"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of flatulence both in stomach and intestines: hence possibly, Pythagoras who had studied ceremonial-purity in Egypt, forbade the use, unless he referred to venery or political-business. I was once sitting in the Greek quarter of Cairo dressed as a Moslem when arose a prodigious hubbub of lads and boys, surrounding, a couple of Fellahs. These men had been working in the fields about a mile east of Cairo and, when returning home, one had said to the other, "If thou wilt carry the hoes I will break wind once for every step ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... 'command and by her direction; and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased with the representation.' In his 'Letters' (1721, p. 232) Dennis reduces the period of composition to ten days—'a prodigious thing,' added Gildon, {172a} 'where all is so well contrived and carried on without the least confusion.' The localisation of the scene at Windsor, and the complimentary references to Windsor Castle, corroborate the tradition that the comedy ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... he answered, plucking a piece of long grass and beginning to chew the end of it. "I don't know what you put in that plum pudding, but it has made me everlastingly sleepy. I'd like to take a nice long nap;" and a prodigious yawn ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... world, my masters; and, as you generally find an inferior dauber magnify the peculiarities of a great man's style, so as to give a better idea of his manner than you gather from his own performances, let us see the prodigious insanity developed in the imitators of Shakspeare. Never, till I saw the brass knocker on the door of the Vizier's palace in Timor the Tartar, painted, you told me, by Wilkins of the Yorkshire Stingo, did I know how you produced your marvellous effects on the door of Billy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... and to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel; their self-respect prodigious; they had the best pew at the Foundling: all their habits were pompous and orderly, and all their amusements intolerably dull and decorous. After every one of her visits (and oh how glad she was when they were over!) Miss Osborne and Miss Maria Osborne, and Miss ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... do—work that people could not understand. The people invariably thought there must be a trick about the giving—that the eager one wanted hidden results for self.... Invariably, they were prodigious workers, men of incredible energy. Thus they ground themselves fine; and invariably, too, they were men of exalted personal conduct, though often they had passed before the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds. It is so certain that information, i.e., the knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the maids' beds, pull stools from under folks, and lay a coal upon their shoes when they were asleep. He was at last turned off for some notable piece of roguery, and when I came away, was loitering among the ale-houses. Bless me, thought I, what a prodigious wit would this have been with us! I could have matched all the sharpers between St. James's and Covent Garden, with a notable fellow in the same neighbourhood, (since hanged for picking pockets at fairs) could he have had the advantages ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who were unfailingly polite racked ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. The world, it has been often remarked, appears as if it had long been preparing for the advent of man; and this, in one sense, is strictly true, for he owes his birth to a long line of progenitors. If any single link ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... a book- store, she stood next to a gentleman leaning over the same counter, whom a salesman addressed by the name of a popular author, and she remained staring at him breathless till he left the place. When she bragged of the prodigious experience at home, her husband defied her to say how it differed from meeting the lecturers who had been their guests in Tuskingum, and she answered that none of them compared with this author; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mission to receive me. His is a pretty mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he has succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital. Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... able to hide, hitherto, such an encircling and all-mastering Spirit? He possesses every Quality that ART could have charm'd by: yet, has lent it to, and conceal'd it in, NATURE.——The Comprehensiveness of his Imagination must be truly prodigious!——It has stretch'd out this diminutive mere Grain of Mustard-seed, (a poor Girl's little, innocent, Story) into a Resemblance of That Heaven, which the Best of Good Books has compar'd it to.——All the Passions are His, in their most close and abstracted Recesses: and by selecting the ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... fights of his time.... Socially, he has always lived in a somewhat humble position, and it is to the credit of his nature as a man that he bears not the slightest trace of the parvenu. Plain and undistinguished in appearance, he combines the advantages of a prodigious memory with a remarkable aptitude for reading his fellow-man, and this last quality would be more valuable were it not leavened by a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation. He is very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of bigotry and hot temper; and surrounded and approached ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... his hand with a deprecatory gesture—that hand, by the by, was remarkably small and delicately formed—it looked almost fragile. Yet the strength and suppleness of D'Avencourt's wrist was reputed to be prodigious by those who had seen him handle the sword, whether in play or ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the apostle Jude, verse 9, and why not quarrel with, and accuse the justice of God as unrighteous, for consenting to the salvation of sinners, since his best qualifications are most profound and prodigious attempts to dethrone the Lord God of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the black gave a prodigious leap, which Tartlet could not but admire from a choregraphic point of view. Then repressing his fear, and seeing the bird with broken wing running through the grass, he started off and swift as a greyhound ran towards it, and with many a caper, half of joy, half of stupefaction, brought ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... before the sensational rencontre in Emma's den, the chance of finding a rude pilgrim woodcut on the Quai Voltaire revealed the saint's identity. This ugly print informed the faithful that the "prodigious image" of Our Lady existed in the Church of the Carmelites at Borgo San Liberale. One might distinguish at the extreme right of the five compartments a willowy St. Michael in armour, like Chaucer's Squire in a black-letter folio, or if the identification ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... have told you the whole story, Major Pierson," said Lieutenant Dallberg with another prodigious yawn. ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... in the "Tribune" was prodigious. It was widely circulated through all the journals of the North. The Anti-Slavery Society preserved it in a pamphlet. The ire of a good portion of the Southern journals was ludicrous to witness, and proved how keenly the blow was felt. The report was republished in Great Britain,—first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... him," said Mr. Thomson. "I daresay old Peter knew as little about this as I do. You see, I succeeded to a prodigious accumulation of old law-papers and old tin boxes, some of them of Peter's hoarding, some of his father's, John, first of the dynasty, a great man in his day. Among other collections, were all the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exposed to our attacks. Very large bodies of men must otherwise be employed in escorting them. They may form depots at the foot of the hills as they advance, but even then their difficulties will be prodigious. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the house on Herbert Street, and his daughter Elizabeth (who afterward became a woman of prodigious learning) soon made acquaintance with the Hathorne children. She remembers the boy Nathaniel jumping about his uncle's yard, and this is the first picture that we have of him. When we consider what a beautiful ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... largely advanced each of these branches of science, and having spent many years in gathering and sifting materials for his present work, the store of accurately registered facts upon which the author of the 'Origin of Species' is able to draw at will is prodigious. ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... the offal was by the obscene birds that flew down from the hills; Messieurs the landcrabs, who were assuredly the best scavengers of all, not stirring beyond the Palisadoes. Some things were very cheap, but others inordinately dear. Veal was at a prodigious price; and 'twas a common saying, that you could buy Four children in England cheaper than you could one calf in Jamaica. But for the products and dishes of the colony, which I have elsewhere hinted at, all was as low-priced as it was abundant. What ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... being held there by two pieces of whalebone, that closed the pocket. The searchers, among whom were Dick and Boldero, did not have it all their own way; four or five men rushed upon them, and endeavored to pull them off Emerson. The din of voices was prodigious, but Mark, still standing on the table, stilled it for a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... who has ever believed for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote the poem in question—the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... drug store. He had once heard Dr. Lamerton, the apothecary at home, described as a "well-to-do" man. The phrase stuck in his small brain, and he connected the sale of drugs with wealth. (How, he reasoned, could any one be tempted to sell wares so nasty unless by prodigious profit?) He felt sure the drug-seller would be able to change the guinea for him, and walked in boldly. His ears were tingling, and he felt a call to ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... 'Well-to-Dwell' there lived a mighty hunter, whose name was 'Grim-face,' Feeling a desire one day for a little venison, he took his bow, and went into the woods; where he soon killed a deer. As he was carrying the deer home, he came upon a wild boar of prodigious proportions. Laying the deer upon the earth, he fixed and discharged an arrow and struck the boar, which instantly rushed upon him with a roar louder than the last thunder, and ripped the hunter up. He fell like a tree cut by the axe, and lay dead along with the boar, and a snake ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to the views of Savary, the Due de Rovigo, who avowedly remained on good terms with Bourrienne after his disgrace, though the friendship of Savary was not exactly a thing that most men would have much prided themselves on. "Bourrienne had a prodigious memory; he spoke and wrote in several languages, and his pen ran as quickly as one could speak. Nor were these the only advantages he possessed. He knew the routine of public business and public law. His activity and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... He swung the bow in. He pointed it shoreward. Straight for the opening of the sluice! His last strokes were prodigious. The boat swung the right way and shot into the channel. Lane dropped his oars. He saw men below wading knee-deep in the water. The boat rode the incline, down to the long swell and curled yellow billows below, where it was checked with violent shock. Lane felt himself ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... George could not get back to his capital till next day at noon. Then, as the road from his closet at St. James's to the King of Denmark's apartment on t'other side of the palace is about thirty miles, which posterity, having no conception of the prodigious extent and magnificence of St. James's, will never believe, it was half an hour after three before his Danish Majesty's courier could go, and return to let him know that his good brother and ally was leaving the palace in which they both were, in order to receive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sighs, Sweet Melancholy, from my breast; "'Tis here that eastern greatness lies, "That Might, Renown, and Wisdom rest! "Here funeral rites the priesthood gave "To chiefs who sway'd prodigious powers, "The Bigods and the Mowbrays brave, "From Framlingham's ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... events; and that was a prodigious comfort to a man like myself, who has a sort of religious scruples about making a will. I have heard it whispered that you were actually married to Martha; in which case, Tom might drop into our shoes, so readily, without any more ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they were interrupted by the approach of Miss Larolles, who, tripping towards Cecilia, exclaimed, "Lord, how glad I am to see you! So you would not go to the auction! Well, you had a prodigious loss, I assure you. All the wardrobe was sold, and all Lady Belgrade's trinkets. I never saw such a collection of sweet things in my life. I was ready to cry that I could not bid for half a hundred ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... attention to. They are more occupied with humanity in general than with individuals in particular. However, Barbicane professed the contrary principles, and applied them upon every occasion. Thanks to his care, to his intelligence and respectful intervention in difficult cases, to his prodigious and humane wisdom, the average of catastrophes did not exceed that of cities on the other side of the Atlantic, amongst others those of France, where they count about one accident upon every 200,000 francs ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... is so prodigious that instead of embracing the message of grace with its guarantee of the forgiveness of sin for Christ's sake, man finds himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. "If I live," says he, "I will mend my life. I will do ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... psychologically preconformed to opium. The prodigious mental activity so early awakened in him counteracted the narcotic despotism of the drug, and made it a sort of ally. The reader sees from this how much depends upon predispositions as to the effect of opium. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a prodigious noise in its day, and was much heralded in France. The French declared that Jumonville, the leader, who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and his party were ambassadors and sacred characters. Paris rang with this fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... sat at the centre table, Myra in Miss Murgatroyd's place, and Jim in Susie's, and consumed their bread-and-cheese, and drank their beer, with huge appetites and prodigious enjoyment. And Jim used Miss Susannah's napkin, and pretended to be sentimental over it. And Myra reproved him, after the manner of Miss Murgatroyd reproving Susie. After which they simultaneously exclaimed: "Oh, my dear love!" in Miss Eliza's most affecting manner; then linked fingers for a wish, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... humanity may be moulded. If he saw them at all, it was through the softening and illusive medium of generalised phrases. Nor was he ever shocked and driven into himself by 'the immoral thoughtlessness' of men. The courses of nature, and the prodigious injustices of man in society, affect him with neither horror nor awe. He will see no monster if he can help it. For the fatal Nemesis or terrible Erinnyes, daughters of Erebus and Night, Emerson substitutes a fair-weather abstraction named Compensation. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Emperor was seated the King of Saxony, in a white uniform with red facings, and collar richly embroidered in silver, wearing a false cue of prodigious length. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... while he rubbed his hands and laughed—"prodigious, and a man might say impossible. A young lass like Mary, such a coaxing little poppet, as tender as a lambkin, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... cracking of whips, mingled with the braying of mules, the neighing of the horses, the commands of the officers engaged in drilling the men, the incessant hum and buzz of the camps, the blare of bugles, and the roll of drums,—all these made up a prodigious volume of sound that lasted from the coming-up to the going-down of the sun. But this morning was strangely still. The wagons were silent, the mules were peacefully munching their hay, and the army teamsters were giving us a rest. I listened with ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the year 1537, was reigning Duke of Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked at least upon a par with the Dukes of Urbino, and his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... during which they had listlessly acquiesced in her aggressive absorption of the carriage of the seas. America could count upon their sympathies, and possible co-operation, in her rivalry with the British carrier. "It is manifest," wrote Coxe in 1794, "that a prodigious and almost universal revolution in the views of nations has taken place with regard to the carrying trade." When John Adams spoke of the United States retaliating upon Great Britain, by enacting a similar measure ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Mahomet Bassa were also slain. The whole loss of the Turks in this action amounted to about 22,000; and of the Imperialists, 3,695 common soldiers, and 469 officers. There was found in the camp 164 pieces of cannon, and a prodigious quantity of powder, bullets, bombs, grenades, and various military equipments and stores; and the booty in other articles was great and ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... disjointed scraps of Celtic verse, that in the times of old, when Fionn Mac Cumhaill, popularly styled Finn Mac Cool, wielded the sceptre of power and justice, we possessed a prodigious and courageous dog, used for hunting the deer and wild boar, and also the wolf, which ravaged the folds and slaughtered the herds of our ancestors. We learn from the same source that these dogs were also frequently employed as auxiliaries in war, and that ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... avowed herself the mother of the children, and said that she had killed one and would like to kill the three others, rather than see them again reduced to slavery! By this time the crowd about the premises had become prodigious, and it was with no inconsiderable difficulty that the negroes were secured in carriages, and brought to the United States District Court-rooms, on Fourth Street. The populace followed the vehicle closely, but evinced no active desire to effect a rescue. Rumors of ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his powers. He then gave himself to his work with all ardor, and without sparing brain or muscle, risking limb and life at Bull Run, on the Mississippi, at Fort Donelson, at Antietam and Gettysburg, in the Wilderness, at Savannah, and in Richmond. His powers in toil were prodigious. He could turn off an immense amount of work, and keep it up. When the lull followed the agony, he went home to rest and recruit, spending the time with his wife and friends, everywhere diffusing the sunshine of hope and faith. When rested and refreshed, he hied again to the front ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... his return home, dropped a hint to the girl Libby—short for Liberia—his wife's orphan and penniless niece, who dwelt with them as a servant, and whose support they were anxious to get off their hands; and so, to her own prodigious astonishment, the recalcitrant Biddy found herself superseded, and the American help hired a day or ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... feed them in high Indra's heaven. Yet they, when that prodigious joy is o'er, Paradise spent, and wage for merits given, Come to the world of ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... and because she had an episcopal decentralised system of Church administration, which has been capable of adapting itself to all political and social situations. She reserved perfection only for herself, and was prodigious in criticising other Christian communities. She became ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... time you would not find anywhere else an ensemble of ideas, works, acts and instruction so suited to your artist-nature, and, consequently, so favorable to the full development of your fine powers. Thanks to M. de Bulow and his prodigious activity, on a par with his intelligence, Munich is becoming the new musical capital of Germany. You will therefore do well to stay some time there, in order vigorously to prepare yourself for the task which has devolved ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... where they embarked on the steamers Algoma and Chigora; and proceeded 300 miles to Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior; thence by land and water through a dense wilderness, several hundred miles, to Fort Garry, at Red River. A prodigious undertaking, indeed, involving a vast amount of labor and privation; nevertheless the majority of the troops endured it tolerably well. During the first two or three weeks Fred Charlston stood the hardships and inconveniences with a brave spirit, and enjoyed with good relish ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in, so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... high; nowhere else is there a corps of journeyman novelists comparable to Wells, Bennett, Benson, Walpole, Beresford, George, Galsworthy, Hichens, De Morgan, Miss Sinclair, Hewlett and company. They have a prodigious facility; they know how to write; even the least of them is, at all events, a more competent artisan than, say, Dickens, or Bulwer-Lytton, or Sienkiewicz, or Zola. But the literary grande passion is simply not in them. They get nowhere with their suave and interminable volumes. Their view ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... indeed, he had scarcely frequented the house long enough. M. de Bargeton, spread at full length in his great chair, appeared to see and understand all that was going on; his silence added to his dignity, and his figure inspired Lucien with a prodigious awe. It is the wont of imaginative natures to magnify everything, or to find a soul to inhabit every shape; and Lucien took this gentleman, not for a granite guard-post, but for a formidable sphinx, and thought it necessary ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the plants he cultivates, find that salt gives them an appetite. And it would almost seem as if nature had purposely dealt with us in this matter on a magnificent scale. She has made salt-magazines of the sea and the bosom of the earth, where it exists in prodigious masses which cost nothing but the labor of stooping to pick up, except in countries where a gentleman called a tax-gatherer, stands by to count the lumps and allow them to pass on by paying a duty. For my part, if I were the government—this is a secret between you and me, mind—I would look ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... the defense of the chief. He snatched up a great spear, a weapon full ten feet long and with a point and blade as keen as a razor. He thrust it past Xingudan and, with all his might, full into the chest of the upreared bear. Strength and a prodigious effort driven on by nervous force sped the blow, and the bear, huge as he was, was fairly impaled. But Will still hung to the lance and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and Dutch houses, the resident foreigners, and the Christian ministers, excited a prodigious sensation, thrilling civilized mankind. On the Exchanges of Europe men took the odds for ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... consigned. But it was as an organizer of research that Mr. Brewer earned his greatest fame and achieved his greatest success, and it was to him more than to any one man, to his immense persistence in urging upon the powers that be a more generous freedom of access to our Records, and to his prodigious powers of work in arranging and tabulating the enormous masses of documents of all kinds which constitute the Apparatus of English History, that this country stands indebted, and will remain indebted as long as ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... old magnificent courage and ability will never altogether leave him until the beatings of his heart shall have quite ceased: touch him with foolishness or disrespect, and his rage will be terrible." Standing here we can see his prodigious bushy eyebrows, that are as white as driven snow, and under them we can see the large black eyes, beneath the angry fierceness of which hundreds of proud British peers, assembled in their council-chamber, have trembled ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... he discovered the spot in the river at which the treasures were sunk, and he was permitted to take possession of them. These were the treasures of which Ahasuerus availed himself to glorify his feast. So prodigious were they that during the six months of the feast he unlocked six treasure-chambers daily to display their contents to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... artificial necessaries, which became, under the iron rule of the aforesaid World- Market, of equal importance to them with the real necessaries which supported life. By all this they burdened themselves with a prodigious mass of work merely for the sake of keeping their wretched ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... incompatibility of temperament; and from 1858 they found it desirable to live apart. This no doubt added to his restlessness and the craving for excitement, which showed itself in the ardour with which he took up the idea of public readings. These readings are only less famous than his writings, so prodigious was their success. His great dramatic gifts, enlisted in the service of his own creations, made an irresistible appeal to the public, and till the day of his collapse, ten years later, their popularity showed no sign of waning. The amount of money which he earned thereby ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and a half dozen pictures of the fine old English stage-coach days. Over the fireplace were suspended several pairs of boxing gloves, garnishing the picture of a tall fellow in fighting attitude, whose prodigious muscles were only a little smaller than those of all the saints and angels of all the accredited masterpieces of ancient art. A pair of foils and masks, neatly arranged over each corner of the mantelpiece, completed the decorations ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... in nature is simpler or more orderly. The sovereign states of Germany or Italy, which one can traverse in a half hour, compared to the empires of Turkey, Moscow, or China, are only feeble reflections of the prodigious differences that nature has placed in ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty.... He had what the farmers call a long head.... He was a great worker; he had a prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily.... He had a vast good nature which made him accessible to all.... Fair-minded ... affable ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... may regard our race as composed of all the nations that have been and will be—and assign to it different ages. For instance, when the race is ten thousand years old a century will be what a single year is in the life of a centenarian. But there is this prodigious difference. The mortal man grows old and loses his reason and happiness through the enfeeblement of his bodily machine; whereas the human race, by the perpetual and infinite succession of generations, will find itself at the end of ten ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... man, and burnt until the calmness of the evening closed the dreadful scene. Three hundred of the best and most convenient buildings in the town were consumed, which, together with lots of goods, and provincial commodities, amounted to a prodigious sum. Happily few lives were lost, but the lamentations of ruined families were heard in every quarter. In short, from a flourishing condition the town was reduced in the space of six hours to the lowest and most deplorable state. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... boundless Of groundless joys, and griefs as groundless; Assuring beauties that the border Of their new dress is out of order; And schoolboys that their shoes want tying; And babies that their dolls are dying. Lend me, lend me, some disguise; I will tell prodigious lies: All who care for what I say Shall be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... of these works—the Dante, La Fontaine, or "Don Quixote"—and glance at the pictures. The mere hand labor involved in their production is surprising; but when the quality of the work is properly estimated, what he accomplished seems prodigious. No particular mention need be made of him as painter or sculptor, for his reputation rests solely upon his work ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... previously the family had descended on Tadpool as from the skies—or as a heavy stone cast into some quiet mill pond. No one in the neighbourhood could discover anything about them—although Jane Tebbs's exertions in the matter were admittedly prodigious and unwearied. The house agent proved disappointingly vague, and could only inform her that a gentleman who happened to hear of the place had come down from London, inspected the house, liked its lofty, spacious ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... body thrived at a prodigious rate. One could almost see him grow. There was not a warrior in the village who was as strong as he, and already he surpassed them all in endurance; none was so fleet of foot nor so tireless. His face and hair darkened in the wind ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when she declared that it was quite enough for her that I had with that fine precipitation invited her, I quite took this as she meant it; before we had gone very far our understanding, hers and mine, was complete. Her attitude was as happy as her success was prodigious. The sacrifice of the portrait was a sacrifice to the true inwardness of Lady Beldonald, and did much, for the time, I divined, toward muffling their domestic tension. All it was thus in her power to say—and I heard of ...
— The Beldonald Holbein • Henry James
... sepulchred emblems Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin! 295 The wrecks beside of many a city vast, Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons, Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes 300 Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these, The anatomies of unknown winged things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 305 The iron crags, or within heaps of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Louis XIV. Raoul did not know of her letter to Charles II., although D'Artagnan had guessed its contents. Who will undertake to account for that seemingly inexplicable mixture of love and vanity, that passionate tenderness of feeling, that prodigious duplicity of conduct? No one can, indeed; not even the bad angel who kindles the love of coquetry in the heart of woman. "Monsieur de Bragelonne," said the princess, after a moment's pause, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... had been partially driven away from the spot where we landed and had been working, but we found them in prodigious numbers a little way on. Cousin Silas insisted on our tying up old Surley, to prevent the unnecessary destruction which he dealt among them. Before committing any great slaughter among them, Cousin Silas advised us to kill only a few of each description, to ascertain which ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the empire, amounted to five hundred and eighty-three; and that, under the successors of Constantine, the complete force of the military establishment was computed at six hundred and forty-five thousand soldiers. [134] An effort so prodigious surpassed the wants of a more ancient, and the faculties ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... continual swing, swing, on and on, without a moment's pause, with the quick, bustling, breathless sort of tramp of the engine—all these things, and forty others, put me in such a state of intense activity that I felt as if I kept a shop—or was a prodigious man upon 'Change—or was flying up to make a fortune—or had suddenly been called to form an administration—or had become a member of the prize ring, and was going up to fight white-headed Bob. However, on this occasion I was not called upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... like a well-fattened rat, that I mentally wonder how I could ever have had the courage to eat one, and a flight of rainbow-hued Blue Mountain parrots, who have held their ground to the last, whirr up with a prodigious flapping of wings, and, alighting on a gum-tree, can be seen hanging about the blossoms, head downwards, sucking out the honey with their uncouth beaks and awkward little tongues, which seem but badly adapted to such a delicate task. ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... was seen save the boundless green plain, extending in all directions; and then, upon ascending a slight rise, they saw in the dip before them two ostriches. Almost simultaneously the creatures caught sight of their enemies, and went off at a prodigious rate, followed by the dogs and horsemen. For a time their pace was so fast that their pursuers gained but little upon them. Presently, however, the dogs gained upon one of them, and, by their barking and snapping at it, impeded its movements. The horsemen were close together, and the boys had drawn ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... half an hour earlier than usual the next morning. But no one noted it because his habit had always been to arrive among the first—not to set an example but to give his prodigious industry the fullest swing. There was in Turkey a great poet of whom it is said that he must have written twenty-five hours a day. Norman's accomplishment bulked in that same way before his associates. He had not slept the whole night. But, thanks to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... ultimately compelled, at their excessive inconvenience, to take another road when they changed guard. It cost them three miles of march, whereas before they had but half a mile. Having achieved this feat, I was entreated with prodigious favours by all the men of quality who were invested in the castle. This incident was so important that I thought it well to relate it, before finishing the history of things outside my art, the which is the real object of my writing: forsooth, if I wanted ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... shore of the Ocean with Ananta and addressed the Ocean, saying, 'O Ocean; we have come to churn thy waters for obtaining nectar.' And the Ocean replied, 'Be it so, as I shall not go without a share of it. I am able to bear the prodigious agitation of my waters set up by the mountain.' The gods then went to the king of tortoises and said to him, 'O Tortoise-king, thou wilt have to hold the mountain on thy back!' The Tortoise-king agreed, and Indra contrived to place the mountain ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... What a prodigious bore this race was going to be! The wind was blowing up his legs, and his light spring overcoat was far from ample. The seats were too close together and were of a granite hardness; but he and Lily were wedged into the back and could not escape without treading upon the ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... though how he contrived to cross the seas the story does not say. The eagle welcomed them, and when the last humming-bird had settled down he addressed the meeting, saying that there was no doubt that he had a right to demand to be proclaimed their king. The spread of his wings was prodigious, he could fearlessly look at the sun, and to whatever height he soared he could detect the slightest movement of a fly ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... never perceive the prodigious improbability of the arrival of that boat. She did not seem to be thinking of it. Perhaps she had already forgotten the fact herself. And Heyst resolved suddenly to say nothing more of it. It was not that he shrank from alarming her. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... Rivers was on his way out to the store, he fell to studying the sky and air. On the prairie, as on the sea, one studies little else. There was something formidable in every sign. In the west a prodigious dome of blue-black cloud was rising, ragged at the edge, but dense and compact at ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... Bell Rock, and rose gradually to be captain of the Regent. He was active, admirably skilled in his trade, and a man incapable of fear. Once, in London, he fell among a gang of confidence-men, naturally deceived by his rusticity and his prodigious accent. They plied him with drink—a hopeless enterprise, for Soutar could not be made drunk; they proposed cards, and Soutar would not play. At last, one of them, regarding him with a formidable countenance, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Codlingsby, as he debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a box for Armida at Madame Vestris's theatre. That little Armida was folle of Madame Vestris's theatre; and her little brougham, and her little self, and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass, and her miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty guineas every evening at Nathan's in Covent Garden (the children of the gardeners of Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be seen, three nights in the week at least, in the narrow, charming, comfortable little theatre. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the Boer war, an ex-priest, a clerk, a banker and a cowboy, all very pleasant people as long as they were sober; but the arrival of each was celebrated with several bottles, which the director handed out without any demur, although the amount was prodigious. Quarrels ensued; but by New Year's Eve peace was restored, and we all decorated the director's house with wreaths for the banquet of the evening. The feast began well, but towards midnight a general fight was going on, which came to an end by the combatants falling asleep one ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... the Italian world, were natives of Bearn: one of these, Garat, surnamed "the musical Proteus," was born at Ustaritz. Nothing appeared impossible to this prodigious singer: his voice was splendid and his taste exquisite: his only defect was an inordinate vanity—by no means an uncommon fault in artists of this description. A person on one occasion, thinking to embarrass him, inquired how high in the scale he could go; "I can mount as high as it pleases ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... still linger traces of faded red and blue, which gives access to a great hall with rows of mighty columns, those on the left hand round, those on the right square, and almost terribly massive. There is in these no grace, as in the giant lotus columns of Karnak. Prodigious, heavy, barbaric, they are like a hymn in stone to Strength. There is something brutal in their aspect, which again makes one think of war, of assaults repelled, hordes beaten back like waves by a sea-wall. And still another great hall, with more ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... me, that Martin never looks at nature except through bits of stained glass. He is never satisfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. He should endeavour to school his imagination into the apprehension of the true idea ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... trip to Crocky's Island, situated on the opposite side of the Strait. On landing at Hellgate, within Fools' Inlet my surprise was much excited by the prodigious flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread before them, consisting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... required to testify their loyalty to the emperor by heading the attack on his foes. Desperately the little British force had to fight to maintain their position, and their losses were so serious, the number of their enemies so large, so rapidly increasing, that it was clear to all that the most prodigious efforts would be necessary to enable them to hold on until reinforcements arrived, and that all idea of an early capture of ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... Fields and the City Abulphed. Golius 's Notes upon Alferganus. Thus much concerning the Place of his Nativity; he was born in the Year of the Hegira 370, which is about the 980 Year of Christ. He was indeed a prodigious Scholar; he had learn'd the Alcoran, and was well initiated into Human Learning before he was Ten years old; then he studied Logick and Arithmetick, and read over Euclid without any help, only his Master show'd him how to demonstrate the first five or six Propositions; Then he read Ptolemy's ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... lines at once, and his mind would grasp the meaning with a velocity equal to that of his glance; sometimes even a single word in a phrase was enough to give him the essence of it. His memory was prodigious. He retained thoughts acquired through reading with the same fidelity as those suggested to him in the course of reflection or conversation. In short, he possessed every kind of memory: that of places, of names, of things, and of faces. ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the period known as the Carboniferous Age, or age of plant life, they did not attain their greatest development until Jurassic and Cretaceous times, when many were of prodigious size and ruled the world. The gigantic ichthyosaurs, mesosaurs, and dinosaurs held dominion over the sea and land, and the monster flying reptile, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... among the prodigious mountains, of which Nepal in its extended sense consists, are inhabited by various tribes, that differ very much in language, and somewhat in customs. All that have any sort of pretensions to be considered as aboriginal, like ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... not current, however, until he took the Sea Witch and showed the world the fastest ship under canvas. Low in the water, with black hull and gilded figurehead, she seemed too small to support her prodigious cloud of sail. For her there were to be no leisurely voyages with Captain Bob Waterman on the quarter-deck. Home from Canton she sped in seventy-seven days and then in seventy-nine—records which were ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... conceived and carved this prodigious statue," says Professor Maspero [Footnote: Manual of Egyptian Archaeology second edition 1895 page 208] "was a finished art, an art which had attained self mastery, and was sure of its effects. How many centuries had it taken to arrive at this degree of maturity and perfection?" It is impossible ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... flowed here now, except in time of freshets, or during the spring and fall rains; and there was such a prodigious tangle of alder, willow, clematis and other vines that for years no one had penetrated it. From a fisherman's point of view there seemed no inducement to do so, since this secondary channel appeared to be dry for most ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... king, however, determined on fighting, if there was any possibility of gaining the victory; but the most dissuaded him from venturing on an engagement, and all, as one man, said that the Vindland people had undoubtedly a prodigious force. Duke Otto, however, pressed much to go to battle. Then the king ordered the whole army to be gathered by the war trumpets into battle array, and ordered all the men to arm, and to lie down for the night under their shields; for he was told the enemy's army ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... hundred and twenty thousand a year. There are two monkeys, five cats, eight dogs, and ten horses, all of whom (except the horses) walk about the house like the masters of it. Tita, the Venetian, is here, and operates as my valet—a fine fellow, with a prodigious black beard, who has stabbed two or three people, and is the most ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... village crank came to hear me, honoring the occasion by wearing a new stove-pipe hat of prodigious proportions, which he deposited on the seat as he arose during prayer. When the amen was pronounced, perhaps paralyzed by the fervor, he sat down upon said stove-pipe, crushing it to a pie, then leaped from the wreck uttering a blasphemous yell which convulsed the crowd ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... October, 1727, after having been solemnly rehearsed in the cathedral on the 6th, in the presence of a numerous assemblage. This work forms one of the most solid foundations of its author's glory. "Zadok the Priest" especially is an inspiration of prodigious grandeur—the chorus, "God Save the King" (not the National Anthem), is comparable in beauty to the "Hallelujah" chorus, in ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... France make more careful dispositions for a battle—albeit once in it he bore himself like any captain of horse—nor ever did Du Mornay himself sit down to a conference with a more accurate knowledge of affairs. His prodigious wit and the affability of his manners, while they endeared him to his servants, again and again blinded his adversaries; who, thinking that so much brilliance could arise only from a shallow nature, found when it was too late that they had been outwitted by ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... instant, retraced his steps across the flat, gained the foot of the steep hill and climbed step by step with prodigious effort in the deep snow ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... account you may be more struck with their resemblance to the "shears" seen in shipyards, by which the masts are "stepped" into their places. These masts, as we may call them, are not all of one stick of wood, but of several pieces spliced together; and notwithstanding their prodigious length—fifty yards, you will remember—they are of no great thickness. In fact, although the two are joined together at the top—as we shall presently have occasion to show—when a strong wind blows, both bend, and vibrate back and forward like an elastic trout rod. At their bases they are ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... if occasion served, but otherwise to be cast aside as child's play. Nobody could suspect such an inflammable nature with that baby face; but it seems she was ready to eat her fingers with dulness in the school-room, and had prodigious notions of the rights of woman; so she took all he said most seriously, and met him more than half-way. Then he goes to London, gets better information, looks at the will in Doctors' Commons, maybe, finds it a slowish speculation, and wants to let her down easy; whereof she ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... huge hydrocephalic head, the magnitude of which implies disease, ultimate weakness, and early death. Others maintain that, apart from the extraordinary elements that undoubtedly characterised Chatterton, and constituted him a premature and prodigious birth intellectually, there was also in parts of his poems evidence of a healthy vigour which only needed favourable circumstances to develop into transcendent excellence. Hazlitt, holding with the one of these opinions, cries, 'If Chatterton had had a great work to do by living, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is covered with alternate slabs of black and white marble, which were brought, either in whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within, there was a prodigious richness of precious marbles, and a pillar, if I mistake not, from Solomon's Temple; and a picture of the Virgin by St. Luke; and others (rather more intrinsically valuable, I imagine), by old masters, set in superb ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... looked at her across the colorful mound, and smiled, half as with embarrassment. A lie, he thought, might ameliorate the situation, and he bravely hazarded a prodigious one. "Is it necessary to tell you that Jack loved you? And that the others ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Roosevelt tells, in his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, of the most notable of these, a former scout and Indian fighter named "Vic" Smith, whose exploits were prodigious.] ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... was educated entirely by his father at home. He was exceedingly precocious, indeed excessively precocious, for his application to studies in childhood and adolescence impaired his health, and is held responsible for his death at thirty-nine. Prodigious, though not incredible stories are preserved, especially of his precocity in mathematics. His mind was active rather than accumulative; he showed from his earliest years that disposition to find things out for himself, which has characterised ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... the old law of the land and subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought him far in his profession; but he had this much in common with some few great spirits: he entertained a prodigious contempt for his own special knowledge, and reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a second pursuit unconnected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his almost exclusive attention. The good man was passionately fond of gardening. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... prodigious slaughter, a mad scene of butchery, in which the Indians exulted like fiends. Late in the afternoon they returned to camp, stained with blood and loaded with the spoils of the chase. Snoqualmie distinguished himself by killing a large bear, and its claws, newly severed and bleeding, were ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... Grant's campaign through the Wilderness had been tremendous, and now he seemed to be held indefinitely by Lee in the trenches before Petersburg. The Confederacy, after so many great battles, and such a prodigious roll of killed and wounded, was still a nut uncracked, and Sheridan, who was expected to go up the valley and turn the Southern flank, was resting quietly ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Epicurus never disturbed Greece; his philosophy was publicly taught in Athens during many centuries; he was in incredible favour with his countrymen, who caused statues to be erected to him; he had a prodigious number of friends, and his school subsisted for a very long period. Cicero, although a decided enemy to the Epicureans, gives a brilliant testimony to the probity both of Epicurus and his disciples, who were remarkable for the inviolable friendship they bore each other. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... volume, often alluded to, the birth of the monster seems prodigious and mysterious; it combines two opposite qualities; it is so elaborate in its researches among the thousand authors quoted, that these required years to accumulate, and yet the matter is often temporary, and levelled at fugitive events and particular ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Other people might talk learnedly about various schools and tone poems; he took all he could get silently and with a thankful heart; and because in far-away Peking he could not count upon others playing for him, he performed the prodigious feat of learning to play both violin and 'cello himself without a teacher, and long after he was a ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... pounds was drawn up for Bertie's signature and Nevill's indorsement. The lad hesitated briefly, then wrote his name in a bold hand. He resisted the allurements of some jewelry, offered him in part payment, and received the amount of the bill, less a prodigious discount for interest. The Jew servilely bowed ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... with her usual dignity related this prodigious battle, a battle we apprehend never equalled by any poet, romance or life writer whatever, and, having brought it to a conclusion, she ceased; we shall therefore proceed in our ordinary style with the continuation ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... preparation, stretching over weeks and months, unemotional and methodical, infinite in detail, prodigious in effort, suggested the work of engineers and contractors and subcontractors in the building of some great bridge or canal, with the workmen all in the same kind of uniform and with managers, superintendents and foremen each having some insignia of rank and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer |
