"Gigantic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little closer, while our guide lets the light of his lamp fall upon the black wall at your side. Do you see the delicate tracery of ferns, more beautiful than the fairest drawing. See, beneath your feet is the marking of great tree-trunks lying aslant across the floor, and the forms of gigantic palm-leaves strewed among them. Here is something different, rounded like a nut-shell; you can split off one side, and behold there is the nut lying snugly as does any chestnut ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews
... true, in name if not in fact, to the ancient faith. But in reality changes almost as great as those of the formal heresies were taking place at the core of Brahmanism itself, which, no longer able to be the religion of a few clans, was now engaged in the gigantic task of remodelling and assimilating the indigenous beliefs and religious practices of its new environment. This was not a conscious act on the part of Brahmanism. At first it was undertaken almost unwittingly, and it was accomplished later not without repugnance. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... walked along he was hailed by many friendly voices. He was well known in that part of the gigantic burrow, and the adaptable young American had become a great favorite, not only with the Strangers, but with his French comrades. Fleury, coming out of a transverse cut, greeted him. The Savoyard had escaped during the fighting on the Aisne, and had rejoined the ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... see, not hear"—that brave, rash, resolute imp clinging like a terrier, or a crab, or a briar, on to the back of that gigantic ruffian, whom, if she had no strength to stop, she ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and dearest of Roman pleasures—the chariot races—were no longer celebrated, stretched its long lines beneath the imperial palace covered with dust and overgrown with grass. The colossal amphitheatre of Titus still reared its circle perfect, but stripped of its decorations. The gigantic baths, fed by no aqueduct since the ruin wrought by Vitiges the Goth, rose like fallen cities in a wilderness. Ivy began to creep over them. The costly marble mantle of their walls dropped away in pieces or was plundered ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... would have us believe; he is so impatient of the fallacy that he puts it as far behind him as possible, and sets his conflicts amid scenes that it cannot penetrate, save as a palpable absurdity. Love, in his stories, is either a feeble phosphorescence or a gigantic grotesquerie. In "Heart of Darkness," perhaps, we get his typical view of it. Over all the frenzy and horror of the tale itself floats the irony of the trusting heart back in Brussels. Here we have his measure of the master sentimentality of ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... flag-like grass spring among the crevices and add to the pitfalls, and the whole wood really has the air of having been bewitched. Mrs Bray's impressions of it are interesting. She found the slope 'strewn' all over with immense masses of granite.... In the midst of these gigantic blocks, growing among them, or starting, as it were, from their interstices, arises wildly, and here and there widely scattered, a grove of dwarf oak-trees.... They spread far and wide at their tops, and their branches twist and bend in the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... under the tyranny of ten thousand associations imperceptible to others. The worst writer may easily happen to touch a spring which is connected in their minds with a long succession of beautiful images. They are like the gigantic slaves of Aladdin, gifted with matchless power, but bound by spells so mighty that when a child whom they could have crushed touched a talisman, of whose secret he was ignorant, they immediately became his vassals. It has more than once happened ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would redound to humanity's benefit from the discovery of the South Pole, had overborne even her rather bewildered opposition, and the day before they stood on the wharf in the Erie Basin, watching the Southern Cross swallowing her cargo, like a mighty sea monster demolishing a gigantic meal, they had received their duly signed and witnessed commissions as aviators to the expedition—documents of which they were not a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... by our women in this amounts to genius. The buying of material, cutting and making up, parcelling, storing, and packing of gigantic supplies, all the secretarial and clerical work involved has been the work of women and mostly of women of the leisured classes, many of them without any previous training. From the organization of the big schemes of supply down to such work as the collecting of sphagnum moss, everything that was ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... wasn't the name for what I suffered. Face-ache fails to describe my agonies. Neuralgia doesn't give the faintest idea of my tortures. The left side of my face looked exactly as if I was holding a large dumpling in my mouth, or a gigantic ribston-pippin which I couldn't swallow. Swallow! Not a bit of food passed these lips, except slops, beef-tea, and tea without the beef, for days. At the end of a week I was a shadow. Penelope Anne had gone. Where, no one knew. Somebody said they thought ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... The trees, being partly covered with snow, were outlined indistinctly against the grayish background formed by a cloudy sky, barely whitened by the moon. Seen through the medium of that strange atmosphere, they bore a vague resemblance to spectres carelessly enveloped in their shrouds, a gigantic image of the famous Dance of Death. Then, turning in the other direction, I could gaze admiringly upon the dance of the living! a magnificent salon, with walls of silver and gold, with gleaming chandeliers, and bright with the light ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... an enormous depth, and upon the vaporous rolling flood beneath him a dome of darker shadow rested. At the summit of this shadow an aureole of rainbow light, a complete and glorious circle rested, in the midst of which his own image was flung, grotesque and gigantic. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Kullervo, a morose and wicked slave of gigantic strength, which he always misuses. His history is a terrible tragedy, which has been compared to that of OEdipus. He is, in part, the prototype of Longfellow's "Kwasind." He is the principal hero of the Esthonian ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... glass worthy of remark in the same drawing-room. It was gigantic, and shaped conically, like one of those old-fashioned jelly glasses which used to be seen upon the shelves of confectioners. It was engraved round the rim with the words, "The glorious, pious, and immortal memory"; and on grand occasions, was filled to the ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... vast shapeless clouds lay piled, gigantic coils and masses of vapour, dark, ominous, illuminated by faint, pallid lights that played under them incessantly; and over all towered one tall column of smoke, spreading above like an enormous ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... before the lady. In front of her sits another, who has a glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and thither from a jaunty little structure of black and red velvet. An anxious-looking matron appears under the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson rose crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She is ornamented! she has no doubt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... however, that they would have gained anything had they remained, because the astute Lord Cholme had provided a press-agent. This gentleman, we heard long afterwards, was in Savannah superintending the first rehearsals of a gigantic film-drama depicting the Conquest of the Atlantic. On hearing of his principal's arrival on a steamer he took the next train north, and from the moment he reached Mr. Francis Lord's hotel on Fifth Avenue, Mr. Francis Lord seemed lost to view. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... large number of Brahmanas, his praises sung by a large band of Sutas and Magadhas and bards, and with a white umbrella held over his head and encompassed around by a large number of cars, set out on his journey. Vrikodara, the son of the Wind-god, proceeded on an elephant as gigantic as a hill, equipt with strung bow and machines and weapons of attack and defence. The twin sons of Madri proceeded on two fleet steeds, well cased in mail, well protected, and equipt with banners. Arjuna of mighty energy, with senses under control, proceeded ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... you speak the truth, Madame!" But in the meantime he seemed to consider that one was far safer in the way of some gigantic mowing-machine than on the path of the German army. He had come to tell me the truth and to warn me that I ought to make ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... properly used, civilisation would make a gigantic stride," he added. "In war, for instance, how infinitely pleasanter and more aesthetic it would be to send the enemy to sleep, with the most delightful dreams, never to wake again, than to tear people to pieces with artillery and rifle ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... water for miles and miles away. Thick in the little harbor lay the slender masts of vessels with steady lights glowing in their rigging. Across the narrow bay stood the Normal School with its three stories brightly lighted, and further away was the gigantic Soldiers' Home with a thousand lights burning. To the east was the long bridge across Hampton creek, with every few minutes a lighted omnibus or a pair of carnage lamps going leisurely across. Further yet was a railroad train lighted and ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... aside, by the insinuations of a boy?" and covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears: the scene, the time, the faint sound of the distant music, encouraged these feelings, and heightened despondency. Day was darkening around her, aided by the sombre shade of the gigantic trees, which formed a grove where she sat, and the music borne along at intervals sounded unusually mournful. A heavy sigh near her aroused her from her painful trance, and starting, she beheld the object of her thoughts standing by her side. His ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that vessel, distinctly recognised one of them. They were well shaped, and their height was estimated at betwixt 5 feet 5 inches, and 5 feet 10 inches French; or in English, measure, 5 feet 10,334 inches, and 6 feet 2,5704 inches. They appeared gigantic, it is added very properly, because they had very broad shoulders, their heads were large, and their limbs thick. They were robust and very muscular, and seemed to enjoy perfection of health, and to possess abundance of wholesome diet. Their figures, notwithstanding ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... abandoned broadcast over the country, with no family likeness and no home. They stand alone, or shoulder to shoulder, or at right angles, or at a tangent, or join hands across a valley. They never appear the same; some run to a sharp point, some stretch out, forming a table-land, others are gigantic ant-hills, others perfect and accurately modelled ramparts. In a ride of half a mile, every hill completely loses ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... there to strike—and strike, at last, one of them did! A bluish tongue of snapping flame ran down the old stub; and as it touched the earth, there came a tremendous explosion above the treetops. The massive stub shivered, and then it broke asunder as if cloven by a gigantic ax. It crashed down so close to Baree that earth and sticks flew about him, and he let out a wild yelp of terror as he tried to crowd himself deeper into the shallow hole under ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... to the scene, stretched the long, bush-grown passage of the Strand, picturesquely varied with bridges, and flanked to the right by the embattled halls of feudal nobles, or the inns of the no less powerful prelates; while sombre and huge amidst hall and inn, loomed the gigantic ruins of the Savoy, demolished in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. Farther on, and farther yet, the eye wandered over tower and gate, and arch and spire, with frequent glimpses of the broad sunlit river, and the opposite ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are coming under its sway, but to the people we are breeding of our own race—the barbarians of our streets, our suburban "white niggers," with a thousand a year and the conceit of Imperial destinies. They live in our mother-tongue as some half-civilized invaders might live in a gigantic and splendidly equipped palace. They misuse this, they waste that, they leave whole corridors and wings unexplored, to fall into disuse and decay. I doubt if the ordinary member of the prosperous classes in England has much more than a third of the English language in use, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Angeles, an Easterner who had brought an invalid wife there fifteen years earlier, had watched her miraculous return to pink plump health and become the typical California-convert. He had established a branch of his gigantic business there and himself rolled semiannually from coast to coast in