"Shock" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cause other their commendable virtues to be abhorred, so the honour of great men's virtues is easily a cloak to their errors." Bligh fell short of being a great man, but neither was he a bad man; and the merit of his achievements, both as a navigator and amid the shock of battle (especially at Copenhagen in 1801, under Nelson), must not be overlooked, even though stern history will not permit his errors ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to his feet in time to meet the shock, and they fell together with a crash, the madman on top. As he blindly threw out his arms in self protection he grasped Bildad's wrist, arresting the course of the descending knife. Before the fiend could snatch ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... something awful in this reaction of my spirits. It was painful in the extreme. The very suddenness of the change rendered the shock more acute. But the moment before, I was full of confidence, making fair progress in my enterprise, and cheered with partial success. This unexpected misfortune had interrupted all, and plunged me back again into ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... disabled man is a potential criminal, and that unless he receives some compensation giving him the means of earning honestly his living, he is certain to be a danger or a parasite. This is but natural, for in the first place his physical nature has received a shock, has sustained an outrage, Nature strikes back, and some one has to suffer. The loss of a limb means severed muscles, bones and nerves. Nature never forgets that they ought to be there, but as they are not there she does without ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... through the branches, driving so horizontally as to pass overhead. The sheltering thorn-thicket stirs, and a long, deep, moaning roar rises from the fir-trees. Another howl that seems to stun—to so fill the ears with sound that they cannot hear—the aerial host charges the tree-ranks, and the shock makes them tremble to the root. Still another and another; twigs and broken boughs fly before it and strew the sward; larger branches that have long been dead fall crashing downwards; leaves are forced right through ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... see? Hesitation uncertainty, embarrassment and fear in the march of the government; organisation, re-organisation and finally disorganisation of all and every administration. Again a rude shock and the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... lifted arms. I felt the sickening impact of a blow and the bludgeon flew from my hold; then he was upon me, belabouring me with both fists, but twining my legs in his, I clung to those merciless arms, while above his fierce snarling and the painful shock of his blows, I heard the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... think you have so conquered me that I will be good to you, and yet cannot keep yourself from listening to those who whisper that I am bad to you. Sir, I fear they have been right when they told me that a Jew's nature would surely shock me at last." ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... a little stirring in the crowd. The shock of being addressed in their own tongue, instead of the Terran Standard which the Empire has forced on Wolf, held them silent for a minute. I had learned that long ago: that speaking in any of the languages of Wolf would give ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... are the model children, are they? It's lucky I didn't bring Mrs. Curtis out to see your school for the cultivation of morals and manners; she would never have recovered from the shock of this spectacle," said Mr. Laurie, laughing at Mrs. Jo's premature ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a tremendous noise was heard above, a shock was felt throughout the whole ship, which trembled fore and aft as if it was about to fall into pieces: loud shrieks were followed by plaintive cries, the lower deck was filled with smoke, and the frigate was down on her beam ends. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Bend—that was a matter which concerned only the ranches near that town—so long as no vexatious happenings sifted too far south. But they had so sifted, and Perry's Bend, or rather the undesirable class hanging out there, was due to receive a shock ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... high and urged him forward at full speed, and so, as we have seen, the horse's back was almost level as he leaped from the top of the bank. Sam had no saddle or stirrups in which to become entangled, and as the horse struck the water fairly, the blow was not nearly so severe a shock to the boy as he had expected. Both went under the water, but rising again in a moment Sam slid off the animal's back, to give the poor fellow a better chance of escape by swimming. Striking out boldly Sam reached the bank and crawling up looked for his horse. The poor beast was evidently ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... much for her strength. Wearied with watching, prostrated by the intensity of her vigil, when the hound crawls up the steps, and under the dim light she sees his bedraggled body—blood as well as mud upon it—the sight produces a climax—a shock apparently fatal. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... were weak—physically. There was nothing to support your nerve and brain. It was in your eyes. You scarcely recognized us. You hardly knew what our presence meant to you. And, later, the reaction made things even worse for you. A shock, and the balance would have gone hopelessly. So—I lied ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... goose. I hate to give you a shock, Posy-girl, but those lines were written by a not altogether obscure poet,—one James ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... two thousand five hundred years have passed away since the architect formed without cement its massive archway of huge volcanic stones found on the spot, and during all the time it has been subjected to the shock of numerous earthquakes, inundations of the Tiber, and the crash of falling ruins, it still serves its original purpose as effectually as ever, and promises to stand for as many ages in the future as it has stood in the past. It is commonly said that we owe the invention ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... mere boyish folly, or moon-struck madness, closely as he had applied himself to study in the hope of curing his mania, he was overwhelmed by the sudden announcement of her expected return: overwhelmed by a shock of equally blended joy and pain—joy at the prospect of soon meeting her, pain at the thought of the impassable gulf that yawned them—"so near ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... an unpleasant shock to Juliet on the following morning when she went to Mrs. Fielding's room after breakfast to find her lying in bed, pale and tear-stained, refusing morosely to partake of any ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... stared at her husband with great, fixed eyes, full of terror. Then suddenly she experienced, like an electric shock, an awakening of that courage which comes to women at times, which makes them in moments of terror the most ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... from his own lips his exposition of the mode in which he intends to deal with this measure, and how he will reconcile what he has hitherto said with what he is now about to do. Talleyrand is of course in a state of great consternation, which will be communicated like an electrical shock to the Powers specially favoured and protected by the late Government—Leopold and Don Pedro, for instance. It will be a difficult thing for the Duke to deal with some of the questions on which he has committed himself pretty considerably while in opposition, both with respect to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... about the man who, as I had noted for a long while, was losing his balance more and more. The shock of the barbarous and dreadful slaughter of his half-breed children and of the abduction of Inez by these grim, man-eating savages began the business, and I think that it was increased and accentuated by his sudden conversion to complete temperance after years ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... understand as it was impossible for the moon to comprehend the brightness of the sun. Fanny had been shocked at what she had witnessed when she saw Betty take the sealed packet from the drawer. She remembered the whole thing with great distress of mind, and had felt a sense of shock when she heard that the Vivian girls were coming to the school. But her feelings were very much worse when her father had informed her that the packet could nowhere be found—that he had specially mentioned it to Betty, who declared that she knew nothing about it. Oh yes, Fanny and Betty were as ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... on and charge over their own dead and dying, straight for Cemetery Heights. This is the key of the enemy's position. That once gained the day is won; and on the brave fellows go, great gaps tearing through their ranks—answering every fresh shock with a savage yell. Line after line of the enemy gives way before that terrible charge. The breastwork is occupied—they are driven out! Melting under the horrid fire, unfaltering still—the gray-jackets ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... she had to endure the torture of seeing it operated upon by a heathen Chinese doctor, whose method of treatment was to use long needles which he ran into its tender flesh. The needles were of course unclean, and the child's death was doubtless hastened by the shock thus sustained. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... Then came a chorus of hoarse shouts, a shock, and we were rocking, gunwale and gunwale, with a boat where dim figures moved, crying shrill curses. I remember letting drive at one fellow with an oar and thereafter laying about me until the stout timber shivered in my grasp. I remember the dull gleam of Sir Richard's darting ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... had recovered from her first shock of surprise Charmian felt radiantly happy. She had something to do. Alston, with his shrewd outlook, was bringing her a step farther into this enterprise. He was right. She remembered Crayford. A woman ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... satellite country following the war, but one that was comparatively tolerant and progressive. Labor turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union "Solidarity" that over time became a political force and by 1990 had swept parliamentary elections and the presidency. A "shock therapy" program during the early 1990s enabled the country to transform its economy into one of the most robust in Central Europe, boosting hopes for acceptance to the EU. Poland joined the NATO alliance ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... my lantern again to leave the church, it came upon me all at once that this was the nineteenth of March. It came upon me with a kind of shock, as if a hand had struck the thought upon my forehead; at the very same moment, I heard a voice outside the tower—rising ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... some measure recovered from the shock of her grandfather's death, her thoughts turned at once to the Clancys. One of the family indeed had never been absent from them, and it was with surprise and indignation that she learnt that old Peter's forgiveness would in no manner affect Mike's actual position. The crime of which he was accused ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... and in about three months' time he was out again; but the parents, who were old folks, had received their death-blow. They never rallied from the shock. Perhaps they felt that it was their own hard-heartedness and obstinacy that had caused their daughter's ruin—and remorse is hard to bear. They waned perceptibly from day to day, and during the following year they were borne to the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... They came together with a shock and clung to each other in something like panic. And, so struggling, both dipped under water ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... time to mark the condition of things however, until I was again dispatched to the commander-in-chief. I had but fairly started, when I was struck on the right side by a piece of a shell almost spent, which yet came near ending my earthly career. My first feeling after the shock was one of giddiness and blindness, then of partial recovery, then of deathly sickness. I succeeded in getting off rather than falling from my horse, near the root of a tree, where I fainted and lay insensible for nearly an hour. At length, I recovered so far as to be able to remount ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... gladly have avoided. Then again, what an unsatisfactory account I must give to Bertha of poor Ceaton. His expectation of dying soon might be mere fancy, but it was very evident that his spirits had never recovered the shock he had received when he killed Captain Staghorn, and he felt himself branded with the ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... glory of those conversions. The thought that all the time she was singing, with the one passion of her soul to touch the conscience of that tent full of sin, Jasper Chase had been unmoved by it except to love her for herself, gave her a shock as of irreverence on her part as well as on his. She could not tell why she felt as she did, only she knew that if he had not told her tonight she would still have felt the same toward him as she always had. What was that feeling? What had he been to her? Had she made a mistake? She went to ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... Summer-lightning—it hangs in broad slow sheets, dropping from cloud to cloud, so long in dropping and dying off. The 'bora,' which you only get at Trieste, brings wonderful lightning—you are in glorious June-weather, fancy, of an evening, under green shock-headed acacias, so thick and green, with the cicalas stunning you above, and all about you men, women, rich and poor, sitting standing and coming and going—and through all the laughter and screaming and singing, the loud clink of the spoons against the glasses, the way of calling for fresh 'sorbetti'—for ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... was bristling. As the engine bore down upon him, not a rod away, he reared high in the air, his antlers flashing in the blaze, and struck full at the headlight with his immense fore feet. There was a shattering of glass, a crash, a heavy shock, and the train slid on through the darkness, lit only ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... sternly resist the argument that there is no Democratic and no Republican way of sorting letters, or of collecting taxes, or of treating Indians, as theoretical moonshine, their belief must, after all, have received a rude shock by the conduct of the last three national Administrations, including the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... The shock of the defeat was deep and painful to the administration and the people of the North. Up to late Sunday afternoon favorable reports had come to Washington from the battle-field, and every one believed in an assured victory. When a telegram came about five o'clock in the afternoon, that ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and May sunshine, with a few babies and nurses and placid pedestrians as its only occupants. But Uncle Arthur perceived at once, from the aspect of the major, that it was a place of wild carnage, of desperate assault, of the clash and shock of arms. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... a light is applied to the proper place for combustion. Such an explosion, of course, is far too small in extent to constitute any danger to person or property; the objection to it is simply that the shock of the explosion is liable to fracture the fragile incandescent mantle, while the gas, continuing to burn within the burner tube (in the case of a warming or cooking stove), blocks up that tube with carbon, and exhibits the other well-known troubles of a coal-gas ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... from the beginning. Their further growth and development was arrested by the advent of European civilization, which blighted their more feeble culture. Since their discovery they have steadily declined in numbers, and they show no signs of recovery from the shock produced by their subjugation. Among the northern tribes, who were one Ethnical Period below the Pueblo Indians, their social organization and their mode of life have changed materially under similar influences since the period of discovery. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... saints—I mean slovenly habits and an unclean person. There are, of course, degrees in this; and the sister (of course, and all honour to her) is as fresh as a lady at a ball. For the diet there is nothing to be said—it must amaze and shock the Polynesian—but for the adoption of native habits there is much. "Chaque pays a ses coutumes," said Stanislao; these it is the missionary's delicate task to modify; and the more he can do so from within, and from a native standpoint, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... among several little men, who wore themselves out in a struggle for honors, and to see who would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven. John Jacob Astor was too far away to send a current of electricity through the vacuum of their minds, light up the recesses with reason, and shock them into sanity. Like those first settlers at Jamestown, the pioneers at Astoria saw only failure ahead, and that which we fear we bring to pass. To settle a continent with men is almost as difficult as Nature's attempt to form a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... entered on the side, the mass giving away in every direction in their heedless course. Many of the bulls, less fleet than the cows, paying no heed to the ground, and occupied solely with the hunters, were precipitated to the earth with great force, rolling over and over with the violence of the shock, and hardly distinguishable in the dust. We separated, on entering, each singling ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... front of her for a moment, and there was a suggestion of gathering pallor in her face. Then, she drew backward, away from her companion, and her blue eyes widened. If there was a shock to her in the knowledge she had just received, she accepted it with a very clever little laugh which she ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... minutes, when at a signal given by the Soldan, an hundred instruments rent the air with their brazen clamors, and each champion striking his horse with the spurs, and slacking the rein, the horses started into full gallop, and the knights met in mid space with a shock like a thunderbolt. The victory was not in doubt—no, not one moment. Conrade, indeed, showed himself a practised warrior; for he struck his antagonist knightly in the midst of his shield, bearing his ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... which, launched by the founders of the Republic and consecrated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has for almost a century borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great people through prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign conflicts and the perils of domestic strife ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... it is only the shock and fatigue; but Dr. Worth wished him to be kept as quiet as possible. He can't bear to see any one in the room, so that good Anne said she would sit in Charlie's ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uninterrupted. Now and then a vivid zig-zag flash gored the intense darkness with its baleful blue death-light, followed by a crash, appalling as if the battlements of heaven had been shattered. Once the whole air seemed ablaze, and the simultaneous shock of the detonation was so violent, that Beryl involuntarily sank on her knees, and hid her eyes on a chair. The rain fell in torrents, that added a solemn sullen swell to the diapason of the thunder fugue, and by degrees ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... to ask yourself, quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent? we cannot all be brilliant men in this life. And it is for your interest to be contented rather with a humble station well filled, than to shock every body with failures, the more conspicuous by contrast with the ostentation of their promises." John made no answer, he looked very sulky at the moment, and I am in high hopes that I have saved a near relation from ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... profess I know you not; Depart from me ye that have evil wrought. Whoso therefore these sayings of mine doth hear, And doth them, to a wise man I'll compare, The which upon a rock his building founded, The rain descended and the floods surrounded, The winds arose, and gave it many a shock, And it fell not, being founded on a rock. And ev'ry one that hears these sayings of mine, And not to do them doth his heart incline, Unto a foolish man shall be compar'd; Who his foundation on the sand prepar'd: The rain descended and the floods ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... kind of a scoundrel!" muttered Northrup, dazed by the blinding shock of the fear that became, moment by moment, more definite. "And he's taken the thing to her in ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... passed. Had the inhabitants any complaints of their behaviour? None whatever.[62] Their only indignation was directed against some English soldiers who (if their story be correct) had behaved abominably. It was a curious shock of reality for my friend. He realised that sometimes the enemy might behave well, and sometimes bad stories of English soldiers might be circulated (even amongst Allies). I am quite sure that no soldiers in the world would, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Great as the shock of the sudden attack and his narrow escape was, Ree gave only a little yell of surprise and anger, and ran in the direction from which the shot had come, drawing his pistol as he went. He found no one. Though utterly regardless of the danger ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... ran, but nearer and nearer sounded the frightful screams until, just as he felt two huge claws close on his neck, there was a bump, a loud snap, and he felt himself being carried high in the air. When the shock was over he found that he was squeezed tightly between two hard walls, and he could hear the Ongloc screaming and tearing at the outside with his claws. Then he knew ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... work, for guided by the sounds of the ponies' hoofs, the Boers kept on firing, one shot being from close at hand—so close that the flash seemed blinding, the report tremendous. This was followed by a sharp shock, the two companions, as they tore on, cannoning against the vedette, West's pony striking the horse in his front full upon the shoulder and driving the poor beast right in the way of Ingleborough's, with the consequence that there was a second collision which sent the ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... Helen was certainly lonely. She, who gave away so much, was receiving too little. Leonard was pleased to think that he could spare her vexation by holding his tongue and concealing what he knew about Mr. Wilcox. Jacky had announced her discovery when he fetched her from the lawn. After the first shock, he did not mind for himself. By now he had no illusions about his wife, and this was only one new stain on the face of a love that had never been pure. To keep perfection perfect, that should be his ideal, if the future gave him ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... previous evening he had not seen her after the reception of the news about the Vicar. She had gone upstairs when he came back from the post office. Beyond doubt, she was too disturbed, emotionally, to be able to face him with her customary tranquillity. She was getting over the shock with brush and duster up in the attics. He was glad that she had not attempted to be as usual. The ordeal of attempting to be as usual would have tried him perhaps as ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... determination had withdrawn its lines from it forever. From his eyes a certain mistrustfulness looked forth,—not mistrustfulness of others, but of himself,—as if confidence in his own powers had received an overwhelming shock. The man's appearance made an instant and unmistakable impression upon the entire company. The ladies—God bless their sweet and sympathetic natures!—were profoundly moved at the pitiful aspect of our guest. Their bosoms thrilled ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... and began to use every atom of strength in his sturdy muscles; at the same time he engineered matters in such a clever fashion that every time he pulled his oars through the water it was with a rapid movement in the nature of a shock, so that the little hawser tightening, gave a drag at ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... off large pieces from the cliff and, many of them pushing together, hurled them down, aiming at the houses. And wherever these in their fall did no more than just graze the building, they yet gave the whole fortress a considerable shock and reduced the barbarians to great fear. Consequently the Goths stretched out their hands to those who were still about the gate and surrendered themselves and the fort, with the condition that they themselves should remain free from harm, being slaves of the emperor and subject ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... for a minute while he guessed from something in hers that she divined his strange sense. But neither of them otherwise expressed it, and her apparent understanding, with no protesting shock, no easy derision, touched him more deeply than anything yet, constituting for his stifled perversity, on the spot, an element that was like breatheable air. What she said however was unexpected. "Well, ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... She recalled the shock of Alys Brewster-Smith's indifference to all that misery! The widow's one instinct had seemed to be to fight E. Eliot and the health officer for their interference. Stranger still, the tenants did not want to be moved out, driven on. The whole situation was ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... distracted him with diversity of dangers, one bigger wave drove against a sharp rock his naked body, which it gashed and tore, and wanted little of breaking all his bones, so rude was the shock. But in this extremity she prompted him that never failed him at need. Minerva (who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming off and on, as one dallying with danger, but boldly to force ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... nevertheless, there would always be such a restoration as would make it easily perceptible that God's promise of an eternal dominion to David had not been in vain." The dominion of David had already suffered a considerable shock by the separation of the two kingdoms, existing at the prophet's time; but it was in future to sink even far more deeply, and the people along with it. But, with all these things, God's promise remains true. The judgments do not shut up the way for His mercy, but rather prepare ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... to me. It wasn't just a railing that led to the platform, it was a metal cable fully charged with the ship's electricity. Anyone who touched it got a fearsome shock— and such a shock would have been fatal if Captain Nemo had thrown the full current from his equipment into this conducting cable! It could honestly be said that he had stretched between himself and his assailants a network of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... constitution of India is therefore like a house without a foundation and without a roof. It is a principle of Hindoo religion not to kill a worm, not even to tread on a blade of grass, for fear of injuring life; but the torments, cruelties, and bloodshed inflicted by Indian tyrants would shock a Nero or a Borgia. Half the best informed writers on India will tell you that the Brahmanical religion is pure monotheism; the other half as confidently assert that they worship a million gods. Some teach us that the Hindoos ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... itself, so amusing after all did the whole incident seem to them. The Count found rather risky witticisms, but so cleverly told that they provoked smiles. In his turn Loiseau fired some broader jokes, which did not shock the listeners; and the thought brutally expressed by his wife preponderated in every one's mind: "Since it is her business, why should the girl refuse this man rather than another?"—The pretty Mme. Carr-Lamadon seemed even inclined to think that in her place she would refuse ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... "about accidental and sudden meetings. They are a sort of nervous shock and you always feel that you are looking for something that you've mislaid and that you don't seem able to find ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... his legs, his two feet solidly planted, this Hanniston man felt ready for any shock that Dave Darrin ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... chuckled Eph, holding on to Owen's head for grim life. Under the weight and the unexpected shock the ex-foreman sank ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... time you have heard of my Lord's death: I fear it will have been a very great shock to you. I hope your brother will write you all the particulars; for my part, you can't expect I should enter into the details of it. His enemies pay him the compliment of saying, they do believe now that he did not plunder the public,, as he was accused (as they accused him) of doing, he having ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... look very bright, but we must make allowance for the awful fright that, as we hear, has been caused by the expedition. Possibly, when they have got over the shock, things may be better." ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... estimate the gain. The cold winds, the icy showers, the fogs we leave behind us, give perhaps a zest not wholly its own to Italian sunshine. But the abrupt plunge into a land of warmth and colour sends a strange shock of pleasure through every nerve. The flinging off of wraps and furs, the discarding of greatcoats, is like the beginning of a new life. It is not till we pass in this sharp, abrupt fashion from the November of one side the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... of sorry for your father. If you have his liver on your hands dont blame me. You know the doctor said any kind of a shock would set him ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... the shed, I found a sight that filled me with violent emotion. A boat lay there, crushed by the falling rock. And Eva—Eva lay beside it, mangled and broken, dashed to pieces by the shock—torn beyond recognition. Eva—lying ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... advance at the head of his men, inspiriting them alike by his acts and his deeds. He gave the word to "Charge," and the word has scarcely passed his lips when he received a bullet in the groin. Staggering under the shock, he yet continued to advance, though unable to speak above his breath. The battle had not yet raged more than fifteen minutes, but it was even now virtually decided. The French troops were utterly disorganized, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the lightning flash, sudden as the change of one second to another, there broke upon me a sound that will never leave my ears. It was as if a volcano had burst forth, or an earthquake had instantly tumbled a whole city into ruins. A fearful shock, like a sudden explosion, filled the air. I saw faintly through the thick mists the masts of the ship reeling over, and I saw no more;—vessel and iceberg and the disappearing boat were buried in chaos. ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... don't know;-I'm afraid it's monstrous hot; besides (putting her hand to her forehead) I an't half well; it's quite horrid to have such weak nerves!-the least thing in the world discomposes me: I declare, that man's oddness has given me such a shock,-I don't know when I shall recover from it. But I'm a sad, weak creature;-don't you think I am, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... out, and brought him back; and then the Captain's great apprehension was, that Florence would suffer from this new shock. He felt it so earnestly, that he turned quite rational, and positively interdicted any further allusion to Walter's adventures for some days to come. Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relieve himself of the toast in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... borne on, tugging vainly at the horse's iron jaws. But the boar had short shrift. With a rush Ross closed on it and before it could swerve off sent his spear deep into its side and, galloping on, turned his hand over, drawing out the lance. The pig was staggered by the shock but started to run on. Before it could get up speed one of the Indian nobles dashed at it with wild yells and ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... cathedral towns. They were grand and imposing places, but if, to go there, it was necessary to leave Helstone as a home for ever, that would have been a sad, long, lingering pain. But nothing to the shock she received from Mr. Hale's last speech. What could he mean? It was all the worse for being so mysterious. The aspect of piteous distress on his face, almost as imploring a merciful and kind judgment from his child, gave her a sudden sickening. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... disorder. The whole place is tumbling down; the window is broken; the battered door is off its hinges, propped up against the wall. A cripple girl is sitting on a broken box, turned upside down, immediately outside this miserable hovel. Her face is a greater shock to Hazel than any of the other wretchedness around. There is a desperation of bitterness in that set, white face, with its hollow eyes and cheeks, which is absolutely appalling. Hazel had always imagined that suffering must ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... feathers on each wing. When the butterfly is held in hot, hasty hands, these feathers are rubbed off and do not grow again. It is very much as if we should have our teeth pulled out, or our hair torn out by the roots. When we think of the shock and pain, and of the helplessness that will surely follow, catching butterflies no longer seems an ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... had travelled all the preceding night, and gone to bed at Leek in Staffordshire; and that when I rose to go to church in the afternoon, I was informed there had been an earthquake, of which, it seems, the shock had been felt in some degree at Ashbourne. JOHNSON. 'Sir it will be much exaggerated in popular talk: for, in the first place, the common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to the objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts: they do ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... on one side lay a cornfield. The corn had just been shucked, and beside each shock of fodder lay its heap of ears ready for the gathering wagon. The sight of the corn brought freshly to remembrance the red-ambered home-brew of the land which runs in a genial torrent through all days and nights of the year—many a full-throated rill—but ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the Clenarvon jewels he considered, perhaps, with a slight professional interest; but so far as he could see, the precautions for guarding them were so adequate that the subject did not remain in his memory. He had, however, a very distinct and disagreeable shock when, on the night of John Dory's appearance, he recognized among a few newly-arrived guests the Marquis de Sogrange. He took the opportunity, as soon as possible, of withdrawing his wife from a little circle among whom they had been talking, to a more ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... patiently endured. The opposing forces which had grown up were so strong that the wit of man was unable to keep them asunder; and all the control over the issue left to kings and statesmen was restricted to the fabrication of means wherewith to deliver or sustain the shock, and the choice of the hour, if such choice ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... happened then I can not say. When I undertook to record the incident in the chronicles of the S. S. I. E. E. of W. C. I., I found there were five entirely different versions of the affair besides my own. I knew that immediately after the shock I found myself struggling in the water just below the rock over which I must have been slung by the force of the impact. Dutchy declared up and down that he had sailed fifty feet in the air astride of a log. ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... another shock that brought something to his eyes that made him see the others through a mist. There were the pictures of his mother, whose gentle voice he could almost hear, and of his father, whose gray hairs and sad face he suddenly ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... publicly that it will continue its economic reform agenda in close coordination with its Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market) partners. In 1995, the government also promised to undertake efforts to formalize the financial sector, after a financial shock forced the bail-out of the second and third largest banks. Paraguay's continued integration into Mercosur also offers potential for growth; it is closely linked with the success of foreign investment promotion. Non-traditional exports, such as finished ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Mrs Villiers recovered from the shock caused by her encounter with her husband. The blow he had struck her on the side of the head turned out to be more serious than was at first anticipated, and Selina deemed it advisable that a doctor should be called in. So Archie went into Ballarat, and returned to the Pactolus with Dr Gollipeck, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... said Caesar, twisting the long limp grass, "every enemy is a tyrant, if he has the upper hand. Consider, what will the war be? Blood, the blood of the noblest Romans! The overturning of time-honoured institutions! A shock that will make the world to tremble, kings be laid low, cities annihilated! East, west, north, south—all involved—so great has our Roman ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... a glimpse of the knife that he had placed on the mantel, he received a shock that annihilated his torpor and his fatigue. It dazzled him like ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... my Lord? no, he disturbs not me. My mind he stirs not, though his mighty shock Hath brought mo' peers' heads down to the block. Farewell, my boy! all Cromwell can bequeath, My hearty blessing; so ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... necessity for Alfred to announce the sad news to his widowed mother; and here the power of language fails us—the shock was so sudden, so unexpected. The half of her life was so suddenly torn from the bereaved one, that the pang was well-nigh insupportable. But God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and has promised that the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of Rome, so as to be able to curb the Pope with their aid, as has been observed. Thirdly, by converting the college more to himself. Fourthly, by acquiring so much power before the Pope should die that he could by his own measures resist the first shock. Of these four things, at the death of Alexander, he had accomplished three. For he had killed as many of the dispossessed lords as he could lay hands on, and few had escaped; he had won over the Roman ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... to feel that an hour of great trial was at hand, and this was a girding for the combat. With the shield of a warm, hopeful heart, and the sword of a strong, unfaltering will, she awaited the shock; but as she concluded her song the head bowed itself upon her arms, the shadow of the unknown, lowering future had fallen upon her face, and only the Great Shepherd knew what passed the pale lips of the young orphan. She was startled ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... his massy spear Recovering quick, like lions hunger-pinch'd Or wild boars irresistible in force, They fell to close encounter. Priam's son 305 The shield of Ajax at its centre smote, But fail'd to pierce it, for he bent his point. Sprang Ajax then, and meeting full the targe Of Hector, shock'd him; through it and beyond He urged the weapon with its sliding edge 310 Athwart his neck, and blood was seen to start. But still, for no such cause, from battle ceased Crest-tossing Hector, but retiring, seized A huge stone angled sharp and black with age That on ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... locked the door and carried the key. When we reached home I was sorry I hadn't gone with father, so I could have seen mother, Sally, Candace, and Laddie when first they met the new teacher. The shock showed yet! Miss Amelia had taken off her smothery woollen dress and put on a black calico, but it wasn't any more cheerful. She didn't know what to do, and you could see plainly that no one knew what to do with her, so they united in sending me to show her the place. I asked her what ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... saw, to her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected, but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so staggering and intimate—as summing up all the last ten days confused experience—that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Utopian, was opposed by many well meaning men who feared that its effect would be to give a shock to the trade and domestic industry of the province; and who thought that, as the depreciation had been gradual, justice required that the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... by the gate of Venus, with a banner white as milk. They were then arranged in two ranks, their names were called over, the gates were shut, the herald gave his cry, loud and clear rang the trumpet, and crash went the spears, as if made of glass, when the knights met in battle shock. There might you see a knight unhorsed, a second crushing his way through the press, armed with a mighty mace, a third hurt and taken prisoner. Many a time that day in the swaying battle did the two Thebans meet, and thrice were they unhorsed. At last, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... your faith. But she is a woman! She loved you and expected you that hour, I say. Thus comes the shock of finding you untrue, of finding you at least a common man, after all. She is a woman. 'Tis the same fight, all the centuries, after all! Well, I ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... escape! But I had not reckoned upon the patrol leader, the little Owl, the Hibou of a Boy Scout so deft and courageous. The spy fled, but into his path sprang the tiny figure of the Owl, his pole in rest like a lance. They met, the man and the little Owl, and the shock of that tourney aroused the echoes of the night. The man, hit in the belly by the point of the pole, collapsed upon the grass, and the Owl, driven backwards by the weight of the man, rolled over and over like un herisson. He was no longer an Owl; he was a round Hedgehog! ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... appeared transported out of himself, so manifest a change appeared, both in his countenance, and his whole person. Having somewhat recovered himself, instead of following his discourse, inspired with a divine impulse, he declared to his audience the encounter, and shock of the two navies, but in a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... before the invalid the shock of wonder and delight with which he will learn that he has passed the indefinable line that separates South from North. And this is an uncertain moment; for sometimes the consciousness is forced upon him early, on the occasion of some slight association, a colour, a flower, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shock must follow shock, Until the sole remaining Rock That all one's hopes exist on, Crumbles beneath the crushing force Of Conscience, kicking like a horse, ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... involuntary nervous system or endocrine disorder is the highly frequent suppression of the menstrual function. At times this may occur as a sequel to mental shock, as it did in the case of Celia H. (Case 19), who was menstruating when, frightened by the suicidal attempt of her brother, the flow ceased abruptly. That purely psychic factors can produce marked changes in such functions has been demonstrated by Forel and other hypnotists ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... raged round a single point. For that long period the warlike genius of Napoleon was pitted in strategy against the skill and foresight of a cluster of British sailors; and the sailors won. They beat Napoleon at his own weapons. The French were not merely out-fought in the shock of battling fleets, they were out-generalled in the conflict of plotting and warlike brains which preceded the actual fight off ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... view of the quarrel which was threatening the life of the English Church, and not even Hooker could be so comprehensive and so fair. For Hooker had to defend much that was indefensible: he had to defend a great traditional system, just convulsed by a most tremendous shock—a shock and alteration, as Bacon says, "the greatest and most dangerous that can be in a State," in which old clews and habits and rules were confused and all but lost; in which a frightful amount of personal incapacity and worthlessness had, from sheer want of men, risen to the high places ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the briefest space of time from the bewilderment of the shock, ran out of the cabin toward the deck, groping his way as best he might in the darkness through the long passage until he came upon the marine orderly, William Anthony, who was at his post of duty near the ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... men prisoners, occasioned by the regiment of Colonel Farr, and two more sustaining the shock of their whole army, to secure the retreat of the main body, ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon plain to me that the lad was falling sick; hastened by heat, exhaustion, and the shock of his alarm, the fever, predicted by Doctor Livesey, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... credits had been extended beyond the margin of safety, and the volume of business transactions had swollen to such bulk in proportion to the amount of actual monetary wealth in existence that any shock to public confidence, any nervousness resulting in a contraction of the circulating medium, could not fail to produce catastrophe. The shock came; as sooner or later it had to come. In the stern period of struggle and retrenchment which followed, all the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... these things did not come on her like a shock now, for he had been saying them more or less ever since the beginning of his illness; and fully occupied as she was, she never opened her mind to the future. After ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... color fade out of his face. A shock seemed to go over his body. He took a couple of dragging strides toward her. His eyes had the gaze of a man who did not believe what he saw. The hand he ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... excitement; he groaned as he sank into his chair and the hand with which he poured out a glass of spirits shook; the glass rattled against his teeth when he raised it to his lips. The half-contemptuous fashion of his reception of Spargo had now wholly disappeared; he was a man who had received a shock, and a bad one. And Spargo, watching him keenly, said to himself: This man knows a great deal more than, a great deal beyond, the mere fact that Marbury was Maitland, and that Ronald Breton is in reality ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... so modified as to last only until the king shall see again the ring which he has given to his bride. To the Hindu, curse and modification are matters of frequent occurrence; and Kalidasa has so delicately managed the matter as not to shock even a modern and Western reader with a feeling of strong improbability. Even to us it seems a natural part of the divine cloud that envelops the drama, in no way obscuring human passion, but rather giving to human passion an unwonted ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... "Oh, Louisa, I can shock you yet. That was just how you used to say 'Nancy' long ago, as if I'd broken all the ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... were moving forward in pursuit of their still flying enemy, suddenly the whole force of Hannibal's reserves, strong and vigorous, just from their tents and their fires, burst upon them. They had scarcely recovered from the astonishment and the shock of this unexpected onset, when the two thousand concealed in the ambuscade came sallying forth in the storm, and assailed the Romans in the rear with frightful shouts ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... irresistible passion. That, however he felt himself obliged, for these reasons, to retire from the government, yet he should consider it as unfortunate, if that should bring on the retirement of the great officers of the government, and that this might produce a shock on the public ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... dilapidated urchins hanging around the steps proceeded to give them with a vim faintly suggestive of ridicule. The single glance I obtained of the discourteous offender gave me an idea of chimneys. His face was smoky, his clothes were fleecy, and his general appearance was decidedly sooty throughout. A shock head, and more shocky eyebrows, bore a strange resemblance to the patent chimney-sweep; while his clothes seemed rich in past memories of the profession. I had before caught sight of this individual, in a tumble-down, rickety shop near the residence of Mrs. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... place of the book which, on other occasions, lay ready to his hand at meal-times. He held up the letter the moment his visitor came into the room, and abruptly opened the conversation by asking Mr. Vanstone if his nerves were in good order, and if he felt himself strong enough for the shock of an overwhelming surprise. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... he, "you are the native of a free country. Everything which you witness here must surprise and shock you." ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... I experienced a great shock through my entire system, as if some mighty bond had been rent asunder. For a moment I was dazed and lost consciousness. When I awakened I found myself standing beside the old body which had served me faithfully and well. To say that I was surprised would only inadequately express the ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... he was flashing his light into the blinking eyes of an enormous fat person, who seemed to be dazed, either by the shock of the collision or by the light—Freddie Firefly couldn't ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... hurry, thinking only of his doves and the loved one, he failed to observe that several little pieces of string were swinging to and fro in the breeze from the branches of a thicket near him. Dreadful indeed was it for him that he did not; for suddenly he felt a terrible shock, accompanied by most intense pain, the bones of his leg being apparently crushed to pieces—he was ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... daring, even profane assaults on elemental questions by ways that are untrodden if not forbidden. It is a wonderful type of Romanticist poetry in the bold choice of subject and in the intense vigor and beauty of the verse. Coming with a shock upon the classic days of German poetry, it met with a stern rebuke from the great Goethe. But a century later we must surely halt in following the lead of so severe a censor. The beauty of diction alone seems a surety of a sound content,—as when ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time, I began to take courage; yet I had not heart enough to go over my wall again, for fear of being buried alive, but sat still upon the ground greatly cast down, and disconsolate, not knowing ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... Hereditary monarchy, become constitutional, presented itself to my mind both as a principle of stability, and as a natural and worthy means of reconciliation and conversion amongst the classes and parties who had been so long and continually at war. But in 1816, so soon after the revolutionary shock of the Hundred Days, and before the counter-revolutionary reaction of 1815 had subsided, the accession of the Right-hand party to power, would have been very different from the victory of men capable of governing ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... all; but it came with a painful shock upon the feelings of Mr. Markland. Its very vagueness made it the more frightful to him; and his heart ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... Israel, who was placed near Hector of Troy, and Arthur of Brittany not far from Moses—all of whom had appropriate crests and mottoes. In the centre were the arms of our Lord Christ as Emperor of Judea, and the chief part of them was the Cross. But it came upon one with a curious shock, to see this coat among the shields of Scottish nobles. There were beasts that could be recognised at once, and these were sparingly named; but others were astounding, and above them were inscribed titles such as these: ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... bisons and musk bulls, which were even more savage. Upon which he declared that this was not a world to live in, and to prove that he was sincere in his opinion, poor fellow, about three months after his retirement into the country, he died from a general decay, arising from the shock produced on his system. But before these three months had passed, it had been finally arranged that Harcourt and I were to be united on the same day; and having renewed my acquaintance with the good bishop, whom I had taxed ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... hear this! for friendship, you know— Our poor friend!—but I thought it would terminate so. Our friendship is such, I'll read nothing to shock it. You don't happen to have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... a shock; but St. Ange took its shocks in a peculiar way. It reserved its opinion until it ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the cold bath arises through the shock to the nervous system and the loss of heat from the body. It is avoided by using water whose temperature is not too low and by limiting the time spent in the bath. A brisk rubbing with a coarse towel should always follow the cold bath. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... of sin, but, instead of producing penitence, he only rouses the whole man into proud and angry self-defence; whereas a single touch, no heavier than an infant's finger, applied away up somewhere, remote from conscience, in the region of the imagination, may send an electric shock down through the whole being and shake the conscience ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... desire to study philosophy, commend us to the regular documents. We do not wish for truth, as she emerges dripping from the well, to be clothed in the garments of fiction. Such incongruous unions can hardly fail to shock a correct taste, even if the story is managed with tolerable skill. In this instance, we can not highly praise the conduct of the narrative. It is full of improbable combinations. Persons and scenes are brought into juxtaposition, in a manner to violate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... play your father's philosophic airs upon me! We people who live in the world, and not with philosophers, are not prepared for such entrapping interrogatories. But come, I mean in plain English, my dear, though I am afraid it will shock your ears, that you will be" (speaking loud) "pretty well admired, pretty well abused, and—oh, shocking!—pretty ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... and not a great distance from Pawnee Rock. Both tribes were hunting buffalo, and when they, by accident, discovered the presence of each other, with a yell that fairly shook the sand dunes on the Arkansas, they rushed at once into the shock ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... no time for knife-work now. As the avalanche of brute strength descended upon him Aldous gathered himself for the shock. He had already measured his own weakness. Those ten minutes among the rocks of the chasm had broken and beaten him until his strength was gone. He was panting from his first onset with Quade, but his brain was working. And he knew that Quade was no longer a reasoning thing. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... bite into his back; then his head felt queer, and he closed his eyes. When he found himself trying to rise, he saw, as through a mist, his regiment falling back, driven from their ground by the first shock of the charge. He groaned in agony of spirit. What ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and intelligent, who hold our own opinions and speak in our own words, yet seem to hold them with a difference or from another reason, and to speak on all things with less interest and conviction. The first shock of English society is like a cold plunge. It is possible that the Scot comes looking for too much, and to be sure his first experiment will be in the wrong direction. Yet surely his complaint is grounded; surely the speech of Englishmen is too often lacking in generous ardour, the better part of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that part of the plain which has the name of Forgetful Green. And if those who go on their way, meet with a shock, it is when they lose sight of the good which they have at the hand of Him who ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... things that are found in woods and fields. At twelve years of age Ernst had formed a goodly herbarium, and was making a collection of bugs, and not knowing their names or even that they had names, he began naming them himself. Later it came to him with a shock of surprise and disappointment that the bugs and beetles had already had the attention of scholars. But he got even by declaring that he would hunt out some of the tiny things the scholars had overlooked and classify them. Every man imagines himself the first man, and to think that he is Adam ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... arrived there on my lecturing trip. As I entered the hotel a divine vision passed out of it, clothed in the glory of the Indian sunshine—the Mary Wilson of my long-vanished boyhood! It was a startling thing. Before I could recover from the bewildering shock and speak to her she was gone. I thought maybe I had seen an apparition, but it was not so, she was flesh. She was the granddaughter of the other Mary, the original Mary. That Mary, now a widow, was up-stairs, and presently ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... fact alone was enough to shake Rachel's nerves; her discovery had all the shock of an unwelcome encounter with the living. But it was the gradual appreciation of the true significance of her discovery that redoubled Rachel's qualms even as she was beginning to get the better of them. So they had been friends, her first husband and her second! Rachel stooped and ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... importance as an indication of how a metal will perform under shock. Some engineers think that the tensile test, which is one made under slow loading, should therefore be supplemented by another showing what will happen if the load is applied almost instantaneously. This test, however, has not been standardized, and depends to a considerable extent upon the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... generally supposed and we know that the control can be frequently restored by a period of rest or by a helpful stimulus. Quite recently a patient who in hospital had been confused, undisciplined, abusive, and threatening, was removed to a house of detention. The shock of finding himself, as he said, amongst a lot of lunatics, led him to face reality from a fresh point of view. He admitted that it had taught him a lesson and when he revisited the hospital, if not entirely grateful to us for the experience, he ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... or three times, and finally jumped up and ran yelling after his defeated warriors. This butting on the part of the goat was very hard upon King Rinkitink, who nearly fell off Bilbil's back at the shock of encounter; but the little fat King wound his arms around the goat's neck and shut his eyes and clung on with all his might. It was not until he heard Inga say triumphantly, "We have won the fight without striking a blow!" that Rinkitink ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in return an extension of the export trade; but besides all this, if he understood the measure of the government last year, it was proposed that the relaxation should be practically so limited as to cause no violent shock to existing interests, such as would have the tendency of displacing that labor which should be employed, and which, if displaced, would be unable to find another field." The measure of the previous year had nothing but a beneficial ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... to dodge disagreeable duties by converting questions of principles into criticisms on the men who represent principles; and the men who represent principles should therefore look to it that they make no needless enemies and give no needless shock to public opinion for the purpose of pushing pet opinions, wreaking personal grudges, or gratifying individual antipathies. The artillery of the North has heretofore played ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... for years, off and on, and had thought of her as a pretty girl and a pleasant companion. He had skated with her, ridden with her, danced with her, and had only understood, with a sense of mild shock, at the time of her engagement to Frank six months before, that she was of an age to become ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... she said in a low voice, her eyes covered by their lids, her lips set. "It was the shock, nothing more. I came to speak to you here because it is cooler, and I wished to see that you were—comfortable; that is the English word, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... midst of the girl's own sufferings, she too was sustained by the hope of being able to communicate with Brigaut. The same desire was in both hearts; parted, they understood each other! At every shock to her heart, every throb of pain in her head, Pierrette said to herself, "Brigaut is here!" and that thought enabled her ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... instead of bowing over it; that when we nod cheerfully to him in the street with a wave of the hand or a lifting of a cane or umbrella instead of taking off our hat; that when we fail to address both him and his lady with the title belonging to them, no matter how commonplace that title, we shock his prejudices and his ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... tall, grim-lipped and earnest-eyed. His curt speech carried the convention with him. His platform was a wagon box, and he stood there with his hat off, the sun falling upon his shock of close-clipped stiff hair, making a powerful and resolute figure with a touch of poetry ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... snatch the paste away before it should take fire, flinging aside the packet in his hurry. Agamemnon, jumping upon the piazza at the same moment, trod upon the paper parcel, which exploded at once with the shock, and he fell to the ground, while at the same moment the paste "fulminated" into a blue flame directly ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... six similar marks, and on inquiry he learned that these were made by a childless woman in the expectation that the boy would soon die and be born again as her child. The boy suffered no harm, but his mother, being in bad health, nearly died of shock on learning of the magic ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... are,' he said, 'like plumed lances. And how beautifully that beech bends, what an exquisite curve, like a lance bent in the shock of the encounter.' ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... own shock enough to grate: "Well, we sure haven't. If that thing goes off, the gamma burst will kick up so many minority carriers in the transistors that the p-type crystals will act n-type, and the n-type act p-type, for a whole ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson
... good housemaid, a black-haired, black-eyed Tuscan, quick, cleanly, and full of a keen sense of humor. It was a great shock to me to find her lying there dead. The breast of her dress was stained with dried blood, which, on examination, I found had issued from a deep and fatal wound beneath the ear where she had been struck an unerring blow that had ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... 9, 1776, "Pd. Short for 6 dozen sparw heds," and the sparw heds are repeated all down the page, varied with what would shock the H. H.—3d. for foxheads. Also "expenses ad visitation" 9s. 6d., and at the bottom of the page, the parish is thus mentioned as creditor "out of pockets, 5s. 1d." In 1777 however, though the vestry paid "Didums 1 badger's head, 1 polecat's head; Hary Bell ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge |
