"Thunderclap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of men who mean to settle a dispute by instant and mutual destruction, and there was a sort of gasp of excited surprise among the people as the two swords fell at the same moment with something like a thunderclap on the respective shields. Feeling that neither could overcome the other by the might of a resistless blow, each, after one or two rapid cuts, thrusts, and guards, ascertained that his adversary was so nearly his match as to render great care needful. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... insolence and the rapacity of Pietro de' Medici increased. In the autumn of that year Savonarola delivered a famous course of sermons on Noah's Ark, warning all to take refuge from the coming flood in the mystical Ark of mercy. The flood came indeed, for suddenly all Florence was startled as if by a thunderclap by the news that a foreign army was pouring over the Alps for the conquest of Italy. The terror was overwhelming. Italy was unprepared, for the princes had no efficient ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... knew how deeply they would disquiet her. But, soon concluding there would be no wisdom in attempting concealment, he told her what he had heard. As he had anticipated, the news fell like a sudden thunderclap on her heart. She had experienced, indeed, many strange misgivings respecting her son's late mysterious absences; but she was not prepared for such a double portion of ill-omened news as she deemed this to be, and it struck her mute with dismay, for it at once brought ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... ordayned lawes and statutes, which the Tartars doe most strictly and inuiolably obserue, of the which we haue before spoken. [Sidenote: The death of Chingis. His sonnes.] He was afterward slaine by a thunderclap. He had foure sonnes: the first was called Occoday, the second Thossut Can, the third Thiaday: the name of the fourth is vnknowen. From these foure descended all the dukes of the Mongals. [Sidenote: His graund children.] The first sonne of Occoday is Cuyne, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... disobedience to one of the prison regulations. Is this, then, a caprice, or an access of ill-temper, on the part of an officer who has no authority in this matter, since prisoners awaiting trial are only responsible to the representatives of our so-called justice? Like a thunderclap this explanation drives away my hesitation and sadness, which are now replaced by indignation and a limitless horror; and while Nadine, sick and worn, throws herself upon my bed, I mount to my window in order to communicate the news to my neighbours. The narrow court-yard, into which the sunshine ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... beholding the warlike apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. But his arquebuse was levelled; the report startled the woods, a chief fell dead, and another by his side rolled among the bushes. Then there arose from the allies a yell which, says Champlain, would have drowned a thunderclap, and the forest was full of whizzing arrows. For a moment the Iroquois stood firm, and sent back their arrows lustily; but when another and another gunshot came from the thickets on their flank they broke and fled in uncontrollable terror. Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the whole made a web through which he could not force his way. Cautiously he exerted his strength. The keen blade hewed through the first of the stellanium strands, but Damis held his breath as the wire parted. It seemed impossible that the ting of parting metal which sounded like a thunderclap in his ears would not be heard by the Viceroy. He knew that there must be an entrance into the room through the hangings and he made his way cautiously forward, testing the draperies from time to ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... lift up the cry, 'Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord,' there follows, swift as the thunderclap on the lightning flash, the rousing summons, 'Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem!' Wheresoever it is obeyed there will follow in due time the joyful chorus, as in this context, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... "A thunderclap! You have heard but few of them in Louisiana, I guess, or you would know the difference betwixt thunder and the crack of a backwoodsman's rifle. To be sure, yonder oak wood has an almighty echo. That's James's rifle—he has shot a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... had to say about him, and listened to their abuse with keen satisfaction. Gleams of ambition must have been shooting in upon him by this time. It was impossible that he had not thoughts of a bigger future for himself, and yet it came as a thunderclap to him when he heard that he, a youthful free-lance, had been adopted by the Liberal associations of the district to be their candidate for Parliament at the next election. It may be imagined with what zest under this stimulation he carried on his ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... The thunderclap of the European war shattered the uneasy calm in China, not because the Chinese knew anything of the mighty issues which were to be fought out with such desperation and valour, but because the presence of the German colony of Kiaochow on Chinese soil and ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... mid-passage, we were chased and almost taken by a schooner that fired cannon and bade us heave to, but the Kirkbean men, who had Kate o' the Shore with them, bade our boat carry on, and engaged the pursuer. We could see the flash of their guns a long distance, and cries came to us mixed with the thunderclap of the schooner's guns. The Colvend men would have turned back to help, but they had received strict orders to put us on shore, whatever might happen, the which ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... it. I knew it wasn't coming. I had quite made up my mind about that. I was as sure of it;—oh, as sure of it as I am that I've got you now. And then it came;—like a great thunderclap." ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... her breath, expecting a thunderclap or some other outward token of the sudden death of Belvane's muse. Instead she was struck by the extraordinary silence of the place. She had a horrid feeling that everybody else was dead, and realising all at once that she was a very wicked little girl, ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... keeping company so many years, and she had got all her quilts made and everything!" But best of all was for the parties to be married outright, by a justice of the peace, without a word of public warning, and then to enjoy the pleasure of outwitting the neighbors, and coming down like a thunderclap on a social sunshine unsuspicious of banns, which had been published on some three literally public days, but when nobody was hearing. That was something worth doing, and very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... favored him. His mother's reputation for wealth, the knowledge that he was her sole heir, the high position of the family, shielded him from suspicion. Then came the thunderclap. He was caught in the act of "dealing a second" in the English Club, and driven from the club