his private car. Honor and Jimsy were a little awed by touching elbows with greatness but he didn't really bother them very much, for they were too entirely absorbed in each other. He ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... solid structures of brick, with facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather than in which, worship is offered. There are exceptions, however. The more ancient of these edifices, like the Ananda at Pagan, have inner chambers enshrining gigantic statues of Buddha, with corridors around the chambers, quite comparable to the aisles of English or French cathedrals. But the greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... relate occurred in antediluvian times, when there were giants in the earth who lived a thousand years. Then matter reigned, not mind. It was the age of brawn. Everything material existed on a gigantic scale, and man's architectural works, rude in design but well adapted for shelter and protection, were proportioned to his own stature and rivaled the everlasting hills in size and solidity. And they ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... and raises up the low, He who the infinite machine sustains, With swiftness, with the medium or with slow, Apportioning the turning Of this gigantic mass, The hidden is ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... I heard, with fear astounded, The storm, of Thorgerd's waking, From Northern vapours breaking. Sent by the fiend in anger, With din and stunning clangour, To crush our might intended, Gigantic hail descended. ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... comfortable position on the summit of a gigantic pumpkin can continue his matutinal sleep in peace; the stork can continue undisturbed his preparations for his impending long voyage over seas. Man has not yet thought to break by travail or by song the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... through the dark stems of the majestic fir-trees towering over our head. There is every gradation of form and colour in the picture, from the ripe warm gold barring the branches of the firs, to the pale silveriness of their upper foliage; from the gigantic trees rising from the gorge below, each seeming to fill a chasm, to the airy, graceful birch, a mere toy beside it. Rare butterflies abound, but ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... I mean with the 'explanation,' especially that part of it where he talks about Providence and a future life. There is a gigantic thought there." ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... artist's great strength. There are two good portraits—one of Mrs. Burne-Jones, by Mr. Poynter. This lady has a very delicate, artistic face, reminding us, perhaps, a little of one of the angels her husband has painted. She is represented in a white dress, with a perfectly gigantic old-fashioned watch hung to her waist, drinking tea from an old blue china cup. The other is a head of the Duchess of Westminster by Mr. Forbes-Robertson, who both as an actor and an artist has shown great cleverness. He has succeeded very well in reproducing the calm, beautiful ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... gigantic natural powers, let us linger a moment to point out how heartily the Winds are sketched in these Tales as four brothers; of whom, of course, the North wind is the oldest, and strongest, and roughest. But though rough in form and tongue, he is a genial, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... artificial methods. Squashes were growing under glass, poor things! There were immensely large gooseberries in the garden; and in this particular berry, the English, I believe, have decidedly the advantage over ourselves. The raspberries, too, were large and good. I espied one gigantic hog-weed in the garden; and, really, my heart warmed to it, being strongly reminded of the principal product of my own garden at Concord. After viewing the garden sufficiently, the gardener led us to other parts of the estate, and we had glimpses of a delightful valley, its ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... critic will see that four converging columns, to be effective, should never have operated so far away from their point of convergence, and so far separated from each other. The enterprise was gigantic; but its awkwardness equaled its strength, and its own weight ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... "dwells in a wood, to the eastward of Midgard, called Jarnvid, (the Iron Wood,) which is the abode of a race of witches called Jarnvidjur. This old hag is the mother of many gigantic sons, who are all of them shaped like wolves, two of whom are the wolves thou askest about. There is one of that race, who is said to be the most formidable of all, called Managarm: he will be filled with the life-blood of men who draw near ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... Roman and mediaeval remains, with architecture of different periods, were to be found in the city, as well as a public library and art-gallery, cafes and the inevitable cercle. The flora, owing to the diversities of elevation, was varied, and while vineyards clothed the foot of the slopes and gigantic old chestnuts looked down on them from above, the vegetation of the hill-tops was that of Lancashire or Scotland. It follows, of course, that the pursuits and habits of the population were correspondingly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... descended again. Finally it shone almost horizontally through the tree-trunks, growing larger and larger until its field was crackled across with a frostwork of twigs and leaves. By and by it reached the edge of a hill-bank, visible through an opening, and paused. It had become huge, gigantic, big with mystery. A wolf sat directly before it, silhouetted sharply. Presently he raised his pointed nose, ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor ever was success so complete. If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy. In contemplating what we have still to perform, the heart of every citizen must expand with joy when he reflects how near our Government has approached to perfection; that in respect to it we have no essential improvement ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... Glancing at the others of the group, it was plain this sleeper was master and they his slaves. Two of them were stretched on the bare boards at the lower end of the pallet, and they were white. The third was a son of Ethiopia of unmixed blood and gigantic frame. He sat at the left of the couch, cross-legged, and, like the rest, was in a doze; now and then, however, he raised his head, and, without fully opening his eyes, shook a fan of peacock feathers from head to foot over the recumbent ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the startling order which the quartermaster sent to the wheel-house at that moment, and which was obeyed with as much promptness as is possible on such a gigantic craft as ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... marsh-born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once afforded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the parasite ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... characteristic of Michael Fenger that his personality reached out and touched you before you came into actual contact with the man. Fanny had heard of him long before she came to Haynes-Cooper. He was the genie of that glittering lamp. All through the gigantic plant (she had already met department heads, buyers, merchandise managers) one heard his name, and felt ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the deck brought out dazzling scintillations from a beach composed of gigantic crystal pebbles as large as ostrich eggs. On the beach and grouped thickly all about our hull, swarmed a legion of ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... car laughed and applauded, and Lapoulle, who did not know who Badinguet[*] was, and could not have told whether it was a king or an emperor in whose cause he was fighting, repeated like the gigantic baby ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... restricted her vision of the universe to that solitary window of the soul through which she looked, prevented her now from seeing in the city anything except the dreary background of Oliver's illness and failure. The naive wonder with which she had watched the gigantic outlines shape themselves out of the white fog, had faded utterly from her mind. She ached with longing to reach Oliver and to find him well enough to take the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... not attribute this cruelty-for cruelty it certainly is, to be so unmindful of the health and comfort of any being, leaving entirely out of sight his more important part, his everlasting interests,-so much to any innate or constitutional cruelty of the master, as to that gigantic inconsistency, that inherited habit among slaveholders, of expecting a willing and intelligent obedience from the slave, because he is a MAN-at the same time every thing belonging to the soul-harrowing system does its best to crush the last vestige of a man within ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... reaches of meadow and wood in the soft, empurpled night. Away to the east a shimmering silveryness beneath a palace of aerial cloud foretokened moonrise. But directly before us the potato field, with its wreathing smoke and sullen flames, the gigantic shadow of Uncle Alec crossing and recrossing it, reminded us of Peter's famous description of the bad place, and probably suggested the Story ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... healthy. It is at times windy, but in summer it is as mild and dry as the south of England. In winter the cold is never severe, and only at intervals of several years does snow fall to any depth, so as to risk the destruction of cattle. The most remarkable production is the tussac, a gigantic species of grass, which grows to the height of ten feet, and is capable of sheltering and concealing herds of cattle and horses. The core of this grass is of so nutritious a nature, that people have been known to live for months ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... 7,750,000 additional human beings. Many of them were torn to shreds and smithereens by the gigantic concentration of mechanical and explosive power, designed, constructed and transported to the European battlefields for the express purpose of carrying on this month-long and year-long collective endeavor to take as much life ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... instance, for which Balzac has twenty-four stories on his list, whereas only two, "The Chouans" and "A Passion in the Desert," were executed. But surely, sufficient was done, looking to the comedy as a whole, to force us to describe the execution as well as the conception as gigantic. Had the work been more mechanically pushed to its end for the exact plan's sake, the perfection of scheme might have been attained at the expense of vitality and inspiration. Ninety-seven pieces of fiction, the majority ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... were very active in Lorraine, but the city of Nancy paid no attention to them. In 1914 Nancy had seen the invading army broken against the mountain of Saint Genevieve and the Grand Couronne; she had withstood a bombardment by gigantic shells and visits from air squadrons, and all without losing her good humor and her animation. She was one of those cities on the front who are accustomed to danger, and who find in it an inspiration for courage, for commerce, and even for pleasure which does not belong to cities behind the lines. ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... gigantic naval preparations have been made by the enemy; and they must strike many blows on the coast this fall and winter. They are building great numbers of gun-boats, some of them iron-clad, both for the coast and for the Western rivers. If they get possession of the Mississippi River, it will be a sad ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... was not sure—he rather thought he was not of the Thorley family; and so on for a mighty long time. But though he tired them prodigiously, he contrived to evoke before their minds' eyes a very gigantic, though somewhat hazy figure, and a good deal stimulated the interest with which a new arrival was commonly looked for in that pleasant suburban village. There is no knowing how long Lord Castlemallard might ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... application to your productions; I should prefer to call them historical representations in the highest sense of the word. If we fancy that this or the other rock or this or the other tree is gazing at us like a gigantic being with thoughtful earnest eyes, so again, on the other hand, this or the other group of fantastically attired men resembles some remarkable stone which has been endowed with life; all Nature, breathing and moving in harmonious unity, lends accents to the sublime ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... concentric ditches across the hollow of the catchment area, intersected by diagonal ones here and there; the general appearance of the work—the bright yellow of the newly excavated part set against the dark ground of the old—was as if some gigantic fishing-net had been carelessly thrown across the country. These little dykes were about two feet deep, and there must have been already some twenty miles of them. The ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... catbird, I have a still warmer regard. Always a good singer, he sometimes nearly equals the brown thrush, and has the merit of keeping up his music later in the evening than any bird of my familiar acquaintance. Ever since I can remember, a pair of them have built in a gigantic syringa near our front door, and I have known the male to sing almost uninterruptedly during the evenings of early summer till twilight duskened into dark. They differ greatly in vocal talent, but all have a delightful way of crooning ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... night of the white full moon, a gigantic wildcat living some fifteen miles from Ringwaak had decided to change his hunting-grounds. His range, over which he had ruled for years, was a dark, thick-wooded slope overlooking the brown pools and loud chutes of the Guimic stream. Here he had prospered ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... there a great finger-post served the double purpose of informing the traveller in four directions and of frightening many a country lad or lassie of a moonlight night, when it stood gaunt and staring like a gigantic skeleton, as everybody knows the meeting of cross-roads is at no time a ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... the advertising column, but in the body of the paper he found a paragraph to the effect that Mr. Samuelson, of Hull, had built a gigantic steam vessel in that port, and was going out to New Zealand in her on her trial trip, to sail that morning at high tide, 6.45 A.M., ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... the windows were wide open, and the sounds of the street mingled clearly with the tinkle of the supper-room. Outside, against a sky of deepest purple, Sophia could discern the black skeleton of a gigantic building; it ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... nature. And ever and anon a hand or foot of Jan emerged from the tangle, to be gripped by Lawson and lashed fast with rope-yarns. Pawing, clawing, blaspheming, he was conquered and bound, inch by inch, and drawn to where the inexorable shears lay like a pair of gigantic dividers on the snow. Red Bill adjusted the noose, placing the hangman's knot properly under the left ear. Mr. Taylor and Lawson tailed onto the running-guy, ready at the word to elevate the gallows. Bill lingered, contemplating his work with ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... bow from a stiff altitude. The youth was on the gigantic Dusautoy scale, looking taller even than his uncle, from his manner of holding himself with his chin somewhat elevated. He had a good ruddy sun-burnt complexion, shining brown hair, and regular features; and Albinia could respond heartily to the good Vicar's exclamation, as he ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... housekeeper, Mrs. Brown, ducking and smiling in the background. While the servants were unpacking the carriage, Mr. Fountain took Lucy to her bedroom. Mrs. Brown had gone on before to see for the third time whether all was comfortable. There was a huge fire, all red; and on the table a gigantic nosegay of spring flowers, with ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Neptune, whom we at once think of as the physical sea—certainly a great barrier. The wrath of Neptune is also set off with a tale of wonder, which gives the origin of Polyphemus, the Cyclops—a gigantic, monstrous birth of the sea, which produces so many strange and huge shapes of living things. But Neptune is now far away, outside of the Greek world, so to speak, among the Ethiopians. This implies ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... all its grandeur—the unroofed temple of God, Nature's great cathedral. Three thousand feet down, level as the floor, sunk beneath the surrounding mountains which stretched away to right and left in a gigantic mass, it lay clothed in a carpet of green grass and trees so far below that they seem to merge into one. Cut by a silvery stream that winds lazily amid the Edenic beauty, as if loath to be away, ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... dark cave about forty feet long, which was wholly lined with huge flat rocks carved with countless writhing serpents. As Frances passed they seemed to stir and breathe beside her, at her feet, overhead. The cave opened into a sacrificial chamber. The reptiles grew gigantic here, and crowded closer. Through some rift a beam of melancholy light crept in; a smell of death hung ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... very finest specimen of native we have seen yet," wrote Mrs. Stevenson. "He is several inches over six feet, of perfect though almost gigantic proportions." ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... took her book and went off to the farthest corner of the back-yard, where a gigantic apple-tree stood, with a magnificent seat of curled branches up in its centre, into which, Kat found her way, with some speedy climbing, and then sat down and looked thoughtfully at nothing for nearly half an hour. Yes, she did look very thoughtful, and ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... acre of valley, some remnant of glacier had melted after its slow-plowing progress of ten million years. The smooth, round stones which it had dropped when it vanished in the sun lay there as thickly strewn as seeds from a gigantic poppy-boll. And then, as the gorge-wedge narrowed, there were great, polished boulders, like up-peeping skulls, and riven ledges against which Indian hunters had made their fires in the old days. And on the tipping land of the mountainside, and the little strips where soil lodged between the rocks, ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... her gigantic babe, Charlotte had forgotten all about money and business affairs when once more the practical man in him came out of childish ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... he concluded, "it is a gigantic task to lift thousands of tons of steel and literally carry it a quarter of a mile to forty feet of water in less than a minute. Everything has to be calculated to a nicety. It's a matter of mathematics—the moment of weight, the moment of buoyancy, and all that. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... the gigantic or Taur-elephant Arnee, appears to be rare; found only single, or in small families, in the upper eastern provinces and forests at the foot of the Himalaya. A party of officers of the British Cavalry, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... till the two reached the point where the mountain face sweeps backward in the curve of which the Downfall makes the centre. At the outward edge of the curve a great buttress of ragged and jutting rocks descends perpendicularly towards the valley, like a ruined staircase with displaced and gigantic steps. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a gigantic shark (Carcharodon megalodon), from the Pliocene at Malta. Half natural ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... already saw the merry boys who had gone out to meet them, and who now headed the procession amid manifestations of the liveliest delight. Yes, they were coming, they were coming! Yonder, down the mountain-slope, moved the motley procession of the Tyrolese, resembling a glittering serpent of gigantic proportions. How their rifles flashed in the sun! How beautifully the bouquets adorned their pointed green hats! And now they were already able to distinguish the faces and the individual forms. Immediately behind the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... deciphered the print. Finally the lamp was brought in, and shed a mellow radiance over the dusky apartment. The volume was finished and dropped upon her lap. The spell of this incomparable sorcerer was upon her imagination; the sluggish, lurid tarn of Usher; the pale, gigantic water lilies, nodding their ghastly, everlasting heads over the dreary Zaire; the shrouding shadow of Helusion; the ashen skies, and sere, crisped leaves in the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir, hard by the dim lake of Auber—all lay with grim distinctness before her; and from the red ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... lasting nearly an hour before the arrival at the Whispering Stones, two tall conical blocks that leaned toward each other like gigantic gray-mantled figures. They were soon surveyed and passed by with the remark that they would be good ghosts on a starlit night. But a soft sunlight was on them now, and Gwendolen felt daring. The stones ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... masses of clouds collecting in the east—Mr Waller called them lightning clouds—their shadowy parts were of a peculiar steel blue, while the brighter portions glowed with a fleshy tint. At dusk, catching the reflection of the sun, they seemed to shine out of the dark sky like pale spectres of gigantic size, casting their supernatural lights over the waves. At midnight the expected lightning burst forth with as almost terror-inspiring grandeur; sometimes eight or ten flashes of forked lightning darted forth at once, lighting up the whole ocean, and showing the dark ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... during the fair, but at no other period of the year. In Cossin's Reminiscences of Exeter (1877) we are told how "at Exeter, on the occasion of the Lammas Fair, a procession yet perambulates the city, one man bearing a pole with a gigantic stuffed glove at the top of it, the latter being subsequently ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath
... storm sounded a crisis in a series of tremendous, shattering crashes, so heavy and so prolonged that all the world seemed to rock and vibrate, echoing the uproar like a gigantic sounding-board. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... feature was advertised at one time, but the "feature" was always carefully selected for its wide popular appeal, and then Mr. Curtis spared no expense to advertise it abundantly. As much as $400,000 was spent in one year in advertising only a few features—a gigantic sum in those days, approached by no other periodical. But Mr. Curtis believed in showing the advertising world that he was willing to ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... exhorted his friends to stand to their defence, saying he had seen as much smoke in the hall upon a Christmas even.] The mien and appearance of the company assembled was wild, and, even in their social hours, almost terrific. Their prince himself had the gigantic port and fiery eye fitted to sway an unruly people, whose delight was in the field of battle; and the long mustaches which he and most of his champions wore, added to the formidable dignity of his presence. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... off the stem of the clay pipe, lest it should stick out of his pocket, boards the salvage steamer, and disappears forward. After a time he reappears from under the cabin hatchway, with a gigantic pair of sea-boots and a scrap of chewing tobacco. Behind the deck-house he bites a huge mouthful off the brown Cavendish, and begins to chew courageously, which makes him feel tremendously manly. But near the furnace where the ship's timbers are bent he has to unload his stomach; it seems ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... buried beneath a temple in honour of Trajan. Next, to the south, was the Library—with stores of papyri worth more perhaps to the world than all the architecture of Pergamon. The middle of the crescent held the shrine of Athena, goddess of Pergamon, and beside it the Altar of Zeus the Saviour, gigantic in size, splendid with sculpture, itself the equal of an Acropolis. Lastly, the southern or lower end of the ridge bore a temple of Dionysus and an Agora ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... and generally exaggerate their depredations, as they exaggerate the depredations of most kinds of seabirds. Whatever the fate of the harbour seals should be, there can be no doubt that the harps or Greenland seals, the bearded or square-flippers, the grey or horseheads, and the gigantic and magnificently game hoods, should all be put under conservation. I am also inclined to think that the walrus could be coaxed back to what once were some of his most favourite haunts. Just now he has no chance whatever; and he is so extremely ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... example I want to consider is that of the common spider, whose curious courtship customs are described by Darwin.[37] Here we find the relatively gigantic female seizing and devouring the tiny male fertiliser, as he seeks to perform the only duty for which he exists. This is a case of female superiority carried to a savage conclusion. The male in these courtships often ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... near personal friendship for a considerable period in Africa, and also at home, it has been easy to trace—more especially from correspondence with him of late years—that Livingstone wanted just some such gigantic problem as that which he attacked at the last to measure his strength against: that he finally overrated and overtaxed it I think all ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... austere expression which seemed habitual to them. He looked just what he was, youthful in years, but old in trials and labours, and to one who analysed his countenance, the conviction was inevitable that his will was gigantic, his ambition unbounded, his intellect ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... succeeded? Here are a few answers to the question: Because the author had a deep, practical knowledge of the stage. Because he disdained all stage tricks. Because he had the wit to select for his hero one of the world's greatest and finest characters. Because he had the audacity to select a gigantic theme and to handle it with simplicity. Because he had the courage of all his artistic and moral convictions. And of course because he has a genuine dramatic gift. Finally, because William J. Rea plays Lincoln with the utmost ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... robes so long and flowing that they trailed upon the ground. As they marched they beat two great drums which were likewise draped in black, and beside them came the fife player, black and sombre like the others. Following these came a personage of gigantic stature enveloped rather than clad in a gown of the deepest black, the skirt of which was of prodigious dimensions. Over the gown, girdling or crossing his figure, he had a broad baldric which was also black, and from which hung a huge scimitar with a black scabbard and furniture. He had his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... every civilised country, see all conceivable applications of it, count up his probable royalties, sketch out the novel methods in which he would invest his gains, and finally retire with the most gigantic fortune that has ever been amassed. And you would be swept along by his words, and would be carried every foot of the way with him, so that it would come as quite a shock to you when you suddenly fell back to earth ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... gigantic wheel, in the midst of the circle stood a cluster of leafless trees, mighty patriarchs, gnarled and twisted, with great overhanging limbs as stout and rugged as only hoary age can ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... A gigantic emaciated female figure which, contrary to the general rule of ghostly creatures, appeared in ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Tail," cried Kenneth, raising his voice so as to be heard above the heavy roar; and the fall bore no slight resemblance to the long white sweeping appendage of some gigantic beast, reaching from the face of ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... of them were absurd, Shiela; the most abominably grotesque creatures came swarming and crowding around the bed—faces without bodies—creatures that grew while I looked at them, swelling to gigantic proportions—Oh, it ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... utmost. Sublime and beautiful were there so exquisitely blended, that to determine the leading characteristic of the scenery was impossible. Mountains, clad to the loftiest summit in perpetual verdure; gigantic trees, rich in blushing fruits; pensile plants, aglow with the choicest flowers; proud-rifted rocks, pale and ghastly, as if cleft by an earthquake; foaming cascades springing madly down the cliffs, leaping ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... time the tug's rockets were spent and the German cruisers were rushing down a line of gigantic smoke-palms that were planted by the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... borrowed the mule and buckboard. They were fine weapons, too. He had tried them. Oh, no, if it came to shooting he would give a different account of himself this time. Mr. James must look to himself. So must Abe Conroy. He would have no mercy. And he frowned darkly down at the gigantic weapons. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... dire reality. Suppose that we could see the huge planets and the ponderous stars whirling their terrific masses with awful, and if it might be so, clamorous velocity, and thundering through the fields of unresisting space with furious gigantic momentum, such as the mighty avalanche most feebly figures, and thus describing with chafing eccentricities and frightful deflections, their mighty centre-seeking and centre-flying circles, we should behold ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... the entrance to the choir ran the rood-screen, a vast erection of brown oak and black iron, surmounted by a high loft, from which glimmered down sheaves of silvered organ pipes, and, higher yet, in deep shadow, he could make out three gigantic figures, of which the center one was nailed to a cross. Beyond this began the stalls—dark and majestic, broken by carving—jutting heads of kings and priests leaning forward as if to breathe in the magnetism of that immense ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... its way over the vexed flood of the meeting waters of the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa, four horsemen crossed a rustic bridge, that led from the mainland to the opposite, or eastern extremity of the Island of Montreal. One of the riders was of gigantic stature, and another of diminutive proportions; and all were clad in the coarse grey frieze suit of the country, and wore upon their heads the common blue cap or tuque. Pursuing their way, they kept to the least frequented paths; endeavouring to avoid recognition; until ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Isabelle had learned from Cairy, who had heard the gossip among men. Woodyard was too unimportant a man to occupy the public eye, even when it was a question of a "gigantic steal," for more than a few brief hours. By the time the Woodyards had returned from that journey to Europe, so hastily undertaken, the public had forgotten about the Northern Mill Company's franchise. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... avoids the sententious style—it does not preach, but ridicule philosophy—it plunges amid the great practical business of men—it breathes of the Agora and the Piraeus—it is not a laughing sage, but a bold, boisterous, gigantic demagogue, ever in the thickest mob of human interests, and wielding all the various humours of a democracy with a brilliant audacity, and that reckless ease which is the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... curving masses around the scenes of the later Gothic tapestries. Even more, they began to play an important part in the mise en scene, and were drawn on tiny scale as habitations of the actors in the play who thrust heads from windows no larger than their throats, or who gathered in gigantic ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to-night is the Festival of Yakushi-Nyorai, the Physician of Souls. Borne to the steps at last, I find myself able to halt a moment, despite the pressure of the throng, before the stand of a lantern-seller selling the most beautiful lanterns that I have ever seen. Each is a gigantic lotus-flower of paper, so perfectly made in every detail as to seem a great living blossom freshly plucked; the petals are crimson at their bases, paling to white at their tips; the calyx is a faultless ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... enough to follow and so saved us steering by compass, which is very difficult as the needle will only come to rest after you have been standing still for about a minute. That march was extraordinary, the snowy mist hid all distant objects and made all close ones look gigantic. Although we were walking on a flat undulating plain, one could not get away from the impression that the ground was hilly—quite steep in places with deep hollows by the wayside. Suddenly a herd of apparent cattle would appear in the distance, then you would think, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... above Monterey the scene is often noble, although it is always sad. The upper air is still bright with sunlight; a glow still rests upon the Gabelano Peak; but the fogs are in possession of the lower levels; they crawl in scarves among the sandhills; they float, a little higher, in clouds of a gigantic size and often of a wild configuration; to the south, where they have struck the seaward shoulder of the mountains of Santa Lucia, they double back and spire up skyward like smoke. Where their shadow touches, colour dies out of the world. The air grows chill and deadly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... litter of gods and bones, Balatta whimpering at his heels, Bassett entered the shadow of the Red One and passed on under its gigantic overhang until he touched it with his finger- tips. No lacquer that. Nor was the surface smooth as it should have been in the case of lacquer. On the contrary, it was corrugated and pitted, with here and there ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... A gigantic explosion slammed into the room; a crack appeared in one wall and dust floated down from the ceiling. There was a sound of snapping small arms fire in ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... that his finger-nails were seven or eight inches long, and were supported by bamboo splints. Indeed, they were no longer human nails, but twisted and distorted quills, giving him the appearance of having gigantic claws. "Velly big Chinaman," whispered my cheerful friend; "first-chop man—high classee—no can washee—no can eat—no dlinke, no catchee him own glub allee same nothee man—China boy must catchee glub for him, allee time! Oh, him ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... previously, the possibilities of untold wealth had never before dazzled the vision. Rude storehouses began to rise on every hand, which have since given place to extensive and even handsome structures. A perfect furor was created along the river by the brilliant prospect of a gigantic bonanza. Hundreds of storehouses of immense proportions were erected during the summer months, and for several successive winters the river and adjacent streams were the scene of a feverish excitement. Every dollar that could be obtained was invested in a claim, and some farmers upon the shores ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... hostilities against the Court of France, whose political system would certainly impel it to resist any attack upon the divan of Constantinople, that the balance of power in Europe might be maintained against the formidable ambition of Catherine, whose gigantic hopes had been already ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... in front of the frightened pony lay coiled a gigantic rattlesnake, its ugly head and tail raised and its rattles singing ominously. Two more steps and the pony would ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the situation when on April 22nd the Germans made their first attack with poisoned gas in the Second Battle of Ypres and, in a gigantic effort, again attempted to break through; and the defence called for the most desperate kind of fighting, only surpassed in intensity by the struggle in the First Battle of Ypres. Just about this time, the then Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... wedged together as to be utterly impassible, and extending about a mile to the southward. Behind it the frozen surface was comparatively smooth for some distance, until terminated in the extreme background by gigantic ranges of ice mountains, the one towering above the other. Captain Cook concluded that this vast field reached the southern pole or was joined to a continent. Mr. J. N. Reynolds, whose great exertions and perseverance have at length succeeded in getting set ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a second ridge, and between the two sloping greenly down, till it terminated in a little bay. Parallel to the valley ran this grand hill-terrace—until it likewise reached the coast, ending abruptly in precipitous gigantic cliffs, against which the tides of centuries might have beat themselves in vain. Beyond all, motionless in the noonday dazzle, and curving itself away in a mist of brightness where the eye failed, was the great, wide, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... has had the effect, in this neighborhood, to stir up gigantic efforts to fill the want of female education. The same feeling is extending itself throughout Syria, so that future prospects for the promotion of pure Christian knowledge and true civilization are brilliant and ought surely to encourage the benevolent ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... to act, is a secondary question, so long as the existence of the law and the possibility of its discovery by the human intellect are granted. But he must be a half-hearted philosopher who, believing in that possibility, and having watched the gigantic strides of the biological sciences during the last twenty years, doubts that science will sooner or later make this further step, so as to become possessed of the law of evolution of organic forms—of the unvarying order of that ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... between the two halves of the nineteenth century is the gigantic combination which the shuttle of these latter years is weaving. The wealth of no single man was found sufficient to place a railroad across the continent. Men combined their capital, and to-day we can ride from New York to San Francisco ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... her own government and mine—or should I say of both of my governments?—that it could be in the power of mortal mind to conceive. It was a beautiful, reasonable, generous, patriotic, sympathetic drama of the gigantic war mule and it had only one tiny, hidden obscure line in one of its verses, but in that line lay all of dishonor that could come to a man and a State who should allow a smaller nation fighting for its life and its honor to be defrauded of one of ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... more I see of the profession, the more I am in love with it. It's a wonderful thing. Just think of being able to plan out a great big bridge across a broad river, or some wonderful dam, or a tall sky-scraper, or an elevated railroad, or a tunnel under a gigantic mountain, or a ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer |
