily up to him with an awful triumph. His heart was caught by the grip of a skeleton hand. He could feel its several sinews as they tightened their grasp. It was impossible to break away—the grip of the hand was on the heart in, his breast, and he was in the power ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... been. As he speaks the words coldly, almost cruelly, as she looks in his face, the last trace of color leaves her own. The hot fire dies out of her eyes, an awful terror comes in its place. With all her heart, all her strength, she loves the man she so bitterly reproaches. It seems to her she can look back upon no time in which her love for him ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one could easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some ghostly palace that had known no living tenant since that awful November night of eighteen ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no chance fur 'ee, Jasper. Ther'v bin oal soarts ov taales 'bout you. She's awful vexed now that she ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... old man's advice: kindled a large fire, answered the question put to him as he had been directed to do, and seizing the child flung him in without hesitation. The Sibhreach gave an awful yell, and sprang through the roof, where a hole had been left to ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... silence, what seemed to him an age, until it caught again. Then he continued to the end without a stop. After the meeting the veteran came forward to shake hands. "Have you any advice for me?" said the young man, that awful breakdown looming large in ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... TRAGIC things! I shouldn't have been a bit surprised any time to hear you were sick. Are you sick? Perhaps that's why you don't write or come home. Wire me the minute you get this. Oh, Elliott darling, when I think of you marooned in that awful place—" ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... now. I aint got to say a word to nobody out yer. Wonder 'f I'll ebber git back from de 'cad'my an' kitch fish in dis yer bay? Sho! Course I will. But goin' away's awful!" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... father, the sun. He saw mountains, whose summits breathed fire, and others, which were the abode of the snow spirit—now noisy with the war of the Holy People above the clouds, and now with the hissing of the Great Serpent in the deep, awful, and inaccessible valleys of the bright old inhabitants.[A] They overcame, he thought, the impediments of fire and storm; they charmed away the wrath of the evil spirits, and looked at length from the eastern ridge of those mighty hills upon the interminable glades and prairies spread ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... On that ill-smelling And muddy throatful Revolts. Ah me! That awful vision! That dread collision With the rowdy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... elapsed, when, upon the last day of the year, one of his guardians entering his room, began to converse with his physician upon the melancholy circumstance of Aubrey's being in so awful a situation, when his sister was going next day to be married. Instantly Aubrey's attention was attracted; he asked anxiously to whom. Glad of this mark of returning intellect, of which they feared he had been deprived, they mentioned ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... length said the count, and his voice sounded to the trembling courtiers hollow and awful as that of an angel of death, "gentlemen, the king says if you do not leave here at once, he will easily find means to compel ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... You see, she rather holds onto me. It's awful in a way, too. It looks as though I am posing as magnanimous. I'm not, Clay. If I had cared awfully it would have been different. But then, if I had cared awfully, perhaps ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mother instinct was not deceived as to the strength of his passion. Strange and conflicting were the sensations with which she awaited the result; at one moment thinking, 'It is madness; he must promise—it is too awful!' at another, 'Ah! but how can he, if he loves her so? It is impossible; and she, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... observed one, sotto voce, "the bloke really has awful headaches, like a girl, and then he always shuts up this way. You will only rile him, and get the rough ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... maniac when the water went on its head. I—I took Mrs. McKee out in a hired machine. That's what happened to my capital." He grinned sheepishly. "She said she would have to go in her toque. I had awful qualms. I thought it was ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... wife, the lovely Sara, were in Paris, where no word reached them till long after, and then only by a stranger, an old workman of the factory in Languedoc; so the months went by, and then came the awful revolution that put an end to the royal family, and enthroned the guillotine. Then the revolution passed out of the hands of men, and the destinies of France seemed to be in the keeping of murderers like Robespierre and Couthon. By that time the old ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... feeble word to indicate the feelings of that foe! Although, no doubt, some of them might have heard of, perhaps seen, the ponderous and comparatively quiet bison of the Western prairies, none of them had ever imagined anything so awful as a little black bull with tremendous horns, blood-red nostrils, flashing eyes, and cat-like activity. One awe-struck look they gave it, and then fled howling into the woods. The sounds were so startling that those of the enemy ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... how I remember that! And ten days from that day the boat had left the shore which never returned; never—and he had left me! gone! For three days we waited—and I hoped while I could—oh—that awful agony of three days! And the sun shone as it shines to-day, and there was no more wind than now; and the sea under the windows was like this paper for smoothness—and my sisters drew the curtains back that I might see for ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... was worth half a million dollars; and instead of making his big business still bigger, he was studying Greek. It was a woman and Eros taught Schliemann Greek, and this was so letters could be written—dictated by Eros, who they do say is an awful dictator—that would not be easily construed by Hoosier "hoi polloi." Together the woman and Schliemann studied the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... teeth, "I'm cured—cured of the awful fear! That second time he missed, I just gave up entirely; I didn't care any longer. And then somehow I felt such a sense of peace and freedom—there weren't any upside-down things around to torture me, no sense of insecurity. I just was, in ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... hardest truth for her to realize was that her father, whom she had always trusted and looked upon as the embodiment of honor and uprightness, was the foremost to suggest and even offer to carry out the fearful deed. "I will kill the King, if need be, even without help:" the awful sentence seemed to be repeated over and over again by the rustling night wind. Her first impulse was to save him from the consequences of such an act. Were not the names of Moore and Essex familiar to her? And what was their fate for even a suspected ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... winged serpents and oceans of fire which affrighted us, are seen as the portals through which the imagination enters a more beautiful, radiant world. The powers we dared not raise our eyes to—heroes, dread deities and awful kings—grow as brothers and gay children around the spirit in its resurrection and ascension. For there is no pathway in the universe which does not pass through man, and no life which is ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... changed, grew stern, grew implacable. He bent towards her, still holding her firmly by the wrists. He looked closely into her eyes, and in his own was neither accusation nor condemnation, only a deep and awful questioning that seemed to probe ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... entered the tropics, an awful storm burst upon our ship. The first squall of wind carried away two of our masts, and left only the foremast standing. Even this, however, was more than enough, for we did not dare to hoist a rag of sail on it. For five days the tempest raged in all its fury. Everything was swept off the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... awful tough on hop fiends in this burg now and they'll be a copper along in a minute, so you better duck. I know you guys is no less than J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, if not more, and you'll gimme a million ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... and happy. Five months ago I could hardly walk across the room, I was so full of pain. I could scarcely step. I now feel like a new woman. I sleep well and have a good appetite. I used to get such awful sick headache spells, but now I have them no more. Also would be troubled with awful bearing down pain at time of menstruation but have also been relieved of this. I cannot praise your medicine enough. I think it is the best thing made for women. I advise, everyone who suffers with ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham
... Bourbons. France, if successful, means to pour in a vast many thousands on us, and has threatened to burn the capital itself, Jersey, my dear Madam, does not enter into a calculation of such magnitude. The moment is singularly awful; yet the vaunts of enemies are rarely executed successfully and ably. Have we trampled America under ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... unspeakable elastic things. You'd make allowances if you knew what I've gone through since the day before yesterday, when I found, after telegraphing a frantic appeal to my aunt in Scotland, that she's left home and they could give me no address. I've had an awful time. My nerves ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... every church in Christendom, as far as I am aware, from the metropolitan cathedrals of Europe to the humblest missionary chapel in the islands of the sea, concur with the Church of England in imploring the Sovereign of the universe, by the most awful adjurations which the heart of man can conceive or his tongue utter, to deliver us from "sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion." And reason good,—for while a rebellion against tyranny; a rebellion designed, after prostrating ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... lover as was the belief which now pervaded Mary's mind that Jem's innocence might be proved, without involving any suspicion of that other—that dear one, so dear, although so criminal—on whose part in this cruel business she dared not dwell even in thought. For if she did there arose the awful question,—if all went against Jem the innocent, if judge and jury gave the verdict forth which had the looming gallows in the rear, what ought she to do, possessed of her terrible knowledge? Surely not to inculpate her father—and yet— and yet—she almost prayed for the blessed ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... passed across Russia into Siberia. At last, after travelling thousands of miles, I came up with the gang of wretched prisoners in which the doctor was. Showing my papers to the officer in command, I was taken at once to the awful prison-house. I had him brought to me in a private room, and placed ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the able-bodied men gave out, old men, boys, women, and girls fought on with stubborn fury, and died before they would surrender. The wounded escaped if they could, or, cursing their captors, tore off their bandages and bled to death. Disease wrought awful havoc in all the armies engaged; yet the struggle continued until flesh and blood could endure no more. Flying before his pursuers into the wilds of the north and frantically dragging along with him masses of ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... set down," said Mrs. Gray cheerfully, leading the way; "awful tryin' weather we're havin', ain't it? An' the mud—my, it's somethin' fierce! The men-folks track it in so, there's no keepin' it swept up, an' there's so many of us here! But there's nothin' like ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... home and family in all the world, and lived as her people and mine have lived for generations, honest, God-fearing, law-abiding, neighbour-loving men and women, and then died as men should die? But now, Jim, I see a black, awful picture. No, I'm not morbid, I'm going to make a heroic effort to put the picture out of sight; but I'm ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... us a picture of heaven and of hell. In the one are the 'solemn troops and sweet societies'; in the other, no peace, no confidence, no bonds, only isolation, because sin which is selfishness lies at the foundation of the awful condition. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... said, and took an apple from the bowl. "My daddy says you were real primitive, an' killed your babies for some silly religious reason. I think that's awful! How could it be religious? God couldn't like to have little babies killed!" She took a big bite of the apple; the juice ran from the corners of ...
— One Martian Afternoon • Tom Leahy
... night he would sit up an hour longer than his big red-faced friend, and pour out his imaginings to the typewriter—the poor typewriter. The speed he developed was a detriment to composition; the faster he went the more hyperbolic and awful became his effusions, and so we repeat, the poor typewriter! It had brought about its own ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... of the sun, the awful stillness came stealing to envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... legs, his look flashed eagerly, then a little painfully—then suddenly stayed, for it rested on the green turban of Yusef, the drunken ghaffir. Yusef's eyes were almost shut; his face had the grey look of fresh-killed veal, for he had come from an awful debauch of hashish. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... irreverent, so headstrong, and at times even violent. He used to tremble for the child's future, as, attracted by the sweet, true ring of her voice, he saw the eager, merry eyes wandering all round the room, while the lips were singing the most sacred words. Those awful and profound truths, that were to him the only realities, and which animated his every effort, were apparently to this sweet young singer but as fairy tales, or even as mere empty words on which to build up the fabric ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... many things that he would be better without.' "Which is true of more than him," growled Jack. 'Of course, he does not like Rosenblatt. A little while ago there was a dance and, as always at the dances, that awful beer! The men got drunk and a good deal of fighting took place. Rosenblatt and a friend of his got abusing the girl. The boy flew at him and wounded him with a knife,' "And served him jolly well right," ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... her with an awful realisation of how near her slender body had come to being ruthlessly crushed by the human machine—simply because it happened to put itself in the path. That he, too, had all unconsciously been in the path and had barely escaped destruction ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... and to hit the high C, he judged the coast was clear, and leaped lightly out of bed. Even before he'd struck the floor he knew there'd been a horrible mistake somewhere, for he felt a tug as if he'd hooked a hundred-pound catfish. There was an awful ripping and tearing sound, something fetched loose, and his wife was sitting up in bed blinking at him in the moonlight. It seemed that just before she went to sleep she'd pinned her nightgown to his with a safety pin, which wasn't such a bad idea for ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... side, because it is an imitation of the Bible, and therefore lacks originality, and on the other side it suffers, because it does not sufficiently imitate the Biblical style. In spite of these limitations, it is real poetry. In the Psalms there is deep sympathy for the wilder and more awful phenomena of nature. In the poetry of the Spanish Jews, nature is loved in her gentler moods. One of these poets, Nahum, wrote prettily of his garden; another, Ibn Gebirol, sang of autumn; Jehuda Halevi, of spring. Again, in their love songs there is freshness. There is in them a ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... passing from the authority of a parent to the rod of the stranger, until these horrid anticipations worked his expiring imagination into frenzy. When I saw him he was a prey to all the anguish of despair, and he made me feel how awful is the retribution of nature upon those ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... arms, and one bright little boy by her side; and this boy is our little brown-eyed Fred—the hero of our story. But few years had rolled over his curly head, when he first looked, weeping and wondering, on the face of death. Ah, one look on that awful face adds years at once to the age of the heart; and little Fred felt manly thoughts aroused in him by the cold stillness of his father, and the deep, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... are," returned Aunt Sarah. "Only they're not quite so awful, because they haven't learned to cover themselves all over with little pretences. When Penrod grows up he'll be just the same as he is now, except that whenever he does what he wants to do he'll tell ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... that nearly every important war-producing cause contributed to the fierceness of the conflict. Personal ambition, trade rivalries, the greed of munition-makers, race hatreds and revenge—all played a part in the awful tragedy. Thirty millions of human lives were sacrificed; three hundred billion dollars' worth of property was destroyed; more than two hundred billion dollars of indebtedness was added to the burden that the world was already carrying. The paper currency of the nations was swollen ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... tree that he fell on his knees, sometimes bending the saplings behind which I stood until his horns almost touched me. There was not a branch I could lay hold of to climb up. How long this awful game of "touchwood" lasted, I know not; it seemed hours; after the first excitement of self-preservation passed off, weariness again took possession of me, and it required all the instinct of self-preservation to keep me on my feet; several times the bull left me for a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... seek for it yourself," cried the King. And he gave orders that the merchant be tied hand and foot, and tossed into a little boat without food or drink, and then sent adrift to die helplessly in the lonely seas. And so this awful ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... immaterial, have been at deadly strife in my conjectures. The present has been to me an evasion, the future an enigma; the earth a delusion, the heavens a doubt. Even the pomp of those inexplicable stars is a new agony of indecision to my recoiling fancy[6]—so impassive in their unchangeableness, so awful in the quiescence of their eternal grandeur. Supreme, too, in my bewilderment, remains the problem of their revolutions—the cause of their impulsion[7] as well as of their creation. Baffled in my scrutiny of the sublime puzzle which is domed over the globe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... I suppose,' said Leonard; 'but he is an awful bother, and poor Ave gets the worst of it. One has no patience with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reminded that the Southerners were upon them. He had satirically worked it out in his own mind that if he were ever pushed out of his own position, it would be some Southerner who pushed him. He sometimes thought of the whole New York professional situation as a public wonderful awful dinner at which almost nothing was served that did not have a Southern flavor as from a kind of pepper. The guests were bound to have administered to them their shares of this pepper; there was no getting away from the table ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... in the Black Hawk War!" proceeded the Illinoisian, "and I remember one time I grew awful weak in the legs when I heard the bullets whistle around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I should sink to the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... and hush all noise in her great world-house without strongly intending that her children should go to sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole community very generally set their faces bedward, and the toll of the nine-o'clock evening-bell had an awful solemnity in it, sounding to the full. Good society in New England in those days very generally took its breakfast at six, its dinner at twelve, and its tea, at six. "Company tea," however, among thrifty, industrious folk, was often taken an hour earlier, because each of the invitees ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... in torrents, the thunder echoed clap on clap, each detonation preceded by an awful zig-zag of fire. The tempest grew in fury, and, scarce able to ride on the shifting wind, the plaintive voices of the bells ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... comparing them to the eyes of the hero of a certain romance called "Melmoth the Wanderer," which used to alarm us boys thirty years ago; eyes of an individual who had made a bargain with a Certain Person, and at an extreme old age retained these eyes in their awful splendour. I fancy Goethe must have been still more handsome as an old man than even in the days of his youth. His voice was very rich and sweet. He asked me questions about myself, which I answered as best I could. I recollect I was at first astonished, and then somewhat relieved, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike could stay without paying anything. Well, I sunk twenty thousand dollars in that, and might have lost more, only Carter—Kitty's father—persuaded me—he's an awful clever old fellow—into turning it into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to take poor chaps who couldn't pay, at half prices, or quarter prices, PRIVATELY, don't you see, so as ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... of man that he thought much about, was the right to be eternally damned if he did not lay hold of grace. King and subject were alike creatures whose sole significance lay in their individual immortal souls. Their relations with one another upon earth were nothing in the presence of the awful judgment which awaited them both. Thus whether Bunyan's brief career in the army was under Charles or under Fairfax must remain doubtful. Probability is on the side of his having been with the Royalists. His father was of 'the national religion.' ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for antiquities; she wrote poetry—- ballad poetry—which people who were considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things into the awful chasm that had been made in her life, she tried her best to fill it up. She set herself to consider the poor man's case, and made experiments and gave advice which confirmed her poorer brethren in their opinion that she was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... would meet it on his feet, looking into its eyes. He would not shrink and cringe from it, but would face it with dignity as a Foote should face it, uttering no cry of pain or fear. It was a dignified moment, the most dignified and awful of his life. ... Five generations were looking on to see how he met it, and he was conscious of their eyes. He stared before him with level eyes, forcing a smile, and waited the seconds there remained ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... their wines to Flanders; Guyenne sent hers to England. Froissart writes that, in 1372, a merchant fleet of quite two hundred sail came from London to Bordeaux for wine. This flourishing trade received a severe blow in the sixteenth century; for an awful famine having invaded France in 1566, Charles IX. did not hesitate to repeat the acts of Domitian, and to order all the vines to be uprooted and their place to be sown with corn; fortunately Henry III. soon after modified this edict by simply recommending the governors of the provinces to see ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... "There's an awful roarin' from our window," said Shep. "Thee can't half hear it down here. Come out on the stoop. The old ponds have got their ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... mercy emphatically preached by Manu and other law-givers." After paying a warm tribute to Mr. Jackson's personal qualities and great learning, and quoting sacred texts to show that "such a murder is to be condemned the more when a Brahman commits it," and renders the murderer liable to the most awful penalties in the next world, the proclamation proceeded to declare that "his Holiness is pleased to excommunicate the wicked persons who have committed the present offence, and who shall commit similar offences against the State, and none of the disciples of this Petha shall have any dealings ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... shouts of sailors that sounded but faintly above the roar of the tempest, and the next morning discovered that a huge wave had carried away the bridge, the lookout fortunately managing to escape being carried away with the wreck. The experience of that awful night is one never to be forgotten, a night that, according to the captain, was the worst that he had ever witnessed during his thirty years of experience, and it was with feelings of great relief that we dropped anchor in the harbor of New ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... only reply was another awful fit of sickness, that made as if it would tear his chest asunder. While he was under the influence of it, his tutor entered, and set about ministering to him with a care and fatherly tenderness that even deceived me. I can see ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... not annihilate the principle of religion in the spirit of man; but in taking away the awful repression of the idea of one exclusive sovereign Divinity, it left that spirit to fabricate its religion in its own manner. And as the creating of gods might be the most appropriate way of celebrating the deliverance ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... lodgings, and Miss Baker and Caroline lived there as the world mostly does. There are three sets of persons who resort to Littlebath: there is the heavy fast, and the lighter fast set; there is also the pious set. Of the two fast sets neither is scandalously fast. The pace is never very awful. Of the heavies, it may be said that the gentlemen generally wear their coats padded, are frequently seen standing idle about the parades and terraces, that they always keep a horse, and trot about ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... know," she sighed at last. "I had such faith in you, and this has been such an awful shock. Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, I could ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... citizens without, and now again having all the world within her walls; and passing through all the vicissitudes of gigantic rise, wavering decline, and mournful fall. And men speak of the future still with these awful monuments ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth |
