"Formidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country, sometimes (like Hrothgar with his palace Heorot in "Beowulf's Lay") a great fort and treasure house, as Eormenric, whose palace may well have really existed. There is often a primitive and negroid character about dwellings of formidable personages, heads placed on stakes adorn their exterior, or shields ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... formidable amount, and calculated his resources, he felt, for a time, utterly discouraged. But a reaction from this state of feeling came, and he set his mind vigorously to work in devising means for ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... latter to be so weak, in an unfinished state, as to be easily carried, without artillery, by the force of English bayonets. The difficulties in the way of heavy cannons, in that dense forest, were very formidable; and Abercrombie was willing to rely upon sword and bayonet, on the strength of his engineer's report. That functionary was mistaken; and when the English approached the French lines, they found an embankment of earth and stones, eight feet in height, strongly guarded by abatis, or felled ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson
... Abundant supplies arrived at the same time from Lyons. On November twentieth the new officers took charge, two days later a general reconnaissance was made, and within a short time the investment was completed. On the thirtieth there was a formidable sally from the town directed against Buonaparte's batteries. In the force were two thousand three hundred and fifty men: about four hundred British, three hundred Sardinians, two hundred and fifty French, and seven hundred ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... AND CHIPPEWAS.—These hostilities have reached such a point, that the department has deemed it necessary to interpose its friendly offices in a more formidable manner, by dispatching an expedition into the principal seat of the war. The instructions, however (of Aug. 9th), by which I was designated for that purpose, reached me so late in that month, that ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and, proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, in sight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he was clearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along very slowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fell over; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and found him dead,—having bled to death from the wound I ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... dogs would hold him till we arrived, and we needed our breath for the next act. So on a trot we came over a rise of ground and saw, away up on the limb of a tall straight fir tree, a bear that looked very formidable and large. The golden rays of the rising sun ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Crete, Cyprus, and many Ionian and AEgean islands. The discovery of America and of a new route to India was destined to shake the very basis of her commercial supremacy. And her unscrupulous policy toward her Italian rivals lost her friends to the west. So great was the enmity against Venice that the formidable League of Cambrai, entered into by the emperor, the pope, France, and Spain in 1508, wrung many ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... once, partly by the offensive manners of the formidable-looking old woman, her bulk and gruffness, but also because Old Tom's doubt of her powers, which she perceived, was shaking her confidence. She sat down at the piano, however, and struck a few notes; ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... other people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object, he denounces all kinds of free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls heresy. When he had the power, heresy was the most terrible and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment, torture, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Hampton Court, and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour of knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George I, whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace and danger, against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King, that splendid conspiracy broke up; and a golden opportunity came to Dick Steele, whose hand, alas, was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... would be cruel to put into print. Of Webster, however, he never seems to have spoken a contemptuous word. Indeed, Mason, though fourteen years older than Webster, and fighting him at the Portsmouth bar with all the formidable force of his logic and learning, was from the first his cordial friend. That friendship, early established between strong natures so opposite in character, was never disturbed by any collision in the courts. In a letter written, I think, a few weeks after he had made that ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... to destroying the happiness of God's finest creation—man. Treating the Devil from a Darwinian point of view, we may assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a polite ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... requirements of early Teutonic society; and, as private war died down, so the status of the page became impaired, until in the reign of Elizabeth we find him a pampered domestic, whose pert air and gaudy dress represented all that was left of a formidable troop armed with sword and buckler. Ben Jonson deplores and ridicules the transformation in lines with which the present volume may well close. The host in the play has refused his son as page to Lord Lovel, saying that he would hang him sooner than "damn him to that ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... detailed information as this Uncle Sam, that world renowned errand boy, could hardly do otherwise than deliver this formidable document. And thus it was that W. Harris, scout, had stopped a great train, which goes to show you what boy scouts ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... is no doubt of that, Mrs. Randolph," said Mr. Marshall. "Such an enemy would be very formidable! I should begin to question on which side ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... as he stood on the hall steps, and watched the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his saturnine fashion, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a strong, unscrupulous ally, the other a formidable enemy. ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the aspect of the valley becomes formidable. Troops of mammoths and mastadons in stone lie crouching over the eastern declivity, one above another, and heaped up over the whole slope. These colossal ridges shine with a tawny hue like iron rust; the most enormous of them drink the water ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... the seas being driven over shoals were irregular and broken. At last my sea came. It rolled up without a crest, square and formidable. I could not calculate where it would break, but I pulled for life away from it towards the beach upon which the sea was breaking with deafening sound. It was only for a moment that I beheld the great brown wave, which bore with it the mud of the shoal, bearing down upon me; for the next, it broke ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... named the "struggle for existence" is the old difficulty, known as "the origin of evil," presented in a new shape. It is rendered more formidable, as a stumbling-block to the benevolence of the Author of nature, by making what was considered exceptional the rule. It gathers up into one comprehensive statement the scattered occasions of misery, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those they steered in their own country from the hands of those that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that Christian-Scientism is destined to make the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century from now it may stand second to Rome only, in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and in other ways shows a slight increase of maturity over the biography of Agricola. His object in writing this treatise has been much contested. Some think it was in order to dissuade Trajan from a projected expedition that he painted the German people as foes so formidable; others that it is a satire on the vices of Rome couched under the guise of an innocent ethnographic treatise; others that it is inspired by the genuine scientific desire to investigate the many objects of historic and natural interest ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the United States has turned out a few formidable battleships, which it is claimed surpass the best of those of any other navy in the world. The Delaware and North Dakota each have a draft of twenty-six feet, eleven inches and a displacement of twenty thousand tons. Great interest attached to the trials of these vessels because ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... the promise of a great prosperity to be speedily achieved in the released energies of a vigorous and industrious people. He had not again to choose between differing factions of his own party, nor to carry out a policy against the will of a formidable opposition. To the Federalists hardly a name was left in the progress of events at home and abroad; while all immediate vital questions of difference vanished, the party in power remained in almost undisputed ascendency. The most important Democratic measures it then insisted upon were a national ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... lasted for about a quarter of an hour from the time the serpents were let loose until they were called off, and it was more than an hour from that time before he could speak. I thought I could discover that the poisonous fangs had been pulled out of these formidable serpents' jaws, and mentioned that circumstance to the showman, who said, that they had indeed been extracted; and when I wished to know how swellings on his neck and other parts could be assumed, he assured me, that though their deadly ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... resources: wide natural resource base including major deposits of oil, natural gas, coal, and many strategic minerals, timber note: formidable obstacles of climate, terrain, and distance hinder ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... Two formidable parties, under experienced leaders, in execution of the campaign planned by George Washington and our former Deputy Post Master General, the able Benjamin Franklin, had united under the walls of Quebec. Both leaders intimately knew its highways and by-ways. Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... other artifices, have used their best endeavours, and employed all the rules of their art, to render those years of our age, which they call climacterics, dangerous and formidable. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... was the information that we gleaned, and in some details requiring a simple credulity that nine months of active campaigning had quite jostled and worried out of us. It seemed settled, however, that our comrades up the river were a host formidable in numbers and of magnificent armament and material; altogether very well able to take care of themselves, at least until we could ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the Rhine, whose civilisation (one exclusively due to the energy of man) came centuries after the establishment of the great Roman towns of the Rhine; it is true of the estuary of the Seine, whose principal harbour of Havre is almost modern, and whose difficulties are still formidable for ocean-going craft; and it is ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... his one extra suit of underclothes, a soiled shirt, two dickeys and cuffs, his whisk broom, toothbrush, a box of blacking, the blacking brush. She made the package as compact as she could—it was still a formidable bundle both for size and weight—and carried it into her room. Then she rolled into a small parcel her own possessions—two blouses, an undervest, a pair of stockings, a nightgown—reminder of Bethlehem and her brief sip at the cup of success—a few toilet ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the General made his guest the object of his formidable advance. The first time, having put him out of countenance, he contented ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a lofty one. Marlowe's mighty line was not easy to surpass. There is nothing which provokes the best efforts of genius so powerfully as formidable predecessors and rivals. It is as with the forest trees; if some grow tall, the rest will struggle to grow taller, so that they may escape from the shade into the sun. The University Wits and scholar poets, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... of examining an hippopotamus thoroughly. It is a most singular looking animal, which may be described as intermediate between an overgrown hog and a high-fed bull, without horns and with cropped ears. It has an enormous head. Each of its jaws is armed with two formidable tusks, and those in the lower, which are the largest, are nearly two feet in length. The nostrils, ears, and huge eyes are placed on nearly the same plane, thus allowing the animal to make use of its three senses and of respiration, at the same time exposing but a very small part of its ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... there was a rumor that the Indians in their own Councils could not agree, that a small party was opposed to making a treaty. The opposition, however, could not have been very formidable. The principal Chiefs seemed fully to understand the importance of accepting some terms. About noon, Crowfoot, with Mr. L'Heureux, as interpreter, came to my tent and asked for explanations on some points, which I cheerfully gave ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... the statement, made again and again and reinforced by formidable rows of figures, that the more training a girl receives, the less she is inclined to marry or, if she does marry, to have children. The fact seems undeniable that in our larger eastern women's colleges, at least, not more than half the graduates marry up to the age of forty, ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... been in a kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress ! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. Yet I am highly flattered by her invitation, and highly delighted in the prospect of being ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... time, though the chariot was still employed to some extent in the lion-hunts, it appears to have been far more usual for the king to enjoy the sport on foot. He carried a straight sword, which seems to have been a formidable weapon; it was strong, very broad, and two feet or a little more in length. Two attendants waited closely upon the monarch, one of whom carried a bow and arrows, while the other was commonly provided with one or two spears. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... Julia to know that Hippolitus lived; her fears of detection, and her scruples concerning Ferdinand, instantly vanished; she thought only of escape—and the means which had lately appeared so formidable—so difficult in contrivance, and so dangerous in execution, now seemed easy, ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... allow his "Polyeuctes" to be represented. The theatre crowned it with the laurels of victory. It thus fell to Corneille to triumph successively, single-handed, over two great adversary courts of critical appreciation,—the Academy of Richelieu and the not less formidable Hotel de Rambouillet. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... within the shelter of this formidable obstacle that Tippoo's army was encamped. Within the enclosed space were seven or eight eminences, on which strong redoubts had been erected. Fearing that Tippoo might, as soon as he saw the position ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... Dagger or poniard. These weapons are of various forms, and generally much more formidable than would be suggested to an European by the name dagger. The kinjal is used with wonderful force and dexterity by the mountaineers, whose national weapon it may be said to be; it is sometimes employed even as a missile. It is worn suspended in a slanting direction in the girdle, not on the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... as she looked about her, how she could have raised in her own imagination, around the Chapel and its affairs, so formidable an atmosphere of terror and tyrannic discipline. Here gathered together were a few women, tired, pale, many of them uneducated, awaiting like children the opening of a box, the springing into flower of a dry husk of a seed, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... surface, a stoutish, easygoing elderly man, with kindly patient manners, and an engaging simplicity of character. But he has a watchful, deliberate, waiting, listening face, and formidable reserves of power, both bodily and mental, in his capacious chest and long head. His gentleness is partly that of a strong man who has learnt by experience that his natural grip hurts ordinary people unless ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... on the shore of the island. Between you and me, Father Griffen possessed, among others, the secret of cooking a turtle, buccaneer-fashion, of which the mere recital was enough to excite ravenous hunger on the part of his hearers. In spite of his usually formidable appetite, Father Griffen scrupulously observed his fasts, which an edict of the pope's decreed should be much less strict at the Antilles and in ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the Brigade front. The frontage taken over by the Brigade was one of 1,850 yards approximately along the Passchendaele Ridge. There were two objectives to be taken, of which sections were detailed as the job of the 17th—a slice which included two formidable "pill-boxes" known as the ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... towards it, saw it had been dropped, picked it up, and found that it came from some substance held in a bag of open network. With a short laugh he saw it was fungus, a discovery that took all the mystery out of the recent performance, and since it appeared that the only thing formidable about his persecutors was their trickery in making the most of the terrors of the dark, he remade the fire, for there was no mistaking the chillness of the air. As he thought over the fantastic doings of the visitors, he ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... ridges.... On the other hand, there cannot be a more unhealthy country than that which extends from the Balkan to the borders of the Danube and Pruth. This difference between the climate of the mountains and the plain is the most formidable defence which nature has given Shumla. While the enemy is encamped in wet grounds and pestilential marshes, in want of wood, of provisions, and sometimes of men in health to take care of the sick; the Turks breathe a keen, dry air, and have an inexhaustible supply ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... days of Border-war was a more formidable obstacle to progress than a wilderness of spectres. In the reign of Edward the Confessor the great highway of Watling Street was beset by violent men. If you travelled in the eastern counties, the chances were that you ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... rendered necessary the employment of a considerable portion of the Army to preserve the peace and maintain order. In the States of West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Illinois these disturbances were so formidable as to defy the local and State authorities, and the National Executive was called upon, in the mode provided by the Constitution and laws, to furnish military aid. I am gratified to be able to state that the troops sent in response to these calls for aid in the suppression ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... artillery, not even the light guns that could be carried horse- or muleback. It must be left to carbine and saber. Colonel Winchester carefully watched his formidable foe, trying to divine every trick and expedient that he might use. He had a memory to avenge. He had news to carry to Grant, and Forrest must not keep him from carrying it. Moreover, his regiment and he would gain great prestige if they ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... aware, scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued in silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude, a formidable change of the amphitheatre which held the Carnival; although the human stir continued just the same amid that ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... them astray, now pressed on for the Delaware, and thus that concert of action, for which Washington had all along labored in vain, was again restored between the fragments of his army, impotent when divided, but yet formidable as ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... had been there for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in which he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so long ago that it was shadowy and unreal to him. The ordeal of spending the evening in this retreat had not appeared formidable when he had contemplated it that afternoon in the lane; but, now that he was actually undergoing it, it was extraordinary how ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... that he will not meddle with his neighbor's feuds, or involve a community dependent on him with any one's formidable enemy. Yet he will turn back from his course the moment an appeal is made for his help, and face that enemy as Van Corlaer faced the governor of Acadia, full of the fury roused by outrage. But what could he and Father Jogues and the persevering Capuchin say to the parchment ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... cottages, with none of the fussy architectural efforts that marked those on Sylvester Street. They nestled modestly behind their cottonwoods and Virginia creeper; their occupants had no social pretensions to keep up. There were no half-glass front doors with doorbells, or formidable parlors behind closed shutters. Here the old women washed in the back yard, and the men sat in the front doorway and smoked their pipes. The people on Sylvester Street scarcely knew that this part of the town existed. Thea liked to take Thor and her express wagon and explore these quiet, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... established their headquarters at Montreal. Their operations were carried on with great energy and profit, and many factories were built in the western portion of the Province. The company thus soon became a formidable competitor with the Hudson's Bay Company and for a period of two years, an actual state of war existed between them. This condition of affairs finally terminated in a consolidation of the two organizations, under the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... was now moved away up to the Rhine, and was very much shortened; but above all, the Gauls were made to feel themselves to be Romans. Their country became one of the chief strongholds of civilization and of Christianity; and when the frightful shock of barbarism came—the most formidable blow that has ever been directed by barbaric brute force against European civilization—it was in Gaul that it was repelled and that its force was spent. At the beginning of the fifth century an enormous horde of yellow Mongolians, known as ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... of his enemies at home was as relentless as the barbarity of the French Court. The party which still adhered to him in both houses was sufficiently large to be formidable to his opponents, who could only feel themselves secure by his perpetual banishment. On the pretext that he had fled from justice, a Bill of Banishment was passed through both Houses, by which he was pronounced ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... damned Grimbal come arter my gate-post," he gasped, launched instantly to high wakefulness by the suspicion. Then, dragging on his trousers, and thrusting the tail of his nightshirt inside them, he tumbled down-stairs, with passion truly formidable, and hastened naked footed ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... years in our knowledge of contagious or epidemic diseases is due exclusively to M. Pasteur and the scientific method that he introduced through his remarkable labors on fermentation. Now that we know our most formidable enemies, how shall ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... cut the 'Confederacy' in two equal parts, holding the western division at our mercy, opened the Mississippi and all its tributaries, and crowded the rebellion into the five States nearest the Atlantic coast. In the east we have fought a score of battles with the most formidable army ever marshalled on this continent, composed of the flower of the rebel soldiery led by their best generalship, and, spite of frequent repulses, have forced it from the Potomac and below the Rappahannock to the James, away from the smell ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... education of the Negro before the war; every thing had been done to keep him in ignorance. To emancipate 4,000,000 of slaves and absorb them into the political life of the government without detriment to both was indeed a formidable undertaking. Republics gain their strength and perpetuity from the self-governing force in the people; and in order to be self-governing a people must be educated. Moreover, all good laws that are cheerfully obeyed are but the emphatic expression ...
— 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
... of nature would be, I should say, into things which he can eat and things which can eat him: including, of course, his most formidable enemy, and most savoury food—his fellow-man. In finding out what he can eat, we must remember, he will have gone through much experience which will have inspired him with a serious respect for the hidden wrath of nature; like those ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... penetrated into the wild country and established blockhouses and small forts in very much the same way as Cumberland and Wade in 1746 held down the Highlands. The British position was much strengthened by the firm grip obtained of this formidable stronghold of the enemy, which was dangerous not only on account of its extreme strength, but also of its proximity to the centres of population and ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the meeting of Parliament, exerted himself with almost more than his usual vigour and talent, to resist this formidable band of opponents; but the chances were against him. The timidity of his friends, and, if we may believe Horace Walpole, the treachery of some of his colleagues, and finally the majority in the House of Commons against him, compelled him at length to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... propriety of expression, which was admirably adapted to his purpose. In short, he had such a wonderful vein of oratory in commenting, explaining, and discussing, that I never beheld his equal; though in amplifying, embellishing, and refuting, he was rather to be dreaded as a formidable critic, than admired as an eloquent speaker."—"Indeed," said Brutus, "though I always thought I sufficiently understood the character of Scaevola, by the account I had heard of him from C. Rutilius, whose company I frequented for the sake of his acquaintance with ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... reasonableness of Cobden's, resembled them in this, that they belonged to that class of oratory which aims at convincing the reason rather than at persuading the emotions. Lord John had, however, one quality likely to make him widely popular—his pluck; at bay he was formidable. If there was a trace of injustice or unreasonableness in his adversaries, though their case might be overwhelmingly plausible, it was ten to one he routed them in confusion. He was ready in retort. One example of this readiness Gladstone was fond of quoting: Sir Francis Burdett had made a ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... might perhaps be met by the old objection, that, whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady talk, and when you compare ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... batrachians, fivescore of them at least, black scale and crimson scale lustrous and gleaming in the rosaceous radiance; saucer eyes shining circles of phosphorescence green, purple, red; spurs clicking as they crouched along with a gait at once grotesque and formidable. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... cordial relations between his own country and Great Britain. This was precisely the type of Ambassador that fitted into the Imperial purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically but quietly for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe, Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled into a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was one of deception, he was not himself ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... apparatus of a separate establishment carried on in the same house; but here too she was foiled, for his Grace had stubborn notions on that score also, and plainly hinted that any separation must be final and decided; and Adelaide could not yet resolve upon taking so formidable a step in the first year of her marriage. She was therefore compelled to drag the chain by which, with her own will, she had bound herself for life to one she already despised and detested. And bound she was, in the strictest sense of the metaphor; for, though the Duke had not the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "Radicals," they are in the best position to draw advantages from the "rapprochement" of these forces, and it was thus that Millerand came into the ministry in 1900, that Briand became prime minister in 1910, and Augagneur minister in 1911. These are among the most formidable opponents of the Socialist movement in France to-day. It will seem from this and many other instances that the opportunist policy which leads at first to a show of success, later results in a weakening ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... to 1.2%. Growth lagged at 1.1% in 2002 because of erratic rains, low investor confidence, meager donor support, and political infighting up to the elections. In the key December 2002 elections, Daniel Arap MOI's 24-year-old reign ended, and a new opposition government took on the formidable economic problems facing the nation. In 2003, progress was made in rooting out corruption and encouraging donor support. Since then, however, the KIBAKI government has been rocked by high-level graft scandals. The World Bank ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... there are such beings who inhabit worlds or spheres of their own. The Buddhist doctrine is that, by interior self-development and conquest over his baser nature, the Arhat becomes superior to even the most formidable of the devas, and may subject and control ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... Grasping the sceptre of ill-gotten authority with great boldness, they have wielded it with a corresponding energy. Their early successes and their protracted resistance, sustained for more than two years by means of large and formidable armies, organized, disciplined, and led with great skill, have sufficed to give them credit and support at home, and much consideration abroad. In the midst of stirring events, carried away by the first impulse of excitement, the Southern people have not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the cut a more formidable barrier interposed. A pocket of gravel on the eastern bank had slipped, engulfing a steam shovel, and a gang of men were busy about it. On a level overlooking the scene, in corduroy jackets and broad hats, stood two engineers. At times one of them gave directions ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... to the most formidable obstacle, or, if I may so speak, to the most rugged eminence in the path of grammatical science; but be not disheartened, for, if you can get safely over this, your future course will be interrupted with only here and there a gentle elevation. It will require close application, and a great ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... it; under the water, or on the top of it, floats on its surface with perfect ease, or beneath the surface, midway between the top and the bottom. In their natural state these animals are wild and ferocious; though on the land, they are not very formidable, but when pursued they fly to ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... ought to rejoice whenever you look at it, for you can turn this little note into a formidable weapon against the Electoral house. With this note you can some day force the young Elector to make you my successor, confirm you in the rank of Grand Master of the Knights of St. John, or even, if ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home, wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being brought up, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... from the heavy timber felled to clear away the spot, and open the lines of fire. The ends were simply crossed alternately and pinned. Two such structures, with a space of 6 feet for clay, formed, on an elevated position, a very formidable casemated work. The slanting overhanging roof furnished excellent cover in lieu of loop-holes ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... placard outside the butcher's announces an "Occasion" consisting of a mule and a donkey, both of guaranteed "premiere qualite." And the butcher! A thick-set, powerfully built fellow, with blue-black hair, curly like a bull's and shining in pomade, with fierce mustache of the same dye, waxed to two formidable points like skewers. Dangling over his white apron, and suspended by a heavy chain about his waist, he carries the long steel spike which sharpens his knives. All this paraphernalia gives him a very fierce appearance, like the executioner ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... have effected an alliance with the Moros, it would no doubt have been a formidable one. The Moros are well armed and expert fighting men. Most of our weapons have been purchased from them, as they had formerly acquired a stock of stolen Spanish guns. Those living in the Lake Lanao vicinity must have about two thousand Remington and Mauser ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... member of the Commons' House of Parliament made a motion in the House, towards the close of the last session, for the immediate prohibition of these monster nuisances, and quoted several cases of alarm and danger to life of which they had been the originating cause. These formidable erections are for the most part the property and handiwork of the men who travel with them, and who must levy a pretty heavy contribution on the public to defray their expenses. They perform entire overtures and long concerted pieces, being furnished with spiral barrels, and might probably produce ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... willingly," replied the apprentice, rushing before the younger Bloundel, and flourishing his formidable cudgel. "Out with you, sir! ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... A violently hostile feeling between the Turks and Greeks had culminated earlier in the year in a formidable insurrection among the Sultan's Greek subjects. It was terminated on the 18th of June by an ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Hugh, who saw the wisdom of Alec's advice, he promptly abandoned the desire for a plunge; and, as he soon learned, they did well to seek the protection of their smoke smudge, for the mosquitoes were truly formidable. Even under the canopy of smoke, these noxious insects darted viciously to bite and torment the campers. Time and time again, the boys were awakened from sleep by the attacks of these buzzing pests; but at last they grew more accustomed to such onslaughts, and pulling nets closely around ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... halt at Accident, if only on account of the martyrdom I endured at the hands of some small, pale boys, children of the house wherein I abode. I had just settled myself to smoke a meditative pipe before supper, when they came in, with a formidable air of business about all the three; they drew up a little bench, exactly opposite to my rocking-chair, fixing themselves, and me, into a deliberate stare. Every now and then the spokes-boy of the party—he was the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... gratified his own inclinations; he therefore supplied the queen with such sums as enabled her to levy new forces, and drive her enemies before her. By procuring a reconciliation with the king of Prussia, he freed her from the nearest and most formidable danger, and gave her an opportunity to secure herself against ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... cruiser," cried the thoughtless lad; "he is a younker, like myself, and would hardly dare run down upon such a formidable ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exuded from the body. The other accidents were produced by dissection, or some other mode of contact with bodies of patients who had died of various affections. They also differed much in severity, the cases of puerperal origin being among the most formidable and fatal. Now a moment's reflection will show that the number of cases of serious consequences ensuing from the dissection of the bodies of those who had perished of puerperal fever is so vastly disproportioned ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... French emperor has satiated his national craving for her degradation; and not until he strikes her a blow, which will resound throughout the world, will England be prepared to battle with the Gaul. No future accession of territory would make France more formidable for the invasion of England than she is now. Her army of five hundred thousand men, and her steam navy and ironclads are all-sufficient for that purpose, whenever the French emperor chooses so to employ them. But if Napoleon devotes this army and that navy to such a formidable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... quitted the gate, and took to the more formidable work of attempting to scale the walls. And here Singleton's power was tried to the utmost. For at one part the ground sloped a considerable distance up one of the buttresses, which made the ascent from below ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... pressman considered him with more attention. His face was pale and dissipated, with the promise of formidable passions yet to be loosed; but it was a clever and sensitive face; his clothes were coarse and careless, but he had a good seal ring on one of his long, thin fingers. His name, which came out in the course of talk, was James ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... suggestion of a dictaphone," said Sir James dryly. "We have a very formidable adversary. I believe, if we exercise all due care, that there is a very good chance of his being delivered into our hands. But we must neglect no precaution. We have an important witness, but she must be safeguarded. I would suggest that Miss Tuppence should ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... we suggested, "that the young woman threatened to be a formidable rival, as there was a row?" Each of the officers nodded at the other, and said that was about it. The Major then started on a little private curriculum of nods on his own account, backed by a half-closed eye of superhuman subtlety, and added once or twice that that ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... Terrified by the formidable looks and gestures of the demon, the poor girl offered no resistance, and her grandfather drew her into the opening, which ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... confession of his own incapacity. The education of the official, too easily and too freely turned into ridicule, gives him an insight into human nature which, coupled with a little experience, renders him extremely formidable to the shifty criminal or the crafty litigant. As a rule, he finds no need for the application of pain. There is a quaint story illustrative of such judicial methods as would be sure to meet with full approbation ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... arithmetic and geometry, and among other things, "Tom's Expenses, 1796." A quarter at the High School costs 10/6, "Lattin books," 4/-, school money is 3/-, a ferret 3d., and so on. His sister Polly's expenses are entered in the same book and that young lady's outlay was more formidable. Items for the milliner such as "making up a Bonnet. 3/6," (young ladies still wore bonnets) are frequent. Miss Polly spent 6/- on ear-rings. Once when she took a "Shaise" it cost her 2/-, while "Chair Hire" is sometimes 1/6 and sometimes reduced to the modest proportions of 9d. No doubt for ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... had comfortably nestled themselves in their hovels, the old chief, with a show of some formality, presented me a heavy ram-goat, distinguished for its formidable head-ornaments, which, he said, was offered as a bonne-bouche, for my supper. He then sent a crier through the town, informing the women that a white stranger would be their guest during the night; and, in less than half an hour, my hut was visited by most of the village dames and damsels. One ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... rival, another girl, knowledge and light and sight would have been hers. As it was, she grappled in the dark with an intangible adversary about which she knew nothing. What truth she felt in his speech made the Game but the more formidable. ...
— The Game • Jack London
... Peyster glared at her son, then crossed to the safe, larger and more formidable than the one above from which she had been removing her jewels, took out a document and returned to the two men. She had something of the ominous air of a tragedy queen who is foreshadowing an ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... so far has been uneventful, and we are now swaying luxuriously at anchor in a dense fog. This I believe is the usual welcome accorded to travellers to the island of Newfoundland. There is no chart for icebergs, and "growlers" are formidable opponents to encounter at any time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the arguments contained in the Lectures have lost whatever novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions have been submitted to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far, about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them require much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ in their readings ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... necessity for your going," said the Judge. "Our house is large enough for all; your attacks at table are not yet very formidable; and I have not taught you whist perfectly. Would it not be better to substitute a curia vult avisare in place of a decision? But, Anne, have you nothing to say? Is this your gratitude for all Thomas's martyrdoms of readings of I know not what unimaginable nonsense; and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary; but when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... though there was the most entire absence of elder-brotherism on his part, and only the most kind and thoughtful affection, for which I shall always feel grateful, yet our intercourse was that of man and boy; and though the difference of years was not so formidable as between "Matthew" and Wordsworth, yet we were less than they a "pair of Friends," though a pair of ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what word was lost or lamed in the skirmish: and so falling on again, with fresh valour, he fights backward and forward! charges through and through! routs! kills! takes! and then, "Gentlemen! as you were!" Now to such of his parish as have been in the late wars, this is not very formidable; for they do but suppose themselves at Edgehill or Naseby, and they are not much scared at his doctrine: but as for others, who have not had such fighting opportunities, it is very lamentable to consider how shivering they sit ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... government so essentially commercial as that of the United Provinces, seems extraordinary. The fact was, that when in the beginning of the year 1665 the States General saw that the war with England was become inevitable, they took several vigorous measures, and determined to equip a formidable fleet, and with a view to obtain a sufficient number of men to man it, prohibited all navigation, especially in the great and small fisheries as they were then called, and in the whale fishery. This measure appears to have resembled the embargoes so commonly resorted to in this ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... family, and met again Mademoiselle de Lavedan, whom I had not seen since the balcony adventure of some nights ago. The Vicomtesse was also present, a lady of very austere and noble appearance—lean as a pike and with a most formidable nose—but, as I was soon to discover, with a mind inclining overmuch to scandal and the high-seasoned talk of the Courts in which her ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... marquis; "and hasten to admit the captain of banditti. I have heard much of Stephano Verrina, and would fain behold this formidable chieftain." ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Federation of Labor to admit the revolutionary Western Federation of Miners into the Federation of Labor Congresses, the element opposed to Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell's conservative tactics has, for the first time, become formidable, embracing one third of the delegates, and is likely to bring about great changes within a few years, both as to the Federation's political and as to its ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... them to scorn Christianity less, but it would lead them to fear it more. It was no longer a matter merely for the populace to insult, but for government deliberately to put down. The prevailing and still growing unbelief among the lower classes of the population did but make a religion more formidable, which, as heathen statesmen felt, was able to wield the weapons of enthusiasm and zeal with a force and success unknown even to the most fortunate impostors among the Oriental or Egyptian hierophants. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... New York in the night. Still moving and living in the free circles of nature, he did not perceive the formidable, pitiless, restless, fierce angles of the great city waiting in the dark to close about the rotundity of his heart and brain and mould him to the form of its millions of re-shaped victims. A cabby picked him out of the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... also lost his credit with Rochester, so soon as he became generally popular; and shortly after the representation of that piece, its fickle patron seems to have recommended to the royal protection, a rival more formidable to Dryden than either Settle or "starch Johnny Crowne."[14] This was no other than Otway, whose "Don Carlos" appeared in 1676, and was hailed as one of the best heroic plays which had been written. The author avows in his preface the obligations he owed to Rochester, who had recommended him ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Sir, it is my Opinion, and I have endeavour'd to prove, that Luxury, tho' depending upon the Vices of Man, is absolutely necessary to render a great Nation formidable, opulent and polite at the same Time. But before you pass any Judgment upon me for this, give me Leave to put you in Mind of Two Things, which I take to be undeniably true. The First is, that the Kingdom of Christ is not of this World; and that the last-named is the very ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... years back, this same individual (in connection with the no-less fire-proof Signora Girardelli) exhibiting 'extraordinary proofs of his supernatural power of resisting the most intense heat of every kind.' Since which an IMPROVEMENT of a more formidable nature has to our astonished fancy been just demonstrated. In the newspapers of the past week it is reported that he, in the first instance, refreshed himself with a hearty meal of phosphorus, which was, at his own request, supplied to him very liberally by several ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... mouth of a steel purse, was on this especial occasion, and for a while, wide open. Sophie Tarne singing her best to amuse this vile and disorderly crew, who sat or stood around the room half drunk, and with glasses in their hands, pipes in their mouths, and the formidable, old-fashioned horse-pistols ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... see in favour of the People of the Child were that they would fight on the vantage ground of their mountain stronghold, a formidable position if properly defended. Also they would have the benefit of the skill and knowledge of Ragnall and myself. Lastly, the enemy must face our rifles. Neither the White nor the Black Kendah, I should say, possessed any guns, except a few antiquated ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... long got back to the palace unperceived by anyone, before we heard a confused noise of trumpets, drums, and other instruments of war: We soon understood, by the thick cloud of dust which almost darkened the air, that it was the arrival of a formidable army; and it proved to be the same vizier that had dethroned my father, and usurped his throne, who, with a vast number of troops, was also come to possess himself of that of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... uncertainty in regard to the place of sociology among the sciences and its relation to the other social sciences, particularly to history, to state somewhere, clearly and definitely, what, from the point of view of this volume, sociology is. This resulted finally in the imposition of a rather formidable essay upon what is in other respects, we trust, a relatively concrete and intelligible book. Under these circumstances we suggest that, unless the reader is specially interested in the matter, he begin with the chapter on "Human Nature," and read ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... evening the malady had assumed so formidable an aspect that the doctor had his doubts of the patient's chance of recovery. With her husband's full approval, Stella remained night and day at her ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... formidable undertaking," said Mr. Bryant, "to go to each of these way stations; and yet, Ed, I can't think of anything else to do. We have traced her to the train, and on it. She must have left it somewhere, ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... dish; but the least noise, the least wrinkle on the surface of the water would cause the future repast to vanish. The reptile plunges, the birds continue without suspicion to come and go. Suddenly there emerges before them the huge open jaw armed with formidable teeth. In the moment of stupor and immobility which this unforeseen apparition produces a few imprudent birds have disappeared within the reptile's mouth, while the others fly away. In the same sly and brutal ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... arm, a patent on which, was obtained through the Scientific American Patent Agency, June 11, 1867, is destined, in our opinion, to become a formidable rival to the breech-loading rifles which have already attained popularity. It is one of the most simple and effective guns we have yet seen. Only three motions are required to load, discharge the piece, and throw out the shell of the cartridge. The breech-block is side-hinged, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... laboured with certain but tardy success. But while he was thus engaged, Joe's predicament became each moment more critical. The wood being by this time pretty well seasoned, began to burn more freely. The blaze was making formidable advances, and the ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... to answer, because, having left the mountain world behind, a formidable line of nobly planned arches began striding along beside us, through the sun-bright fields, and I was sure it must be the giant Roman ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... chariot of Queen Mab, my team of bulls and the crickets, the ark, the Sphinx, and the balloons, with Hilaro Frosticos, Gog and Magog, Lord Whittington, and the Lord Mayor's show, Don Quixote, &c., with my fleet of canoes, altogether cut a very formidable appearance on our arrival at the Isthmus of Darien. Sensible of what general benefit it would be to mankind, I immediately formed a plan of cutting a canal across the isthmus from ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... character of siffleur. His deep love of solitude was even aggressive; he would not tolerate the intrusion of another bird upon his domain. He greeted his fellow-sufferer first with hisses and then with threats and feints of war. Trembleur did not respond, but he presented his formidable bill in readiness to ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... with which they had hitherto been made up, and which placed the best form on a level with the worst? The prudes who practised illicitly, and felt the convenience of a guise which so well concealed the effect of their frailties, were neither the least formidable nor the least numerous of the enemies created by this revolution of costume; and the Dauphine was voted by common consent—for what greater crime could there be in France?—the heretic Martin Luther of female fashions! The four Princesses, her aunts, were as bitter ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... held her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence. She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... different countries are not merely different from one another, they are separated from one another by formidable natural barriers. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... much to see but hedgerows and houses and fields as we jolted slowly on. Once we met what Ike called the "padrole," and the mounted policeman, in his long cloak and with the scabbard of his sabre peeping from beneath, looked to me a very formidable personage; but he was not too important to wish ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... think I am right in saying, three or four different types of the older predreadnought battleship which have been so foolishly and so prematurely regarded in some quarters as obsolete or negligible—all bringing to bear the power of their formidable twelve-inch guns on the fortifications, with magnificent accuracy and with deadly effects. [Cheers.] When, as I have said, these proceedings are being conducted, so far as the navy is concerned, without ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yellow colour; and its short, webbed feet are flesh coloured. It is frequently met with in the Southern Ocean. The species mentioned in the text is the black-beaked albatross, which frequents the India waters. The albatross Is a formidable enemy to the sailor, for if one falls overboard, he will assuredly fall a victim to this powerful bird, unless rescued immediately by his comrades. Its cry has some resemblance to that of the pelican; but it will also, when excited, give rent to a noise not unlike the braying of an ass. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... his work. He had seen both before, but had never scrutinised them till now; and, as he glanced at their bold swarthy faces and brawny muscular frames, he thought to himself, "These are just the fellows to deal with the cibolero." A formidable pair they looked. Each one of them, so far as appearance went, might with safety assail an antagonist like the cibolero—for either of them was ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... him, and comforts from which he was cut off by poverty. Nature had endowed Cerizet with an insignificant, rather pretty little countenance, red hair, and a pair of dull blue eyes; he had come to Angouleme and brought the manners of the Parisian street-boy with him. He was formidable by reason of a quick, sarcastic turn and a spiteful disposition. Perhaps David looked less strictly after him in Angouleme; or, perhaps, as the lad grew older, his mentor put more trust in him, or in the sobering influences of a country town; but ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... waiting; they would have felt that they were somewhere on the road to Cupid's garden. But, with a possibility of a shorter probation, they had not as yet any prospect of the beginning; the zero of hope had yet to be reached. Mr. Swancourt would have to revoke his formidable words before the waiting for marriage could even set in. And ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... of these winter sessions, we are told by Rev. William M. Thayer, in his biography of Garfield, that he was applied to by an ambitious student to instruct him in geometry. There was one difficulty in the way, and that a formidable one. He was entirely unacquainted with geometry himself. But, he reflected, here is an excellent opportunity for me to acquire a new branch of knowledge. Accordingly he procured a text-book, studied it faithfully at ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The first thing that we meet as we enter the garden, is the large grape trellis, with its mass of tangled brown canes, a perfect mat of long vines and curling tendrils. How are we to attack this formidable network of vines in order to do anything with them? The first thing to be done is to sever all the cords and ties that fasten the vines to the trellis, and allow them to fall to the ground for convenience in trimming them. Spread the vines ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... stick,' I answered. 'By the inscription, I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole, so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions unless you had some ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... small vestibule, with the usual arrangement of treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... carefully observed, and their success at every point such as Periander had predicted. At the Gate of the Desert the most formidable preparations were made, under the inspection of the Emperor himself, who, at a distance, could plainly be discerned directing the work and encouraging the soldiers. Two towers of enormous size were here constructed, and driven toward the walls. Upon both, as they ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... river shore and about the carcases of the Buffaloe, on which I presume they feed. we have not as yet seen one of these anamals, tho their tracks are so abundant and recent. the men as well as ourselves are anxious to meet with some of these bear. the Indians give a very formidable account of the strengh and ferocity of this anamal, which they never dare to attack but in parties of six eight or ten persons; and are even then frequently defeated with the loss of one or more of their party. the savages attack ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Chopin writes according to a programme, to the situations in life best known to, and understood by himself; and in an adequate manner; the conquest of the stupendous difficulties in complicated figures, winding harmonies and formidable passages. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker |
