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More "Overwhelm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children into the deserts of Damaraland to die. Before the war in South Africa, rumour says, he was instructor to the "Staats Artillerie," which Kruger raised to stay the storm that he knew inevitably would overwhelm him. Serving, with Smuts and Botha themselves in the early months of the Boer war, he joined the inglorious procession of foreigners that fled across the bridge at Komati Poort after Pretoria fell, and left ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... sake of argument," said Eldon Parr, "what would you do with the innumerable impostors who would overwhelm such a board with claims that they had bought and sold stock at a loss? And that is only one case I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... maiden filled her trembling palms With coinage of the realm. The fairy said: "Take back your alms! My heart they overwhelm. Henceforth at every word shall slip A pearl or ruby from your lip!" And, when the girl got home that night,— She found the fairy's words were right! (I think there are not many girls Whose words are worth their ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... sitting-room table. Prayer meeting and supper she had forgotten entirely. The minister had not come home for his evening meal, and food was furthest from the housekeeper's thoughts. What should she do? What ought she to do? How could she avert the disaster so certain to overwhelm those two young people the moment their secret ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... turning out the guard in her honor, the formality with which she was conducted from corridor to corridor and from hail to hail, the immensity and gorgeousness of the vast audience hall in which she was finally left alone with the Emperor; all these did not so much overwhelm her as exalt her. She felt herself indeed ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Willis had not been able to obtain a location near enough to the inauguration proceedings to distinguish more than the portly figure of a man, or to hear anything except the roar of the multitude. But now she was to have the chance to meet Jimmy face to face and overwhelm him with her secret. Little by little the file of visitors advanced on its passage toward the nation's representative, and presently Miss Willis caught her first glimpse of Sir Galahad—her real Sir Galahad. Her heart throbbed tumultuously. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... tissue-paper, and the great ocean is about to pour in at every aperture. And still they hoot and laugh their insolent laugh of safety and triumph above the roar of the greedy and boundless waters, just ready to overwhelm them forever. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... any boasting or bragging. The world is awfully stupid! It adores well-bred egotism. We are all deeply inquisitive about people; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love. You can't pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it. You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause. You must just seem to be in need of sympathy ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it happened that the subjects of their criminal acts were weighty enough to sustain an energetic inquiry. Hence their reputation became worse than scandalous: the mingled infamy of their calling, and the houseless condition of wretchedness which had made it worth their acceptance, combined to overwhelm them with public scorn; and this public abhorrence, which at any rate awaited them, mere desperation led them too often to countenance and justify by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... keeping alive the feverish irritation which had already done so much toward destroying my peace, and overthrowing the guardian outposts of my pride and honor. How long the strife was to bo continued before the ocean-torrents should be let in—before the wild passions should quite overwhelm my reason—was a subject of doubt, but not the less a subject of present and of exceeding fear. In these matters, I need not say that there was substantially very little change in the character of events that marked the progress of my domestic life. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... not pride, doth Fancy wield The sceptre of her gorgeous realm, Whose revelations overwhelm ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... old, who disappear among the ranks of the common people. Burke's "Vicissitudes of Families" strikingly exhibits the rise and fall of families, and shows that the misfortunes which overtake the rich and noble are greater in proportion than those which overwhelm the poor. This author points out that of the twenty-five barons selected to enforce the observance of Magna Charta, there is not now in the House of Peers a single male descendant. Civil wars and rebellions ruined many of the old nobility and dispersed their families. ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... with this verse: All evils would have overwhelmed us, as they shall overwhelm the unbelievers forever, if Christ had not become the great transgressor and guilty bearer of all our sins. The sins of the world got Him down for a moment. They came around Him like water. Of Christ, the Old Testament Prophet complained: "Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... night, these dreadful doubts and sufferings, which nothing could calm or end, recommenced. He especially dreaded the darkness of the evening, the melancholy feeling of the twilight. Then a flood of sorrow invaded his heart, a torrent of despair, which seemed to overwhelm him and drive him mad. He was as frightened of his own thoughts as men are of criminals, and he fled before them as one does from wild beasts. Above all things he feared his empty, dark, horrible dwelling, and the deserted streets, in which, here and there, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... wrote to the head of the police, whom I styled "your excellency" and "my lord," begging him to vouchsafe his all-powerful protection. I told him that I had resolved on selling all my property to put an end to the suit which threatened to overwhelm me, and I begged him to suspend the proceedings, the cost of which could only add to my difficulties. I also asked him to send me a trustworthy man to value my effects as soon as I had come to an agreement with my creditors, with whom I begged for his good offices. When ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... front of the box. Standing erect, with flaming looks of anger, with cheeks like purple, she confronted them there—the true heir of the Caesars, the courageous daughter of Maria Theresa— and had already opened her lips to speak and overwhelm the traitor with her wrath, when another voice was ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... whole Western world. It has left many monuments of itself here in Britain. At Rome the worship was extremely popular, and it may almost be said to have been a matter of chance whether Mithraism should overwhelm Christianity, or whether the younger religion by adopting many of the rites of the older one should establish itself (as it did) in the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... me; he will learn to see in me a consecrated person, lying under the shadow of an awful calamity, and only able to support herself and bear up against it by devoting herself to that Holy Being who is invisibly around us, and alone is able to shield us from the dark powers which threaten to overwhelm us." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least. It is evident that the circumference {GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA} offers far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still more powerful factor in favour of the new big howitzer is ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... letter what the supporting army is to the line of attack. It stands just behind the men at the front, ready to strengthen a point here, reinforce the line there, overwhelm opposition ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... "since you have condemned yourself for acting hastily, it would ill become your host to overwhelm you with reproaches, and to say truth, after what you have said, I hope that the course of true love will in your case run smooth. But, my young friend," he added, in more serious tones, "I must strictly forbid any further reference to this with Milly, till her mother comes. ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... saw it, and must ever see it—then it is we look to the Crucified One. "When I feel myself in my heart of hearts a sinner," I once heard Dr. Parker say, "a trespasser against God's law and God's love; when I feel that a thought may overwhelm me in destruction, that a secret, unexpressed desire may shut me out of heaven and make me glad to go to hell to be away from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne—then when I am told that Jesus Christ was wounded ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... never to be allowed an active influence. They have a trick of growing by leaps and bounds, and before the will has time to realize that an enemy is at its gates, to fling their whole force against the citadel and overwhelm the dazed defenses. How near Archibald Travers came that morning to yielding to himself he never knew. Lois' happy, thankful face hovered constantly before his eyes. He felt very tender toward her. He felt that he should like to be ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Thaisa, he said, "A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; no light, no fire; the unfriendly elements forget thee utterly, nor have I time to bring thee hallowed to thy grave, but must cast thee scarcely coffined into the sea, where for a monument upon thy bones the humming waters must overwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple shells. O Lychorida, bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper, my casket and my jewels, and bid Nicandor bring me the satin coffin. Lay the babe upon the pillow, and go about this suddenly, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... two battalions and a half were not sufficiently strong to carry the second position; so I sent for the two reserve battalions, and ordered the cavalry to pass the river, and follow on our right flank the march of our columns. During this time the enemy had endeavored to overwhelm us on both sides. Major Becdelievre brought together what remained of his battalion, rushed upon the fusileers and forced them back into the wood whence they had come." These were splendid feats of arms. But the excessive inferiority of Lamoriciere's ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... nation is awake in both Christian and Moslem. People ask why should not we, like the Bulgars and Serbs, rule our own land? But first we must learn, and organize. We must have time. If another war took place now the Slavs would overwhelm us. We must work our propaganda and teach Europe that there are other people to be liberated besides Bulgars and Serbs. The Turk is now our only bulwark against the Slav invader. I say therefore that we ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the trust to which the voice of my country called me being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is, that it has been my faithful ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... frightful disorders took place. Meetings of large bodies of the people were held in all the leading cities and towns throughout the kingdom to petition the Prince Regent and parliament to do something effectual to stay the tide of calamity that seemed to be setting steadily in to overwhelm ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... where Pericles reads the vile King his riddle and escapes, past Tarsus, where he assists Creon, the governor of a helpless city, to Pentapolis, where, shipwrecked and a stranger, he wins the tournament and the hand of the Princess Thaisa, the waves of chance carry the Prince. They overwhelm him in the great storm which robs him of his wife, and gives him his little Marina; but they bear the unconscious Thaisa safely to land, and in after years their wild riders, the pirates, save Marina from death at the hands of Creon, and bring her to Mitylene. Here, upon his storm-bound ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... gift of saying, or, better still, of singing, what he suffered made Tegner, during this period, master of his sufferings. They did not overwhelm him and ruin his usefulness. On the contrary, these were the most active and fruitful years of his life. But it was the deep agitation which possessed him—it was the suppressed tumult of his strong soul which vibrated through ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... contributed so large a portion to the economic and intellectual civilization of its fatherland during the time the sun of tolerance shone on its horizon, but which was destined to perish the moment the greed of princes and the fanaticism of priests, hoodwinking the masses, united to overwhelm it. Nevertheless the three centuries of fruitful activity were not entirely lost to the future; and the Jews of France, who had gone in numbers to foreign lands, carried with them their ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... simplest thoughts with conviction. No, it was when he expressed them best that he was least convincing, since an emotion that can be adequately presented is not a very big emotion; at least it does not overwhelm the soul. Inadequacy, helplessness, gaucherie, prove that the feelings are bigger than the eloquence. They "get across the footlights" between each player on the human ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... thee wait upon me whilst I live, To do whatever Faustus shall command, Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere, Or the ocean to overwhelm the world. ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... the first overwhelm of astonishment at what had befallen her—made fully to understand that which she had a right, and was in duty bound to do—entered upon the preparations for her work with the same unaffected readiness with which she would have done the ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... gently, "you have borne up so bravely against this terrible blow; you must try and not let it overwhelm you." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... cried the old squaw, Nashola's grandmother. "Call up a storm that will break their wings and shatter the sides of those giant canoes. Bring wind and rain and thunder and all the spirits of the sea to overwhelm them." ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... names of Desaix, Kleber and Bonaparte. But they had not the mastery of the seas, and returned not from the burning sands of the desert.... Think also of the time when the most formidable army of Europe, led by the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, tried to overwhelm the vast Russian Empire. But the empire was mightier than the Great Army, and it returned not from the glacial solitude of the steppes.... So let it go far, ever farther on, that German army already decimated, panting, exhausted; let it reach the Tigris, the Euphrates, even far off India! ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Riquer to earlier valorous corsair commanders, but Jaime, annoyed by his chatter, ever displaying a desire to overwhelm the island of Majorca, its hostile ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... said, "you honor me, you overwhelm me, I know not what to say. But think! The Prince is well, full of health and the hope of years. This thought of yours is but a vision, a delusion—how can we speak of the thing that ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... "if a man were to speak all the sense of the seven wise masters, a woman would find nonsense enough to overwhelm him with; so I shall say no more, but that I would to Heaven I may find the King in no worse humour than you describe him. I am commanded to attend him down the river to the Tower to-day, where he is to make some survey of arms and stores. They are clever fellows who contrive to keep Rowley from ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the demands of the great White Chief from the Cape,'—he meant Sir Bartle Frere—'he will fight with the English; only he will let them begin the fighting. He will draw them on into Zululand and then overwhelm them with his impis and stamp them flat, and eat them up; and I, who love the English, am very sorry. Yes, it makes my heart bleed. If it were the Boers now, I should be glad, for we Zulus hate the Boers; but the English ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... security against the pirates, who ravage the seaboard of this continent incessantly from end to end. And for this reason the roads leading up to the town are made very narrow, tortuous, and difficult, with watch-towers in places, and many points where a few armed men lying in ambush may overwhelm an enemy ten times as strong. The towns themselves are fortified with gates, the streets extremely narrow and crooked, and the houses massed all together with secret passages one to another, and a network of little alleys leading whither ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... centuries. But science has no voice beyond its own province. The weakest and the simplest soul, strong in the consciousness of the divine within and above it, may withstand its most powerful assaults. The shadows of doubt may cover us, and we may see no light. The difficulties of modern speculation may overwhelm us, and we may find no issue from them. If we wait till we have solved these difficulties and cleared away the darkness, we may wait for ever. If your religion is made to depend upon such matters, then ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... first closed upon him and the vision of wonderland burst upon his astonished eyes. The weeks had been those of unending kindness, of gifts showered abundantly, of promises for the future which might well overwhelm him by their generosity. Let him but consent to claim his rights, Gessner had said, and every ambition should be gratified. No other explanation than that of a lagging justice could he obtain—and no other had he come to desire. If he remained at Hampstead, the image ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... overwhelm me!" exclaimed the Judge, bowing still lower than before. "I think higher ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... surrounded by an ocean of trees, so vast, so full of endless billows, that it seemed to be pressing on every side to overwhelm them. Gnarled oaks, with branches twisted and knotted as if in rage, rose in groves like tidal waves. Smooth forests of beech-trees, round and gray, swept over the knolls and slopes of land in a mighty ground-swell. But most of all, the multitude of pines and firs, innumerable ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... come, we are all very glad of him, though he came on his own invitation, brought no wardrobe with him, does not pay for his board, never speaks a word, takes no notice of us, and wants more waiting on than any one else in the house. The children are full of delicious curiosity about him, and overwhelm him with presents of ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... "To overwhelm her escort while she is taking the air, child. Babington is to come with one hundred men and carry Mary off. Her escort seldom consists of more than eighteen or twenty men, and we think she might be easily taken ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... father lived in the mountains. My town was Azupirani, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother, the princess, conceived me, and secretly gave birth to me: she placed me in a basket of reeds, she shut up the mouth of it with bitumen, she abandoned me to the river, which did not overwhelm me. The river bore me; it brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, received me in the goodness of his heart; Akki, the drawer of water, made me a gardener. As gardener, the goddess Ishtar loved me, and during ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... she had seized the significance of Monjardin's verses, had grown deathly pale; stricken by sudden disillusionment, she felt a glacial chill overwhelm her body to the very marrow; she feared that she would faint straightway and provide a spectacle for the guests, who were all drinking her health, their eyes focussed upon her. A veil of tears spread before her sight.... In vain she tried to repress them, to force a smile of thanks upon her face. ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... is the light coin of "small talk" that breaks with chink and shimmer the heavy bills of large denomination, that else would overwhelm social conversation with ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... fingers, she rested in the deep peace which, ever since her revelation, had enveloped her about. For a minute she let her mind dwell on the picture she carried in her brain, until the association became too keen and threatened to overwhelm her from very tenderness; then she sprang from her bed, and, flipping the window-blind to the top, drank in the beauty of the valley through the open window. Her bedroom had windows both to the east and the west; and it was her custom to awaken early ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Hector, Rob, and Edgar. Presently, as they looked up the dry bed between the high banks, they saw a wall of water moving on towards them, such, on a smaller scale, as might have been beheld by the Egyptians when attempting to cross the Red Sea. But this was high enough to overwhelm any human beings, or horses or cattle, which might have been in its way. The summit hissed and foamed, rising almost to the top of the bank. No streams advanced before it: it was literally a wall of water. On it came, its roar growing louder and louder. In ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... have followed the first seven. Christ will then be killed after the sixty-nine weeks, that is to say, in the last week), "the Christ shall be cut off, and a people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and overwhelm all, and the end of that war shall ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... bronze who could terrify witnesses, torture and overwhelm the opposition, and thunder so successfully from the legal rostrum, sat there abashed by the child's tone and manner, and as he watched her he could not avoid smiling at her imperious mandate. Although silent, it was one o'clock before she fell into a deep, sound slumber, and then the lawyer ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of those moments of vague misgivings, that leave the soul as it were in utter darkness, come to overwhelm you, call upon GOD, as a child in terror cries out to ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... was called out by several of them, in order to make Michel rush back, which he did instantly at the exciting sound, ready to overwhelm the hugest men ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... will summon the citizens to arms, we will recall the army to duty, we will rise up before Louis Bonaparte, terrible as the living Republic, we will fight on the one hand with the power of the Law, and on the other with the power of the People, we will overwhelm this miserable rebel, and will rise up above his head both as a great Lawful Power and ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... and realms (that whilom flower'd In honour, glory, and rule, above the rest) He overwhelm'd, and all their fame devour'd, Consumed, destroy'd, wasted, and never ceased, Till he their wealth, their name, and all oppress'd: His face forhew'd with wounds; and by his side There hung his targe, with gashes deep ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was one of the things you most wanted, but I thought it best not to overwhelm you quite this morning; so while you were on an exploring expedition round the store I chose and furnished one ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... voyage when he discovered America, the loftiest billows would rise and swell, and toss their foaming crests far above his head, as he clung to the deck to gaze at them. They would seem at times ready to overwhelm him with the vast and towering volumes of water which they raised around him. Then, when the shock which was produced by the encounter of one of them was passed, and the ship, trembling from the concussion, ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... rewards (which are the Nerves of it,) otherwise than by the Civill Power (which is the Soule of the Common-wealth) they ought to be moved; and by strange, and hard words suffocates the people, and either Overwhelm the Common-wealth with Oppression, or cast it into the Fire of a ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... manned by Phoenician sailors, and a huge army, under the two satraps Datis and Artaphernes, were on the opposite side of the AEgean Sea, ready to overwhelm little Attica first, and then all Greece. Nobody had yet stood firm against those all-conquering Persians, and as they came from island to island the inhabitants fled or submitted. Attica was so small as to ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought that the general ridicule would overwhelm me. Two or three came closer, as if in pity or curiosity; and, at last, one cried out that I actually ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her planks—there were spots on her flag— So the fanatics said, as they seized on her helm; And from soft summer seas, turned her prow where the crag And the wild breakers rose the good ship to overwhelm. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... of the turn in affairs was what chiefly struck Constance, though it did not overwhelm her. Less than twelve hours before—nay, scarcely six hours before—she and Sophia had been living their placid and monotonous existence, undisturbed by anything worse than the indisposition or death of dogs, or the perversity of a servant. And now, the menacing Gerald Scales ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... had displayed in sending it. Having got the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had been planned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereaved father ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... words to acknowledge that series of welcomes, those unbounded and universal displays of public affection, which have marked each step, each hour, of a twelvemonth's progress through the twenty-four States, and which, while they overwhelm my heart with grateful delight, have most satisfactorily evinced the concurrence of the people in the kind testimonies, in the immense favors bestowed on me by the several branches of their Representatives, in every part and at the central seat of ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... yet Cromwell had not the right of dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be justified only by supposing them invested with lawful authority. But combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those, who have long practised perfidy, grow faithless ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... himself a home, and know once more the meaning of happiness. Was he selfish in hoping that life still contained a true joy for him, in spite of the sorrows that fate had heaped upon his head, as if she meant to overwhelm him altogether? At least, the hope was a natural one, and showed courage and resolution. He clung to it desperately, fiercely; he felt that after all he had lost he could not bear to let it go. The ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in its own display, and Burke from the same cause, added to his overpowering autocracy of temper—were but too much calculated to throw suspicion on the cause in which they were employed, and to produce a reaction in favor of the person whom they were meant to overwhelm. "Rogo vos, Judices,"—Mr. Hastings might well have said,—"si iste disertus est, ideo me damnari oportet?" [Footnote: Seneca, Controvers. lib. iii. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... sylphic waist. She gently inclines her head towards him, and both seemed overshadowed by the long beautiful tresses which float in wild luxuriance. From Don Lope's flashing eye the innocent Theodora drinks large draughts of sweet but deadly poison; a tear of tenderness starts to overwhelm her eye and falls on the lover's hand; a deep sigh escapes her bosom, and they meet in a fervent embrace. Happy!—thrice happy moments!—dear to the genuine sensibility of humanity, dearly cherished and oft alas! but too dearly purchased! Few words the lovers ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the fortune of a state. I am far from denying the operation of such causes, but they are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace than the foreign causes that tend to depress, and, sometimes, overwhelm society." ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... the human mind, this speech cost Cosmo nearly all the advantage that he had previously gained. His ominous suggestion of a great nebula rushing out of the heavens to overwhelm the earth had immensely impressed the imagination of his hearers, and his uncontradicted accusation that Professor Pludder was concealing the facts had almost convinced them that he was right. But when he mentioned "arks," the strain was ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... stopping the accusations she saw were ready to overwhelm the offending little girl; "come here, and let me talk to you about this sad thing you have done to the little birds. Do you see what you have done by your ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... truth is, that the two principal figures in that affair parted each other's company fully realizing that hostilities were at hand. To say that Harrison was bound to sit helplessly in his capital while his enemies gathered a force sufficient to overwhelm him, and all without a move on his part to avert a calamity, but illustrates the foolishness of the whole contention. Immediately on the breaking up of the council, Tecumseh departed with a portion of his braves to organize and cement a federation of the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... good and supremely reasonable, therefore supremely just and equitable. From him certainly is all power; he is unquestionably King of kings, and Lord of lords. By him kings reign and magistrates decree just things. He may, at his will, set up or pull down kings, rear or overwhelm empires, foster the infant colony, and make desolate the populous city. All this is unquestionably true, and a simple dictate of reason common to all men. But in what sense is it true? Is it true in a supernatural sense? Or is it true only in the sense that it is true ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... become a question of time. If Mahomed Jan could close with and overwhelm our small force, Kabul would be his; but if, by any possibility, his advance could be retarded until Macpherson should come up, we might hope to retain possession of the city. It was, therefore, to the Afghan leader's interest to press on, while it was to ours to delay him ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... his wife; judge, then, what must be her love of the man she bud chosen. His desire now was to do her injury, and his fiercest torment was the thought that he dared not fulfil the menace with which he had hoped to overwhelm her. If he prosecuted Hood, all the circumstances of the case would inevitably come out; Emily had friends in Dunfield, and if her father's guilt were once disclosed, there would be no reason for her concealment of what had happened; ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Atheist, 'But the divine Heraclitus also says, 'A great variety of information does not usually give wisdom.' And Timon said, ... 'For what is the use of so many names, my good grammarian, which are more calculated to overwhelm the hearers than to do them ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the storm cloud gathering in the rear burst with unexpected fury. Masses of men led by the Khalifa's son, the Sheikh ed Din, rushed down the Kerreri slopes and threatened to overwhelm the brigade. Again there was seen a proof of the ascendancy of mind over brute force. At once Macdonald ordered the left part of his line to wheel round, keeping the right as pivot, so that the whole speedily formed two fronts resembling a capital ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and cold, and the heights we had gained brought us into the very sky. The immensities appeared only as lights: the higher light, a brilliance of stars; the lower light, a glow of fires. The frightful bombardment with which the Germans overwhelm us is really ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... was always to act on the defensive—he masked his batteries, and was careful not to exhaust his ammunition in the first encounter. He never offered battle without having a sufficient force in reserve to overwhelm his opponent. He never exposed a weak point, nor espoused a worthless cause. He always fought for great principles, which to him were sacred, and he defended them to the utmost of his ability, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Heart Line is a certain sign that some terrible tragedy in the affections will at some time or other overwhelm the subject. ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... often bring upon themselves. If you would only think of the absurdity of what you are saying. You have admitted your prosperity; and the other troubles, home troubles, which I know are very trying, need not overwhelm you. You are much less manly, Walter, now you are a man, than I expected you to be. You have quite disappointed ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... it was, had not only held aloof, but turned about to fly like herds before the lion; so he was forced to drive them back, and bring up his other troops, reasonably thinking that such numbers must overwhelm at last, if they could ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... he pursued his lonely road and it shone clear through a gathering scud that threatened soon to overwhelm the silver light. Clouds flew fast and, above Brendon's head, telegraph wires hummed the song of a gathering storm. The man's thoughts proceeded as irregularly as the fitful and shouting wind. He weighed each word that Jenny had said and strove to understand each ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... again serene, and all nature was restored to tranquillity. The king, therefore, issued forth with his cavaliers and took the road to the tower, followed by a great multitude, for he was anxious once more to close the iron door, and shut up those evils that threatened to overwhelm the land. But lo! on coming in sight of the tower, a new wonder met their eyes. An eagle appeared high in the air, seeming to descend from heaven. He bore in his beak a burning brand, and lighting on the summit of the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... lips to speak. Yes, he could overwhelm her with statistics and figures, all worked out; of shipping and disasters to shipping; of wealth and senseless waste of wealth. He could bury her beneath evidence taken by Royal Commission and Parliamentary Committee, commissioners' reports, testimony of shipowners ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Tuesday, when he will take a house in the neighborhood of Scotland Yard," put in Holmes, quickly, observing a sneer on Hawkshaw's lips, and hastening to overwhelm him by further evidence of his ingenuity. "When he gets his bill he will open his piratical eyes so wide that he will be seized with jealousy to think of how much more refined his profession has become since he left it, and out of mere pique he will leave the hotel, and, ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the whole thing is that the undistilled well which the Bubble Bug taps would often overwhelm it in an instant, either by the burning acidity of its composition, or the rubber coating of death into which it hardens in the air. Yet with this current of lava or vitriol, our Bug does three wonderful things, it distills sweet water ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... self-fertilised as 100 to 86. They differed, also, to a wonderful degree in constitutional vigour. The crossed plants flowered first, and produced exactly twice as many flower-stems; and they afterwards increased by stolons to such an extent as almost to overwhelm the ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... achievement? Which has rights above The other? I desire her, her desire Is not toward me, which of these two desires Shall triumph? Why not mine for me and hers For her, at least the stronger must prevail, And wreck itself or bend all else before it. That millionaire who wooed her, tried in vain To overwhelm her will with gold, and I With passion, boldness would have overwhelmed it, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... River issue, and shall cast into the stream at its source three drops of holy water, for him, and for him only, the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first can succeed in a second attempt; and if any one shall cast unholy water into the river it will overwhelm him, and he will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the Golden River turned away and deliberately walked into the center of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became red, white, transparent, dazzling,—a blaze of ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... with three thousand horse and fifty thousand foot, and in his eagerness to arrive at the scene of action would not wait to provide artillery and the various engines required in a siege. "The multitude of my forces," said he, confidently, "will be sufficient to overwhelm the enemy." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Asvaghosha's rank as a poet depends chiefly on his Buddhacarita, or life of the Buddha up to the time of his enlightenment. It is the earliest example of a Kavya, usually translated as artificial epic, but here literary skill is subservient to the theme and does not, as too often in later works, overwhelm it. The Buddha is its hero, as Rama of the Ramayana, and it sings the events of his earlier life in a fine flow of elaborate but impassioned language. Another of his poems,[206] discovered only a few years ago, treats of the conversion of Nanda, the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... route he was sure to encounter Forrest, who always attacked with a vehemence for which he must be prepared, and that, after he had repelled the first attack, he must in turn assume the most determined offensive, overwhelm him and utterly destroy his whole force. I knew that Forrest could not have more than four thousand cavalry, and my own movement would give employment to every other man of the rebel army not immediately present ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the evils which are to overwhelm the believer. I look round upon my little flock of hearers, and I seem to see them led as lambs to the slaughter—poor, defenceless creatures, set upon by worse than lions and wolves. And you, lady of Piso, how can I sincerely rejoice that you have ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... in the name of Maskull, and the other in that of Nightspore. That's nearly all that I know about them, so don't overwhelm me with, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... This would have been awkward, and certainly I could not deny that poor Dthemetri had succeeded in his odd plan of inspiring respect, for at the very time that this explanation was going on in Italian the Governor seemed more than ever, and more anxiously, disposed to overwhelm me with assurances of goodwill, and proffers of his best services. All this kindness, or promise of kindness, I naturally received with courtesy—a courtesy that greatly perturbed Dthemetri, for he evidently feared that my civility would undo all ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... won't argue long on that point, for I could overwhelm you if I approved of overwhelmin'. But I merely ask you to cast your right eye over into England, and then beyond it into France. Men have ruled exclusively in France for the last 40 or 50 years, and a woman in England: which realm has been ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... himself, by earnestness, by restraint and control, the wise man may make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm. ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... find out his weaknesses and his foibles, and you know just where to plant your sting. You learn what he wants, and you take it away from him. You choose your allies carefully, and you surround him and overwhelm him; then when you get through with him, ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... man who has just arrived home, the eager expectancy of his folk awaiting him, this autumn sky, this world, the gentle morning breeze, the universal responsive tremor in tree and shrub and in the wavelets on the river, conspire to overwhelm this lonely youth, gazing from his window, with unutterable ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... and looks up at the enormous bulk, it seems not so much the bulk, so lightly is it carried, as the spirit of the tree—the elastic vigor, the patience, the endurance of storm and change, the confident might, and the soaring, almost contemptuous pride, that overwhelm the puny spectator. It is just because man can measure himself, his littleness, his brevity of existence, with this growth out of the earth, that he is more personally impressed by it than he might be by the mere variation in the contour of ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... Iron jacket and iron boot, Iron breeches, and on the head No hat, but an iron pot instead, And under the chin the bail (I believe they called the thing a helm); And the lid they carried they called a shield; And, thus accoutered, they took the field, Sallying forth to overwhelm The dragons and pagans that plagued the realm— So this modern knight Prepared for flight, Put on his wings and strapped them tight; Jointed and jaunty, strong and light; Buckled them fast to shoulder and hip— Ten feet they measured from tip ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... misery threatened to overwhelm her again, and began swiftly to change her dress and arrange her hair. She pulled back the stiff curtains of one of the tall windows and leaned out. A soft blue haze, the first glimpse of September's tender eyes, was settling ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... are eloquent enough to do justice to the heroic, determined defense she made there under the shadow of her own goal, when defeat seemed every moment waiting to overwhelm her? Every man in that blue-clad line and back of it was a hero, the kind that history loves to tell of. The right guard, Morris, was a pitiable sight as, with white, drawn face, he stood up under ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... by the papers, that you have been shamefully mobbed at Fulton. I write to let you know that there are some in the world who will not join the multitude who are trying to overwhelm ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... wandering lamb to the fold? He has seen, indeed, that the poor child has chafed much latterly, that the old serenity and gayety are gone. But is it not a chafing under the fetters of sin? Is it not that she begins to see more clearly the fiery judgments of God which will certainly overwhelm the wrongdoers, whatever may be the unsubstantial and evanescent graces of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Republicans should have looked beyond their noses, and then they could not have failed to see that tilting against foreigners would ruin us in the whole Northwest. New Hampshire and Ohio should forbear tilting against the fugitive-slave law in such way as to utterly overwhelm us in Illinois with the charge of enmity to the Constitution itself. Kansas, in her confidence that she can be saved to freedom on 'squatter sovereignty,' ought not to forget that to prevent the spread and nationalization of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... new forces at work, and to bring some realisation of the great gulf which separates the thinking classes of to-day from the men of a few years ago; whilst, at the same time, it is sufficiently condensed not to overwhelm the reader with too great ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... experienced; and although this token is not often seen, I knew it, and a shuddering seized me. Twice in my life had I seen this same thing, and I knew that there would be an awful storm, with a spring tide, which would overwhelm the poor people who were now out on the ice, drinking, dancing, and making merry. Young and old, the whole city, were there; who was to warn them, if no one noticed the sign, or knew what it meant as I did? I was so alarmed, that I felt more strength ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... unbroken; nor with what indignation I turned on the villain thus convicted of an act of treachery towards the King only less black than the sin against hospitality of which he had been guilty in my house. But the discovery I had made seemed enough of itself to overwhelm him; for, after standing apparently stunned while I spoke, he jerked himself suddenly out of his captors' hands, and made a desperate attempt to escape. Finding this hopeless, and being seized again before he had gone ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... engines, long and round, Thick rammed, at th' other bore with touch of fire {p. 249} Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth From far, with thund'ring noise, among our foes Such implements of mischief, as shall dash To pieces, and overwhelm ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... like a lion and assembled all the host of the Goths. He advanced from Ravenna and harassed the walls of Rome with a long siege. But after fourteen months his courage was broken and he raised the siege of the city of Rome and prepared to overwhelm Ariminum. Here he was baffled in like manner 313 and put to flight; and so he retreated to Ravenna. When besieged there, he quickly and willingly surrendered himself to the victorious side, together with his wife Mathesuentha and ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... sounds to-day,—speech demanding growth for a part of a country, denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the South and ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... all the furies of the infernal regions had been let loose that night, and would overwhelm them. The ground trembled, and the hut swayed as if it were going to topple over. It was as if wild horses were prancing on the roof; as if howling ghosts rushed past the door, and as if owls and bats were beating ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Hosts of Light is inch by inch. Extraordinary efforts, impetuous charges, which seem to win for a moment, too often leave the attacking force tired and exhausted, and the forces of reaction set in and overwhelm them. I am the friend of revolt if people cannot stand the conditions they live under, and if they can see no other way. It is better to be men than slaves. The French Revolution was a tragic episode in history, ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... down again, for I heard the coxswain cry out, "Hold fast, my lads!" and, turning my head for an instant over my shoulder, I saw a tremendous wave come rushing on with a crest of foam curling over it as if about to overwhelm the boat. On the crew pulled, however; when in an instant the sea broke, a large portion coming right down into the boat, wetting us through fore and aft. But the men seemed to think nothing of it, and on they pulled. Several other seas ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... After this there was little defence against them, even where we were clinging, for the waters poured in, as if maddened by their success, through the passage formed by the separation of the vessel, and came bounding on, as if changing their direction on purpose to overwhelm us. As the two parts of the vessel were thrown higher up, the shocks were more severe, and indeed, the waves appeared to have more power than before, in consequence of their being so increased in weight from the quantity of sand which was mixed up with ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Roman Catholic priest will dare to deny what I say on this matter; for they know that it would be easy for me to overwhelm them with such crowd of testimonies that their grand imposture would for ever ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... mode of life, and this unusual domicile, her eye quailed not, nor did her heart beat quicker, as she looked down into the abyss below, or turned her eyes up to the beetling mass of rock which appeared, each moment, ready to fall down and overwhelm her. She passed her hand across her temples to throw back the hair which the wind had blown over her eyes, and again scanned the distance as the sun's light increased, and the fog gradually ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with iron scythes so that they can charge straight into the ranks of the foe? [18] And suppose you heard that they have camels to ride on, each one of which would scare a hundred horses, and that they will bring up towers from which to help their own friends, and overwhelm us with volleys of darts so that we cannot fight them on level ground? [19] If this were what you had heard of the enemy, I as you, once again, you who are now so fearful what would you have done? You who turn pale when told that Croesus has been chosen commander-in-chief, Croesus who proved ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... human voice disturb the flow, Around me here, of spirit-presence fullest? And yet, this once my thanks I owe To thee, of all earth's sons the poorest, dullest! For thou hast torn me from that desperate state Which threatened soon to overwhelm my senses: The apparition was so giant-great, It dwarfed and withered all my ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... conceived some ship was firing its guns for assistance. At other times there would fall such incessant and heavy torrents of rain for two or three days together as if an universal deluge were going to overwhelm the world. This almost unceasing war of the elements perplexed the men and reduced them almost to despair, so that they were continually wet and could not get half an hours rest at a time, always beating up to windward. In such terrible tempests ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the general protection of law, as from his own private power and that of his confederates. The authority of the monarch, though far from absolute, was irregular, and might often reach him: the current of a faction might overwhelm him: a hundred considerations of benefits and injuries, friendships and animosities, hopes and fears, were able to influence his conduct; and amidst these motives, a regard to equity, and law, and justice was commonly, in those rude ages, of little moment. Nor did any man entertain thoughts of opposing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... notes from the Earth Council and back again, followed during the next few days. But the patrol was not withdrawn; nor was war declared. The Earth Council knew that Tarrano had not ordered the model back—nor would he destroy it. Yet if the Earth forces were to overwhelm Tarrano, and the model were lost, a revolution upon Earth could easily take place before Georg could convince the people that he was able to build ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... he went off in haste after his men, who were to be added to those massing in the town, so as to oppose and overwhelm the Spanish landing parties. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Often he would look at her to find that her eyes had been fixed upon him in a long, grave, meditative gaze. Then he would seem to himself a very sorry sort of person, and was compelled to admit that he who had once wished to overwhelm the girl with the infinite riches of a passionately loving soul, was a bankrupt, groping with empty hands in empty pockets. He ought to speak, ought to open the sluices on the other side of which the flood of his passionate love must have gathered and risen high; but ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... great, all may be good. Power, pomp, ambition, envy, pride, Wrecked barks adown life's stream may glide, Ruined by some fierce passion throe, E'er, reckless, o'er Time's brink they go; But if fair virtue grasps the helm, Nor storm nor wave can overwhelm. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... profitless As water in a sieve: give not me counsel; Nor let no comforter delight mine ear, But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine. Bring me a father, that so lov'd his child, Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine, And bid him speak to me of patience; Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine, And let it answer every strain for strain; As thus for thus, and such a grief for such, In every lineament, branch, shape, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... which these conferences were calculated to leave upon my mind was fast wearing away, when there occurred a circumstance, slight indeed in itself, but calculated irrepressibly to awaken all my worst suspicions, and to overwhelm me again with ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... their torches against the ground, set fire to the dried thorns and withered grass, and the blaze ran along the earth like wildfire, to the great alarm of poor L**, who saw in every burning bush a stream of lava rushing to overwhelm us. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a discussion, and he was a foe who wielded a stout blade. He fought, however, with scrupulous fairness, never interrupting an adversary; but listening to him with a deliberate patience that was almost disconcerting. Then when his turn came he would overwhelm his opponent and destroy his most weighty arguments in what a friend once described as “a lava torrent of burning words.” He possessed many of the qualities necessary to debate: concentration, the power of pouncing upon the weak spot in his adversary’s argument, and above all a wonderful memory. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... broke away, and all her works abaft were shivered. The ship in this situation became, in a degree, embayed under the terrific bulk of ice, for its height was twice that of the mainmast of a ship of the line, and the prominent head of the berg was every moment expected to break away and overwhelm the ship. At length, after every practicable exertion, she was got off the shoal, and the ice floated past her. It was soon perceived that the Guardian had six feet of water in her hold, and it was increasing very fast The hands were set to the pumps, others to find out the leaks, and they ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the sounding squadrons of the air returned to their attack, and renewed their ravages with redoubled fury; and the stately dome rocked amidst the wheeling clouds. The impregnable clouds tottered on its basis, and threatened to overwhelm those whom it was intended to protect, the vessel was almost rent in pieces, and scarcely secure; where then was a place of safety? Sleep affrighted flew, diversion was turned into horror; all was uproar in the elements; all was consternation among ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... our narrow and limited experience and sympathy. We each stand quite alone, a solitary unit, a pygmy in the world. What good fortune can we expect? The great life of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that it will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. There is no defence to be offered to it; no opposition army can be set up, because in this life every man fights his own battle against every other man, and no two can be united under the same banner. There is only ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... delayed to acknowledge the receipt of the grape-roots,—Charles is n't to blame, I told him I would write,—because I waited for the cider to come, that wife and I might overwhelm you with a joint letter of thanks, laudation, and praise. But I can wait no longer. That is, the cider does n't come, and I begin to think it is a myth. Poets, you know, deal in such. They imagine, they idealize, nay, it is said ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... his foster-father. It was not pleasant to tell the boy that the barber had fallen in a fit, and might die from the effects of it; and if he did, Leo might not be able to give him the information he needed. It would confuse his mind, and overwhelm him with grief. Mr. Checkynshaw could not see why poor people should grieve at the sickness or death of their friends, though it was a fact they did so, just like rich people of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... of joy, restlessly moving one foot, as if scratching the ground, and betraying the struggle between bashfulness and love by alternate blushes and paleness. Then, in a low sweet gentle voice, she uttered these words: "O gracious sir, why do you, having just delivered me from a terrible death, now overwhelm me in a sea of love whose waves are the agitations of anxiety driven by the wind of passion? My life, saved by you, is entirely at your disposal. Take pity on me; regard me as your own. Let me be your servant, your slave; I would endure anything rather than separation from you. ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... fallen," Varta's voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. "Evil has risen to overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in Your Revelations, O, Ruler of Worlds and Maker of Destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given of old, I would depart from this, Thy house. Suffer me now to ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... to cool our parched tongues. Our very skin felt like leather, and was cracked and scorched all over. A short time only could be given for rest, however; another blast might sweep up clouds of sand and overwhelm us; another fatiguing march during a day and night over the Desert had to be passed. Besides, every drop of water was expended; and though the camels might go on with comparative ease, we must all of us expect to suffer dreadfully,—but more especially the ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... last time I cast a furtive glance behind me he had not recovered sufficiently to dash after me and overwhelm me with protestations of his uprightness, yay ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... right," exclaimed Duff one day to Rucker, after Gary had brought the schooner unscathed through a mountainous wave that had threatened to overwhelm everything. "I will say this for him, he knows how to ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... injury. Sometimes they climbed, or, more hazardous still, descended, a long, steep stairway of rock, or they were hid in the clouds that hung around the higher peaks of the mountain. Now the path led them under huge, detached rocks, that seemed asking leave to overwhelm them, and now under the solid cliffs, that suggested the more grateful idea of the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Down in the valley were pleasant waterfalls, little fields rescued by much labor from the surrounding waste, choice fruits, and ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... have, experiences which will furnish him resources for coping with the difficulty at hand. A difficulty is an indispensable stimulus to thinking, but not all difficulties call out thinking. Sometimes they overwhelm and submerge and discourage. The perplexing situation must be sufficiently like situations which have already been dealt with so that pupils will have some control of the meanings of handling it. A large part of the art ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... him with its unexpectedness, except the loveliness and helplessness of the girl beside him. His head was reeling; his calmness, his loyalty, his earlier feelings of dispassionate pity had given way to an extreme agitation that was rushing him headlong and threatening to overwhelm him. His heart beat furiously and he clenched his teeth, fighting to regain his usual sang-froid. The emotional temperament that Diana had divined from his novel had sprung uppermost with a bound, overthrowing the rigid repression of years. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... enemies have done? The measure had been exceeded; his madness had grown to be too enormous, and the existence of people too difficult because of him. Vinicius believed that Nero's hour had struck, that those ruins into which the city was falling should and must overwhelm the monstrous buffoon together with all those crimes of his. Should a man be found of courage sufficient to stand at the head of the despairing people, that might happen in a few hours. Here vengeful ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... storm covers many miles of country, and the rain is falling in torrents; and, unless I am greatly mistaken, most of it will find its way into this river. Therefore must we be on our guard against a sudden spate, which may overwhelm us if we are ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... moaned. All her eager desire to overwhelm Rose Cameron's rival with the shameful news of her bridegroom's previous marriage and living wife had evaporated, leaving only deep sympathy and compassion for the sweet young girl, who looked so kindly, and spoke so gentle. Yet deeply she ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... ulterior object was probably Vienna. At Prague lay Marshal Brown with one great army. Daun, the most cautious and fortunate of the Austrian captains, was advancing with another. Frederic determined to overwhelm Brown before Daun should arrive. On the sixth of May was fought, under those walls which, a hundred and thirty years before, had witnessed the victory of the Catholic league and the flight of the unhappy ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in search of a footstool, to make me hold her fan, to overwhelm me with questions and bewilder me with a thousand coquetries, were the immediate proceedings of Madame de Marignan. A consummate tactician, she succeeded, before a quarter of an hour had gone by, in putting me at my ease, and in drawing from me everything ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... our laments, leaving us at least serene and resigned where our struggles and protests would be unavailing. It is by thus generalizing the point of view of art so that we adopt it towards our own life that we secure the catharsis of tragedy. Instead of letting sorrow overwhelm us, we may win self-possession through the struggle against it; instead of feeling that there is nothing left when the loved one dies, we may keep in memory a cherished image, more poignant and beautiful because the reality is gone, and ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... some repeating hymns, and others declared that if they could only get on shore, they would never come on the water again. Stevenson made his way on deck and looked around. The billows seemed to be ten or fifteen feet high, and each appeared as if about to overwhelm the ship. One man, a black, lashed himself to the foremast, and kept watch in case the ship should break loose from her moorings. The next morning the sun rose and the gale abated, but the sea was still very rough, and at the Bell Rock the spray ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... no one more becoming to Stephen than this girl. She understood him and could alleviate by her sole presence, not through any gift properly made, but by that which radiated from her alone, the great weight which threatened to overwhelm his whole being. Simply to converse with her might constitute the ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... and know that it is a profession with little prospect." Then he quoted Dr. Johnson: "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being drowned"; and further to overwhelm me, he clinched the saying by a comment of his own. "In a ship of war you run the risk of being killed as well as that of being drowned." The interview left me a perplexed but not ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... question her. At first she was too greatly overcome by her emotions to answer. As she cowered, trembled, and sobbed, she might well have been regarded as the embodiment of that shame and remorse which overwhelm fallen womanhood before the heart is hardened and the face made brazen by years of vice. Patiently and kindly the judge drew from her faltering lips some pitiful story, and then he talked to her in low, impressive tones, that seemed to go straight to her despairing soul. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... it be like to come to this canyon—to give up to its enchantments? That, like many another disturbing thought, had to go unanswered, to be driven into the closed chambers of Carley's mind, there to germinate subconsciously, and stalk forth some day to overwhelm her. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... slightest rumour of wrong or cruelty. No woman suffering, or alleged to be suffering, from the cruelty of a husband, would ever call for his sympathy in vain. It was, however, cases of cruelty to little children that most tended to overwhelm his judgment. His burning horror at the mere idea of such deeds knew no bounds. A wife might to some extent be able to protect herself from the brutalities of her husband, but what chance had a helpless, friendless, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... matter the Iceni must act as one man. We are all equally outraged in the persons of our queen and her daughters; all have a right to a share in avenging her insults. We might spoil all by moving before the others are ready. When we move it must be as a mighty torrent to overwhelm the invaders. Not Camalodunum only, but every Roman town must be laid in ruins. It must be a life and death struggle between us and Rome; we must conquer now or be enslaved ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the opportunity. The rumbling of the approaching hoofs grew louder and louder, and every moment was precious. It sounded before them and to the right and left of them, indicating that the herd was an immense one, and that it was advancing with a front broad enough to overwhelm the entire camp. Knowing that no more time could be wasted in debating the matter, George unslung his Winchester and fired two shots into the air. The effect was almost magical. The camp, which had been so quiet a second before, was aroused into instant life and activity. Loud cries ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... the sole artist. Painted many tavern sign-boards, Pictures also for the chapels, Portraits e'en of brides of peasants. Stable was his reputation; For if any criticisers Would find fault with his great paintings, That an arm or nose was crooked, Or a cheek looked too much swollen, Then he would overwhelm his critics With the big high-sounding phrases He had learnt when at Bologna. Hearing nothing but perspective, Colouring and soft gradation, Modelling and bold foreshortening, Soon they lost their ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... on closing the history of Napoleon Bonaparte, that the reader may be disposed to pause a moment to reflect on the character of that wonderful person, on whom fortune showered so many favours in the beginning and through the middle of his career, to overwhelm its close with such deep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... She had not expected this from Arthur. She thought he would overwhelm her with praise; and, instead, he sat there like a judge laying all her faults before her. Stern critic! Somehow he didn't seem ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... them, edging to the very hair-line of the magic circle, which seemed to assure their placid sunny peace. An upheaval of splintered granite often tossed and tumbled in the abandon of an unrestrained passion that seemed irresistibly to overwhelm the sanities of a whole region; but somewhere, in the very forefront of turmoil, was like to slumber one of these little meadows, as unconscious of anything but its own flawless green simplicity as a child asleep in mid-ocean. Or, away up in the snows, warmed by the fortuity of reflected ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... maid, humble and modest, who has made it her duty to make this call upon the wife of her brother's employer, and who is amazed at the warm welcome she receives. She is surrounded and made much of. "How kind of you to come! Draw up to the fire." They overwhelm her with attentions and show great interest in her slightest word. Honest Risler's smiles are as warm as his thanks. Sidonie herself displays all her fascinations, overjoyed to exhibit herself in her glory to one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... chroma and value of red and yellow pigments so overwhelm the lesser degrees of green and blue pigments that no balance is possible, and the colorist of fine perception must reject not alone the theoretical, but also the practical outcome of ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... restrain these passions in some few men at some times, but most part they domineer, and are so violent, [1588]that as a torrent (torrens velut aggere rupto) bears down all before, and overflows his banks, sternit agros, sternit sata, (lays waste the fields, prostrates the crops,) they overwhelm reason, judgment, and pervert the temperature of the body; Fertur [1589] equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas. Now such a man (saith [1590]Austin) "that is so led, in a wise man's eye, is no better than he that stands upon ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of state I can easier scorn than hate; And I find it answers right: Scorn torments them more than spight. All the vices of a court Do but serve to make me sport. Were I in some foreign realm, Which all vices overwhelm; Should a monkey wear a crown, Must I tremble at his frown? Could I not, through all his ermine, 'Spy the strutting chattering vermin; Safely write a smart lampoon, To expose the brisk baboon? When my Muse officious ventures On the nation's representers: ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... you fall in his way and be unprotected, direful, indeed, might be the consequences. Sudden disease, like a pestilence at mid-day, might seize you, and on those lovely shores you might pine away and die. Dreadful accidents might overwhelm you and bury all your happiness forever. Therefore ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... frequently to moan 'Sixty threepennorths.' This imperfect sentence not being at all intelligible as a confession, but sounding like a Gargantuan order for a dram, brought him into new difficulties by occasioning his parent to pounce at him in a more than usually snappish manner, and to overwhelm him with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... automatic—a battery of guns!" replied Lanstron. "This is where I will use any influence I have with Partow for all it is worth. Now, let the red-tapists dare to point to his past when I ask anything for him and I'll overwhelm them with the living present! Yes, and he shall have the iron cross. It is for such deeds as his that ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while. But if at the center of them all there is an honest love for Christ, they cannot overwhelm us; and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... unpromising. Not only was there no resistance in the subject to the grandeur of poetry, but, on the contrary, this subject offered so much grandeur, was so pathetic and the amplitude of range so vast as to overwhelm the powers of any poet and any audience, by its exactions. That was a fault in one direction. But a different fault was—that the subject allowed no power of selection. In ordinary didactic poetry, as we have just been insisting, you sustain the interest by ignoring ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... people with a flood, man and every living thing that the air and the seas bring forth and nourish, birds of the air and beasts of the field. But thou, and thy sons with thee, shall have mercy when the black waters, the dark, destroying floods, shall overwhelm the hosts of sinful men. Begin to build thee a ship, a mighty seahouse, and in it make abiding-room for many, and set a rightful place for every tribe of earth. Build floors within the ark, dividing ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... two tails, those new beasts—a little tail behind, in the usual place, and a very big tail in front, which they use as a hand. They are very many, and very terrible. Do you think it is they who are driving all these other beasts upon us to overwhelm us?" ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... God, that thou hast left the meanes To end my soule from this perplexitie. Not succour him on paine of present death! That is no paine; death is a welcome guest To those whose hearts are overwhelm'd with griefe. My woes are done, I having leave to die And after death live ever ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... suffice to mark distinctly the advance my pupil's mind has hitherto made, and the route by which he has advanced. You are probably alarmed at the number of subjects I have brought to his notice. You are afraid I will overwhelm his mind with all this knowledge. But I teach him rather not to know them than to know them. I am showing him a path to knowledge not indeed difficult, but without limit, slowly measured, long, or rather endless, and tedious ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... than we can bear. The present hour we are always able to endure. As our day, so is our strength. If the trials of many years were gathered into one, they would overwhelm us; therefore, in pity to our little strength, He sends first one, then another, then removes both, and lays on a third, heavier, perhaps, than either; but all is so wisely measured to our strength that the bruised reed is never broken. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... again alone, sat down at a turn in the path, just out of sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an unforgettable reprimand. She rose before ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... campaign without it? are no exaggerations of our candidate's merits to be allowed? no depreciations of the other candidate? Shall we no longer prove that the success of the party opposed to us will overwhelm the land in ruin? Let me see. Leaving out the two elections of General Washington, eighteen times that very fact has been proved by the party that was beaten, and immediately we have not been ruined, notwithstanding that the dreadful fatal fellows on the other side got ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... quick perception of her sex she felt it, and drew back a step, not knowing but the next moment might overwhelm her with an accusation. But Bigot was not sure, and he dared not hint to Angelique more than ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... in the fearful commotion, may be thrown safely on to the shores of reunion. It was anticipated, especially by the rebels themselves, that these incalculable losses, these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the North with ruin and tear her to pieces with faction and disorder. But this anticipation of accumulated disasters, in which the wish was father to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable extent. The pecuniary ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... say, "What a poor figure does the proudest man make, my dear Pamela, under the sense of a concealed guilt, in company of the innocent who know it, and even of those who do not!—Since the casual expression of a baby shall overwhelm him with shame, and make him unable to look up without confusion. I blushed for myself," continued he, "to see how you were affected for me, and yet withdrew, to avoid reproaching me so much as with a look. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... had been a painful disillusion, and she knew well what it would mean to return home in disgrace with the de Vignes. Her cheeks burned and tingled still with the shame of the discovery. She felt that another of the old dreadful chastisements would overwhelm her utterly. And yet that she would most certainly have to endure it if she were unruly now was conviction that pressed like a cold weight upon her heart. Had not the letter she had received from her mother only that morning contained a stern injunction ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... prove himself in order to command and not to crave support. But Charles was elated with the success of his advertising campaign, and at the growth of his prestige among the artists.... 'Such a combination has never been known. We shall simply overwhelm the public.' ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... openwork, about the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to overwhelm her; as ladies did in past centuries and do ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... turned to do the work of the gods, answering the prayers of men or smiting them, and ever They sent Their swarthy servant Time to heal or overwhelm. And Time went forth into the worlds to obey the commands of the gods, yet he cast furtive glances at his masters, and the gods distrusted Time because he had known the worlds or ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... dull dream at the best. But there were numbers of both men and women unexpectedly capable of extremes of heroism, who took the burden of misery upon themselves and exhibited high spirits based on no evident excuse. Nothing could overwhelm ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... are occupied by about an hundred janisaries. Right before the town there is a hill of shifting sand, which gathers and increases with a west wind, insomuch, that they have an old prophecy among them, that this sand hill will one day swallow up and overwhelm the town, as it every year increases and destroys many gardens, though they employ every possible device to diminish this sand-bank, and to render it firm ground. The city is walled round, though of no great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot, remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were coming to overwhelm me with benedictions for which I had not bargained. Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me, he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My barns should burst their doors with plenty, and all my paths drop fatness. My face should be smeared with ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... irritation between France and Germany had increased to the point where open rupture was feared. For years Germany had been waiting for a propitious moment to swoop down on France and overwhelm her. The French intrigues in Morocco, which were leading visibly to a French Protectorate over that country, aroused German resentment, for the Germans coveted Morocco themselves. The Kaiser went so far as to invite Roosevelt to interfere with him in Morocco, but this, the President replied, was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... as she had seized the significance of Monjardin's verses, had grown deathly pale; stricken by sudden disillusionment, she felt a glacial chill overwhelm her body to the very marrow; she feared that she would faint straightway and provide a spectacle for the guests, who were all drinking her health, their eyes focussed upon her. A veil of tears spread before her sight.... In vain she tried to repress them, to force ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... was an overpowering will to see her. He turned, inch by inch, little degree by degree, knowing that if, when he turned, he looked into her eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm them, carry them along like straws on the flooding river. At last his head was turned; ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... was locked between two forces. And one, a tide that was bursting at its bounds, seemed about to overwhelm him. Finally that side of him, the retreating self, the ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... a bit of it!' cried Lady Davenant, almost gaily. 'When did anything in the world overwhelm her and what do you take her for? She'll only make some delightful odd speech. As for people knowing it,' she added, 'they'll know it whether he wants them or not. My poor child, how long do you expect ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... circumstances of my miserable fate, would wonder over each inequality of spirits I betrayed, condemn every tear I shed, read every letter I received, and, at the slightest appearance of equivocation or deceit, would banish me from his heart, and overwhelm me with his just anger. But it was too late, I said to myself—too late to retract, too late to think. I mentally closed my eyes, and passed through the next twenty-four hours like some one walking in ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... steering oar firmly with both hands, his restless eyes on the alert—a glance at the schooner ahead, as we rose on a sea, another at the mainsheet, and then one astern where the dark ripple of the wind on the water told him of a coming puff or a large white-cap that threatened to overwhelm us. The waves were holding high carnival, performing the strangest antics, as with wild glee they danced along in fierce pursuit—now up, now down, here, there, and everywhere, until some great sea of liquid green with its milk-white crest of foam rose from the ocean's throbbing bosom and drove ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... short-lived, for just then a strange knight with drawn sword rushed upon the giant. The maid watched the contest with breathless fear, and many times she thought that the tyrant would slay her protector. At last in one such moment the giant stooped to clutch a huge boulder with which he meant to overwhelm his adversary, when, overreaching himself, he slipped and fell headlong down ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... above May carry tidings of thee, who is he, In whom that sight doth wake such sad remembrance?" Forthwith he laid his hand on the cheek-bone Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws Expanding, cried: "Lo! this is he I wot of; He speaks not for himself: the outcast this Who overwhelm'd the doubt in Caesar's mind, Affirming that delay to men prepar'd Was ever harmful. "Oh how terrified Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one Maim'd of each hand, uplifted in the gloom The bleeding stumps, that ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... left ear three times, saying at each kiss: 'To thee!—For thee!—With thee!' Reflect again, Violette, before undertaking this cure. If you are not prepared for the most difficult sacrifices, the greatest misfortunes will overwhelm you and my sister Furious will be the mistress ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... to contend with the dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and rule all nations with a rod of iron. This prophecy was at that time understood universally by the sincere Christians to refer to the birth of Constantine, who was to overwhelm the paganism of the city on the seven hills, and it is still so explained; but it is evident that the heathens must have looked on it in a different light, and have regarded it as a foretelling of the birth ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... raged like a lion and assembled all the host of the Goths. He advanced from Ravenna and harassed the walls of Rome with a long siege. But after fourteen months his courage was broken and he raised the siege of the city of Rome and prepared to overwhelm Ariminum. Here he was baffled in like manner 313 and put to flight; and so he retreated to Ravenna. When besieged there, he quickly and willingly surrendered himself to the victorious side, together with his wife Mathesuentha and the ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... just shows how important it is for them to capture Liege quickly, Arthur," said Paul. "They know perfectly well that when they bring up a few more army corps and their big guns they can batter the forts to pieces and just overwhelm our garrison." ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... this infernal system are beginning to re-act upon the Christians, who are latterly kept in a constant state of alarm, fearing the number and disposition of the blacks, which threaten at no far distant period to overwhelm the south with some dreadful calamity.[12] Three incendiary fires took place at Orleans, during the month I remained in that city, by which several thousand bales of cotton were consumed. The condition of the slaves on the sugar or rice plantations, is truly wretched. They are ill-fed, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... words, Isaachar," cried the marquis. "Will you permit this scandal to be discovered, and involve the Countess of Arestino—myself—ay, and yourself, old man, in danger, and perhaps ruin? Perhaps, did I say? Nay, that ruin is certain to fall upon her—certain also to overwhelm you—for the Count of Arestino is a councilor of state, and," added Manuel, with slow, measured emphasis, "the dungeons of the inquisition open at his commands to receive ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... own hidden purposes. The Devil communicates with them through their idols or anitos, playing the role of the dead man whom they are adoring; and often he enters into the person of the priest himself, for the short space of the sacrifice, and makes him say and do things which overwhelm and terrify the onlookers. This divine fervor is also attained (the duties of the office being taught) through special friendship, or kinship, or as a legacy. This inheritance is highly esteemed by them, in their blindness—and through cupidity, for, besides ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... shown in its full force in me during that night. God suffered me not to drain at one draught my cup of woe, lest it should overwhelm my very soul. He vouchsafed to me the delusive belief, which. I long retained, of her inward presence. In me, before me, and around me, I saw that heavenly being who had been sent to me for one single year, to direct ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... stock-jobbing, the impossibility of opening small loans, the excessive price of manual labour, contributions exacted in advance, and the distress of most of the land-owners, who are not in a condition to shew favour to their tenants, are scourges which still overwhelm the country. But I am credibly informed that, in general, the rural inhabitants now lend a more attentive ear to instruction, and that prejudices have less empire over their reason. The great landed proprietors, whom terror had induced to fly their country, have, on recovering possession ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... foam, and their slopes are marbled with a beautiful spumy tracery. Very wonderful are these mottled waves: with a following sea, at one moment it seems impossible that the great mountain which is overtaking the ship will not overwhelm her, at another it appears inevitable that the ship will fall into the space over which she seems to be suspended and crash into ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... plan. The immense collection of guns, ammunition, railway material, and every kind of transport aroused high hopes. It was believed that the bombardment prolonged throughout many days with an intensity far greater than before the Somme would overwhelm the German resistance, and open the way to the Flanders coast and to the submarine bases then at the most successful height of their activity. These expectations were disappointed. The German positions no longer consisted of continuous trench lines, which could be reduced to shapeless ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... furies of the infernal regions had been let loose that night, and would overwhelm them. The ground trembled, and the hut swayed as if it were going to topple over. It was as if wild horses were prancing on the roof; as if howling ghosts rushed past the door, and as if owls and bats were beating ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... safe at last, for the time being, from the clutching water, rising and still rising below them; then Dick sped away. But what of Oscar: was he dead? and what if help should not reach them in time, and the tide should overwhelm them, after all? ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... gay butterflies that attract them in the form of pleasure and amusement: they forget the grave counsels of the thoughtful, till they find the path they have followed is beset with briers and thorns; and a thousand painful difficulties that were unseen, unexpected, overwhelm and bring them to a sad sense of their own folly; and, perhaps, the punishment of their errors does not fall upon themselves alone, but upon the innocent, who have unknowingly been made participators in ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... received by Athens was terrifying. "Quit your land and city and flee afar!" cried the prophetess. "Fire and sword, in the train of the Syrian chariot, shall overwhelm you. Get ye away from the sanctuary, with your ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I walked very swiftly, as if the heavy flood tide of social life were roaring at my heels, and would outstrip and overwhelm me, without all the better diligence in my escape. But, threading the more distant windings of the track, I abated my pace, and looked about me for some side-aisle, that should admit me into the innermost sanctuary of this green ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... only reckless, not audacious; and therefore peril, not punishment, befell us. The rocks smote our frail shallop; they did not crush it. Foam and spray dashed in our faces; solid fluid below the crest did not overwhelm us. There we were, presently, in water tumultuous, but not frantic. There we were, three men floating in a birch, not floundering in a maelstrom,—on the water, not under it,—sprinkled, not drowned,—and in a wild wonder how we got into it and how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... and went back to bed, and asked her what she wanted with me so early in the morning. She sat down on the bed, and began to overwhelm me with apologies. I replied by asking her why, if it was her principle to fly at her lovers like a tiger, she had slept almost in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... returned from that prowl into the forest, we found the inn dark. Such people as may have called in had gone home; but we suspected that Franziska had given the neighbours a hint not to overwhelm us on our first arrival. When we entered the big room, Franziska came in with candles; then she brought some matches, and also put on the table an odd little pack of cards, and went out. Her uncle and aunt had, even before we went out, come and bade us good-night formally, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... prove it. Refute the charges which have been brought against you, which overwhelm you, which induce me, the court, and everybody else, to consider you guilty. Speak, and ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... the seance of every species are his aiders and abettors—the unbeliever, whom believers overwhelm or bribe to acquiescence, the fair votaries who find prurient suggestions characteristic of the genuine medium, the lover of the lie through the natural love of it, the amateur, incapable of a real conviction, who plays safely with superstition, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... work which he was destined to overthrow, creating the monarchy which he reprobated, consecrating a fanatic king—a sort of madman, who passes across behind the transparent sheet of history with frantic and threatening gestures; and then Samuel has to overwhelm this extraordinary Saul under the burthen of his curses, to anoint David king—David, whom another prophet is to accuse of his crimes. And these inspired men succeed each other, continuing from year to year their task of guardians ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the arm-pit with a sleeve quilted with some woollen stuff, filled with rags and hair, and then rush on the enemy, the right hand wielding the knife."[3138]—Let us use these knives as soon as possible, for "what means are now remaining for us to put an end to the problems which overwhelm us? I repeat it, no other but executions by the people."[3139]—The Throne is at last down; but "be careful not to give way to false pity!.... No quarter! I advise you to decimate the anti-revolutionary members ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... would try to concentrate his mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used so eagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by a conscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... covers many miles of country, and the rain is falling in torrents; and, unless I am greatly mistaken, most of it will find its way into this river. Therefore must we be on our guard against a sudden spate, which may overwhelm us if we ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... possibilities of being? We cannot answer this question here. But we find suggestions from the spectrum and the spectroscope which may be worth our heeding. The materials with which we have to do in their most brilliant scientific theories seem at first to overwhelm us with their vastness and complexity. The hulks are so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the laws are so wide-sweeping, and at times so pitiless, the distances are so over-mastering, even the uses and beauties are so bewildering, that we bow in mute ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... whole. The natives greeted the first train of waggons with jubilant astonishment, but received all with the greatest friendliness and helpfulness. Particularly the Wa-Taveta, the Sultan of Useri, and the Masai tribes did not fail to overwhelm our travellers with proofs of their respect and love for the white brethren who had 'settled ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... they were besieged for eighteen months, till Megabyzus contrived to turn the water from one of the two streams, whereby the Athenian ships were stranded, and the Persian troops were able to march across the river bed, and overwhelm the Athenians with their numbers. A few only escaped to Cyrene. The entire fleet fell into the enemy's hands; and a reinforcement of fifty more ships, arriving soon after the defeat, was attacked unawares after it had entered the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Cambridge, is proving unsatisfactory, has married an Earl's daughter, and so on. That known, the letters tell their own tale. They reveal the writer too (I refer to Sir Benjamin): shrewd, clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters that overwhelm him in the end do not leave his readers unmoved; bankrupt and beaten he goes down fighting with the final characteristic wire, in response to a suggestion of compromise by his chief enemy, "Surrender be damned." A little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... gambling in stocks, who goes to his bed at night scheming how he may with impunity exploit his fellow-man, and who rises in the morning with a strained consciousness of possible fluctuations in the market which may overwhelm him in irretrievable disaster, lives in perils which easily bear comparison with those which threaten the precarious existence of primitive man. To masses of men in civilized communities the problem of the food supply ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... with the din of preparation throughout America for defensive war. It now was found that vigorous measures must be pursued to oppose the torrent which was preparing to overwhelm the colonies, which had now been dissevered from the British empire, by the declaration of independence. The continental army was now raising, and great numbers of American youth volunteered in the service ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... child, without any boasting or bragging. The world is awfully stupid! It adores well-bred egotism. We are all deeply inquisitive about people; and if you can reveal yourself without vanity, and are a lovable creature, the world will overwhelm you with love. You can't pay the world a greater compliment than to open your heart to it. You must not bore it, of course, nor must you seem to be demanding its applause. You must just seem to be in need of sympathy and comfort. You must be a little sad, a little tired, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... behold. It is in accordance with a wise plan of Providence that the deeds of past ages should perish with them, except the few needed to cast their gleam of light upon the world's future pathway. We are made capable of rescuing just enough for the highest purposes of life, not enough to overwhelm and burden us in our march toward the goal before us. It is thought by some that the point and finish of the ancient Greek authors, as compared with the moderns, is attributable to the fact that they were less perplexed with accumulated lore and the multiplication of books and subjects ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the church, murdered the king, and filled the nation with tumult and oppression; yet Cromwell had not the right of dissolving them, for all that he had before done could be justified only by supposing them invested with lawful authority. But combinations of wickedness would overwhelm the world, by the advantage which licentious principles afford, did not those, who have long practised perfidy, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... to-day,—speech demanding growth for a part of a country, denying it for the whole, speech ignoring the nationalist tendency so soon to overwhelm all bounds, all creeds in the making of a mighty America that should be a home for all the nations. But as the gray-headed old doctor went on he only voiced what was the earnest conviction of many of the ablest men of his time, both of the South and ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... on the spirits of the king, and their effect was increased by certain gloomy prognostics of a great calamity, which was shortly to overwhelm the country. His health rapidly gave way. He had died but two years before, and had been succeeded by his son Cacama, the present king, a young prince who was two-and-twenty years old when he ascended the throne, after a sanguinary war with an ambitious younger brother. In ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... before Jimmie Dale spoke. There seemed to be a horrible, ghastly dryness in his mouth; there seemed to well up from his soul and overwhelm him a world of mocking and sardonic irony. The Mole! The Mole was the leader of the gang with which the Pippin was allied; it was at the Mole's place that the Pippin usually lived; it was at the Mole's place that the police would first ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... back by the fire, yet still shrinking from the terror and uncertainty of the sea. She thought: "It is but death—why should I fear? The waves are at hand, to save me from all suffering." And the collective horror of hundreds of beings did not so overwhelm her as she had both fancied and feared; the tragedy of each individual life was lost in the confusion, and was she not ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... religion demands that they should wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking. And that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi, and almost the whole of India forswear foreign goods. There is a verse ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... thunderous unison of tread; and the rattling thunder-shocks, intermittent, though coming steadily nearer, served but to emphasize these foot strokes of the waves. The heavens above and the waters under the earth—these conspired, these marched together, to assail, to overwhelm, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... I dropped two of them with my rifle, bringing the others to a temporary halt. Again, I appealed to them to desist. But they only mistook my solicitude for them for fear, and, with shouts of rage and derision, leaped forward once again to overwhelm me. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Both of them in my presence have named thee their Cid—since Cid, in their language, is equivalent to lord, I shall not envy thee this glorious title of distinction; be thou, henceforth, the Cid; to that great name let everything yield; let it overwhelm with terror both Granada and Toledo, and let it indicate to all those who live under my laws both how valuable thou art to me [lit. that which thou art worth to me], and that [deep obligation] which I ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... and the security of each individual among them was not so much derived from the general protection of law, as from his own private power and that of his confederates. The authority of the monarch, though far from absolute, was irregular, and might often reach him: the current of a faction might overwhelm him: a hundred considerations of benefits and injuries, friendships and animosities, hopes and fears, were able to influence his conduct; and amidst these motives, a regard to equity, and law, and justice was commonly, in those rude ages, of little moment. Nor did any man entertain thoughts of opposing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... the city more closely in the veil of mist, angrily tugging at the sails of the vessels delayed in the harbour. And the Erinyes sang their gloomy songs to the hearts of the citizens and whipped up in their breasts that tempest which was later, to overwhelm the denouncers ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... drove a keen-edged but slender wedge into the curve of the Boer position, and was favourably placed to storm the ridge. A few score of Highlanders were now fingering the key with which it seemed possible to unlock the sluice gates and allow the flood waters of war to overwhelm the foe. But War is a game of chance. The key was snatched away and the issue of the day reversed by a man who had lost ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... thou had, my dear; no light, no fire; the unfriendly elements forgot thee utterly, nor have I time to bring thee hallowed to thy grave, but must cast thee scarcely coffined into the sea, where for a monument upon thy bones the humming waters must overwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple shells. O Lychorida, bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper, my casket and my jewels, and bid Nicandor bring me the satin coffin. Lay the babe upon the pillow, and go about this suddenly, Lychorida, while I say a priestly ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... gods and the tireless machinations of Fate. The widening circle of prosperity grows weaker as it spreads until the antagonistic forces which it has pushed back are made powerful by compression to resist and finally overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my skill in medicine that patients were brought to me from all the four quarters of the globe. Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying was a perpetual grief to their friends; wealthy testators whose legatees were desirous to come by their own; superfluous children ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... there the Trojan women, weeping, Sit ranged in many a length'ning row; Their heedless locks, dishevelled, sweeping Adown the wan cheeks worn with woe. No festive sounds that peal along, Their mournful dirge can overwhelm; Through hymns of joy one sorrowing song, Commingled, wails the ruined realm. "Farewell, beloved shores!" it said: "From home afar behold us torn, By foreign lords as captives borne— Ah, happy are ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... It is the survival of the fittest in a new realm. You study your victim, you find out his weaknesses and his foibles, and you know just where to plant your sting. You learn what he wants, and you take it away from him. You choose your allies carefully, and you surround him and overwhelm him; then when you get through with him, ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... food for thy sending," replied Sir Lancelot hastily, and with that they couched their spears. The first rush was over, but man and horse had withstood the shock. Again they fell back, measuring the distance with an eager and impetuous glance, and again they rushed on, as if to overwhelm each other by main strength, when, as fortune would have it, their lances shivered, both of them at once, in the rebound. The end of Sir Lancelot's spear, as it broke, struck his adversary's steed on the shoulder, and caused him to fall suddenly, as if sore wounded. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... seen with what naive admiration these fat deputies, enervated with good fortune, listened to this ascetic, this man of another age, like some Saint-Jerome who had left his Thebaid to overwhelm with his vigorous eloquence, in a full assembly of the Roman Empire, the shameless luxury of the prevaricators and of the concussionaires. How well they understood now this grand surname of "My conscience" which the courts had given him. In the galleries the enthusiasm rose higher ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... am often made heartsick by them; but heartsickness always makes me run to Christ, and one good look at Him pacifies me. This is in fact my panacea for every ill; and as to my own sinfulness, that would certainly overwhelm me if I spent much time in looking at it. But it is a monster whose face I do not love to see; I turn from its hideousness to the beauty of His face who sins not, and the sight of "yon lovely Man" ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... what Mr. Jordan knew and dreaded; the law was on his wife's side, and by applying at a police-court for protection she could overwhelm him with shame and ridicule, which would make life intolerable. Impossible to argue with this woman. Say what he might, the fault always seemed his. His wife was simply doing her duty—in a spirit of admirable thoroughness; he, in the eyes of a third person, would appear an unreasonable ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... Cecily—adding, 'I do not think he is coming out. He is having something to eat,' in hopes that this tardiness might be a preparation. She was relieved that Bertha rushed back again to monopolize Miss Raymond, and overwhelm her with schemes for walks under Mervyn's escort. Cecily let her talk, but made no promises, and the soft gentleness of those replies thrilled as pangs of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dreadful task before me. My spirit was bleeding from every stab that this girl had dealt me; yet I had to confess that her outburst of rage had challenged my admiration even more than her brightness in the hour that had gone before. How could I go through with my work? How could I bear to overwhelm her with the sorrow and disgrace that must crush on her if I proved to the world the awful facts that were burned on ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... he reflected upon the joy and satisfaction his friends and relations would experience upon his return; sometimes upon the congratulations and embraces of those who, being neither the one nor the other, would, nevertheless, overwhelm him with impertinent compliments: All these ideas passed quickly through his head; for a man deeply in love makes it a scruple of conscience not to suffer any other thoughts to dwell upon his mind than those of the object beloved. It was then the tender, endearing remembrance of what ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... usually slight, but the people very intent upon a verdict of guilty. He was very glad that at Exeter his colleague who sat upon the "crown side" had to bear the responsibilities.[25] The two women (he seems to have known of no more) were scarce alive as to sense and understanding, but were "overwhelm'd with melancholy and waking Dreams." Barring confessions, the other evidence he considered trifling, and he cites the testimony of a witness that "he saw a cat leap in at her (the old woman's) window, when it was twilight; ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... him that in his route he was sure to encounter Forrest, who always attacked with a vehemence for which he must be prepared, and that, after he had repelled the first attack, he must in turn assume the most determined offensive, overwhelm him and utterly destroy his whole force. I knew that Forrest could not have more than four thousand cavalry, and my own movement would give employment to every other man of the rebel army not immediately present with him, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... jealous? Was it forgotten that the House of Austria had once aspired to universal dominion? And would it be wise in the princes and commonwealths of Europe to lend their aid for the purpose of reconstructing the gigantic monarchy which, in the sixteenth century, had seemed likely to overwhelm them all? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... After making me promise to write, on the first doubt that any one might try to put into my mind, he might have remembered to do the same by me, instead of coming down in this way, not to explain, but to overwhelm me with his displeasure, without giving me a moment's time to justify myself. Edward seems strangely unkind too," she sighed, as she slowly untied her bonnet and put it away, as if to avoid tempting herself with the sight of it again. "I never knew Edward ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... more distinct drew the headland. Then it seemed to stand out in the dark ocean like some monster of the deep about to overwhelm us. It was a remarkable headland—once seen not likely to be forgotten. As we all stood gazing at it with dread and anxiety, I observed a person coming up on the poop deck. He advanced rapidly towards where the mates were standing. I thought I recognised the figure and appearance of Mr Barwell, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... humiliation at this discovery. I set my lips hard and straightened my limbs; raised my voice to a shrill, defiant pitch, and struggled in the dimming horror to select my adversary in the monkey-jacket and overwhelm him with bitter apostrophes. In vain! The novelty, the excitement, the enervation of that long, consuming fever, mastered my overtaxed physique. I knew that, if I did not cease, I should fall senseless to the floor. Only ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of a valuable estate, for thirty seven years; the time was now arrived, when the mounds of justice must be broken down by the weight of power, a whole deluge of destruction enter, and overwhelm an ancient and illustrious family, in the person of an innocent man. The world would view the diabolical transaction with amazement, none daring to lend assistance to the unfortunate; not considering, that property ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the Loss of all things in this Life, rather than tamely surrender the publick Liberty. The Eyes of the People of Britain seem to be fast closed; if they should ever be opened they will rejoyce, and thank the Americans for resisting a Tyranny which is manifestly intended to overwhelm them and the whole British Empire. Righteous Heaven will surely smile on a Cause so righteous as ours is, and our Country, if it does its Duty will see an End to its Oppressions. Whether I shall live to rejoyce with the Friends of Liberty and Virtue, my fellow ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least. It is evident that the circumference {GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA} offers far more chances of hiding than the circumference ABC, but a still more ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... and iron boot, Iron breeches, and on the head No hat, but an iron pot instead, And under the chin the bail (I believe they called the thing a helm); And the lid they carried they called a shield; And, thus accoutered, they took the field, Sallying forth to overwhelm The dragons and pagans that plagued the realm— So this modern knight Prepared for flight, Put on his wings and strapped them tight; Jointed and jaunty, strong and light; Buckled them fast to shoulder and hip— Ten feet they measured from tip to tip! And a helm had he, but that he wore, Not on ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... and the impropriety of Gothic ones doesn't mean that you are in any real danger of supposing chasubles to be anything more important relatively than, say, the uniform of a soldier compared with his valour and obedience and selflessness. Now don't overwhelm me for a minute or two. I haven't finished what I want to say. I wasn't speaking sarcastically when I said that, and I wasn't criticizing you. But you are not Cyril. By God's grace you have been kept from the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Hedwig could not be induced to study, but would overwhelm Nino with questions about his wonderful cousin who sang, so that he longed with his whole soul to tell her it was he himself who had sung. She saw his reluctance to speak about it, and she blushed when she mentioned the night at the Pantheon; but for her life she could not help talking ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... retina is evenly excited, and the local signs of all are simultaneously felt. This equable tension, this balance and elasticity in the very absence of fixity, give the vague but powerful feeling that we wish to describe. Did not the infinite, by this initial assault upon our senses, awe us and overwhelm us, as solemn music might, the idea of it would be abstract and moral like that of the infinitesimal, and nothing but an ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... and his only thought was that she had suspected him, had watched him, had tracked him, and had now come to overwhelm him with dishonor; and he felt that he ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... simply overwhelm me with their magnificence! They're beyond all price, and—and I've no idea what to do with such ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... whereof no reason can be given but the height of the water above the land; thirdly, to such as stand on the shore the sea seems to swell into the form of a round hill till it puts a bound upon our sight. Now that the sea, hovering thus over and above the earth, doth not overwhelm it, can be ascribed only to his Providence who 'hath made the waters to stand on an heap that they turn not ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... two weeks," (which have followed the first seven. Christ will then be killed after the sixty-nine weeks, that is to say, in the last week), "the Christ shall be cut off, and a people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary, and overwhelm all, and the end of that war shall accomplish ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... this, I would be obliged to employ a large portion of the money sent me by my uncle for the purchase of merchandise, and I was convinced that my uncle, who was inflexible in exacting fidelity to commercial regulations, would overwhelm me with his anger, but my heart gained the ascendency over my reason, and Christian charity triumphed. Listening only to my compassion, I ransomed the unfortunate woman, and with my own hands I unbound her chains. That was the ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... plain—are always the most fascinating to men. The sisters doted on each other: Mary taking the lead in society. 'I must even tell you,' Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, 'that they dress within the bounds of fashion, but without the excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons.' (One would almost have supposed that Horace had lived in the days ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... over quaking moss ankle-deep, or through long, rank grass, waist-high and water-rotted with sea-fog. Here they launched their boat of sea-lion skin on a bone frame, and pulled across a bay of ten miles to the farthermost hunting-grounds. Again, the natives overwhelm Drusenin with kindness. The Russian keeps his sentinels as {91} vigilant as ever pacing before the doors of the hut; but he goes unguarded and unharmed among the native dwellings. Perhaps, poor Drusenin was not above ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... jolting of her carriage, and she groaned continually, as much from her moral as from her physical sufferings. "It is horrible," said Marie Louise, "to see her suffer so." It rained in torrents, and the thunder roared as if to foretell all the misfortunes which were about to overwhelm the country. The roads, made still worse by the bad weather, were abominable. When the fugitives reached Buda, after a long and difficult journey, they were wet through, and nearly worn ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... struck him as humiliation enough; but to have been in love with that sort of woman came very near mental malady. He said "that sort of woman," because the vagueness of the term gave scope to the bitterness of resentment with which he tried to overwhelm her. It enabled him to create some such paradise of pain as that into which the souls of Othello and Desdemona might have gone together. Had he been a Moor of Venice he would doubtless have smothered her with a pillow; ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... Passing Amsterdam and Culemborg, it penetrated down into South Holland, whence it would be easy to pass back into Gueldres. Asperen was its next prey. Three times the citizens beat off the cruel foe: a few more to man their walls, and they might have driven him right away, to overwhelm others less fortunate ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... revulsions to materialism which is liable to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed in his body clamoring for expression—before it, too, should be hurtled into oblivion. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... commanders, and were sent to Savoy. The French aid to James in Ireland helped best in giving confidence to the raw Irish levies, but it was more than offset by the German troops brought over by William. The weakness, indecision, or worse, of James before Derry, his chicken-hearted failure to overwhelm Schomberg when he lay at his mercy before the arrival of William, ruined his chances. Remember that the Irish army, if defeated at the Boyne, was not broken, and was strong enough, when pursued by William, to repulse him with 500 killed and 1,000 wounded and to compel him to raise the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... reciting in Don Quixote, in the course of some discussion, "By Jingo, Mr. Sales." Sales was struck with horror. He said it was the most horrible phrase that ever came from the lips of mortal man, and he should think the walls of the building where they were would fall down on Whitney's head and overwhelm him. What awful and mysterious meaning the words "by Jingo" had for the old Spanish gentleman we never could discover. He declined to give any explanation and treated the subject as one to be avoided with horror ever after. I commend the question ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Smith the tall man erred, in that discussion with the little man, Mr. Brown. Those early sorrows were great things then. Very bitter grief may be in a very little heart. "The sports of childhood," we know from Goldsmith, "satisfy the child." The sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. I think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear, as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his biography. When five years old, he got ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... She is the cashier's sister, a poor old maid, humble and modest, who has made it her duty to make this call upon the wife of her brother's employer, and who is amazed at the warm welcome she receives. She is surrounded and made much of. "How kind of you to come! Draw up to the fire." They overwhelm her with attentions and show great interest in her slightest word. Honest Risler's smiles are as warm as his thanks. Sidonie herself displays all her fascinations, overjoyed to exhibit herself in her glory ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... him 'the worst returns to laughter.'[172] 'Bear free and patient thoughts,' he says to his father. His own thoughts are more than patient, they are 'free,' even joyous, in spite of the tender sympathies which strive in vain to overwhelm him. This ability to feel and offer great sympathy with distress, without losing through the sympathy any elasticity or strength, is a noble quality, sometimes found in souls like Edgar's, naturally buoyant and also religious. It may even be characteristic of him that, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... peculiarly instructive now. The immediate destruction of the enemy's works opposed to the Queen Charlotte, and the comparative impunity she thus obtained, shows the wisdom of laying the ships as close as possible, where the concentrated fire of her batteries may overwhelm the enemy, and destroy the few guns which alone can be opposed to her; whereas, by anchoring at a distance, the enemy's guns from a great extent of the works may be trained to bear on her, while her own shot strike with uncertain aim and diminished effect. The results of this latter course may be ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... made on purpose to frighten superstitious people into fits of piety and devotion, nor to overwhelm devoted cities with destruction; a volcano should be considered as a spiracle to the subterranean furnace, in order to prevent the unnecessary elevation of land, and fatal effects of earthquakes; and we may rest assured, that they, in general, wisely answer the end of their intention, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... cloud obscures the sun. Not forever would the demon of passion slumber and dream in my breast; with recovered strength it would wake again, and, ever increasing in power and ever baffled of its desire, would raise once more that black tempest of that past to overwhelm me. Other darker visions followed: I would see myself as in a magic glass, lying with upturned, ghastly face, with many people about me, hurrying to and fro, wringing their hands and weeping aloud with grief, shuddering at the abhorred sight of blood on their sacred, shining floors; ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Look there for your unchallengeable upper class! You feel that you are one of this our civilized community, that you cannot escape from it, and would not if you could. Good hope sustains you; weariness does not overwhelm you; in isolation you see no charms for vanity; personal pride is greatly moderated. Nor shall your title of citizenship exclude you from worlds of imagination or of devotion. The Comic spirit is not hostile to the sweetest songfully poetic. Chaucer bubbles with it: Shakespeare overflows: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and in general a very superficial one. His philosophy may be new in France, but is greatly exhausted here. He tries to imitate Montesquieu, and has heaped commonplaces upon commonplaces, which supply or overwhelm his reasoning; yet he has often wit, happy allusion;, and sometimes writes finely: there is merit enough to give an obscure man fame; flimsiness enough to depreciate a great man. After his book was licensed, they forced him to retract it by ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... conception, but they lower the thermometer. Look back, if you will, and add to the description the glimmering of the livid flames; the sulphurous hail and red lightning; yet altogether, however they overwhelm us with horror, fail of making us thoroughly, unendurably hot. The intense essence of flame has not ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... person of the king. The Egyptian court must have seemed oppressively splendid, with the brilliant and costly workmanship of Usertesen, to one who had lived a half-wild life for so many years; and, more than that, the recalling of all his early days and habits and friendships would overwhelm his mind and make it difficult to ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... consent to bear the burdens of government, should Egypt wish it of me, as yet I know not. Still he who wore the double crown is, I believe, dead in the midst of the sea; at the least I saw the waters overwhelm him and his army. Therefore, if only for an hour, I will be Pharaoh, that as Pharaoh I may judge of certain matters. Lady Merapi, tell me, I pray you, how came you to ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... was anciently the boundary between Carthage and Cyrene; and our author confirms the account of Sallust, that neither river nor mountain marks the confines. He also confirms the description given by Herodotus of the dreadful storms of sand that frequently arise and overwhelm the caravans in this part of the Syrtis. At the head of the Syrtis the ground is depressed, and this depression, our author supposes, continues to the Great Desert. Soon after he left this barren country, he entered Cyrenaica, the site ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... machine of the French army was then turned eastward against the armies of the coalition which England, under Pitt, was forming; and in a series of astonishing campaigns it was used to beat down the Austrians in 1805 at Austerlitz; to overwhelm the Prussians in 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt; and to force the Russians, after {190} a severe winter campaign in East Prussia, to come to terms in 1807. Napoleon and the Tsar, Alexander, meeting on the bridge at Tilsit, July 7, divided Europe between them by ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... and starry Heavens may terrify us; its immensity may seem to overwhelm us. But our inquiring thought flies curiously on the wings of dream, toward the remotest regions of the visible. It rests on one star and another, like the butterfly on the flower. It seeks what will best respond to its aspirations: and thus a kind ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach a large part of this force ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Sheridan, from imagination, luxuriating in its own display, and Burke from the same cause, added to his overpowering autocracy of temper—were but too much calculated to throw suspicion on the cause in which they were employed, and to produce a reaction in favor of the person whom they were meant to overwhelm. "Rogo vos, Judices,"—Mr. Hastings might well have said,—"si iste disertus est, ideo me damnari oportet?" [Footnote: Seneca, Controvers. lib. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... and other English Law Books, to satisfy the Clergy as to the law of conspiracy. This done, you overwhelm them with this sage ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... and would bring their guns to bear, if they let him have his way. So they took the long tubes from their carriages, and lashed rollers of barked oak under them, and with very stout ropes, and great power of swearing, dragged them into the proper place to overwhelm ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... silent. He was locked between two forces. And one, a tide that was bursting at its bounds, seemed about to overwhelm him. Finally that side of him, the retreating self, the weaker, found ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... much later in my forgotten life. He reminded me of my trip to Torquay, where I first met him: and all at once the whole history of my old visits to the Moores came back like a flood to me. The memory seemed to inundate and overwhelm my brain. They were the happiest time of all life, those delightful visits, when I met Jack and fell in love with him, and half confided my love to my Cousin Minnie. Strange to say, though at Torquay itself I'd forgotten ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Shapes that wrestled with the squared Towers. They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm them. Before they could strike the City swept closer; had hidden them ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... encompassed by a thousand warring forces, by physical elements which inflict pleasure and pain, by dangers seen and unseen, by the influences of a tempting, sinful world, yet endued by God with power to contend with all, to perfect himself by conflict with the very forces which threaten to overwhelm him. Such is the idea of a man. Happy he in whom it is unfolded by ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... it intermitted its wrath only to increase its strength; soon the sounding squadrons of the air returned to their attack, and renewed their ravages with redoubled fury; and the stately dome rocked amidst the wheeling clouds. The impregnable clouds tottered on its basis, and threatened to overwhelm those whom it was intended to protect, the vessel was almost rent in pieces, and scarcely secure; where then was a place of safety? Sleep affrighted flew, diversion was turned into horror; all was uproar in the elements; all was consternation ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... himself redden. And a cold fear seemed to overwhelm him. He realized that Strom was a zealot, and he knew he would not hesitate to kill. This prompt penetration of his disguise was something he had ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... not impossible however, to withhold one's respect from those barbarians who could thus change the face of art, almost of nature; who could overwhelm courage and counteract learning; who not only devoured the works of wisdom and the labours of strength, but left behind them too a settled system of feudatorial life and aristocratic power, still undestroyed in Europe, though hourly ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... had risen as he pursued his lonely road and it shone clear through a gathering scud that threatened soon to overwhelm the silver light. Clouds flew fast and, above Brendon's head, telegraph wires hummed the song of a gathering storm. The man's thoughts proceeded as irregularly as the fitful and shouting wind. He weighed each word that ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... last strides, and lose, lose by a neck, Lose by an inch, but lose, and bring the wreck A day's march nearer. Now begins again The agony of waiting for the pain. The agony of watching ruin come Out of man's dreams to overwhelm ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... never landed in England. When its sails appeared, and it seemed as though it must overwhelm the small English fleet that was opposed to it, Queen Elizabeth on horseback rode among her soldiers, encouraging and cheering them, and urging them to fight to their last drop of blood in defense of their country. But the English fleet, under Sir Francis Drake, put ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... or step on and off the highway of holiness. She dwelt there. That does not imply that never during those thirty years was she overcome by Satan. Once, into a deep sorrow was poured the bitterness of gall through the wickedness of another. The enemy came in like a flood, threatening to overwhelm and root up many precious things, but the Spirit of the Lord was there to lift up a standard against him. 'If ye forgive not your enemies, neither will your Father forgive you,' was the word that came to her heart. She closed her lips, hushed her sobs, crept to the feet ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... would speak as Gunga Dass did to me throughout that long afternoon. I was powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me again and again. I can compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the overpowering nausea of the Channel passage—only my agony was of the spirit and infinitely ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... his knees, and taking the Baron's hand]. My Lord, you overwhelm me with confusion, as well as ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... to the earth, and the upper one to heaven, and would in fact reach still farther were there space to admit of it. Fire flashes from his eyes and nostrils. The Midgard serpent, placing himself by the side of the wolf, vomits forth floods of poison which overwhelm the air and the waters. Amidst this devastation heaven is cleft in twain, and the sons of Muspell ride through the breach. Surtur rides first, and both before and behind him flames burning fire. His sword outshines the sun itself. Bifrost, as they ride over it, breaks to pieces. Then ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... in Scotland. The occasion was one in which gallant bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, and indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a different stamp from James might even then have so inspired the Highland clansmen, and so made use of his opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the Hanoverian forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But James was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He had graceful manners, a mild, serene temper, and great power of application to work. His personal courage was undoubted, and he was willing enough ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... shall not be overcome, but will so strive and warsle aneath the foul grips of that rampant Arminian, the English high-priest Laud, that he shall himself be cast into the mire, or choket wi' the stoure of his own bakiefu's of abominations, wherewith he would overwhelm and bury the Evangil. Yea, even though the shield of his mighty men is made red, and his valiant men are in scarlet, he shall recount his worthies, but they shall ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... observes, on closing the history of Napoleon Bonaparte, that the reader may be disposed to pause a moment to reflect on the character of that wonderful person, on whom fortune showered so many favours in the beginning and through the middle of his career, to overwhelm its close with such deep and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... ceremonial of turning out the guard in her honor, the formality with which she was conducted from corridor to corridor and from hail to hail, the immensity and gorgeousness of the vast audience hall in which she was finally left alone with the Emperor; all these did not so much overwhelm her as exalt her. She felt herself indeed ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and you will find that the tonnage of the United Kingdom, to which the reciprocity treaties apply, have increased considerably under one-half, while the trade to which they did not apply has more than trebled its tonnage. To overwhelm the defalcations in the British trade with the reciprocity states, by the extended or more prosperous state of the general trade, was both unfair and disingenuous. Yet, this has Mr. Labouchere not a moment hesitated to do. Knowing, for he must have known, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... oppressed the heart of the poor prisoner whenever the queen entered the room; no one heard the stern, hard, threatening words of Sophia; no one supposed that she came, not to nurse the sick girl, but to overwhelm her with reproaches. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... principal figures in that affair parted each other's company fully realizing that hostilities were at hand. To say that Harrison was bound to sit helplessly in his capital while his enemies gathered a force sufficient to overwhelm him, and all without a move on his part to avert a calamity, but illustrates the foolishness of the whole contention. Immediately on the breaking up of the council, Tecumseh departed with a portion of his braves to organize and cement ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... time high or enduring spirits, but such as she had were now completely quelled. A dreadful feeling of coming evil—a foreboding of misery, such as will sometimes overwhelm stronger minds than Anty's, seemed to stifle her; and she continued sobbing till she fell into hysterics, when Meg and Jane were summoned to her assistance. They sat with her for above an hour, doing all that kindness and affection could suggest; but after a time Anty told them ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the world from the terrible oppression. Wars on wars were waged; provinces on provinces were deluged with blood; coalitions, bound by sacred oaths, were formed against the giant tyranny. And yet the hierarchy managed to maintain its assumptions and to overwhelm all remedial attempts. Whether made by individuals or secular powers, by councils or governments, the result was the same. The Pontificate still triumphed, with its claims unabridged, its dominion unbroken, ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... not that faith, in the power of which alone Satan can be resisted; and therefore his eyes were holden so that he could not see the snares which the subtle foe was laying around him, nor could he, in his own strength, bear up against the strong tide which was threatening to overwhelm him. ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... to war for Oregon, how long would it be before her starving millions would rise in infuriated masses, and overwhelm their bloated aristocracy! He would say, then, if war ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... evidently being afraid of her being jerked overboard—an event but too likely to occur, from the way the ship was rolling. On pulled the boat, now sinking down deep into the trough of the sea, which curled into mountain billows, and seemed about to overwhelm her; now she rose up high on the crest of a wave. Many of those who gazed at her held their breath, scarcely believing that she could possibly live amid the tumult of waters. Slowly she proceeded, guided by the well-practised hand of the old boatswain. She was close to the wreck. Now ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... peaceable possession of a valuable estate, for thirty seven years; the time was now arrived, when the mounds of justice must be broken down by the weight of power, a whole deluge of destruction enter, and overwhelm an ancient and illustrious family, in the person of an innocent man. The world would view the diabolical transaction with amazement, none daring to lend assistance to the unfortunate; not considering, that property should ever be under the protection of law; and, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... was fine and cold, and the heights we had gained brought us into the very sky. The immensities appeared only as lights: the higher light, a brilliance of stars; the lower light, a glow of fires. The frightful bombardment with which the Germans overwhelm us is really a ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... Nile. Here they were besieged for eighteen months, till Megabyzus contrived to turn the water from one of the two streams, whereby the Athenian ships were stranded, and the Persian troops were able to march across the river bed, and overwhelm the Athenians with their numbers. A few only escaped to Cyrene. The entire fleet fell into the enemy's hands; and a reinforcement of fifty more ships, arriving soon after the defeat, was attacked unawares after it had entered the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat, tipped over his left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty; when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and merchants, to overwhelm him with obsequious attention; when he shouldered his way to the bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized him, and—apologized. They got a look in reply, that made them tremble in their boots, and by this time, a gorgeous ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... day went on, and the St. Luke left off zig-zagging, the relief of those on board was the relief of a reprieve from death. Almost everybody was cured of sea-sickness, and quite everybody was ready to overwhelm his neighbour with cordiality and benevolence. Rich people didn't mind poor people, and came along from the first class and talked to them just as if they had been the same flesh and blood as themselves. A billionairess native to Chicago, who ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Henry. O foolish youth! Thou seek'st a greatness that will overwhelm thee. Stay but a little; for my cloud of dignity Is held from falling by so weak a wind, That it will quickly drop; my day is dim. Thou hast stolen THAT, which after some few hours Were thine without offence; and at my death Thou ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... hope, the poet's prayer: Alas for England, and her tarnish'd crown, Her sun of ancient glory going down, Her foes triumphant in her friends' despair: What wonder should the billows overwhelm A bark so mann'd by Comus and his crew, "Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm?" Yet, no!—we will not fear; the loathing realm At length has burst its chains; a motley few, The pseudo-saint, the boasting infidel, The demagogue, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and when, alone at last, he would try to concentrate his mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used so eagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by a conscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... comrades at the hotel, but stayed with them only a little while, because he, of course, was to dine with Sylvia and the Graysons. All the others had been invited, but they did not wish to overwhelm the candidate on this day of all days, and none ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... "And when we have slaughtered the animals, what shall we do?" "From the hands of fair women take the drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with wine and mead." "Horn in hand,—what then?" "Bravely carouse until drunkenness overwhelm you—all to the honour of the gods, that they may bless the marriage!" The rough warriors break into laughter, and in uncouth jollity stamp with their feet and spear-butts. "Great good fortune is indeed abroad on the Rhine when Hagen the grim grows jovial!" Not the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... unsatisfactory, has married an Earl's daughter, and so on. That known, the letters tell their own tale. They reveal the writer too (I refer to Sir Benjamin): shrewd, clear-headed, vulgar and of bull-dog courage. The disasters that overwhelm him in the end do not leave his readers unmoved; bankrupt and beaten he goes down fighting with the final characteristic wire, in response to a suggestion of compromise by his chief enemy, "Surrender be damned." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... and a half were not sufficiently strong to carry the second position; so I sent for the two reserve battalions, and ordered the cavalry to pass the river, and follow on our right flank the march of our columns. During this time the enemy had endeavored to overwhelm us on both sides. Major Becdelievre brought together what remained of his battalion, rushed upon the fusileers and forced them back into the wood whence they had come." These were splendid feats of arms. But the excessive inferiority of Lamoriciere's artillery and numbers made victory impossible. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... and the Committee on Ways and Means, one of the most interesting and able bodies of expert lobbyists that has ever been developed in the experience of any country,—men who know so much about the matters they are talking of that you cannot put your knowledge into competition with theirs. They so overwhelm you with their familiarity with detail that you cannot discover wherein their scheme lies. They suggest the change of an innocent fraction in a particular schedule and explain it to you so plausibly that you ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... rumour of wrong or cruelty. No woman suffering, or alleged to be suffering, from the cruelty of a husband, would ever call for his sympathy in vain. It was, however, cases of cruelty to little children that most tended to overwhelm his judgment. His burning horror at the mere idea of such deeds knew no bounds. A wife might to some extent be able to protect herself from the brutalities of her husband, but what chance had a helpless, friendless, terrified child, incapable ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... dear Trenta!" cries the count, holding up both his hands in remonstrance; "you overwhelm me. I require no such inducements; they horrify me. Enrica Guinigi is sufficient in herself—so bright a jewel requires no ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... upon her like a blow that she felt at once all over, upon body, heart and mind. The discovery rushed out from its ambush to overwhelm. The truth of it, making all arguing futile, numbed her faculties. But though at first it deadened her, she soon revived, and her being rose into aggressive opposition. A wild yet calculated courage like that which animates the leaders of splendid forlorn hopes flamed in her little person—flamed ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually get ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... driven from the devastated scenes of his unholy conquest. The tide of conflict which during the dark days of midsummer threatened to overwhelm the allied forces has been turned into glorious victory. As the sounds of battle die away and the beaten foe hurries from the field it is fitting that the conquering armies should pause to give thanks to the God of Battles, who has guided ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... mother," she answered, in a grave voice. "You will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother's dying farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with those assurances ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... penetrate the soul, imbrue the soul, absorb the soul, affect the soul, disturb the soul. absorb, rivet the attention; sink into the mind, sink into the heart; prey on the mind, distract; intoxicate; overwhelm, overpower; bouleverser[Fr], upset, turn one's head. fascinate; enrapture &c. (give pleasure) 829. agitate, perturb, ruffle, fluster, shake, disturb, startle, shock, stagger; give one a shock, give one a turn; strike all of a heap; stun, astound, electrify, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... our dear one lies dying; when we have struggled through a night hideous with the phantoms of ruin and disgrace, then the dawn comes, and the sun. We lift our seamed faces to the bright sky and hope again. For if there is still harmony in the heavens, how can the discord of the earth overwhelm us? So we comfort our hearts, foolishly exalting our troubles to the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... came forward, at the appeal, to the front railing of the platform. The first sight of her judges, the first shock on confronting the pitiless curiosity of the audience, seemed to overwhelm Rose. She turned from deadly pale to crimson, then to pale again, and hid her face on her brother's shoulder. How fast she heard his heart throbbing! How the tears filled her eyes as she felt that his ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... his grateful countrymen when the Advocate was contending at a momentous crisis with storms threatening to overwhelm the republic. Alas! where ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of Moorish fortresses, were around and above him;—the dark and heavy thunder clouds that advanced slowly, seemed like the shrouds of these specters of departed greatness; they approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if Nature herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely valley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom before the approach of night. Stanton gazed around. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Breviary hurriedly, or who may be tempted to acquire the habit, should weigh well the words read therein (Friday's Vespers) "Labor labiorum ipsorum operiet eos; cadent super eos carbones" (Ps. 139). "The labour of their lips shall overwhelm them; burning coals shall ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... set out for Lyons, where there awaited him the deputies of the Cisalpine Republic, assembled for the election of a president. Everywhere on his route he was welcomed with fetes and congratulations, with which all were eager to overwhelm him on account of the miraculous manner in which he had escaped the plots of his enemies. This journey differed in no wise from the tours which he afterwards made as Emperor. On his arrival at Lyons, he received the visit of all the authorities, the constituent bodies, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... rebellion would be suppressed in ninety days, and that an undisciplined force of seventy-five thousand men or even five times that number would march to Richmond, clear the banks of the Mississippi, capture New Orleans, and overwhelm the whole South, had given way to more reasonable and rational views before Congress convened at the regular session in December. Still the slow progress that was made by the Union armies, and the immense war expenditures, to which ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... and he concluded that Leo was equally interested in his foster-father. It was not pleasant to tell the boy that the barber had fallen in a fit, and might die from the effects of it; and if he did, Leo might not be able to give him the information he needed. It would confuse his mind, and overwhelm him with grief. Mr. Checkynshaw could not see why poor people should grieve at the sickness or death of their friends, though it was a fact they did so, just like rich people of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... this wonderful, when, you receivers depress their senses by hunger? Is this wonderful, when by incessant labour, the continual application of the lash, and the most inhuman treatment that imagination can devise, you overwhelm their genius, and hinder it from breaking forth?—No,—You confound their abilities by the severity of their servitude: for as a spark of fire, if crushed by too great a weight of incumbent fuel, cannot be blown ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... devoted, so generous. Indeed, he was perfection in her eyes, but still something was lacking. Outwardly she could find no fault with him, but there were times when she feared that she did not make him happy; and yet, if she ever told him so, he would overwhelm her with ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... for a moment. "I am a godless man," he said. "The stars and space and time overwhelm my imagination. I cannot imagine anything ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... about seven miles in circumference, and is covered with grass and rushes, but it shakes under the least pressure, and will swallow up nearly anything. In 1776, after heavy rains, it burst, and, as in Ireland, streams of black peaty mud began to creep over the plain and to overwhelm the houses. It was the scene of a battle fought on November 24th, 1542, when the English Army under Sir Thomas Wharton defeated a Scottish Army of 10,000 men, who were either killed, drowned, or taken prisoners. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and says, If we tolerate these exchanges, foreign nations will overwhelm us with their produce. We will have cotton goods from England, coal from Belgium, woolens from Spain, silks from Italy, cattle from Switzerland, iron from Sweden, corn from Prussia, so that no industrial pursuit will any longer be ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... knew whether she understood or not. She gazed at him as if half comprehending his words, and then the fact of his having returned from the House of the Leopard seemed to overwhelm every other thought, and she murmured, "O Christian, I am afraid of thy God ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... for the poet had in his keeping the key which alone could give admission to the beautiful world which lay locked up in his own soul; but yet it was easy to him, if he thought they were observed, to play his part, and to overwhelm Pentaur with words which, to the drivers, were devoid of meaning, and which made them laugh by the strange blundering fashion in which he stammered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... portions of the wrecks, which have been scattered in the fearful commotion, may be thrown safely on to the shores of reunion. It was anticipated, especially by the rebels themselves, that these incalculable losses, these tremendous shocks and sudden changes, would utterly overwhelm the North with ruin and tear her to pieces with faction and disorder. But this anticipation of accumulated disasters, in which the wish was father to the thought, has not been realized to any appreciable extent. The pecuniary losses have ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... submissive, law-abiding spirit. The possibility of evading the law never even suggests itself. There is many a feeble mother of grown and growing "Sissys" to whom the spring or fall dressmaking appears like an avalanche coming to overwhelm her, or a Juggernaut coming to roll over her. She asks not, "How shall I escape?" but, "How shall I endure?" Let her console herself. These semi-annual experiences are all "mission." All sewing is "mission;" all cooking is "mission." It matters not what she cooks, nor what she sews. "Domestic," ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... silently. She had not expected this from Arthur. She thought he would overwhelm her with praise; and, instead, he sat there like a judge laying all her faults before her. Stern critic! Somehow he didn't seem just ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... Jay's honor was in great part to overwhelm and stamp out the undertone of growl and snarl that filled the air. Many said that peace had been gained at awful cost, that Jay had deferred to royalty and trifled with the wishes of ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... too evident that if he had carried out the idea of strangling Caffie, all the difficulties against which he had struggled, and which would overwhelm him, if not the following day, at least in a few days, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Dutch to have fought with some advantage the combined fleets of two such powerful nations; but nothing less than a complete victory could serve the purpose of De Wit, or save his country from those calamities which from every quarter threatened to overwhelm her. He had expected, that the French would make their attack on the side of Maestricht, which was well fortified, and provided with a good garrison; but Lewis, taking advantage of his alliance with Cologne, resolved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... the reef. It is time to be away, for we see a fleet of canoes approaching from the north. We hoist sail. The sea is smooth, and we glide rapidly over it, but on come the canoes still faster. They may overwhelm us with their numbers. Much of our powder has got wet. The men do not know it though. Happily the savages catch sight of the schooner and our tent left on the sand-bank. Their eagerness to secure the plunder from the wreck overcomes every other consideration, and they dash over the reef, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... as of coming storm in Wall Street for several weeks, and this had culminated in a small, and probably a sham, tempest, with more stage thunder and lightning than any real. However, it was on that very account just the sort of cataclysm to overwhelm phantom and illusory ships of fortune like Arthur Carrolls. That week he acknowledged to himself that his career in the City was over, that it was high time for him to shut up his office and to shake the dust of the City from ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the longer the time before it is fully realized. Susan's loss of the money that represented so much of savage if momentary horror, and so much of unconscious hope this calamity did not overwhelm her for several days. Then she yielded for the first time to the lure of opium. She had listened longingly to the descriptions of the delights as girls and men told; for practically all of them smoked—or took cocaine. But ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... stand on the rear platform of a train and see the mountains away from which we are rushing rise and impend as if to overwhelm us, so in moving farther from his past very rapidly now, it seemed to follow him as a landscape growing always nearer and clearer. His mind dwelt more on the years when hatred had so ruined him, costing him the only woman he had ever asked ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... suggested the blossoming, the begetting of life. Prayer came but slowly to his lips; fancies made his mind wander. He perceived things he had never seen before—the gentle wave of her chestnut hair, the rounded swell of her rosy throat. She had to assume a sterner air and overwhelm him with the splendour of her sovereign power to bring him back to the unfinished sentences of his broken prayer. At last the sight of her golden crown, her golden mantle, all the golden sheen which made of her a mighty princess, reduced him once more to slavish submission, and his prayer ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... escaped, and only escaped. We had been only reckless, not audacious; and therefore peril, not punishment, befell us. The rocks smote our frail shallop; they did not crush it. Foam and spray dashed in our faces; solid fluid below the crest did not overwhelm us. There we were, presently, in water tumultuous, but not frantic. There we were, three men floating in a birch, not floundering in a maelstrom,—on the water, not under it,—sprinkled, not drowned,—and in a wild wonder how we got into it and how ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... they had got within five or six feet of the bottom of the ocean. There the metal was still clearly visible, but even the most hardy miners would scarcely have ventured on an attempt to win another grain from the rock overhead, lest the water should rush in and overwhelm them, and ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... already, and though the weather has brightened up a little with me, yet there has always been since a tempest brewing round me in the grim sky of futurity, which I pretty plainly see will some time or other, perhaps ere long, overwhelm me, and drive me into some doleful dell, to pine in solitary, squalid wretchedness.—However, as I hope my poor country muse, who, all rustic, awkward, and unpolished as she is, has more charms for me than any other of the pleasures ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... life, the lord of help, cut off his sovereignty; judge not his judgment; carry away his path; annihilate the march of his armies; cast an evil look upon him to uproot his rule, and fix for him the loss of his land. May the evil sentence of Shamash quickly overwhelm him; deprive him of life among the living above; and below in the earth, deprive his ghost of water. May Sin, the lord of the sky, the god who creates, whose ray is splendid among the gods, deprive him of crown and throne ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... after sending his despatches to the council Rutherford set forth at the head of twenty-five hundred men to protect the frontiers of North Carolina and to overwhelm the foe. Leading the South Carolina army of more than eighteen hundred men, Colonel Andrew Williamson directed his attack against the lower Cherokee towns; while Colonel Samuel Jack led two hundred Georgians against the Indian towns ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... throughout all Italy, so many and such shocking examples of violence and avarice as in this city. Has our country fostered us only to be her destroyer? Have we been victorious only to effect her ruin? Has she honored us that we may overwhelm her with disgrace? Now, by that faith which is binding upon all good men, I promise you, that if you still conduct yourselves so as to make me regret my victory, I will adopt such measures as shall cause you bitterly to repent of having misused it." The reply of the ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... death-bed he summoned the patriarch Goldsmid, and delivered into his hands a box, which he strictly enjoined should not be opened till a tertain period which the Ba'al Shem specified, and in case of disobedience a torrent of fearful calamities would overwhelm the Goldsmids. The patriarch's curiosity was not aroused for some time; but in a few years after the Ba'al Shem's death, Goldsmid, the aged, half sceptic, half curious, forced open the fatal box, and then the Goldsmids began to learn what it ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... wants Cage Birds; that one over there wants The Motor—ah, well, The Auto-Car, that's near enough. Soon he would begin to know the different types; he would learn to distinguish between the patrons of The Dancing Times and of The Vote, The Era and The Athenaeum. Delightful surprises would overwhelm him at intervals; as when—a red-letter day in all the great stations—a gentleman in a check waistcoat makes the double purchase of Homer's Penny Stories and The Spectator. On those occasions, and they would be very rare, his faith in human nature ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... to universal dominion? And would it be wise in the princes and commonwealths of Europe to lend their aid for the purpose of reconstructing the gigantic monarchy which, in the sixteenth century, had seemed likely to overwhelm them all? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ruin was overtaking the fortunes of the provincials through the combined pressure of private rapine and public taxation, I grieved no less than the sufferers. When at a season of grievous scarcity a forced sale, disastrous as it was unjustifiable, was proclaimed, and threatened to overwhelm Campania with starvation, I embarked on a struggle with the praetorian prefect in the public interest, I fought the case at the king's judgment-seat, and succeeded in preventing the enforcement of the sale. I rescued the consular Paulinus from the gaping jaws of the court ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... the Duke of Milan's daughter, whose dowry had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry when she heard of her husband's murder. Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, and in which a passion for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest winter, it was said, ever known for several centuries, taking with her all her children. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... while the weeds are suffered to grow unmolested, and are provided with such tenacity of life, and such methods of propagation, that the gardener must maintain a continual struggle or they will hopelessly overwhelm him? What hidden virtue is there in these things, that it is granted them to sow themselves with the wind, and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... I observed that this bush and the Eucalyptus dumosa grew only where the sand seemed too barren and loose for the production of anything else; so loose indeed was it that, but for this dwarf tree and prickly grass, the sand must have drifted so as to overwhelm the vegetation of adjacent districts, as in other desert regions where sand predominates. Nature appears to have provided curiously against that evil here by the abundant distribution of two plants so singularly adapted ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... its exercise be supremely good and supremely reasonable, therefore supremely just and equitable. From him certainly is all power; he is unquestionably King of kings, and Lord of lords. By him kings reign and magistrates decree just things. He may, at his will, set up or pull down kings, rear or overwhelm empires, foster the infant colony, and make desolate the populous city. All this is unquestionably true, and a simple dictate of reason common to all men. But in what sense is it true? Is it true in a supernatural sense? Or is it true only in the sense that it is true that ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... smiling. 'Wait till you are fit for it, and I will overwhelm you. Do you suppose I don't know all about the partisan literature you have ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rushed on: "Your husband comes here, broken with grief because of this affliction; and you overwhelm him with the most cruel and wicked reproaches with charges you have no way in the world of proving——" And the old lady caught her niece by the hand. "My child! Come, do your ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... additionally to take in the various sufferings of the unhappy slaves. These accounts I could seldom get time to read till late in the evening, and sometimes not till midnight, when the letters containing them were to be answered. The effect of these accounts was in some instances to overwhelm me for a time in tears, and in others to produce a vivid indignation, which affected my whole frame. Recovering from these, I walked up and down the room. I felt fresh vigour, and made new determinations of perpetual warfare against this impious trade. I implored strength that I ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Hildegarde, quickly. "I was only thinking of the appalling number of things there are to know. They overwhelm me! They bury me! A mountain weighs me down, and on its top grows a—a teasel. Why, I never heard of the thing! I am not sure that I am clear what a fuller is, except that his earth is ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... come down upon us. At times the thunder was so continued, that it was conceived some ship was firing its guns for assistance. At other times there would fall such incessant and heavy torrents of rain for two or three days together as if an universal deluge were going to overwhelm the world. This almost unceasing war of the elements perplexed the men and reduced them almost to despair, so that they were continually wet and could not get half an hours rest at a time, always beating up to windward. In ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the journey: Sometimes he reflected upon the joy and satisfaction his friends and relations would experience upon his return; sometimes upon the congratulations and embraces of those who, being neither the one nor the other, would, nevertheless, overwhelm him with impertinent compliments: All these ideas passed quickly through his head; for a man deeply in love makes it a scruple of conscience not to suffer any other thoughts to dwell upon his mind than those of the object beloved. It was then the tender, endearing remembrance of what ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that they are more powerful than anything we have ever seen. Forget not, too, that a radio message to Jupiter will bring down ships with hundreds, nay, thousands, of her fighting men with weapons to overwhelm all opposition." ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... teemed through his brain as he rode. Now he would fall into a sweat of panic as fantastic specters of hideous possibilities arose and confronted him, now only a world of grief would overwhelm him. Again a passion of jealousy would drive him to the verge of madness, only to be followed swiftly by that lurking self-pity which robbed him of the wholesome human instincts inspired by the spirit of battle in affairs ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the clouds gathered and formed an army which stormed the zenith and threatened to overwhelm the pure light of the planet. The lesser stars vanished, two or three falling in their haste and losing themselves forever in infinity. The night ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... wanderings, haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion, that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm him with ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... with me, without friends, p 260 Without any hope of help there, In my dire distress appealed To the beauty still so perfect Of my poor pretended wife: If for aught I did I ever Could feel shame, this act alone Would most surely overwhelm me; Since it is the lowest baseness That the vilest breast descends to, To put up to sale one's honour, And to trade in love's caresses. Scarce with shameless front had I This base plan to her suggested, When concealing ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... stared in silent bewilderment. For some moments he seemed perfectly stupefied; then, recovering himself, he began to overwhelm the count with a torrent of questions. Had he noticed, ever since the 1st of January, that the sun had risen in the west? Had he noticed that the days had been only six hours long, and that the weight of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... time of his enlightenment. It is the earliest example of a Kavya, usually translated as artificial epic, but here literary skill is subservient to the theme and does not, as too often in later works, overwhelm it. The Buddha is its hero, as Rama of the Ramayana, and it sings the events of his earlier life in a fine flow of elaborate but impassioned language. Another of his poems,[206] discovered only a few years ago, treats of the conversion ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... admired for his sweet melodies, lovely pictures, and wild prophetic imaginings. His indignant remonstrances, intermingled with grand imprecations, burst in thunder from a heart overcharged with the love of his kind, and roused to a keener sense of all oppression by the wrongs which sought to overwhelm himself. But as he recedes further in time, and men are able to see more truly the proportions of the man, they will judge, that without having gained the rank of a great reformer, Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy and lofty ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... confronted disaster. To realise how deeply Fielding felt the pain of such struggles when falling upon "the best, the worthiest and the noblest of women" we need but turn again to his own pages. If, cries Amelia's husband, when his distresses overwhelm him, "if I was to suffer alone, I think I could bear them with some philosophy"; and again "this was the first time I had ever felt that distress which arises from the want of money; a distress very dreadful indeed ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... marquis. "Will you permit this scandal to be discovered, and involve the Countess of Arestino—myself—ay, and yourself, old man, in danger, and perhaps ruin? Perhaps, did I say? Nay, that ruin is certain to fall upon her—certain also to overwhelm you—for the Count of Arestino is a councilor of state, and," added Manuel, with slow, measured emphasis, "the dungeons of the inquisition open at his commands to receive the heretic or ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... was threatening; yet our boat, with the wind about two points free, rushed gallantly along, rising on the waves like a sea-bird, and sinking into the hollow of the waters as if she had no fear of any attempt on their part to overwhelm her. Thus did we continue to run on during the night, every hour the gale increasing, the billows mounting up until they broke in awful and majestic crests, and often so near to us that we presented our backs in a close file against the weather bulwarks ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... papers taken was an autograph letter of General Robert E. Lee to General Stuart, dated Gordonsville, August fifteenth, which made manifest to me the disposition and force of the enemy and their determination to overwhelm the army under my command before it could be reenforced by any portion of the Army of ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... down into one of the big oceans," said Professor Henderson. "We would probably sink some vessels, and might overwhelm islands; but if this island in the air is as big as Australia it could easily fall into the Pacific and do no particular harm to any present existing body of land—save through the great tidal waves that would result from ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... beautiful; but there are numbers of beautiful girls in Normandy, some of them very rich, much richer than she is. Well now, you'll scarcely believe how the mothers and fathers of these heiresses run after me! It is scarcely decent. But it amuses me immensely; I visit their chateaus; they overwhelm ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... the vast pile of buildings, in the middle of which is the Imambara. The vastness of the pile presented before them was bewildering, though they had seen so many immense structures that mere size did not now overwhelm them. The Great Imambara is considered the marvel of Lucknow, and should not be confounded with another in the citadel bearing the same general name. To walk around or through this enormous building was simply impossible, ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... Thoroughfare Gap for the purpose of preventing the passage of Longstreet, between Longstreet and Jackson. Ricketts was thus forced to yield the gap after having delayed Longstreet during the night of the 28th. Pope could now have retired to Washington without a battle, but he decided to overwhelm Jackson before Longstreet could reach the field, and attacked ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it could reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the English coast. It was his design ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... attract them in the form of pleasure and amusement: they forget the grave counsels of the thoughtful, till they find the path they have followed is beset with briers and thorns; and a thousand painful difficulties that were unseen, unexpected, overwhelm and bring them to a sad sense of their own folly; and, perhaps, the punishment of their errors does not fall upon themselves alone, but upon the innocent, who have unknowingly been ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... I couldn't do it. The second thing is to live to clear out, to destroy what is foul, to make way for the beautiful. But for that you've got to be a hero, and I'm not a hero. And the third is to forget it all—overwhelm it with music, drown it with wine. That's what I did. And look (he spreads his arms out) where my singing ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... down in the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelm both ends of the Nan-Shan in snowy rushes of foam, expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. And on this dazzling sheet, spread under the blackness of the clouds and emitting a bluish glow, Captain MacWhirr could catch a desolate glimpse of a few tiny specks ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... warnings, grew less positive and of ever less duration. The frontier between physical and spiritual passion is perilously narrow, perhaps. My judgment, at any rate, became insecure, then floundered hopelessly. The sound of the harp-strings and of Marion's voice could overwhelm its ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... Varta's voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. "Evil has risen to overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in Your Revelations, O, Ruler of Worlds and Maker of Destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given of old, I would depart from this, Thy house. Suffer me now ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... of us, are at present suffering from various wrong conditions. Taken separately, personally, these wrong conditions overwhelm us; each sits down in his or her own little circle ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... were men of experience in the art of warfare. Sir William Howe had served in America during the French War and was accounted an excellent officer, a strict disciplinarian, and a gallant gentleman. Nevertheless he loved ease, society, and good living, and his expulsion from Boston, his failure to overwhelm Washington by sallies from his comfortable bases at New York and Philadelphia, destroyed every shred of his military reputation. John Burgoyne, to whom was given the task of penetrating New York from Canada, had likewise seen service in the French War both in America and Europe. He had, however, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Prayer, all the Ceremonies of Devotion that were fit to be done, being already past. At last the Bell toll'd, and he was to take Leave of the Princess, as his last Work of Life, and the most hard he had to accomplish. He threw himself at her Feet, and gazing on her as she sat more dead than alive, overwhelm'd with silent Grief, they both remain'd some Moments speechless; and then, as if one rising Tide of Tears had supply'd both their Eyes, it burst out in Streams at the same Instant: and when his Sighs gave Way, he utter'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... moment to disappear. The Caroline was hove-to to leeward, in order to avoid the showers of flakes and sparks, and to intercept any boats or rafts. The mate and four seamen pushed off in the jolly-boat, through a sea covered with floating spars, chests, and furniture, that threatened to crush or overwhelm the boat. When within a few yards of the stern, they caught sight of the first living thing—a wretched man clinging to a spar close under the ship's counter. Every time the stern-frame rose with the swell he was suspended above the water, and scorched ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... upon quite coldly. And the Professor had come to the conclusion, from his experience of life, that the instinct of the average human being whom another has stirred to strong emotion, is to fasten upon and overwhelm that luckless person, to burden him with responsibilities, to claim as much of time, and energy, and existence, as can in any way be wrung from him, careless of the cost to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... pallid features of the dead Wiltrud, and the lifeless entreating eyes looked steadily at this sinful woman who had taken the place of her benefactress. To Luckharde it seemed as if a great precipice was slowly bending over to overwhelm her. With a last mad effort the wretched woman seized the dagger, and struck at the apparition; but she might as well have struck at a misty cloud. Now Luckharde perceived that she was in the presence of the murdered lady of the Fuerstenberg, ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... preserved with such care, and read and re-read with such unfailing devotion. Looking toward me just when I passed by the table, the letters caught his eye. The new hope for the future, in connection with the writer of them, which my news was already awakening in his heart, seemed to overwhelm him in an instant at sight of the treasured memorials that reminded him of his betrothed wife. His laughter ceased, his face changed, he ran to the table, caught the letters up in his hand, looked from them to me for one moment with ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... methods innumerable, so that he retreats at last in despair and returns to his business—so he calls it, as though to make money were all that a man was sent into the world for, as though his children, his country, his fellow man, were not all his business. The outer world seems to have risen to overwhelm him, and the reason of it lies in this same great cause of undue ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... young man, "I have said sufficient to induce your highness not to overwhelm before his majesty my poor friend, De Guiche, against whom all the malevolence of a party bitterly opposed to your own will ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in well; his uncle would help him to get on his feet. Fortunately for their peace of mind, they did not know the real truth,—that Kenly Lounsbury himself was at that moment struggling with financial problems that were about to overwhelm him. She told herself, again and again, that her life would be all that she had dreamed, that her fondest hopes had come true. A few weeks more of the snow and the waste places,—and then ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... she had felt that the high sphere from which he beckoned was no place for the likes of her. Evidently, she feared she would pine away among those strange splendours, never be acclimatised, always be unworthy. He had thought to overwhelm her, and he had done his work too thoroughly. Now he must try to lighten ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... by a large band of wolves, and though they succeeded in driving them off it was only at the expense of almost their last cartridges and the loss of three more dogs. Joe spoke again of the heroism of Howling Wolf, who sat up in his sledge and shot at the wolves, though they threatened to overwhelm him and Joe on more than one rush that they made. Joe said nothing of himself but one's imagination can easily picture these two hardy hunters, sheltered only by their sledges, making a fight for life against a ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... in my less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily literature which thunders over the remnants of the past, as if it were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in the way of systematic knowledge and consistent powers of thought, as if it were destined one day to overwhelm the great inheritance of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... sat on the throne, what evil counsellors whispered in his ear? They were concerned with revenues and policies and ephemeral trifles of all sorts, while we were intent on renewing our ancient covenant with God, to the end that His promise to the world should be fulfilled, and His justice overwhelm the nations. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... single Roman Catholic priest will dare to deny what I say on this matter; for they know that it would be easy for me to overwhelm them with such crowd of testimonies that their grand imposture would for ever ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... thousand foot, and in his eagerness to arrive at the scene of action would not wait to provide artillery and the various engines required in a siege. "The multitude of my forces," said he, confidently, "will be sufficient to overwhelm the enemy." ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... sight doth wake such sad remembrance?" Forthwith he laid his hand on the cheek-bone Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws Expanding, cried: "Lo! this is he I wot of; He speaks not for himself: the outcast this Who overwhelm'd the doubt in Caesar's mind, Affirming that delay to men prepar'd Was ever harmful. "Oh how terrified Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one Maim'd of each hand, uplifted in the gloom The bleeding stumps, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... lifetime" can realize the blissful state of the parsonage twins. They lay on the bed planning the most impossible but magnificent things they would do to show their gratitude, and when Aunt Grace stopped at their door they leaped up to overwhelm her with caresses just because of ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... with fear, with trembling and also with some hopeful interest, for the fireworks resulting from Deming's induction to Villa Elsa. And they promptly began to soar, for Jim had, in his way, all the American speed, and proceeded to overwhelm the household with his attentions. It was a case of swift enthusiasm about the whole family. Unlike Kirtley he did not care how many of the members accompanied the Fraeulein and him. All were welcome. Though he openly displayed ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
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