as a blackleg. Other reverses followed: a public refusal on the part of an officer to play cards with him, followed by a like refusal to give him satisfaction ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... thunderclap. No one expected it, least of all the youth himself. Every eye was turned toward him and his face flushed scarlet. He quickly rallied from the daze into which he was thrown at first, and with his ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... there, shaketh the fateful shaft, And, following up its fate with eyes, afar the steel doth waft 920 With all the might his body hath: no stone the wall-sling bears E'er roars so loud: no thunderclap with such a crashing tears Amid the heaven: on flew the spear, huge as the whirlwind black, And speeding on the dreadful death: it brings to utter wrack The hauberk's skirt and outer rim of that seven-folded shield, And goeth grating through the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... as evenly as though nothing in the least extraordinary had occurred. The incident was closed—that abrupt swoop of terror and impending death dropping down there from out the darkness, cutting abruptly athwart the gayety of the moment, come and gone with the swiftness of a thunderclap. Many of the women had gone home, taking their men with them; but the great bulk of the crowd still remained, seeing no reason why the episode should interfere with the evening's enjoyment, resolved to hold the ground for mere ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... suffered much. The knowledge that Hawdon had not been drowned as she had supposed, had come to her like a thunderclap. And the news of his death, following so soon after this discovery, had unnerved her. She felt Mr. Tulkinghorn's suspicious eyes watching her always and began to tremble in dread of what ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... June 22nd, the excommunication by Pope Alessandro VI. (Borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the Medicean youths marched in triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the Laudi; no doubt Albertinelli was one of these, while Baccio grieved among the awestruck friars in ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... by the child—I could not watch her for four— My brain had begun to reel—I felt I could do it no more. That was my sleeping-night, but I thought that it never would pass. There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass, And there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tossed about, The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without; My sleep was broken besides with dreams of the dreadful knife And fears for our delicate Emmie who scarce ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... or even of the huge, half-blockish enormity of Nimrod,—in Scripture, the 'mighty hunter' and builder of the tower of Babel,—in Dante, a tower of a man in his own person, standing with some of his brother giants up to the middle in a pit in hell, blowing a horn to which a thunderclap is a whisper, and hallooing after Dante and his guide in the jargon of a lost tongue! The transformations are too odious to quote: but of the towering giant we cannot refuse ourselves the 'fearful joy' of a specimen. It was twilight, Dante tells us, and he and his guide ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Thunderclap after thunderclap announced ever-fresh legions pressing into the sky and obscuring the sun. It seemed as if the earth were cowering in their presence, as a partridge cowers before the hovering hawk. The blackthorn and juniper bushes called to caution with a low, swishing noise; the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... thoughts. I had already got under the shade of the trees, when I heard dogs barking, and supposed that my boy Mnason was amusing himself in the chase as usual, and had penetrated into the copse with his friends. However, that was not it: presently there was an earthquake; I heard a voice like a thunderclap, and saw a terrible woman approaching, not much less than three hundred feet high. She carried a torch in her left hand, and a sword in her right; the sword might be thirty feet long. Her lower extremities were those of a dragon; but the upper half was like Medusa—as to the eyes, I mean; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... glacier, on the ridge of which it hung for a moment, as if unwilling to exert itself, it seemed to awake to the reality of its position. Making a lively rush, that seemed tremendously inconsistent with its weight, it shot over the edge of a yawning crevasse, burst with a thunderclap on the opposite ice-cliff, and went roaring into the dark bowels of the glacier, whence the echoes of its tumbling masses, subdued by distance, came up like the mutterings ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Nellie's death came upon Jim Adams with the suddenness of a thunderclap. The weeks had gone by since she wrote to ask him to take Harry, with no further news of her, and after watching every post for a few days in the expectation of a black-edged envelope, he had begun to think that it was only a scare, and that she was not going ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... been totally unprepared for the girl's timid avowal. To Wrayson, however, after the first mild shock of surprise, it was of no special import. To Sydney Barnes, although he made a speedy effort to grapple with the situation, it came very much as a thunderclap. ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... anything that darted swiftly and struck violently, was compared to the hurtling arrow or the whizzing lance. Especially did this apply to the phenomenon of the lightning. The belief that a stone is shot from the sky with each thunderclap is shown in our word "thunderbolt," and even yet the vulgar in many countries point out certain forms of stones as derived from this source. As the refreshing rain which accompanies the thunder gust instills new life into vegetation, and covers the ground parched by summer droughts with ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... a thunderclap," the Archduchess answered quickly. "For years we had lost all trace of you. Besides, there were reasons—you know that there were reasons why I might surely have been forgiven for hesitating. But let that go. We had better ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... medium. I looked into his inner state, and the magnetic outward splendor disappeared, and his inner wretchedness and distress were manifest, and he could not stand any longer before me, and, with an explosion like a powerful thunderclap, he left me and took the direction to Europe. The title of my third volume, if we translate it ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... of argument could not efface. It is not strange, therefore, that the king was troubled when Petri, in February, 1525, violated every rule of Church propriety by being married publicly in Stockholm. The marriage fell like a thunderclap upon the Church. Brask apparently could not believe his ears. He dashed off a letter to another prelate to inquire whether the report was true, and finding that it was, wrote to the archbishop as well as to the king, denouncing the whole affair. ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson |
