"Startling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... shout the war-whoop, as some sullen stream he crosses, Startling from their noonday ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... he heard this extraordinary declaration, rose, more startled than he had ever been in the course of this startling campaign. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... life. From the profits of this volume, with the sum of eighty-six pounds paid him by Constable for the copyright of his two treatises on sheep, he became master of three hundred pounds. With this somewhat startling acquisition, visions of prosperity arose in his ardent and enthusiastic mind. He hastily took in lease the pastoral farm of Corfardin, in the parish of Tynron, Dumfriesshire, to which he afterwards added the lease of another large farm in the same neighbourhood. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... over. With a startling movement the Scharnhorst disappeared beneath the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Her commander and crew had stood with bared heads to the last, and had gone to death, standing as though drawn up for inspection. There was a faint cheer from them as the ship ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... which fell like a bomb into Dick's life. It was long before he could command himself enough to understand anything but the first startling fact. She was dead. In his heart, by his thoughts, had he killed her? was it his fault? He did not go beyond this horrible idea for some long minutes. Then there suddenly seized upon him a flood of gladness, a sensation of guilty joy. God had stepped in to set the matter straight. The miracle ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... they should refuse they would be driven at the point of the bayonet into a strange land, where, as is almost always the case, more than one-half would die before they could be acclimated. At this most startling intelligence more than half of my people fled into Canada; fled to the protection of the British government; fled, many of them, even before receiving a single copper of the promised annuities; fled to a latitude like that ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... leaders were directed to other things than plans for taxing oysters or filching the gains of free negroes. Forth from the Virginia of that time were hurled against negro slavery the thrilling invectives of Patrick Henry, the startling prophecies of Madison, and the declaration of Washington, "For the abolition of slavery by law my vote ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... And lastly, a startling series of cases by Mr. Storrs of Doncaster, to be, found in the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences" ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to these grotesqueries certain individual scenes and plays stand out with startling distinctness as possessed of wit and humor of high order. The description by Cleaereta of the relations of lover, mistress and lena is replete with biting satire (As. 177 ff., 215 ff.). The finale of the same ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... art thou to a fool?" cried the minor canon, so startling Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, "Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him that saucy lubber ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... good music; or aliens in heart, to whom the historic fame of England, 'dear for her reputation through the world,' is less than nothing; or practical jokers, who are calm and confident enough themselves, but delight in startling and depressing others. These are not the people of England; they are the parasites of the people of England. The people of England ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... foot its lady primness, Let those ankles never swerve 150 From their exquisite reserve, Yet have to trip along the streets like me, All but naked to the knee! How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss So startling as her real first infant kiss? 155 Oh, no—not ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... woman, grey-haired, haggard, and sallow, who had been drawn from the neighbourhood of Hog Mountain by the managers of the Atlanta Cotton Exposition to aid in illustrating the startling contrasts that the energy and progress of man have produced, had but one vivid remembrance of that remarkable display. She had but one story to tell, and, after the Exposition was over, she rode forty miles on horseback, in the mud and rain, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... of Wellington Barracks the drums and fifes sounding the tattoo shrilled through the open window with a startling clearness like a sharp summons, and diminished as the band marched away across the gravel and again grew loud. Feversham did not change his attitude, but the look upon his face was now that of a man listening, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... Archbishop Munebrega presided. Did no recollection of that young woman's mother, whom he had once fondly loved, or thought he loved, cross his mind? Did he not remember Dona Leonor herself, when in her early youth, radiant in beauty, he first beheld her, and heard from her lips the startling acknowledgment that she believed the simple Word of God and trusted to it? Now she stood before him a pale wan woman, weighed down with grief and ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... witnessed this startling end, came trembling out of the corner of the room with his hands stretched out. He knelt down before me, his ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... startling in that? They are nothing but a couple of lubberly tradesmen. A furrier and a grocer, who deny the use of baptizing unconscious children, and who are simple-minded enough to oppose the forcing of irrational ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... European is not accustomed to see empty prisons and hospitals in densely settled localities—to come upon cities where there is nothing for the police, the Judges, and the doctors to do he finds startling. They have attained the height where priests, pastors, preachers, and teachers are rarely obliged ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... With startling suddenness, a panel disappeared noiselessly into the red velvet draped wall, and in the aperture so formed a good-looking ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... arranged with more taste. The cages are scattered over a large inclosure, and it seems like wandering over a forest and meeting the animals in their native wilds. After passing beneath the boughs of dark trees, it is startling to look up and see a Bengal tiger within a few feet of you, though he is caged, or to walk on further still, and confront a leopard. This part of the garden is a continual source of amusement to the younger portions of the community of Paris, to ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... which report one-fifth of all women gainfully employed as engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry are somewhat startling until we observe that southern negro women make up a very large number of the farm workers reported. Even aside from these, however, there are many women who are finding work in gardening, poultry raising, bee culture, dairying, ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... noticed that his step was much more springy and alert than that of some officers half his age. His breath came in great gusts, and the small portion of his face not covered by thick beard was ruddy and glowing with health. He drank several cups of coffee with startling rapidity, draining each at a breath, and between times he whistled softly a pleasing ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that likeness," said Paul, "only it was much stronger—startling—so that the room was full of whispers and exclamations as the neighbors—there were hundreds of them—filed past. And you stood there, mother, flushed, and talking to each person who passed and looked at him and then ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... assented to this course, she took a preparatory step which, in so far as it was known, must itself have been sufficiently startling to those about her: she drove to Regent's Park, and when there, stepped out of the carriage and on to the grass. I do not know how long she stood—probably only for a moment; but I well remember hearing that when, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... for four years, seen his niece, and was not prepared for such startling developments of mind and person. He was proud to behold her queen of the school; queen, both in beauty and mental accomplishments. He too might be forgiven for one daring thought that soared down to matchmaking. It was not very strange that, remembering his earliest wife and only ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... in Helen's face as she looked in through the open doorway and saw the men seated at the table. She paused a moment, silhouetted in the door, the Greek letter on the panel standing out with almost startling distinctness beside her. As she stood poised on the threshold in her riding-suit, the ravages of her previous trip having been repaired, she made Lowell think of a modernized Diana—modernized as to clothes, but carrying, ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... changed. She will be a useful ferment, I fancy. How strange it is always—this abrupt leap of the girl into the heritage of womanhood. The boy matures slowly, by imperceptible gradations. Now Leila seems to me years older than John, and the change is really somewhat startling; but then I have seen very little of young women. There is the girl, the maid, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... in his making the proposal, much startling, though greatly gratifying. Master Heatherthwayte, who thanked him, talked of his honour for that discreet and godly woman Mistress Susan, and said he must ponder and pray upon it, and would reply when Mr. Talbot returned ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... morning air comes startling after a central heated house. So Aaron found it. He felt himself dashing up the steps into the garden like a bird dashing out of a trap where it has been caught: that warm and luxurious house. Heaven bless us, we who want to save civilisation. We had better make up our minds what of it ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... eye with all its marvelous yet not absolutely perfect characters, it is indispensable that the reason should conquer the imagination; But I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural selection to so startling a length." (Italics ours). No wonder the reason and judgment of mankind revolts against such a theory and that so many evolutionists ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... for us. My partner had been over the ground, and had returned convinced that there was a fine field for ruby-mining. We sent your father out to look carefully over the ground on our behalf, and a short time ago we received some very startling news from him. He cabled to us that in a fissure of the rock, where, as everyone knows, the finest rubies are found, he had made a most marvellous find. He had come across a ruby of priceless quality, and, as his work ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... when one is young. It was July. The King of Navarre had moved up to St. Denis, in his siege of Paris, but most folk thought he would never win the city, the hotbed of the League. Of M. le Duc we heard no word till, one night, a chance traveller, putting up at the inn in the village, told a startling tale. The Duke of St. Quentin, though known to have been at Mantes and strongly suspected of espousing Navarre's cause, had ridden calmly into Paris and opened his hotel! It was madness—madness sheer and stark. Thus ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... asked the priest, with startling energy; "you, who bask in the sunshine of fortune's smile,—whose days are one ceaseless round of careless gaiety,—whose repose is yet unbroken by the gnawing worm of never-dying repentance! Such, too, I was, in the spring-time of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... retained the familiar English spelling of certain divine names, e.g. Jupiter (instead of Iuppiter), as less startling to ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... there a sadder ceremony. Never did any girl under similar circumstances feel a more vivid presentiment of the pains and penalties that follow on a forced and ill-assorted marriage. And yet there came to me in the course of the service such a startling change of thought as wiped out for a while all my sadness, made me forget the compulsion that had been put upon me, and lifted me into a realm ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... how startling, how much an answer to my unspoken question, was the sound which at that very moment came from the blue wall ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... inherent justice of things that punished Napoleon for his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for our own in a less startling, but not less painful, fashion. Nor was it an unyielding, incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the very vault of heaven." We are punished because our entire moral being, our mind no less ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... colors were presented to us by the Rev. Mr. French, a chaplain who brought them from the donors in New York. All this was according to the programme. Then followed an incident so simple, so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling, though it gave the key-note to the whole day. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose, close beside ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... as pretty as a piece of ladies' embroidery—a delicate toil, a tasteful display of trivial difficulties gracefully surmounted. But even in their higher order of speakers, I could perceive a constant dissatisfaction with themselves, unless they happened to produce some of those startling conceptions which roused their auditory to a stare, a start, a clapping of hands. I had seen Mirabeau, with all his conscious talent, look round in despair for applause, as a sailor thrown overboard might look for a buoy; I had seen him as much exhausted, and even overwhelmed, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of the uncleanness of sin; paralysis of its impotence and pain. On the occasion of healing a paralytic, Jesus, however, did something more startling: he forgave sin. The poor sufferer had been borne by his four friends who were discouraged by no obstacles. When they were unable to enter the house where Jesus was, because of the multitudes which surrounded ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... have to go far to look at the professor. He was flying about her front garden at that very moment in an apparently distracted state, crouching, springing, hiding back of bushes and reappearing with the startling swiftness of magic. The Bartletts were quite used to these antics on the part of their well-paying summer boarder. He was chasing butterflies—a manifestly insane proceeding, of course, but if a man could afford to pay ten dollars a week for summer ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned fast from him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the place took his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each day, there rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture of a great work on a new and startling principle—a modification of the cantilever to the necessities of the situation. Bit by bit he worked it out, and reduced his first floating conception to paper; then he explained it to Walter Tyrrel, who listened hard to his explanations, and tried his best to understand ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... it his business to get introduced to Mrs. Haggert, and the introduction prospered. He also made it his business to see as much as he could of that lady. When a man is in earnest as to interviews, the facilities which Simla offers are startling. There are garden-parties, and tennis-parties, and picnics, and luncheons at Annandale, and rifle-matches, and dinners and balls; besides rides and walks, which are matters of private arrangement. Hannasyde had started with the intention of seeing a likeness, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... had seen, and been very greatly impressed, for surely, if some of these very ordinary boys had succeeded in startling their generation, it would be strange, if we two—Sydney Sproutels and Harry Hullock, who had just carried off the English composition prize at Denhamby—couldn't write something between us that would make ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... with Gualtier all the way. During that drive his mind found full occupation for itself. The discovery and the capture of this man made a startling revelation of several most important yet ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... looking foolish, which, for my part, I call a greater triumph than if he were performing the heroics we are more accustomed to. He has steady eyes, can gaze at the right level into the eyes of others, and commands a tongue which is neither struck dumb nor set in a flutter by any startling question. The best instances to be given that he does not lack merit are that the Jocelyns, whom he has offended by his birth, cannot change their treatment of him, and that the hostile women, whatever they may say, do not think Rose utterly insane. At any rate, Rose is satisfied, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the Wallencamp sun-bonnets came forth, all in a single day, a curious and startling pageant. The Modoc, who had gone bareheaded through the winter, assumed hers as a turban of impressive altitude, while the diminutive Carietta and the infant Sophronia appeared but as vagrant telescopes on ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... student felt a burning kiss upon his lips, and before he knew where he was, the door was shut, and he was in total darkness. All that had happened since he entered the house had occurred so rapidly, was so mysterious and startling, that he was utterly bewildered. For a moment he thought himself betrayed, groped round his prison, which was a narrow closet, found the door, and, grasping his stiletto, was about to force his way through all opposition, when he suddenly heard heavy steps on the other side of the tapestried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... had held out. But by this time her mind had grown comparatively bold and free; it was dealing with new quantities, a different proportion altogether—and that had made for refreshment: she had accordingly gone home in convenient possession of her subject. New York was vast, New York was startling, with strange histories, with wild cosmopolite backward generations that accounted for anything; and to have got nearer the luxuriant tribe of which the rare creature was the final flower, the immense, extravagant, unregulated ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... France, it is supposed that through the friendship of Mme. du Colombier, the friendly patroness of the young lieutenant, communication was opened between the great man and his aspiring reader.[13] "Not yet eighteen," are the startling words in the letter, written by Buonaparte, "I am a writer: it is the age when we must learn. Will my boldness subject me to your raillery? No, I am sure. If indulgence be a mark of true genius, you should have much indulgence. I inclose chapters one and two of a history ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... permitted by the courtesy extended to me by the court official in charge of these rugs to see the entire collection arranged in one section of the Palace. Beside the magnificent antique Persian rugs belonging to the Imperial House of Germany these modern Turkish rugs were startling in color; but the texture was fine, and time will, of course, subdue the glowing colors, which are now often softened in the Western markets by a washing process known to certain firms. Old mohair rugs are also being reproduced at the Hereke factory with ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... was changed, and the spirit of the constitution was outraged. And now, what is the charge against my fellow-traversers and myself? The solicitor-general put it very pithily awhile ago when he said our crime was "glorifying the cause of murder." The story of the crown is a very terrible, a very startling one. It alleges a state of things which could hardly be supposed to exist amongst the Thugs of India. It depicts a population so hideously depraved that thirty thousand of them in one place, and tens of thousands in various other places, arrayed ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... mending a decayed chimney. An accurate survey of the building would, of course, have revealed it at once; but nothing of the kind had been thought of within the memory of man. Such a survey would also have revealed what no one in the least suspected, but which was, nevertheless, a fact of startling significance—namely, that the blind court was, at least, fifteen feet shorter, and twenty-five feet narrower, than ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... work of sanitary progress. During this comparatively brief period, the labour of which, until within a century, has had no systematic direction, the changes for good that have been effected are amongst the most startling of historical facts. Pestilences which decimated populations, and which, like the great plague of London, destroyed 7,165 people in a single week, have lost their virulency; gaol fever has disappeared, and our gaols, once each a plague-spot, have become, by a strange perversion of civilisation, ...
— Hygeia, a City of Health • Benjamin Ward Richardson
... good opening for his startling news, but Georgie rejected it, as it was too early yet. "I wonder what it ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... I am too canny for that. Besides, don't be too sure they will be praises. No; I have asked the president, in strict confidence, just what he thinks of you, and his answer was properly garrulous. His originality was startling, too. He observed that you have temperament. Now I am proceeding to ask you, also in strict confidence, what you think of ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... sensible, could be carried off my feet by a vision. A vision, was it? Yes, and yet real, too real in some ways, since it revealed my innermost thought. A vision! And yet, even now that it had melted into air, I was clinging to it, and instead of resenting its startling revelation of self, was dwelling upon it, and in it, with a delight ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... said the former, advancing out of the shades and almost startling the unsuspecting salt, "we've lost our way. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... mystery, regarding which she had never breathed a word to her son, though it was present in her mind always, and occasioned her inexpressible anxiety and disquiet. She had caused the brass knocker to be screwed off the inner door of the chambers, where upon the postman's startling double rap would, as she justly argued, disturb the rest of her patient, and she did not allow him to see any letter which arrived, whether from bootmakers who importuned him, or hatters who had a heavy account to make up ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could rest with calm. As the wayworn traveller who on some bright day sat down by the fringed bank of clear fountain or silver lake, and while he leant to look into its waters, was suddenly dazzled into madness by the flashing upwards upon him, from the unknown depths, of some startling image; so Bruce, as he rested by the dusty wayside of life, and gazed into the dark abysses of recollection, was startled and horrified, with a more fearful nympholepsy, by the crowding images and sullen glare of unforgotten ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... more prosaic and superficial. We had not the energy to express our deepest sentiments, and things which were formerly pleasant were strange to us now. We had no spur to enliven our thoughts in our monotonous life. To the careless there was nothing startling in this moral numbness, but the more sensitive among us grieved over it, and were humiliated by the shallowness that had ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... these startling words, had stood like a statue, sprang forward when the pale hand pushed back the hair ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... watched the effect of his words, turned about, he found himself confronted with a woman whom he scarcely knew to be his wife, so deadly pale and drawn was her face, so novel and startling were the glance and gesture with which she ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the matron's report had closed with a startling item. It recommended the immediate suspension of a nurse on the ground of gross impropriety of conduct. The usual course in such a case was for the board of the hospital to depute the matron to act for them in private, but the chairman in this instance was a peppery person, with a stern mouth and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... entire orbit of Uranus from observations made during the forty years that succeeded the discovery of that planet in 1781, found the results yielded by theory to be at variance with fact, in a degree that had no parallel in the history of astronomy. This startling discrepancy, which seemed only to gain additional weight from every attempt made by M. Bouvard to correct his calculations, led Leverrier, after a careful modification of the tables of Bouvard, to establish the proposition that there was "a formal incompatibility between the observed ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... eight or ten of them, wine, and my blue wrapper; Jean will be asleep; Bettine will get it for you;—that is all, I think;" and he went carefully away, to bear the startling news out to Congreve Hall; and Olive was left to her lonely vigil, for the troupe arrived presently from the theatre, and the maid was obliged to attend to Madame T——. Most of the performers had rooms on the third ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... gray eyes danced out at me from under browy cliffs clothed with a ledge of lashes, in an actually startling manner. I didn't think the man had so much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... instantly grasped the situation and watched the proceedings with new interest and closer attention. As Mrs. LaGrange took her place and began answering the questions addressed to her, the eager listeners pressed still more closely in their efforts to catch every word, feeling instinctively that some startling developments would be forthcoming; but no one was prepared for the shock that followed when, in response to the request to state her full name, the reply came, in clear ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Sherwoods there were only Nan and her father and mother. They were an especially warmly attached trio and probably, if a most wonderful and startling thing had not happened, Nan and Momsey and Papa Sherwood would never have been separated, or been fairly shaken out of their family existence, as they had been just about a year before this present ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... towards the little group silently, his footfall making no sound upon the moss-grown earth. He did not approach quite near, however, in silence, afraid of startling her, but stopped a little way off, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... get right down to business without hesitation. Show enthusiasm, which is contagious if not overdone. Base your enthusiasm on real optimism. Indicate temperamental youthfulness in vigor and courage. Say something original—something strong, maybe a little startling; but it must be self-evidently true. By all means avoid anything that suggests parrot talk or indefinite thought. Do not expect the other man to listen with interest to a statement proceeding from premise ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... popular with a much higher class of readers than that of the servant-maid or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough prescription; Singleton, the pirate—Colonel Jack, the thief,—Moll Flanders, both thief and harlot,—Roxana, harlot and something worse,—would be startling ingredients in the bill-of-fare of modern literary delicacies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and what harlots is the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe? We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... have looked with great interest at the startling measure of emancipation in Antigua; but if this book is correct, the question is settled as to that island beyond a doubt, since there is such accumulated testimony from all classes, that the business and real estate of the island have advanced, by ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... face and clear gray eyes. I ceased looking for her in society, quite sure that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of suddenly meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places and under startling circumstances. However, the end of it all was patience— patience for ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... on which I base the first of these somewhat startling contentions, have been prominently and repeatedly before the English and Italian public ever since they appeared (without rejoinder) in the "Athenaeum" for January 30 and February 20, 1892. Both contentions were urged (also without ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... of the Sultan of Koetei stands in the edge of the jungle at a horseshoe bend in the river. You come on it with startling abruptness—miles and miles of primeval wilderness and then, quite unexpectedly, a bit of civilization. In no respect does its exterior come up to what you would expect the palace of an Oriental ruler to ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... determined, if possible, to turn the conversation into a commonplace, safe channel; for she had just felt, what most of Miss Broadhurst's acquaintance had in their turn felt, that she had an odd way of startling people, by setting their own secret little motives ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... time she had visited it since the day that consigned her to the poor-house; for it was impossible for her to look at the pond without recollecting one dark passage in her life, known only to God and herself. To-day she recalled, with startling vividness a dusky, starlit June evening, when, maddened by an unmerited and unusually severe punishment inflicted by her father, she had resolved to drown herself, and find peace in the mud at ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Rhodesia. By the end of 1894. he was in high feather, and during a visit to England was feted as a sort of romantic conqueror of the olden time. Perhaps this turned his head; at all events at the end of 1895 came the startling news that "Dr. Jim," as he was called, at the head of six hundred men, had ridden into the Transvaal in support of a Rhodes scheme for an uprising at Johannesburg. The raid was a failure. Jameson, and those other knights of adventure, were captured by the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a moment the eerie darkness quivered and broke into startling light. Twigs and leaves and bluebell spears and tiny patterns of moss seemed to leap at him and vanish as he ran: and two minutes after, high above the agitated tree-tops, the thunder spoke. No mere growl now; ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... pitched but little in the sea, and I could hear the scuffling of feet indicating a new spread of canvas above. The night air, blowing in through my open port became so chill that I covered myself with a blanket. The vessel creaked and groaned in every joint, some of the sounds actually startling me with their resemblance to cries of human agony. I tossed about, occasionally sitting upright to peer around in the darkness, my body bathed in cold perspiration, yet must have dropped finally off into an uneasy ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... enter at last the cook, strolling down the sandhill from Equator Town, listless, vain and graceful; with no thought of alarm. As soon as he was well within range, the travestied monarch fired the six shots over his head, at his feet, and on either hand of him: the second Apemama warning, startling in itself, fatal in significance, for the next time his majesty will aim to hit. I am told the king is a crack shot; that when he aims to kill, the grave may be got ready; and when he aims to miss, misses by so near a margin that the culprit tastes six times the bitterness of death. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... LIFE! Startling, vigorous life, That squirms under my touch, And baffles me when I try to examine it, Or hurls me back without apology. Leaving my ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... figures was marching with many silken banners. There seemed to be an interminable line of young girls—first communicants, I fancied,—in all the purity of their white veils and gowns against the somber dull grays of the church. This mass of pure white was of dazzling, startling effect, something like a great ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... again, and with a startling vividness tell me strange stories from the dreamland into ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... frightened; but she's very good and sensible. She just told me to go down to mother's room and ask her to come up, as Hebe had had a bad night, and perhaps we'd better send for the doctor to come early. And, of course, I knew how to do it without startling mums more ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... said her Mother. "I own I was a little afraid of our children startling the Freres, but they seem to ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter
... transition was startling. The moment before we had been leaping through the sunshine, the clear sky above us, the sea breaking and rolling wide to the horizon, and a ship, vomiting smoke and fire and iron missiles, rushing madly upon us. And at once, as in ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... But don't suppose—oh, don't suppose—that the dreadful embarrassment of my situation was the uppermost idea in my mind! So fervent still was the sisterly interest I felt in Mr. Godfrey, that I never stopped to ask myself why he was not at the concert. No! I thought only of the words—the startling words—which had just fallen from his lips. He would do it to-day. He had said, in a tone of terrible resolution, he would do it to-day. What, oh what, would he do? Something even more deplorably unworthy of him than what he had done already? Would he apostatise from ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Melanchthon jointly published a work under the title Der Papstesel—interpreting the significance of a strange, ass-like monster which, according to a popular story, had been found floating in the Tiber some time before. This book was illustrated by startling pictures, and both text and pictures were devoted to proving that this monster was "a sign from God," indicating the doom of the papacy. This treatise by the two great founders of German Protestantism pointed out that the ass's head signified the Pope himself; "for," said they, "as ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... was still intensely cold. As we went along, Oo-koo-hoo's breath rose like a cloud of white smoke fifteen or twenty feet in the air before it disappeared. Only the faintest whisper of scuffling snowshoes and scrunching snow could be heard; the sound of the occasional snapping of a twig came as a startling report compared with the almost noiseless tread of the hunter. A little cloud of powdery snow rose above the dragging heels of his snowshoes, and, whirling about, covered the back of his leggings with a coating ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... her special favors, who cares more for Nature herself than for this or that striking sensation she may arouse. Affectation is the craving for sensations regardless of their source. And if Nature is chary of striking scenes and startling impressions and thrilling experiences, affectation, with profane haste, proceeds to amuse itself with artificial feelings, and pretended raptures. This counterfeited appreciation, like all counterfeits, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Two simultaneous winged prayers went up into the ether and relief was granted in an unexpected and startling guise. Billie and her friends had just returned and tea and refreshments of a light volatile nature were being passed for the fourth time, by order of Miss Campbell. The visitors were elaborately declining all further nourishment when Nancy saw an arm raised from behind a thick ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... black gown with a low, white collar and a white tie. This long gown added to his height, but the width of the shoulders and neck, and the carriage of his head showed that he was a man built on a noble scale. His hair was snow-white and he wore a beard, that was in startling contrast against his black gown. His cheeks were of high colour, his eyes blue; he was older than Maggie had expected and must, she thought, be over seventy. His whole bearing and behaviour was of a man who had enjoyed great physical health. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... laugh struck like a dagger to the heart that loved him, that of his proud but anxious and miserable mother. To-night, for the first time since his desperate plunge into the abyss of vice, conscience, which he had believed effectually strangled, stirred feebly, startling him with a faint moan, as unexpected as the echo from Morella's tomb, or the resurrection of Ligeia; and down the murdered years came wailing ghostly memories, which even his iron will could no longer scourge to silence. Clamorous as the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... entire animal from the little of it that I saw, aimed for the spot among the grass which I pictured as being just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle broke in upon the stillness of the night with startling effect. I heard the thud of the bullet, instantly followed by a savage snarl that ended in a moan, and as the smoke drifted away I caught a momentary glimpse of a great, tawny, black-spotted form writhing convulsively ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the word with such startling emphasis, that Nathaniel nearly upset the glass of fine old cognac which he was ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... "London: a Pilgrimage," for which we are indebted to the joint labours of Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold, allusion is made to the decadence of the shipbuilding trade on the Thames, and the rapidly accumulating growth of the same industry on the Clyde. The contrast is startling, and although it may be gratifying to the pride of those who are identified with the northern river, it must create sad and humiliating emotions in the breasts of others who have seen the "silvery Thames" shorn so completely of her ancient glory and prestige as a mart ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... incessantly to her daily wants; there was added to the daughter's love the yearning care that a loving woman feels for a helpless charge, and there was hardly room for anything else in her life. Rachel, fortunately for herself and for others, had no startling originality; no burning desire, arrived at womanhood, to strike out a path for herself. She was unmoved by the conviction which possesses most of her young contemporaries that the obvious road cannot be the one to follow. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... to let her go away to some quieter place with Helen, since she never could be persuaded to join in any gayety at home or abroad. All seemed wilful, blind, or governed by the fear of the gossiping world. So the days rolled on till an event occurred which enlightened Christie, with startling abruptness, and showed her the skeleton that ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... contact with the family of a wealthy ribbon-maker named Bray. He was a man of some culture, and the atmosphere of his house, with its numerous guests, was decidedly skeptical. To Miss Evans, brought up in a home ruled by early Methodist ideals of piety, the change was a little startling. Soon she was listening to glib evolutionary theories that settled everything from an earthworm to a cosmos; next she was eagerly reading such unbaked works as Bray's Philosophy of Necessity and the essays of certain young scientists who, without knowledge of either philosophy or religion, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... never was there a room kept more scrupulously neat. He had a private desk for his own use under one of the windows, in which he kept all the accounts that passed through his hands; and it was not an unusual sight to see the Doctor composing his startling, soul-awakening sermons at the large table in the centre of the room, and the little shrewd-looking, grey-haired house-steward dotting down figures quietly at the desk below the window. His presence ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... first Adam, imputed to all his members or posterity, makes them sinners. To use the expressive words of Bunyan, 'The sinner is justified from the curse, in the sight of God, while a sinner in himself.' This is a startling fact. That Rahab or Mary Magdalene, and even Saul, the murderous persecutor, were, in the sight and purposes of God, justified, while they were, in the esteem of God's saints, in a state of the vilest sin, is a doctrine revolting to the pride of human nature. But we should ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Those who read her Painted Meadows will expect and will find in this new novel the same charming background, but they will find a much more dramatic story. Since the novel is one of surprise, with an event at its close which throws everything that went before in a new, a curious, a startling and profoundly significant light, I cannot indulge in any further description of it in this place. But I do wish to quote some sentences from a letter ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... that thick dark rain that seems to have mud in it before it has fallen. The town was veiled in thin mist, figures appearing and disappearing, tram-bells ringing, and those strange wild cries in the Russian tongue that seem at one's first hearing so romantic and startling, rising sharply and yet lazily into the air. He plunged along and found himself in the Nevski Prospect—he could not mistake its breadth and assurance, dull though it seemed ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... peculiar hand had lain in her box of keepsakes. There was no mistaking that signature. She had read it and cried over it so many times that now as it suddenly confronted her with its familiar twists and angles it was as startling as if Emmett's voice had ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... face of an angel and the wisdom of a serpent," he remarked. "I don't know whether his morals or his vocabulary are more startling. Hope has her hands full; but she will find a way to manage him, even if she can't learn from her own ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... her sister with startling energy. "How do you know, how do I know that I may not sometimes visit it? I have lived in this house so long I am certain that I shall see it again. I will come back. Come back to watch over you both and see that no ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... parables are in this respect strictly parallel; in both alike an ordinary act in rural economy is performed, and in either it is performed by a person of the appropriate sex. The converse would have been startling and inexplicable. Whatever the operator may represent in the sowing of the seed, the operator in the hiding of the leaven represents the same. To neglect the strict parallelism between the two cases, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... denouement of the Apronianus affair,—a startling story even in the hearing. He incurred censure because his nurse is said to have seen once in a vision that he should enjoy sovereignty, and because he was believed to employ some magic to this end. He was condemned while absent in his governorship ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... the most startling distinctness, however, was the fact that he had not lost his footing through his own carelessness but that some one had pushed him from ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... singular that his reveries at last ended by reverting to the fair daughter of Mynheer Poots, and her first appearance at the window; and he felt as if the flood of light which had just driven him from the one, was not more impressive and startling than her enchanting form at the other. His mind dwelling upon the beauteous vision appeared to restore Philip's confidence; he now rose and boldly walked into the room. We shall not describe the objects it contained as they chanced to meet ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... care had an unfortunately tempting fringe of loose pieces about it that marred its symmetry. Jimmie proceeded to trim it into shape. So absorbed did he become in this trimming process, that before he realized what he was about, he woke suddenly to the startling fact that the pie had shrunk into a comparatively insignificant size. It would be worse than useless to save the mutilated remains for Aleck; there was nothing for it now but to get the reproachful remnant out of the way. He was so busily occupied ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... you want Miss Warren to think that I was only bluffing, after all? I promised to show her something startling, and I'm ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... was symbolical. When Bill was in my ward he too was on the Danger List. I remember that when he first came to us, before his operation, and before he took a turn for the worse, his wife visited him in that same magenta blouse (or another equally startling) and that for some reason she and "Sister" did not quite hit it off, "had words," and subsequently for a period were not on speaking terms. Later, when Bill underwent his operation, and began to sink, his bed was moved out on to the ward's verandah. Here his wife ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... "The Purple Slipper" glided on the stage with never a creak or a careen. The lights scintillated and glared on the wonderful costumes and scenery, and the sparkling dialogue began to unwind itself into the startling plot. For the first ten minutes the author glowed with such joyous excitement that the producer felt the actual radiations; then little by little he felt her begin to cool, and a chill ran up and down his own spine as Hawtry and Height held ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of a certain afternoon in August of that year, 1858, Mr. Whipple emerged from his den. Instead of turning to the right, he strode straight to Stephen's table. His communications were always a trifle startling. This was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dozen years later they became really formidable. In 818 they landed at Howth; and the same year, and probably the same party, sacked the sacred edifices in the estuary of the Slaney, by them afterwards called Wexford; in 820 they plundered Cork, and in 824—most startling blow of all—they sacked and burned the schools of Bangor. The same year they revisited Iona; and put to death many of its inmates; destroyed Moville; received a severe check in Lecale, near Strangford lough (one of their favourite stations). ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... by which these persons were surrounded. There is always something imposing in the swift movement of a considerable body of water. When this movement is aided by whirlpools and the other similar accessories of an interrupted current, it frequently becomes startling, more especially to those who happen to be on the element itself. This is peculiarly the case with the Pot Rock, where, not only does the water roll and roar as if agitated by a mighty wind, but where it even breaks, the foam seeming to glance up stream, in the rapid succession of wave to wave. ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... work, force would be necessary. The proportion of settlers remaining loyal to Lord Selkirk was by no means insignificant, and Cameron feared the pieces of artillery at Colony Gardens. He decided on a bold effort to get these field-pieces into his possession. {73} Early in April he made a startling move. Miles Macdonell was away at Fort Daer, and Archibald Macdonald, the deputy-governor of the colony, was in charge. To him Cameron sent a peremptory demand in writing for the field-pieces, that they might ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... turn from this and tell of the enterprise in whose interest Margaret and Angus bearded the lions of St. Cuthbert's in their den. They represented the Young People's Guild, and presented the startling request that the old kirk should henceforth employ an organ to aid the service of praise on the Sabbath day. And they further asked for the introduction of the hymns. This implied a revolution, for St. Cuthbert's, up to this ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... paddling almost without a sound, and skirting a ledge of black rocks that jutted well out into the lake, as he spoke. At that same moment something impelled him to glance upward and encounter a vision startling in ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... which was—that, notwithstanding all the evidence of his previous life, it was quite believable that Mr Wentworth was a seducer and a villain, and ought to be brought to condign punishment; but that in the mean time it was very interesting to watch the progress of this startling little drama; and that he himself, instead of merely being the Curate of St Roque's, had become a most captivating enigma, and had made church-going itself half as good ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... eyes he saw a startling change, as in the face of a man who regains consciousness after days of vacancy. His whole countenance had become alive with a sort of jealous understanding. The warmth which the little model brought to his old spirit had licked up the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... must be done: so—here goes at any rate!" he replied; and with a short nervous jerk, he caused a startling clatter within, which was so distinctly audible without, that both of them instinctively hemmed, as if to drown the noise which was so much greater than they had expected. In a very few moments they heard some one undoing the fastenings ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of this startling mortality of infant life? Why does one child out of ten die in the first month, and only three out of four live to be five years old? And what are the ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... bit of information over in my mind. To be sure, I could not at the moment make anything of it apropos of the case in hand, but afterwards I was to remember it under somewhat startling circumstances. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... It came with startling suddenness to most of the men in B company. Noll was the only one who had been warned in advance, and he had held ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... felt her knees tremble. It was as if she were working a new tidy or rug pattern. Any variation of her peaceful monotony of existence jarred her whole nature like heavy wheels, and this was a startling one. ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... external need of his has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called religion, so it has lit in his hand the only adequate symbol of it: I mean the red flower called Fire. Fire, the most magic and startling of all material things, is a thing known only to man and the expression of his sublime externalism. It embodies all that is human in his hearths and all that is divine on his altars. It is the most human thing in the world; seen across wastes of marsh or medleys of forest, it is veritably ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... through the wood, treading the soft moss under our feet, startling the brown lizards from our path and the squirrels from the lower branches of the great trees, and, now and then, surprising a plump little green frog, which went skipping away into the long grass, like an animated emerald. Coming back to the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... daily wear of society; genius and eccentricity are ornaments that are locked away and only brought out on certain days. Everything that ventures forth beyond the protection of the grateful shadow of mediocrity has something startling about it. ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... frame quivered convulsively. She had pushed her clenched fingers under her cap to clutch her hair and support her head, which felt too heavy; she was on fire. The smoke of the flame that scorched her seemed to emanate from her wrinkles as from the crevasses rent by a volcanic eruption. It was a startling spectacle. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... startling transformation. Party lines obliterated. LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION, whose conduct throughout crisis has been splendidly patriotic, rallied his forces to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... the science of human good breeding, is just now the most popular of the problems concerning human sex and reproduction. In recent years, the biological investigators of heredity have published some startling facts which show that the human race must soon check its reckless propagation of the unfit and encourage reproduction by the best types of men and women. This is not the place for a review of the eugenic propositions. Those interested ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... its rhythmical figure, which seems to have been invented to mark the sinuous flexure of the spine and the swaying of the hips of the dancer. Devices made familiar by the symphonic poems are introduced with increased effect, such as the muting of the entire army of brass instruments. Startling effects are obtained by a confusion of keys, confusion of rhythms, sudden contrasts from an overpowering tutti to the stridulous whirring of empty fifths on the violins, a trill on the flutes, or a dissonant mutter of the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... had been invited, and it was, therefore, with no misgiving that she accepted, at his solicitation, Eugene's offer of a trip to the Sarpy mansion, the particulars of which have already been set before the reader. A few hours after her departure, Batoche suddenly made his appearance with the startling intelligence that the Bastonnais would return the next day to begin the regular siege of the town, and the anxious father commissioned him to set out and bring back his daughter at once. In the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... known, maintained the startling paradox, that all mankind were present in Adam, and sinned in him. In this way, he supposed that all men became partakers in the guilt of Adam's sin, and consequently justly liable to the penalty due to his transgression. Augustine was quite too good a logician ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... practical temper broke out in a more startling innovation. Against dissidents from the legal worship of the Church the Presbyterians were as bitter as Laud himself. But Nonconformity was rising into proportions which made its claim of toleration, of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... sight of that. There came a gnawing at his vitals. The far scene of action could not hold his gaze. That dark, uneven, hummocky break in the earth, which was a goodly number of rods distant, yet now seemed close, drew a startling attention. Dorn felt his eyes widen and pop. Spots and dots, shiny, illusive, bobbed along that break, behind the mounds, beyond the farther banks. A yell as from one lusty throat ran along the line of which Dorn's squad held ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... mercy of God, in Christ, to his poor servant John Bunyan.' This simple, heart-affecting narrative, is here related under the allegorical representation of the 'Holy War.' In this, all the circumstances of his conviction of sin, and his conversion to God, are narrated with startling interest from the first alarm—his being roused from a state of death-like lethargy, his opposition to the grace of God, his refusals of the invitations of Emmanuel, and his being at length conquered to become a monument of divine mercy—a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... places, I am struck with the novelty of the situation. I am in the midst of the dreariest, deadest-looking country imaginable. Whirlwinds of sand, looking at a distance like huge columns of smoke, are wandering erratically over the plains in all directions. The blazing sun casts, with startling vividness on the smooth white alkali, that awful scraggy, straggling shadow that, like a vengeful fate, always accompanies the cycler on a sunny day, and which is the bane of a sensitive wheelman's life. The only representative of animated nature ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ladies' responsibilities seemed to have consisted in rejecting any suitor who may have hitherto kneeled to them. But now it was told through Courcy, that one suitor had kneeled, and not in vain; from Courcy the rumour flew to Barchester, and thence came down to Greshamsbury, startling the inhabitants, and making one poor heart throb with a violence that would have been piteous had it been known. The suitor, so named, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Miss Beale," he said. "I promise you a more comfortable ride—even if I cannot guarantee that the end will be less startling." ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... until the sun had mounted higher that it struck the central horror of the field and seemed to linger there in dazzling persistence, now and then returning to it in startling flashes that it might be seen of men and those who brought succor. A tiny brook had run obliquely near the battle line. It was here that, the night before the battle, friend and foe had filled their canteens ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... civilized life. She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel more delight. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane, after all, and not on a common; indeed, it was rather disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable common, where there were sand pits to hide in, and one was out of everybody's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... complete a course of instruction in every department of science, from mathematics to sociology, as can possibly be made general: and his ideas of what is possible in that respect are carried to a length to which few are prepared to follow him. There is something startling, though, when closely looked into, not Utopian or chimerical, in the amount of positive knowledge of the most varied kind which he believes may, by good methods of teaching, be made the common inheritance of all persons with ordinary faculties who are born into the world: not the mere knowledge ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... an attentive ear A startling moral tale to hear, Of Pirate Rob and Chemist Ben, And different ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one's self is a late endowment. The kitten pursues its own tail but would chase that of its mother with equal ardor. I once saw a monkey searching industriously with eyes and hands upon its own body. The sight was startling. I had never before seen an animal look intelligently at itself. It was long before man distinguished his self from the world without, and longer still before he began to understand himself. Physical and mental phenomena, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... apparel replace them. Once she had caught a glimpse of her small, transformed self in a long mirror and her dark eyes had widened. That was all. Lynda had watched her feverishly. She had hoped that with the change of clothing the startling likeness would lessen, but it did not. Robed in the trappings of her father's world, little Ann seemed to ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... no more deaths. The most awful cases began to mend with an immediacy that was startling. By the third day, men who had not been off their backs for weeks crawled out of their bunks and tottered around on crutches. And on that day, the sun, two months then on its journey into northern declination, peeped cheerfully over the crest of the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... the separate national literatures lay the common Christian-Latin literature of the early Middle Ages, undoubtedly the cause of the rather startling perfection of form shown by much of the work of the ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... it is said, brought from England by Governor Bowdoin as food for his sheep. It has spread till its extended presence has been a startling surprise to all English visiting botanists. It hurts no one's fields, for it invades chiefly waste and neglected land—the "dear common flower"—and it has redeemed many a city suburb of vacant lots, many a railroad ash heap from the ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... its effectiveness a good deal, but it is quite an old trick, which I have often done before with excellent results. Everyone who is going much among savages ought to include a lantern and an assortment of good startling slides ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... himself into the belief that Fanny was better, but when each morning's light revealed some fresh ravage the disease had made—when the flush on her cheek grew deeper and the light of her eye wilder and more startling, an agonized fear held the old man's heart in thrall. Many and many a weary night found him sleepless, as he wet his pillow with tears. Not such tears as he wept when Richard Wilmot died, nor such as fell upon the grave of his first-born, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... Those were startling minutes, and though the incident was nothing more than had been anticipated as one of possibly many, it had taken them by surprise, being long ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... innumerable and microscopic feeding rootlets, which possess the power of absorbing moisture, and furnishing it, distributed by the plant juices, or sap, to stem, branch, leaf, flower and fruit. There is one startling fact which may help to fix these things in your memory: it takes from 300 to 500 pounds of water to furnish food for the building of one pound of dry plant matter. You can see why plant food is not of much ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... day since Christmas I have intended to write or go to London, and day after day I have deferred both projects; and now I will give you the adventures and mishaps of this present sunday. Remorse, and startling conscience, in the form of an old, sulky, and a shying, horse, hurried me to the 'Regulator' coach-office on Saturday: 'Does the Regulator and its team conform to the Mosaic decalogue, Mr. Book-keeper?' He broke Priscian's head, and through the aperture, assured me that it did not: ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... to take possession of the booty, to thrust the body behind the tapestry of the chamber, and to remove the more startling evidences of the crime, when the Prince arrived. He supped soon afterwards in the same room, the murdered jeweller still lying behind the arras. In the night the valet and soldier carried the corpse away from the room, down the stairs, and through the great courtyard, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by at home with the same startling swiftness as in the railway carriage. The daylight was continually being replaced by the dusk of evening. The doctor seemed never to leave his bedside, and he heard at every moment his "so-o, so-o, so-o." A continual succession of people was incessantly crossing the bedroom. Among them were: Pavel, ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... children. And I must give you a character;—only I shall say just the truth. You mustn't ask much wages just at first.' Ruby looked very sorrowful, and the tears were near her eyes. The change from the glories of the music hall was so startling and so oppressive! 'It has got to be done sooner or later, so you may as well put the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... must be startling indeed to those who know the ancient world only through the medium of Greek and Roman literature. To the Greek and to his admiring master, the Roman, all outside races were simply barbarians, at once ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... reached this rock, during such weather, is startling enough; it is God's providence that there should live those in these ruins who are able to give you succour. But that you should come in to me at the moment you did—" He halted before the bold inquisitive brightness of her ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... seventy or eighty yards, it was hailed by the sentry. An answer was returned, but too indistinctly for the officers aft to understand what was said. The sentry, however, on the forecastle seems to have made out the answer, for he instantly sung out the startling cry of "A man overboard!" No boats were down at the time; and in that hot tideway in another minute the drowning man would have been swept past the ship, and carried in all probability out to sea, where he must have perished. Mr Dew was forward. Whether ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... wail in the headmaster's voice. The situation had suddenly become too much for him. His brain was swimming. That Mike, despite the evidence against him, should be innocent, was curious, perhaps, but not particularly startling. But that Adair should inform him, two minutes after Mr. Downing's announcement of Psmith's confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real criminal was Dunster—it was this that made him feel that somebody, in the words of an American author, had played a mean trick on ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... way sharply, and Aleck sprang after him, but the ascent of so many steps gave the maid time to re-open the little dining-room door, from which point of vantage she was able to catch a glimpse of the lad's face, which looked so startling that she uttered an involuntary "Oh, my!" before letting her jaw drop and pausing, her mouth wide open and a ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn |
