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More "Startle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him to Judy, and left him outside so he wouldn't startle the house. Where is my girl—where ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... money have been wasted. In my estimation the Bishop is a perfectly detestable tyrant, and if I know him at all he will take all she will give and never grant her wish. Now she is preparing her great move, and hopes to startle him into compliance by a new marvel. She thinks that, like a juggler who turns a white egg black, she can turn a heathen district into a Christian one by a twist of her finger. Well—so far as I am concerned I will have nothing to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ceased the fit, the foaming lips were still. "O maiden," said AEneas, "me no more Can danger startle, nor strange shape of ill. All have I seen and throughly conned before. One boon I beg,—since yonder are the door Of Pluto, and the gloomy lakes, they tell, Fed by o'erflowing Acheron,—once more To see the father whom I loved so well. Teach me the way, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... young-chicken-coloured hair and merry, heather-mixture eyes. They talk no language but slang. They come to grief in a preposterous automobile about every ten miles and attract their idol's attention and startle horses by giving vent to S. O. S. yells. Whenever they have to enter a room they plunge in as if the door had broken away before them. Their only conception of a "good time" is ragtime. If one ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... movement. There was something so strange and uncanny about it—for I by this time knew the ground well enough to be fully aware that there ought not to be any moving thing there—that I stopped playing and sprang to my feet so suddenly that my movement appeared to startle Ama, who uttered a little cry of alarm, or surprise, and made as though she too would spring to ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Wayward Recluse*). His most intimate friends were the shogun's father-in-law, Shimazu Ei-O, and Ikeda Isshinsai. The latter two were also inkyo and shared the tastes and foibles of Harunari. One of their greatest pleasures was to startle society. Thus, when Sadanobu was legislating with infinite care against prodigality of any kind, the above three old gentlemen loved to organize parties on an ostentatiously extravagant scale, and Sadanobu ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had seen had been enough to startle the bravest person. A figure had suddenly appeared out of the gloom, a huge towering figure that looked to the startled girls to be almost as high as the trees themselves, though it was not more than eight feet tall. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... terror. Fear is depicted on their faces and observable in their attitudes, as no wonder it should. What they have just seen is sufficient to terrify the stoutest hearts—even those of tried tars, as all of them are. A ship manned by hairy men—a crew of veritable Orsons! Certainly enough to startle the most phlegmatic mariner, and make him tremble as he tugs at his oar. But they have ceased tugging at their oars, and hold them, blades suspended. Almost the same is their breath. One alone, at length, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... suddenly arisen which can photograph the bones, and, before long, the organs of the human body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the exterior, appears certainly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... of "The Mark of the Beast" has been to further "startle" and awaken "careless, ill-taught professing Christians," by giving some faint view of the fate of those professors who will be "left behind" to go through the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... It used to startle strangers to hear "The Hardy Norseman," "The Cuckoo," and such-like songs from the lips of little Chinese boys. Every Saturday evening they came to the house to practise the hymns and chants for Sunday; I had an harmonium in the dining-room. On these occasions they all had ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... almost fierce action—the peculiar abruptness of the apostrophe—the whitely-robed, the almost spiritual elevation of figure—all so dramatic—combined necessarily to startle and surprise; and, for a few moments, no answer was returned to the unlooked-for speech. But the effect could not be permanent upon minds made familiar with the thousand forms of human and strong energies. Munro, after ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the chamber of the Sangraal, Rowena IV was arranging the red samite cover around the Grail. She jumped when she saw him. "Marry! fair sir, ye did startle me. Methinketh ye be asleep in ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... meal was announced Angel, as usual, was the first to appear, and when he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror he thought one of his friends had come to visit him. It did not seem to startle him in the least, but like all children tried to look ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... in March, 1883, a striking young Frenchman, who said he was a nobleman, came to Little Missouri with a plan ready-made to build a community there to rival Omaha, and a business that would startle America's foremost financiers, the citizens of the wicked little frontier settlement, who thought that they knew all the possibilities of "tenderfeet" and "pilgrims" and "how-do-you-do-boys," admitted ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... delicacy that called for gentle handling and tender cherishing;—the sweetness, rare indeed, but asserting itself as it were timidly, at least with equally rare modesty,—the very style of the beauty, that with all its loveliness would not startle nor even catch the eye among its more showy neighbours; and the breath of purity that seemed to own no kindred with earth, nor liability ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... me startle you, please!" he said, as he stepped from the shadow of the trumpet-flower bush that had ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... or developing political life. When a nation has once entered such a social order it becomes stagnant, its further development is arrested. The activity of the higher faculties of the mind are in abeyance, but not destroyed. It needs the electric shock of contact and conflict with foreign races to startle the race out of its fatal repose and start it on new lines of progress by demanding, on pain of death, or at least of racial subordination, the introduction of new elements into its social order by a renewed exercise of the constructive imagination. For without such action of the constructive imagination ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... market-place presented to the Boy a picture of desolation which chilled him. He was about to turn away with a last cursory glance at the other solitary figure, when something suddenly occurred which arrested his attention. It seemed to startle him too, for he sprang back, with prompt agility, into a dark doorway behind him, from whence he watched what followed with the keenest interest, being careful, however, to conceal himself the while. He had not felt any movement of pity or kindly compassion for the girl; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... her selfe would startle at this letter, And play the swaggerer, beare this, beare all: Shee saies I am not faire, that I lacke manners, She calls me proud, and that she could not loue me Were man as rare as Phenix: 'od's my will, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the prophet's aspirations are founded on the facts of human nature too, and judgments do sometimes startle those whom kindness had failed to touch. It is an awful thought that human nature may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons as that favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains unpierced by either. It is an awful thought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... pains with her toilet; she did not wish to startle, but to attract—and the two things were very different. Her dress looked brilliant, being of a silvery texture; the trimming was composed of small fern-leaves; a parure of fine diamonds crowned ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken place in him during an hour ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... record biographically should have for his baptismal name—Francis. But if you found that this was the very reason for his admitting the man into his series, that, however strange a reason, it had in fact governed him in selecting his subjects, you would no longer see anything to startle your belief. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... apt to startle an Imagination, which has not been raised and qualify'd for such a Description, by the reading of the ancient Poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold Thought in our Author, to ascribe the first Use of Artillery to the Rebel Angels. But as such a pernicious ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... districts of America, where art and labor have united for generations to clear the earth of its inequalities, and to remove the vestiges of a state of nature, can form but little idea of the thousand objects that may exist in a clearing, to startle the imagination of one who has admitted alarm, when seen in the doubtful light of even a cloudless moon. Still less can they who have never quitted the old world, and who, having only seen, can only imagine fields smooth as the surface of tranquil ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... the bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till their arms ached. Anything, everything that would make a din and startle the cattle out of their lethargy, ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; you are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... me?" Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that, can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a great dear about doing things ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... years after his interment, and the skull was found to be without sutures. (Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 218.) Richelieu's was found to be perforated with little holes. The abbe Richard deduces a theory from this, which may startle the physiologist even more than the facts. "On ouvrit son Test, on y trouva 12 petits trous par ou s'exhaloient les vapeurs de son cerveau, ce qui fit qu' il n'eut jamais aucun mal de tete; au lieu que le Test de Ximenes ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... here we have few masters, and our critics know and care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and incident and situation. What we lack is true originality, tranquil force; we are all occupied in trying to startle and surprise, to make a sensation. How little the Greeks cared for that! It was beauty and charm, delicate colour, fine subtlety of which they were, in search; they held all things holy, yet nothing solemn. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hit on," Aunt 'Phrony proceeded, "de fire blaze an' spit an' sputter jes' lak dis do, an' de ooman she fotched a yell an' cried out, she did, 'Lan' er de mussiful! W'at cur'ous sort er wood is dish yer dat ac' lak dis?' De Owl he wuz startle' an' he look roun' suddint, dis-a-way, over his shoulder, an' de wimmins dey let out a turr'ble screech, 'kase dey seed 'twa'n't nuttin' but a big ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... on the breast of my River, and startle the birds on the edge, To land on a newly found island, a boat that is caught in the sedge, The rays of the sun are still level, not yet has the heat of the day Deflowered the mists of the morning, that linger ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... me, JANE! I wish you wouldn't come and startle me with your horrid telegrams—there, give it to me. (Reading.) "Wife down, violent influenza. Must come without her, TOOMER." (Resentfully.) Again! and I know she's had it twice since the spring—it's too tiresomely inconsid—no, it isn't—it's the very best thing she could do. Now we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... was a very curious kind of man. In the coldest weather, when even the hardiest soldiers were wrapping themselves up, he would go about in his shirt sleeves just as if it were summer; and very often he would be up before any one else in the camp was astir, and startle the first officer whom he saw coming out of his tent by crowing like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself almost every week, and going about the palace as he pleased, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... still is the relation which has been shown to exist between criminality and household occupations. Nothing, indeed, which recent investigation has established ought to startle the American woman more. Contrary to public opinion, it is not the factory and shop which are making the greatest number of women offenders of all kinds; it is the household. In a recent careful study of over 3000 women criminals, the Bureau ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, and I admire ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... way in which he straightened out his long legs against the sides of his beast, one suspected that he could, if necessary, repeat the Marshal de Saxe's feats of skill. He stopped his horse suddenly at the very spot which the two men had just vacated and called out in a voice which would startle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... there were not 200 sworn United Irishmen, and which Lord Edward Fitzgerald had altogether omitted from his official list of counties organized in the month of February. In that brief interval, the Government policy of provocation had the desired effect, though the explosion was of a nature to startle those ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... other places,[241] however, he is the son of Dyaus or the sky, though no thought is given in that early stage to the fact that thus Parganya might seem to be the husband of his mother. We saw that even the idea of Indra being the father of his own father did not startle the ancient poets beyond an exclamation that it was a very wonderful ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... at times grotesque, And yet superbly picturesque, Although resignedly we mourn A Park dismantled and forlorn, Long may it be ere you forsake Your quarters on the minished Lake; For there, with splendid plumes and hues And ways that startle and amuse, You constantly refresh the eye And cheer the heart of passers-by, Untouched by years of shock and strain, Undeviatingly urbane, And lending London's commonplace A touch of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... Cluhir, leader in its councils and its politics. On his professional side, his advice and ministrations were in demand even beyond the range of his motor car, and the measure of his greatness may be best estimated when it is mentioned that his motor had been the first to startle the streets of his ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Will looked westward, in the direction of his shop, and it struck him how amusing it would be to startle Rosamund by a disclosure of his social status. Would she still be anxious for his company in search of the picturesque? He could not feel sure—curiosity urged him to try the experiment, but an obscure apprehension ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... is very difficult to surprise or startle an inspector of police. But Mr. Murray was really more than surprised or startled. He was shocked and appalled, as his countenance betrayed when he dropped his pen and fell back in ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... rowing an Algerian galley under the lash of the slave-driver. Above all do not teach him this, like his catechism, in cold blood; let him see and feel the calamities which overtake men; surprise and startle his imagination with the perils which lurk continually about a man's path; let him see the pitfalls all about him, and when he hears you speak of them, let him cling more closely to you for fear lest he should fall. "You will make him timid and cowardly," do you say? We shall see; let us ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... while brown (as already observed) is far more common on the bricks than black. Thus the general tone of their coloring is quiet, not to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly-contrasted colors. The tints used in a single composition vary from three to five, which latter number they seem never to exceed. The following are the combinations of five hues which occur: brown, green, blue, dark yellow, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... peasants from the nobles, to light the flames of civil war, to murder by the hands of her own sons that unhappy country, which, deserted by all the nations of the earth, has again and again risen from her bloody grave to startle her oppressors with the old hymns of faith and triumph. But, if uncultured, because the iron heel of the tyrant has been on the heart of the murdered mother, the Polish peasant is faithful and devoted. He knows the nature of Russian rule. He has seen ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that would startle you," remarked the Bumpy Man, well pleased, as he resumed his stirring. The Ork watched him a while in silence and ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Ned put them all on the alert. Each one had a station assigned to him, which he was expected to hold, in case of a renewal of hostilities; while Jimmy might bemoan the fact that he could not have a bucket of boiling water with which to startle the intended boarders, he evidently did not intend to let that deficiency keep him from doing his duty. Crouching there at a point where he could fire through the breach in the stern of the wreck, he only waited for the word to be given, when he evidently meant to start ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... had a white father and a Seminole mother. Ann, I sometimes wonder what opportunity might have done for Osceola. As great as Napoleon, some one said. What might opportunity do for this strange, exotic flower of Osceola's people? She has brains and beauty and instinctive grace enough to startle a continent. I am greatly tempted. Ann, I beg of you, don't breathe any of this to Aunt Agatha. Some day I may carry Keela away to the cities of the North for an experiment quite my own. Her delicate beauty—her gravity—her shy, sweet ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to artificial respiration and the injection of hot coffee. Having emitted this pronouncement, the great specialist from Manchester Square left. It was one o'clock in the morning. By one of those strange and futile coincidences which sometimes startle us by their subtle significance, the specialist met Theodore Racksole and his captive as they were entering the hotel. Neither had the least ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... first uncertain glimmer of the light, 'rising and falling with the waves, like a torch in the bark of some fisherman,' which is the shining star of a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, surrounded by the gory horrors which shall often startle him out of his sleep at home when years have passed away. Franklin, come to the end of his unhappy overland journey - would that it had been his last! - lies perishing of hunger with his brave companions: each emaciated figure stretched upon its miserable bed without ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles, or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive her ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... writing, nevertheless, is not affected by the desire either to impress or to startle his readers, any more than the writing of a good poet springs from an aiming at effect: it is like all true literature, in the first place, the outcome of a strong and personal passion, the passion for the past. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... at the same time, a strange man in exterior manners; for, with an abundance of real piety, he had an abruptness of delivery and a strange way of mixing up an occasional remark to his congregation in the midst of the celebration of the mass, which might well startle a stranger; but this very want of formality made him beloved by the people, and they would do ten times as much for Father Phil as for ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Of victory o'er the routed foe— Will startle from their rest no more The fallen brave of Mexico. To God alone such spirits yield! He took them in their strength and bloom, When gathering, on the tented field, The garlands ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... a strange child. He had a Norseman's taste for the fabulous and fantastic, and although he never heard a tale of Necken or the Hulder, he would often startle his mother by the most fanciful combinations of imagined events, and by bolder personifications than ever sprung from the legendary soil of the Norseland. She always took care to check him whenever he indulged in these imaginary flights, and he at last came to look upon ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... seas to unknown soils, With various wonders feasts his sight: What stranger wonders does he write! We read, and in description view Creatures which Adam never knew: For, when we risk no contradiction, It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction. Those things that startle me or you, I grant are strange; yet may be true. 10 Who doubts that elephants are found For science and for sense renowned? Borri records their strength of parts, Extent of thought, and skill in arts; How they perform the law's decrees, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... "Mohawk," suddenly uttered, was sufficient to startle a New Brunswick Indian. The late Edward Jack upon asking an Indian child, "What is a Mohawk?" received this reply, "A Mohawk is a bad Indian who kills people and eats them." Parkman describes the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... were bewildered for a moment with the coming strife, but the thoughtful boys, rolling stones down to startle away the sharks before their dear Smart's way, recalled us to our senses. We let down the rope ladder, and the ready Smart swam to it. Placing his precious charge on it, he watched her run nimbly up it and we receive her with rapture in safety, when he wiped his streaming brow, and ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not to perform feats which startle the world and give him fame, but rather to live the life of the moderate and harmonious one; yet how often for lack of true discernment he fails! This middle path is not, however, hidden from the sincere and pure; even common men and women may know it, though in its highest reaches ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... thought Thad whirled over to the exit, and crawled out. And what his eyes beheld was enough to startle anybody, let alone a boy. If a genuine cyclone had not struck the camp on the Little Machias, then something almost as bad must have dropped down upon them, Thad thought, as he stared, hardly able to believe his eyes, or understand what it ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... up the valley. You remember there was a dance? I had left my fan in our sitting-room, and ran up to find it. There was no light in the room, and Virginia and Sir Roger were on the balcony. Of course, I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't find the fan at first, and I didn't like to startle them by suddenly switching on the light, so I—er—I overheard a little of the conversation. Sir Roger was telling her the story of that unfortunate Maxime Dalahaide—why, Marchese, how you must have loved him! The very mention of his name turns ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... I have not taken space to mention certain episodes of the more recent intercourse of these ladies, and must content myself with tracing them, lightly, in their consequences. These may be summed up in the remark, which will doubtless startle no one by its freshness, that two imperial women are scarcely more likely to hit it off together, as the phrase is, than two imperial men. Since that party at Miss Birdseye's, so important in its results for Olive, she had had occasion to approach Mrs. Farrinder more nearly, and those overtures ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Southey said that Gifford cut out his middle joints. When John comes to use the carving-knife I fear Dr. Southey will not be so tractable. Nous verrons. I will not show Southey's letter to Lockhart, for there is to him personally no friendly tone, and it would startle the Hidalgo's pride. It is to be wished they may draw kindly together. Southey says most truly that even those who most undervalue his reputation would, were he to withdraw from the Review, exaggerate the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "that the resemblance is strong enough for me to startle the murderer if he were to meet me suddenly here, and thus?"—I advanced upon him, looking into the depths of his eyes as though I were imitating a dramatic scene. "Yes," I continued, "would the likeness of feature ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet was not always—as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always was—superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Eve home that night for a starter, and the next mornin' he's up bright and early at seven, ready to startle Manhattan. He said he wanted me to go out with him and watch him win my eight hundred bucks and also to notice the way he worked. He picks up the mornin' paper, runs through the "Help Wanted" columns for a minute and finally clears ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... from a dream Carley saw the blocks and squares of gray apartment houses and red buildings, the miles of roofs and chimneys, the long hot glaring streets full of playing children and cars. Then above the roar of the train sounded the high notes of a hurdy-gurdy. Indeed she was home. Next to startle her was the dark tunnel, and then the slowing of the train to a stop. As she walked behind a porter up the long incline toward the station gate her legs seemed to ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... bless my soul, if you frightened him into giving up a quid of tobacco like that you sure did startle him some!" He kicked Stevens' lost property out with the toe of his boot and turned to Joanne, showing her the fresh bread and marmalade. "Mrs. Otto sent these to you," he said. "And the train ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... will not speak of this now; yet I have spoken, for the subject makes me feel too much. I could give instances that would startle the most vulgar and callous; but I will not, for the public opinion of their own sex is already against such men, and where cases of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the wife's favor. But she ought not to need this, nor, I think, can she long. Men must soon see that ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... more than I have been told. It is the rude speech of a barbarous people, who had few thoughts to express, and were content, as they conceived grossly, to be grossly understood. After what has been lately talked of Highland Bards, and Highland genius, many will startle when they are told, that the Earse never was a written language; that there is not in the world an Earse manuscript a hundred years old; and that the sounds of the Highlanders were never expressed by letters, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... rope, and I believe I should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing that bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it would probably startle ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the light that penetrated ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... looked its fairest for our wanderers. Just as a woman adorns herself with all her jewels when she wishes to startle or enthrall, wishes to make a lover of a friend, so Devorgilla arrayed herself to conquer these two pairs of fresh eyes, and command their ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... God. Then he is indeed between heaven and earth. He knows that the slightest shift of the ladder—and a single false step may shift it—will dash him helplessly down to certain death. Stop the clang of the bells beneath him, it may startle him! The spectators far below on the earth involuntarily clasp their hands breathlessly; the jackdaws, who have been driven from their last place of refuge by the ascending figure, caw as they flutter wildly round his head; only the clouds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... not to offend. We of the brigantine are accustomed to divers epithets that might startle less practised ears. We are not to learn, at this late hour, that, in order to become respectable, roguery must have the sanction of government. You were pleased, Captain Ludlow, to name the mystifications of the Water-Witch; ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... '"But," I think I hear some one say, "after all, friend Howe, was not the supposititious case, which you anticipated might occur, somewhat quaint and eccentric and startling?" It was, because I wanted to startle, to rouse, to flash the light of truth over every hideous feature of the system. {86} The fire-bell startles at night; but if it rings not the town may be burned; and wise men seldom vote him an ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... she'd been able to get help in just an ordinary fashion. Of course, if he or I had known what a risk she was running we'd have been half wild with anxiety about her. So you see it really was hard for you not to scream or do anything to startle that man." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... love is stained, our benevolence corrupted, our piety a pretense which God will not accept. An impure young woman is an awful sight. She outrages all just ideas of womankind, all proper conceptions of spiritual beauty. To have evil imaginings, corrupt longings, or deceitful propensities ought to startle any young woman. To feel a disposition to sensuality, a craving for the glitter of a worldly life, or a selfish ambition for unmerited distinction is dangerous in the extreme. It is the exuding of impure waters from the heart. Who feels such utterings within should beware. They are the whisperings ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... seductive admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying this child,—it might startle her to make downright love abruptly; and now that he had an ally in her own household, and was to have access to her with a freedom he had never before enjoyed, there was a refined pleasure in playing his fish,—this gamest of golden-scaled creatures,—which had risen to his fly, and which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... toward the forbidden ground. As long as they are on their own run let them alone, give them not a moment's anxiety of mind; but directly they reach the boundary, show yourself with your dog in your most terrific aspect. Startle them, frighten them, disturb their peace; do so again and again, at the same spot, from the very first day. Let them always have peace on their own run, and none anywhere off it. In a month or two you will find the sheep ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the herd, who bore the name of the "Broncho," on account of her wildness, her glaring red eyes and her branching horns, with an angry toss of her head to shake the water from her eyes, lifted her voice in one long, angry, rolling bellow that seemed to startle the whole herd. It had in it defiance, and determination. Like the leading spirit among the leprous men who sat at the gate of Samaria, the "Broncho" gathered up the feeling of the meeting in one long soul-stirring, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... extreme patience and a great expenditure of time to win their confidence. That was out of the question now. His first impulse was to hail them, and try to make friends of them by offering some small present; but he checked himself as the thought flashed upon him that a movement on his part might startle them and provoke a discharge of their tiny arrows, which were probably poisoned. He could not doubt they had seen him long before he had seen them, and had been for some time playing the part of silent spectators, being kept at a distance, perhaps, by the aspect of the ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... should fire a gun the noise would likely startle them, and the first impulse of the savages would be to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he ceased even to think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. As though this had been a bodily pain, Swann's mind was powerless to alleviate it; in the case of bodily pain, however, since it is independent of the mind, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Review said: "The title of Dr. Walsh's book, The Thirteenth Greatest of Centuries, will startle many readers, but we respectfully commend to the open-minded his presentation of that great epoch. A century that witnessed such extraordinary achievements in architecture, in arts and crafts, in education, and in literature and law, as did the Thirteenth, is not to be lightly dismissed or unfavorably ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... gained sad ascendency, and his finest renditions grew "out of tune and harsh." In depicting the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and Kean, when at their best, can surpass all rivals; and the grotesque, darkly-powerful ideals of Richard and Shylock are precisely those in which they will startle us to the last, gathering new, though fitful, expressions of hate and scorn, as their own natures sink from ethereal to grosser atmospheres. The mouth catches most surely the growing tendency of a soul; and on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... said Bob Cochrane, coming round into the streak of lamplight, carrying his boots in his hands. "I just strolled over to see if you were all right. When I got to the steps it struck me I might startle you if I came thundering up, so I took my boots off and crept round to find out where you were. You were so quiet I thought you must have gone to bed and left ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale. The great lady was simple in her own way. His views and beliefs had nothing in them to shock or startle her, since she judged them from the standpoint of her lofty position. Indeed, her sympathies were easily accessible to a man of that sort. She was not an exploiting capitalist herself; she was, as it were, above the play of economic conditions. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... those astonishing and yet natural things which sometimes startle us is the value some minds attach to mere modernity in art. An old thing is tossed up in a new way, and there are those who attach more value to the way than the thing, and are instantly agape with admiration of originality. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Bendocdar? It is necessary that we should learn, in order to comprehend the events that were ere long to startle and terrify ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... source of puzzling surprises. While she was from the South, she was not Southern in speech, sentiments, ideas, or ideals. Her voice was not Southern and, while she elided final consonants, her intonation was not of the South. Indeed she would startle him every now and then by dropping some archaic word or old form of expression that made him think of Chaucer. Her feeling toward the negro was precisely what his was, and once when he halted in some stricture on the Confederacy and started to ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... The light from the lamp was dim and feeble at Maurice's end of the passage, but it shone brightly enough for a space in front of the sentry. Maurice saw that it would be impossible to approach the man unseen, impossible to steal on him or rush at him without having a shot fired which would startle every one in the inn. He crept up the stairs again. The girl was waiting ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... golden orchards, when she takes her annual holiday in the Highlands of Scotland, the land which is peculiarly dear to her. No sounds of widows weeping for their slain husbands and sons—no fierce battle-cries—no terrible wailings over slaughtered families and ruined homes—startle the still air. But, instead, the children sing the national anthem, as if they knew all that it means; and wherever, on this or the other side of the Tweed, the dear familiar face, with its crown of silvering hair, is ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... figure. Later on, when our conversation reached its most interesting point, I was thankful to recollect that I also was in obscurity. I am not, owing to my training as a diplomatist, an easy man to startle, but Lalage gave me a severe shock. I prefer to keep my face in the shadow when I ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... in due time, a worthy consort, and a certain Crown Prince would, in further due time, startle the world with his left-handed pitching. It was a prospect all golden to dream upon. His spirit grew tall ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... Pan, the Arcadian forest and river-god, was held to startle travellers by his sudden and terror-striking appearances. Hence sudden fright, without any visible cause, was ascribed to Pan, and called a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... bell Shall startle slumber; and all men agree That whatsoever other things may be A cause of sorrow, this ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: ". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... ways of human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the sedges of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... night a solemn vow, To startle all beholders: I wore white muslin on my brow, Green velvet on my shoulders— My trousers were supremely wide, I learn'd to swear "by Allah"— I stuck a poniard by my side, And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... in plush chairs, surveying M. Knaak through their lorgnettes, as he bowed forward, grasped the hem of his frock-coat with two fingers of each hand, and with springy legs demonstrated the various steps of the mazurka. But when he had a mind to completely startle his audience, he would suddenly and without cogent reason leap high in the air, cut pigeon-wings with bewildering rapidity, trilling with his feet, so to say, whereupon he would return to this earth with a muffled thud which, however, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Priscilla quickly moved to the mother's side, but great joys do not kill even though they startle, and presently the white white face was raised with a smile almost of heaven illuminating it, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... an idea of the imperious tone and stern look of the princess, as she pronounced these words which were calculated to startle a girl, until now accustomed to live in a great measure as she pleased: yet, contrary perhaps to the expectation of Madame de Saint Dizier, instead of answering impetuously, Adrienne looked her full in the face, and said, laughing: "This is a perfect declaration ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of their passage upon ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... have but one thing more to ask. Why, if your story is authentic, and well calculated to startle even the brave king, have you thought it necessary to remove ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... awakened by rifle shots and cries of "Indians! Indians!" There was pandemonium at once. The "long roll" was beaten on the infantry drums, and "boots and saddles" sounded by the cavalry bugles, and these are calls that startle all who hear them, and strike terror to the heart of every army woman. They mean that something is wrong—very wrong—and demand the immediate report for duty at their respective companies of every officer and man ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... the knave's, The hapless idiot's and the slave's, Sweet children smile in their nurses' arms, And clap their hands in innocent glee; While, unrebuked by the heavenly charms That beam in the eyes of infancy, Oaths still blacken the lips of men, And startle the ears of womanhood! On either hand The churches stand, Forgotten by those who yesterday Went thronging thither to praise and pray, And take of the Holy Body and Blood! Their week-day creed is the law of Might; Self is their idol, and Gain their right: Though, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Bill experienced a startle of warm surprise. She had remembered his name from his union card. The next moment the superintendent had been plucked from the doorway raving about rights under the law, and the girls were deserting ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... know! We don't know!" The professor slapped the magazine with an emphatic hand. "Emil Mundson hasn't written this article for nothing. He's paving the way for some announcement that will startle the scientific world. I know him. In the same manner he gave out veiled hints of his various brilliant discoveries and inventions long before he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... should rather see them pointed at the vices which prevail; at the corruptions of the public morals, which are fouler than aught I had so much as dreamed of before I was myself a witness of them, and may well be supposed to startle the gods from their rest, and draw down their hottest thunderbolts. But I will not say more, when there must be so many able to do so much better in behalf of what I must still believe to be a good cause. Let me entreat the Emperor, before he condemns, to hear. There are those in Rome, of warm hearts, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... ringlets appear to have been regarded as highly desirable and attractive. The reputed beauty and the prodigious length and weight of the hair of Absalom, the son of David, as recorded in the sacred text, would be sufficient to startle the most enthusiastic modern dandy that cultivates the crinal ornament of his person. Solomon the Wise, another son of David, conceived the beauty of hair sufficiently dignified to express figuratively the graces ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... take his hand. Begin squeezing soft-like, and press harder till he opens his eyes. Don't startle him," was ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... for him, is aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls him with many more than the average number of bangs and bumps prepared, in the access of every important French gare, to startle the drowsy or distrait passenger into a sense ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... good to hear that you think so. He's a prancing beast, and so we mustn't startle him—not till I have ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... not wish to be in a hurry to make my revelations to the world at large. I do not wish to startle people without being able to show them proof of what I say. I wish to speak only to persons who are worthy to hear my story, and I have begun with you. I do not want you to believe me until you are quite ready to do so. Think over what ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... even now, when recounting, as he often did, the scenes of the battle field, his eye would burn with savage fire, lighting up his whole countenance with the fiercest kind of bravery, and often with a hideous yell that would startle our very souls, he would burst from the room and bound over the fields and forest, with the fleetness of a deer—making the woods ring with his frightful war-cry, until the blood seemed ready to curdle in our veins. He had also been one of the famous ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Charter," said Kate, who now stood, unassisted, in the light of the lantern, "but in woeful case, and more like to startle you than if I were the biggest fish. I am Mistress Kate Bonnet, just out of the river between here and the town. No, I will not enter your house, I am not fit; I will stand here ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... with a dig that would startle an ox, With his "C'ck! Oh, my!— Go along wiz 'oo, fie!" Would exclaim, "I'm afraid 'oo a socking ole fox." Now a father it shocks, And it whitens his locks, When his little babe calls him a ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... darkened for ever as it is, for the multiplying memories with which it is thronged make it dearer as well as sadder every day of my life! Lotty, shall I ever believe that he has left me, quite left me, never to return? Will the fearful silence ever cease to startle me? Whenever I came in from a walk or a drive I used to know almost before I opened his door, by the sound of his voice, or of something, whether all was well with him, and now there is only that deadly silence. And yet, I often feel if I had but courage to go in, ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... and a deeper understanding of the realities of life, it is likely that panic would have sent her fleeing headlong from a presence that filled her with nothing but loathing. But she had been spared all this knowledge, and Nicol saw to it that nothing should startle her, nothing should excite her distrust until, in the fulness of time, his ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... has created a God after his own mind; if he could but have created a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been relieved from all our perplexities. But, unhappily, we find in it, as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings. Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that God should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet does ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Champneys," said the boy with the golden eyes, shyly. "I hope I didn't startle you? It's my butterfly's fault. You see, I never know where I've got to follow him, or what I'm going to find ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... children playing and quarrelling, and, further away, the low, dull, continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until a step on the stair or the banging of a door below would startle her ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... There are actually few birds. As you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... something and feared lest it should come to his knowledge. Therefore he resolved to startle her by a blunt question. "I never knew you were acquainted ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... forefinger to the great man towering above her. As he looked down on her, so pixy-like in the twilight of the pines, he felt his flesh creep. She seemed to be waiting for something infinitely comic which yet should startle her. She was poised, half turned as though for flight, yet hung so, without a quiver in an endless listening pause. The man tried in vain to remember the name of a single saint, so held was he by the breathless expectancy in the eyes of the little hobgoblin. His nerves gave ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... man to do with being distressed because he has no brothers?' CHAP. VI. Tsze-chang asked what constituted intelligence. The Master said, 'He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful, may be called intelligent indeed. Yea, he with whom neither soaking slander, nor startling statements, are successful, may be ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor Burr has said that "it was, indeed, no small part of the evil of the matter, that it so long ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... seen had been enough to startle the bravest person. A figure had suddenly appeared out of the gloom, a huge towering figure that looked to the startled girls to be almost as high as the trees themselves, though it was not more than eight feet tall. The figure was clad in long, flowing white ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... discourse to the groups in his store, sitting with his stout legs hanging over the counter, with a coarse brilliancy, original and sagacious, from which the more cultured might cull gems of thought, fresh and striking, despite the terrible swearing, which would startle even ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... "according to the calculations of the French Staff, the total number of armed men upon which Germany would be able to draw for all purposes would exceed 7,000,000." [Footnote: The British Army, p. 161.] This and other forecasts may startle those readers whose curiosity tempts them to read the volume again in 1917. But the work produced no practical result except to put Dilke into the front rank of army reformers. The Government took no action to remedy the military weakness which everyone recognized. The report of the Stephen Commission ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... awhile he knelt upon his side, and she remained on hers, both trembling; but at last the King, dreading to startle her away, rose softly and went round the Pond to where he ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... was, the centre of merry pleasure parties in gay Paris. A young dude, driving my four-in-hand, and yet a criminal, waiting in hourly expectation a telegram announcing success in a great plot which, when it exploded, was destined to startle the business world, and to hurl me from the summit of happiness, where I was reveling, apparently free from care, to the misery of a dungeon, banishing the happy smiles from my face and the joyous ring ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... arms, and broke out into a long clear laugh, musical as a brook. Then, as if tired, she threw herself on the grass, and lay gazing at the moon. The prince was almost afraid to breathe lest he should startle her, and she should vanish from his sight. As to venturing near her, that ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... a mistake at starting, begging your worship's pardon. Why, the very sight of you might startle her into her grave. Nay, you'll give me the money—for mine is all in the savings bank—and I shall go for her myself. I shall tell her squire is longing for her, and that I'm to be here for fear she might feel strange. She ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and doubt come wrongly into play, Preposterously, at cross purposes. Should his child sicken unto death, why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160 Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why—"'t is but a word," object— "A gesture"—he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... opened the trap door, and stepped out into the little observatory the sound was so plain as to startle him. He looked up quickly, and, directly overhead ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... that," said Miss Ingate. "It wouldn't startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley's been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about the house now, though she ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... even the hardiest soldiers were wrapping themselves up, he would go about in his shirt sleeves just as if it were summer; and very often he would be up before any one else in the camp was astir, and startle the first officer whom he saw coming out of his tent by crowing like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself almost ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to denounce that shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... take some noisy instrument to the lake to startle the echoes; a whistle his father made him served for a time; after that he marched up and down the banks, rattling a tin canister with pebbles in it; then he got a large frying-pan from the kitchen, and beat on it with a stick every day for ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so unlike her father's principles, and her early training, that it need startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with no faith in anything else? What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... there were no test of excellence in this first of the fine arts but that all men should run after its productions, as if urged by an appetite, or constrained by a spell!—The qualities of writing best fitted for eager reception are either such as startle the world into attention by their audacity and extravagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... and the general direction of those faults has been previously suggested. The chief of his faults, a certain uncontrollable brutality of speech and gesture when he was strongly roused, was destined to cling to him all through his life, and to startle with the blaze of a volcano even the last quiet years before his death. But any one who wishes to understand how deep was the elemental honesty and reality of his character, how profoundly worthy he was of any love that was bestowed upon him, need ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... forth from her those pleasantries at which you will be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... into the Joys like this: most of them cannot endure me. But I have here the thick veil with which I cover myself when I visit happy people.... (She unfolds a long veil and wraps herself in it carefully.) Not a ray of my you! must startle them, for there are many Happinesses that are afraid and are not happy.... There... like this, even the ugliest and coarsest of them will have ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... human hopes and the folly of friendship?" inquired Adrien, so coldly as to startle both the company and Lord Standon himself, who not being in Lady Constance's confidence, was naturally at a loss for the reason of this sudden anger on the part of Leroy. He drew back in surprise, but any ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... herself would startle at this letter, And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all: She says I am not fair; that I lack manners; She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od's my will! Her love is not the hare that I do hunt; Why writes she so to me?—Well, shepherd, ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... her gesture, the look upon her face could not but startle him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, "Well, mother, you've never taught ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... individual boy or girl. We must be very careful not to drag the matter into mental consciousness. Shoo it away. Reprimand it with a pah! and a faugh! and a bit of contempt. But do not get into any heat or any fear. Do not startle a passional attention. Drive the whole thing away like the shadow it is, and be very careful not to drive it into the consciousness. Be very careful to plant no seed of burning shame or horror. Throw over it merely the cold water of contemptuous ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... of time, to influence me, was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. But ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this. Her silence encouraged Mr Welles to proceed. He thought his tactics had succeeded, and the creature was coming round by degrees. The only point now requiring care was not to startle her away again. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... lesson ebbed away. He sidled out into the path again, came towards me two dainty, halting steps, and stamped prettily with his left fore foot. He was a young buck, and had that trick of stamping without any instruction. It is an old, old ruse to make you move, to startle you by the sound and threatening motion into showing who you are and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working,—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to examine in their connected ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Myrtle to conceal the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying this child,—it might startle her to make downright love abruptly; and now that he had an ally in her own household, and was to have access to her with a freedom he had never before enjoyed, there was a refined pleasure in playing his fish,—this gamest of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... and warn her to keep away from the horses—that both were dangerous for men to fool with, much less was it safe for a woman to undertake familiarities with them. His next thought was that his sudden appearance would only startle the girl and—well, cause a lot of useless talk. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... by other men, for they are all more or less struck by some sacred malady whose paralyzing torpor they must shake off, whose benumbing pain they must forget, to be joyous and amused by those pyrotechnic fires which startle the bewildered guests, who see from time to time a Roman candle, a rose-colored Bengal light, a cascade whose waters are of fire, or a terrible, yet quite innocent dragon! Gayety and the strength necessary to be joyous, are, unfortunately things only accidentally to be encountered ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... blindness of the Decadence—the faults of men too blind to read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without him—would be either stupid or malicious. If at the close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects—crowding their compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible cause for agitation—the crime surely lay with the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... she gayly. "What could you expect when prowling amongst the graves in a church-yard so lone and solitary, like a goule, on a damp November night? I saw you from Mr. Osborne's going toward it, and determined to startle you—and I think I succeeded ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... member of your profession, Mr. Jettison. He was in his day one of the smartest men in the service of your department. Only he's transposed his name—ask them at the Yard if they remember Harker Simpson? That seems to startle you, Mitchington! Well, as you're here, perhaps I'd better ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... loved dramatic situations in real life quite as well as in make-believe, planned to conceal her radiance until her first appearance on the stage, when she would startle them all, and especially Lysander, with her dazzling loveliness. She stood in a shadow of the wings with her coat wrapped about her. Except for Jerry, waiting to do her humble part, she was alone. She listened to the ceaseless chatter in the dressing-room with a happy smile. ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... hoped to startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What do you mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her: "I've heard that it requires gifts for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... persons to enter upon the possession of these houses, whose characters have not undergone the most searching and thorough enquiry." Finally, the author announces that he will state three facts which he thinks will startle his English readers: "Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called 'The Lowell Offering'... whereof ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... neighbouring country. For the most part, even the intolerance of the age was not that born of religious fanaticism, but was the normal outcome of a full-blooded self-confidence. The Elizabethans are apt to startle us by a display of apparently callous cruelty at one moment, and an almost reckless generosity at the next. They slaughtered the garrison of Smerwick in cold blood, and treated the vanquished at Cadiz with a chivalrous consideration which amazed its recipients. They ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... this with earnestness. I have reflected upon it. And if you, my Curtius, will look around upon the state of the empire, you will find many things to startle you. But of this ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... conscious statement to oneself, 'Now I am going to tell a lie'—'This that I am doing is fraud'—'This emotion that I feel creeping with devilish warmth about the roots of my heart is revenge'—and so on, would surely startle us sometimes, and make us fling the gliding poison from our breast, as a man would a snake that he found just lifting its head from the bosom of his robe. Suppose Judas had answered the question, and, gathering himself up, had looked his Master in the face, and said—'What ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... pennies for the Holiday Fund Savings Bank from the children who came weekly to her house. She noticed on three consecutive Mondays that one little lad deliberately helped himself to a new envelope from her table. Not wishing to frighten or startle him, she allowed this to continue for some weeks, and then one day, having dismissed the other children, she asked him quite quietly why he was taking the envelopes. At first he was very sulky, and said: "I need them more than you do." She quite agreed this might ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... fellow would fall into my hands," replied my companion. "If so, then revelations will be made that will startle Europe." ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... dawn, and sudden fire. Janet was bald to the heart inhabiting me then, as if quite shaven. She could speak her affectionate mind as plain as print, and it was dull print facing me, not the arches of the sunset. Julia had only to lisp, 'my husband,' to startle and agitate me beyond expression. She said simple things—'I slept well last night,' or 'I dreamed,' or 'I shivered,' and plunged me headlong down impenetrable forests. The mould of her mouth to a reluctant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... necessity, either from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... another part of his character. It is true that he is in favour with great personages. It is because they are aware that he has observed much for many years. He is light and ironic, but he tells truths which sometimes startle ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that it was a present to Wenna Rosewarne, "with the very dearest love of her sister Mabyn." He passed his hand over the leaves, not noticing what he was doing. Suddenly he saw something which did effectually startle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... to mention that she walked with a cane, having had a severe attack of rheumatics since her arrival in "the great Norrurd," and at every step she hit the pavements in such a manner as to startle the rising generation of Abolitionists, and it had the good effect of preventing any of them from calling out to her, "Where did you get your face painted, you black nigger, you?" which would ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... it more completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person, that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at last fell before the ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin; And ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... well as his audience, is to be his judge. Lord Vargrave's utter incapacity to comprehend political morality, his contempt for all the objects of social benevolence, frequently led him into the avowal of doctrines, which, if they did not startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and delivery), created deep disgust in those even of his own politics who read their naked exposition in the daily papers. Never did Lord Vargrave utter ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from her powerful eye hush an audience—I have seen her acting sometimes even startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage—a faculty of instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some unaccountable sympathy, the power to create which belongs to but one in millions, and which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... the gust were swelling, 15 And the slant night-show'r driving loud and fast! Those sounds which oft have rais'd me, while they aw'd, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, Might startle this dull pain, and make it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... times I would quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some campaign—matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that was ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... my neighbor's fence. I stole as close to him as I could and peered at him through my binocular, while he returned the compliment by peering at me, and then warily ventured to rehearse his little tune. The least movement on my part would startle him, cause him to flit to another perch and crane out his neck to glare at me questioningly with wild, dilated eyes, uncertain whether I was to be trusted or not. Both of us presently grew tired of our strained position, and so I walked off and he flew away. No doubt there was ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... why should we not know again?) the story of the Grecian mother who saw her child sporting on the edge of the bridge. She knew that a cry would startle it over into the raging stream—she came gently near, and opening her bosom allured ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... who was addressing your intellect in weighty words, fathoming your intentions, and detecting your inclinations and prepossessions, and leading you in some given direction with gentle but irresistible force. He would often startle you with the boldness of his propositions, but never till he had contrived, somehow or other, to predispose you in favour of that view of the case which he was presenting. He had a most seductive smile; truth, candour, and gentleness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... eye as keen and wild as a hawk's from sheer solitude and lonely travelling. He was so bent and scarred with weather that he seemed as much a part of that woodland place as the birks themselves, and the noise of his labours did not startle the birds that ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... does Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical matter is before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying, which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is forming a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as it comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the rules of morality, and you will see how ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... which began to startle Dorsenne was only augmented during dinner, so much the more so as, on discussing the conditions of that arrangement he hoped to bring about, the recollection of his terrible youth filled the thoughts and the discourse of the former duellist. Was it, indeed, the same personage who recited ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... than triumph. From her own heart welled up a cry, a revelation of that wonderful thing throbbing in her breast which must have reached Philip's ears had there not in that same instant come another sound to startle them both into ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... it, as if they had never seen it before, and then one of them turned on me quickly, as if to startle me. "Vous ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... escapades as these, we would we might seduce the reader into an utter debauch of spelling. But a sudden Maenad dance of the letters on the page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader—the printer's reader—to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this authority, begging his mercy, to let the little flowers of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... height, and except in early manhood, when he was somewhat attenuated, well built in proportion.] He further described Rossetti's manners as those of a man in deliberate revolt against society; delighting in an opportunity to startle well-ordered persons out of their propriety, and to silence by sheer vehemence of denunciation the seemly protests of very good and very gentle folk. The portraiture seems to me now to bear the impress of truth, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... incapable of discriminating right from wrong. Men, even the wildest, rarely indeed live entirely without some law to guide them, and certainly it was so in Ireland. A rule was growing up and becoming theoretically at any rate, established, many of the provisions of which startle us by the curious modernness of their tone, so oddly do they contrast with what we know of the condition of civilization or ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Letter written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... "as soon as Nollichucky Jack is safe I'll follow you into Kentucky." He slapped me on the knee. "Egad, Davy, it seems like a fairy tale. We always said we were going to Kentucky, didn't we? What is the name of the place you are to startle with your learning and calm by ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... often the Agitation of the Slavery question has been done to death in Congress, and how sure it was to appear again to startle its murderers from their propriety. Like "the blood-boltered Banquo," it would confront again the eyes that had hoped to look upon it no more. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... spiritual realm which now claims him for its own. It is related that on one occasion he nearly frightened to death a watchman who was guarding the coffin of a Tennessee Senator who was lying in state in the Senate Chamber. The startle was doubtless uncontemplated, inasmuch as the Senator was too well bred a man to take ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... boys who had many bunches of fire-crackers, good-naturedly thought they would startle little Washee-washee-wang at his work. So they stole around a corner of the garden, where he was busy in his neat little cabin, and "lit" a whole bunch and threw it over the fence, at a point where all would "go off" right at his door, ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... about him, nor was he the least impertinent. He was frankly interested and wanted to know what was being said. He received the dime and the pennies with a pleasant grin and a (grandmother prompted) "Thank you". But the gift didn't startle him. Dimes must have been a fairly usual part of his life. But a few minutes before the interviewer left she dropped her pencil. It was new and long and yellow. The child's eyes clung to it as he returned ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... and impressiveness both to reader and to hearer. In the remaining Books changes will be found fewer in number and less striking; but occasionally, as for example in 1 Kings xx. 27, we come across changes that startle us by their unlooked-for character, but which, if correct, add a deeper degradation to the outpoured blood of Ahab in the ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... any member of the family. When he came in from his work his first words were for her: some cheery little speech, yet uttered in rather an undertone, lest his natural abruptness unchecked should startle her. The best massive arm-chair, and the snuggest nook by the kitchen fire, were hers; and by the Bible, which was her constant companion, and lay on a little table which stood beside her, a few bright flowers, as their season came round, were placed as tokens ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... the children were grown weary of their tinselled and painted doll. Even the horrors—and some of the details had all the terrible atrocity of barbarism with its passions inflamed by impunity—had ceased to startle; the eloquence of the managers had become commonplace by the repetition which had deprived the horrors of their sting. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the first effort you will do your work a surprising degree of freshness, vigour, and enthusiasm far surpassing the original attempt. Again everyone can and does put forth universal energy under pressure of some urgent necessity, which will startle even himself. No matter who you are and what your physical condition, there is an enormous amount of power in your body that has never been drawn upon at all and impatiently waiting for up-call. We go on in ordinary dog trot pace, resting, limping, "taking care of our health," and then we ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... It was not as tremendous as that which had greeted the plate-smashing comedy at the Hanbridge Empire, but it was far more than sufficiently enthusiastic to startle and shock Edward Henry. In fact, his cold indifference was so conspicuous amid that fever that in order to save his face he had ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... going to strike out into the woods. "Immediately he causes the Drums to Beat and Trumpets to sound for calling his men to-gether."[619]. "Gentlemen and Fellow Soldiers," he says, when they are assembled, "the news just now brought me, may not a little startle you as well as myselfe. But seeing it is not altogether unexpected, wee may the better beare it and provide our remedies. The Governour is now in Gloster County endeavouring to raise forces against us, having declared us Rebells and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... affirmative, I would request him to re-peruse any one poem, of any confessedly great poet from Homer to Milton, or from Aeschylus to Shakespeare; and to strike out (in thought I mean) every instance of this kind. If the number of these fancied erasures did not startle him, or if he continued to deem the work improved by their total omission, he must advance reasons of no ordinary strength and evidence, reasons grounded in the essence of human nature. Otherwise, I should not hesitate to consider him as a man not so much proof against ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... my soul, if you frightened him into giving up a quid of tobacco like that you sure did startle him some!" He kicked Stevens' lost property out with the toe of his boot and turned to Joanne, showing her the fresh bread and marmalade. "Mrs. Otto sent these to you," he said. "And the train won't ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... were not yet driven down into the valleys, and they and the wild ponies stood and stared boldly at the solitary boy, without fleeing from his path, as if they had long since forgotten how the bilberry gatherers had delighted in frightening them. Stephen was too grave and manlike to startle them into memory of it, and he plodded on mile after mile with the three notes in his pocket and his hand closed upon them, pondering deeply with what words he should speak to the unknown clergyman ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... for the final word from Marlanx, who, it seems, was not so far away that communication with him was likely to be delayed. A sword hung over the head of Truxton King, an innocent outsider, and there was a prospect that it would fall in advance of the blow that was intended to startle the world. Olga Platanova was the only one who did not look upon the sprightly American as a spy in the employ of the government—a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... performers to awaken the soul of it; a good table, good weather, good luck, and positively nothing to do but have a good time for three solid weeks in the wilderness. The pestiferous telephone can not play the earwig on board this ship; the telegraph, with metallic tick, can not once startle us by precipitating town tattle; the postal service is cut off; wars and rumors of wars, the annihilation of a nation, even the swallowing up of a whole continent, are now of less consequence to us than the possibility of a rain-shower this ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... glimpse of him, but it was sufficient to startle her considerably. He was a small man wearing a tweed cap and a tweed travelling ulster of a vivid brown. It was not these details, however, which took her aback. It was the fact that in the glimpse she had had of the man's face she ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him— of his little timidities and feelings—so adoringly anxious not to startle him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a creature who COULD HURT—that your very yearning to understand his tiny hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be quite a mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite sense ...
— My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... head of you that would startle you," thought Dick,—this was before the red-haired girl had brought him under the guillotine,—but he only said, "I am very sorry," and harrowed Torpenhow's soul that evening with blasphemies against Art. Later, insensibly and to a large extent against his own will, he ceased ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times,—to Death, if we give the ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the shore, and is one hundred feet wide, being surmounted by gardens and footwalks. It is set at this low level to facilitate the movement of the sea-water, and its design is to represent the fishes and marine animals as nearly as possible in their native haunts and habits, to do which, and not startle the fish, the visitors go through darkened passages, and are thus concealed from them, all the light coming in by refraction through the water. Their actions are thus natural, and they move about with perfect freedom, some of the tanks being of enormous ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... here, Leslie? I thought I heard a sound, and then it was so quiet that I came out to see what it meant. Every little noise seems to startle me this afternoon." ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... tease her: a luxuriant young womanliness lay over and about her. Now, above the pale wild-rose of her cheeks her black eyes danced with a mischievous glee; for she believed her husband intended swinging his leg noiselessly over the sill and creeping up to startle Purdy—and this appealed to her sense of humour. But, as he remained standing at the window, she just smiled slyly, satisfied to be in communion with him over ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... do!" she reflected, shaking herself. "If I go to sleep and tumble off this old root I'll startle away all the fish in the creek." She looked doubtfully at the still water, now and then rippled by the splash of a leaping fish. "No good when they jump like that," said Norah to herself. "I guess I'll ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... in my last" (he wrote), "that the discoloration of my skin had begun. The complexion which you were once so good as to admire, has disappeared for ever. I am now of a livid ashen color—so like death, that I sometimes startle myself when I look in the glass. In about six weeks more, as the doctor calculates, this will deepen to a blackish blue; and then, 'the saturation' (as he calls it) will ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... the door—trickling noiselessly down the knots of the carved oak. Still I stood and watched it, and it crept on slowly, slowly, like a living thing, and growing as it came, to my very feet. I cannot say how long I might have stood there, fascinated by it, had not something suddenly occurred to startle me into my senses again; for full upon the back of my right hand fell, with a sullen, heavy sound, a second drop of blood. It stung and burnt my flesh like molten lead, and the sharp, sudden pain it gave me shot up my arm and shoulder, and seemed in an instant ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs Startle my wandering eye like basking snakes. Where this thick brush displays its emerald tent, I stretch my wearied frame, for solitude To steal within my heart. How hushed the scene At first, and then, to the accustomed ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... is never frank, uncompromising nature. The fact is, that Beddoes wrote from the head, collectively, and without emotion, or without inspiration, save in literature. All Beddoes' characters speak precisely the same language, express the same desires; all in the same way startle us by their ghostly remoteness from flesh and blood. 'Man is tired of being merely human,' Siegfried says, in Death's Jest-Book, and Beddoes may be said to have grown tired of humanity before he ever came to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... his small, moccasined feet. He wondered whether it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with weirdly absurd hallucinations. So what happened in almost that same breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done. It was for a brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their peaks their gymnastics would not have frozen him into a more speechless ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the very law of his being, which was ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to startle belief,—comprising, as it does, a range and variety of study, which might make much older ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Godwin's pen cut the legal cords with which it was attempted to bind them), it might have done so sooner, and with more lasting effect. The world do not know (and we are not sure but the intelligence may startle Mr. Godwin himself), that he is the author of a volume of Sermons, and of a Life ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... sound was so big and heavy for such a little fellow. Since then I have heard it frequently; and now sometimes when I stand at night in the forest and hear a sudden heavy thump in the underbrush, as if a big moose were striking the ground and shaking his antlers at me, it doesn't startle me in the least. It is only Br'er ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... some time before I was heard; but at length the door was opened, and I was accosted by an Englishman, who, in a strange compound of French and English, asked, "What the devil I meant by all that uproar?" Determining to startle my old friend the major, I replied, that "I was aide-de-camp to General Picton, and had come down on very unpleasant business." By this time the noise of the party within had completely subsided, and from a few whispered sentences, and their ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... surprising Shall on Friday next be told, Things to startle and delight thee, When I've crossed ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... knew something and feared lest it should come to his knowledge. Therefore he resolved to startle her by a blunt question. "I never knew ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... hence to hell alive descend; Or die the death I dread no less than hell, Sew'd in a sack, and plunged into a well, Ere I my fame by one lewd act disgrace, Or once renounce the honour of my race. 590 For know, sir knight, of gentle blood I came; I loathe a whore, and startle at the name. But jealous men on their own crimes reflect, And learn from thence their ladies to suspect: Else why these heedless cautions, sir, to me These doubts and fears of female constancy This chime still rings in every lady's ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... be close here," thought Tom, as he reached the end of the cross walk, past which he felt that the boy must come; and to startle him into showing where he was ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... like her very well. She's mad, you know,—mad as a hatter,—and no one can ever guess what freak may come next. One always feels that she'll do something sooner or later that will startle ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... don't know how great I am," declared the inventor, instantly off, on the hint supplied by his visitor. "But just the minute that insurance company gives me the money, I'll be ready to startle the skies! I'll blot out the stars for 'em! I'll show New York! I know what I'm doing! And nothing on earth is going to stop me! All these fool balloonists, with their big silk floating cigars! Deadly cigars is what they ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... extra one on Thursday or Saturday. I do not think anything would persuade her to have an assembly, or play cards, on a Friday. But on a Sunday evening she always has her rubber, to Flora's horror. It does not startle me, because I remember it always was so when I lived with her at Carlisle: nor Annas, because she knew people did such things in the South. I find Grandmamma usually spends the winter at the Bath: but she has not quite made up her mind ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... short gallery had also been shut. Lily, whose manifold misfortunes had not quenched her interest in the 'Incroyable' corset, opened her parcel, and found that the corset was not an 'Incroyable' at all, but an inferior substitute, with no proper belted band, and of a shape to startle even a Brighton bathing-woman! The change must have been effected by the assistant in making ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... environments of evil and forego forever the voice that calls us away to partake of things which shall be as wine and honey to the soul, frightens me; startles me as the sudden thunder of the surf might startle one who sojourned by an ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... oars it was for a good reason. I wanted to slip past a cove where some native craft were moored. That was common prudence in such a small boat, and not armed—as I am. I saw you right enough, but I had no intention to startle anybody. Take ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... startling and astounding shocks which are constantly invented, artfully and habitually applied, under all the power of sympathy, and of a studied and enthusiastic elocution, by a large class of preachers among us. To startle and to shock is their great secret— ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... with a smile, slipping down herself into a chair, beside which, on the floor, stood a sewing-basket from which, Daylight noted, some white fluffy thing of lace and muslin overflowed. Again she smiled. "Though I confess you did startle me for ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... have done for Osceola. As great as Napoleon, some one said. What might opportunity do for this strange, exotic flower of Osceola's people? She has brains and beauty and instinctive grace enough to startle a continent. I am greatly tempted. Ann, I beg of you, don't breathe any of this to Aunt Agatha. Some day I may carry Keela away to the cities of the North for an experiment quite my own. Her delicate beauty—her gravity—her ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... for a long time the buffalo would not be found in a place favorable for driving over the cliff or into a pen. In such cases, the Indians would steal out on foot, and, on a day when there was no wind, would stealthily surround the herd. Then they would startle the buffalo, and yet would keep them from breaking through the circle. The buffalo would "mill" around until exhausted, and at length, when worn out, would be shot down by the Indians. This corresponds almost exactly with one of the methods employed in killing buffalo by ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... called down to me. I could not hear what she said, I was in such terrible agitation. And besides, I think she was afraid to speak too loudly, for fear she might startle the black-and-yellow beast. How I longed to hear her dear words, perhaps her last! Mayhap she was bidding me a fond farewell; perhaps she was trying to encourage me and uphold my heart in this terrible trial. It would be like her; she knows my ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crue To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; 40 To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that, can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a great dear about doing ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... "How you did startle me!" cried Dan in a hoarse whisper. "But I'm awfully glad you've come." Dan's face was perfectly white, and he was trembling visibly. "Kitty, what can I do? I have been such a—such a fool; worse than a fool. Look!" holding up a paper partly ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of the complete surrender of self to the impression, whether spiritual or sensual, of the moment. It is a quality, perhaps, in which the young poet is richer than the mature, his very inexperience making him more venturesome in those leaps of language that startle us with their rashness only to bewitch us the more with the happy ease of their accomplishment. For this there are no existing laws of rhetoric, for it is from such felicities that the rhetoricians deduce and codify their statutes. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... to Luxor. We had come, leisurely, by river, and were sightseeing every moment. Even Bedr, if he were on the spot, intending to finish his revenge as neatly as it had been begun, could have noticed nothing suspicious in our actions. The mention of Bedr in this connection seemed to startle Biddy, and I was sorry I had let his name slip. But, as I had said, every one came to Luxor. Bedr had with apparent frankness explained that he was travelling up the Nile by rail with his two clients: and if that ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... myself by imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world of which I had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... the word "Mohawk," suddenly uttered, was sufficient to startle a New Brunswick Indian. The late Edward Jack upon asking an Indian child, "What is a Mohawk?" received this reply, "A Mohawk is a bad Indian who kills people and eats them." Parkman describes the Mohawks as the fiercest, the boldest, yet most politic savages to whom the ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Bishopriggs decided to ascertain from the servants what the lady's future movements might be; and, thus informed, to startle her by anonymous warnings, conveyed through the post, and claiming their answer through the advertising channel of a newspaper. Here was the certainty of alarming her, coupled with the certainty of safety to himself! Little did Mrs. Glenarm dream, when she capriciously ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... seemed as if they were losing their gloss by being produced whenever the friends wanted something to talk about. Moreover, Emma, who was now within a few months of twenty-one, was seized with a vehement desire to extort her mother's consent to put them at once in execution, and used to startle Violet by pouring out lamentations over her promise, as if it was a cruel thraldom. Violet argued that the scheme was likely to be much better weighed by taking ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like an invading army," he said. "If she's here alone, we will startle her into a spasm. One of us could take a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... while, saying absolutely nothing. And we sat talking of other things till he rose to go away. And then, at the very moment he was mounting on his camel, he turned, and came back. And he said: Listen! Thou art hiding from me something that maybe I could startle thee by guessing: but no matter. Keep thy secret: but listen to a piece of good advice, which may serve thee at a pinch. If ever thou wouldst have a woman prize thee, never let her see that thou settest any store by her. Treat her as a straw, and she will run after thee as if thou ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... castles, their bearded wizards, 'and such odd branches of learning.' There needs a winged griffin, at the very least, to carry them out of the everyday six-and-eightpenny world, or the whizz of an Excalibur to startle their drowsy imaginations into life. The beauties and the wonders of the universe died for them some centuries ago; they went out with Friar Bacon and the invention of gunpowder. Praised be Apollo! this is not our case. There ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... jumped perceptibly as Nancy's soft voice reached her. "Dear child, how you startle one! Have you been there long?" Her voice rose to ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... them hollow both in its voice and in the way it imitates. Do you know that when I have been giving my quick short bark, to tell that I am not well pleased, I have heard one of these fellows near me actually make me startle—its bark was so like to that of one of our kind! I cannot bear the blacks! I have had a grudge against them since some little urchins shot at me when I was young, and made my hand bleed. How it bled! My mother, with whom I had been, kept out of the way of these blackguards, but ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it with growing pallor ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... startle the little mother, whose frightened eyes were fixed upon us, we announced our mutual discovery by a single movement of the hand, and walked quietly past without pausing. Not until we reached the open fields ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... mothers and aunts in plush chairs, surveying M. Knaak through their lorgnettes, as he bowed forward, grasped the hem of his frock-coat with two fingers of each hand, and with springy legs demonstrated the various steps of the mazurka. But when he had a mind to completely startle his audience, he would suddenly and without cogent reason leap high in the air, cut pigeon-wings with bewildering rapidity, trilling with his feet, so to say, whereupon he would return to this earth with a muffled thud which, however, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... be remarked that it would startle those unaccustomed to Freeland ideas to hear the amounts of these allowances. In the first year the maintenance unit reached 160L; therefore an unmarried woman or a widow received 48L; a married woman 24L; a family with three children and a wife 48L; an old man or invalid 64L, which, in ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... interval convinced both nobles and people that a new era was dawning for them. In the short period of eighteen months, the wise administration of Isabella and Ferdinand, had effected a sufficient change to startle all ranks into the conviction that their best interests lay in prompt obedience, and in exerting themselves in their several spheres, to second the sovereign's will. The chivalric qualities of Ferdinand, his undoubted wisdom and unwavering firmness, excited ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... revolution. It is urged by advocates of this doctrine, quite truly, that all political events are brought about by minorities, since the majority are indifferent to politics. But there is a difference between a minority in which the indifferent acquiesce, and a minority so hated as to startle the indifferent into belated action. To make the Bolshevik doctrine reasonable, it is necessary to suppose that they believe the majority can be induced to acquiesce, at least temporarily, in the revolution made by the class-conscious minority. This, again, is based upon Russian ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mind he had held fast to the resolve to say nothing that might startle or disturb her. Convinced that no power could now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events shape themselves as they would. But as he followed Madame Olenska into the hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone with her at the door ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... spun its threads of light under the window; and at the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... anticipation of perception must somewhat startle an inquirer whom initiation into transcendental philosophy has rendered cautious. We must naturally entertain some doubt whether or not the understanding can enounce any such synthetical proposition as that respecting the degree of all reality in phenomena, and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... medical officers of the garrison were immediately in requisition; and the sights which I saw, even when standing at the gate, as the carts and cars rolled over the drawbridge, were sufficient to startle feelings more used to such terrible demonstrations of the folly or the frenzy of the world. But this was no time to indulge indolent sensibilities. Of course, I have no desire to enter into the startling details of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... necessary and justifiable evolution of the stage. The managers may know what the audience wants, just as the editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make a newspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, but it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. An observer must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York or Boston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Has ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... photograph the bones, and, before long, the organs of the human body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... of my neighbours is awake; and the hinges of his door, shrieking terribly, fiendishly, startle the swallows from their sleep. And here are the muleteers, yodling, as ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below when the firing ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... height of beauty,— We know to be glad of life as we were gods Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,— Divine body of Power and divine Burning soul of Light and self-desire. And having given ourselves all to amazement, We are made like a prophesying song Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God.— Yea, God shall marry his ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... was unwilling to startle his proselyte, by insisting upon any topic which appeared particularly to jar with his habits or principles; and he blended his mirth and his earnest so dexterously, that it was impossible for Nigel to discover how far he was serious in his propositions, or how far they flowed from a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive her ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... will regard my husband. Ten to one I shall never have the chance again; but n'importe. Moreover, I was aware that Henry knew so little of me he could hardly be conscious to whom he was writing. Why, it would startle him to see me in my natural home character; he would think I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed. I could not sit all day long making a grave face before my husband. I would laugh, and satirise, and say whatever ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... another matter to an energetic, nervous American. Facts, fancies, faiths, all show how wide is the variance in feelings. With them no introspective [greek]cnzhi seauton overexcites the consciousness of self. But with us; as with those of old possessed of devils, it comes to startle and stays to distress. Too apt is it to prove an ever-present, undesirable double. Too often does it play the part of uninvited spectre at the feast, whose presence no one save its unfortunate victim suspects. The haunting horror of his own identity is to natures far less ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... if we heard them for the first time. I do not know but that they may startle us now, often as we have heard them, if we think seriously over them. That God should appear to mortal man, and speak with mortal man. It is most wonderful. It is utterly unlike anything that we have ever seen, or that any person on earth has seen, for many hundred ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... heat of the weather, the performances of Dick and Jack upon strong venison essence and roast gazelle were enough to startle any housekeeper of small income and an anxiety about the state of the butcher's bill. But of course the outdoor life and constant exertion produced a tremendous appetite; and as Mr Rogers noted the change in Dick, whose palate ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... other men, for they are all more or less struck by some sacred malady whose paralyzing torpor they must shake off, whose benumbing pain they must forget, to be joyous and amused by those pyrotechnic fires which startle the bewildered guests, who see from time to time a Roman candle, a rose-colored Bengal light, a cascade whose waters are of fire, or a terrible, yet quite innocent dragon! Gayety and the strength necessary to be joyous, are, unfortunately things only accidentally to be encountered ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... been wasted. In my estimation the Bishop is a perfectly detestable tyrant, and if I know him at all he will take all she will give and never grant her wish. Now she is preparing her great move, and hopes to startle him into compliance by a new marvel. She thinks that, like a juggler who turns a white egg black, she can turn a heathen district into a Christian one by a twist of her finger. Well—so far as I am concerned I will have nothing to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his middle joints. When John comes to use the carving-knife I fear Dr. Southey will not be so tractable. Nous verrons. I will not show Southey's letter to Lockhart, for there is to him personally no friendly tone, and it would startle the Hidalgo's pride. It is to be wished they may draw kindly together. Southey says most truly that even those who most undervalue his reputation would, were he to withdraw from the Review, exaggerate the loss it would thereby sustain. The bottom of all these feuds, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... an architect, you're a critic," he said to him early in their accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I want you to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have a notion you'll startle my readers." ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... ancient cobwebs fell; soap and water explored unwonted territories: the harshest attendants began practising pleasant looks and kind words on the patients, to get into the way of it, so that it might not come too abrupt and startle the patients visibly under the visitors' eyes: something like actors working up a factitious sentiment at the wing for the public display, or like a racehorse's preliminary canter. Alfred's heart beat with joy inexpressible. He had only to keep calm, and this was his last day at ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured that it ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... with the nervous little seed-pods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants have ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... gazelle would timidly approach to slake his thirst at the water; the noble lion would stalk out in all his majesty for the same purpose, while ever and anon, now close to the canoes, now yards away, a loud snort would startle us, and the huge ugly head of a hippopotamus would ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights from all colors about ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... go to their death without Christ. And I questioned, Do we believe it? Do we really believe it? What narcotic has Satan injected into our systems that this awful, woeful, tremendous fact does not startle us out of our lethargy, our frightful ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... The pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as the twilight deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark corners of the room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excited imagination, should be waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding—though she knew quite well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it—that she forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The room resumed its shadowy ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the sign—"H. H. Hardwill, Publisher." His heart half-failed him, and he stood looking in the large, book-filled window, with that romance which was to startle the literary world folded quietly under his arm, like any common paper. What kind of a man is Mr. Hardwill? he thought. Is he a large man, with a heavy watch-chain, or a thin, sky-rockety piece of humanity, dressed in black, and tipped off with red hair? Was ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... temples, was to her mind death-like. Mary had not been sheltered from taking part in scenes of suffering; she had seen sickness and death in cottages, as well as in her own home, and she had none of the fanciful alarms, either of novelty or imagination, to startle her in the strange watch that had so suddenly been thrust on her but what did fill her with a certain apprehension, was the new and lofty beauty of expression that sat on that sleeping countenance. 'A nice boy,' 'rather a handsome lad,' 'a boy of ingenuous face,' they ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that we possess no recognised English set phrase, such as "to startle the Philistine" or "to ruffle the hair of the Philistine." Indeed, before Matthew Arnold imported the term Philistine from Germany, as equivalent in art matters to the French "le bourgeois" or the later expression "l'epicier," we really had nothing at all to correspond with these ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... him, constant little landslides. And, at ordinary times, Joe Lorey, awkward as he looked to be, could scale a sloping sand-bank without sending down a sliding spoonful to betray the fact that he was moving on it to the wild things it might startle. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... standing with her back to him, and Forrester didn't make a sound, not wanting to startle the Goddess. She was totally unclad, her glorious body shining in the light of the room, her blue-black hair unbound and falling halfway down her gently curved back. But she must have heard him somehow, for she turned, and for half a second ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this wary animal, as it moved forward directly that the line of beaters entered the jungle, instead of advancing in the usual manner almost at the end of the beat. The sudden apparition of the tiger before it was expected would probably startle the gunner, who by firing in a hurry would in many instances entail a miss. Having well considered the matter, I determined to make myself more comfortable on the morrow, by padding the mucharn with the quilted pad of the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... gave a start of astonishment. In his own mind he had arrived at the conclusion that the will would never be executed, and to have Miss Merrick thus suddenly declare her decision was enough to startle even the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... of the earliest if not the first remarkable animal to startle a stranger on arriving in Ceylon, whilst wending his way from Point-de-Galle to Colombo, is a huge lizard of from four to five feet in length, the Talla-goya of the Singhalese, and Iguana[1] of the Europeans. It may ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... between Mark and Berrand. Mark was really possessed by the spirit of the artist, was driven by something strange and dominating within him to do what he did. Berrand was possessed by a spirit of mischievous devilry, by the poor and degrading desire to shock and startle the world at whatever cost. For the moment Catherine mentally saw Mark in a light of nobility; Berrand in a ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... rings with voices shrill, That startle the sleeping bird; To-morrow eve must the voice be still, And the step must fall unheard. The Briton lies by the blue Champlain, In Ticonderoga's towers, And ere the sun rise twice again, The towers and the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... been enough to startle the bravest person. A figure had suddenly appeared out of the gloom, a huge towering figure that looked to the startled girls to be almost as high as the trees themselves, though it was not more than eight feet tall. The figure was clad in long, flowing ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... every rising and setting sun found something added to the volume of my life. But there seems so little to describe! I could go on for ever, giving utterance to thoughts that used to crowd in my young brain, thoughts that would startle as well as amuse,—but I fear they might become monotonous ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... surrogate's room Lady Constantine managed, at the last juncture, to state her errand in tones so collected as to startle even herself to which her listener replied also as if the whole thing were the most natural in the world. When it came to the affirmation that she had lived fifteen days in the parish, she said ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... 1871; and every one agreed it was a brave baby that could start upon such a wild journey. Over the lonely, snow-topped mountains, through the gloomiest gorges the route would lie. Here the whistle of the engine would be answered by the cry of the condor, or deep in the lonely pine forest would startle some ambling grizzly bear. It was in the days when the settler was still subject to attacks by marauding Indians, and civilisation had only a slight foothold among the savage ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... length from the heel to the middle claw, nearly thirteen inches in breadth from the outer to the inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in these ancient sands,—measurements that might well startle zoologists who had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if not lessened, at least familiarized us to the wonder. In a deposit of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... course, is how it should be. He never startles for the sake of startling; neither does he mock. Certainly, unlike the best of his contemporaries, he seems almost as indifferent to the tradition as he is to the public; but he no more laughs at the one than he tries to startle the other. Only amongst the whipper-snappers of painting will you discover a will to affront tradition, or attract attention by deliberate eccentricity. Only, I think, the Italian Futurists, their transalpine apes, a few revolutionaries ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... shape of a crocodile [Transcriber's note: 'crocoiled' in original] displeasure or misfortune, by the figure of an eye, good watche or regarde, and so forthe of other. Emong their priestes, loke whome they sawe startle aboute as haulfe wood, [Footnote: Mad, from the Saxon wod. See "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii., 3, and "Mids. N. Dr.," ii., 3.] him did iudge of all othermooste holy, and making him their king, they fall downe and worship him, as thoughe there ware in him a ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... she spent in the great school, she made but one visit to Oxbow Village. She did not try to startle the good people with her accomplishments, but they were surprised at the change which had taken place in her. Her dress was hardly more showy, for she was but a school-girl, but it fitted her more gracefully. She had gained a softness of expression, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... abhorrence. All this came out gradually before me. Nor did I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good landlords—never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... mother might. So, with her mouth almost in my ear, she whispered, "This is delightful—is it not so? Pray, just hearken to Nicholas: 'With that I fired.' 'Then we tried the covert.' 'The lock jammed.' 'Forty-four brace.' Listen to the huntsmen! Shall we startle them with the horn, tra-la?" And she thrilled with laughter in my ear there in the blissful dark, till I had to put that over her mouth which ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... he seemed fairly well pleased to find that they had not succeeded in capturing his ally. Max awaited developments. He was satisfied with the way things were going, and deep down in his heart believed the thrilling announcement he was storing up with which to startle his three chums would not now be ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... her wheel, with two children playing on the ground before her, were the objects that now presented themselves. The uncouthness of my garb, my wild and weatherworn appearance, my fusil and tomahawk, could not but startle them. The woman stopped her wheel, and gazed as if a spectre ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... not hurry his courtship, for he believed that he had a clear field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he suddenly recognized her as a woman. Now a woman, a beautiful woman especially, alone with one in the desert, is very mighty. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... plain enough, and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the light that penetrated ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... irresistible. The eyes of the man were soon riveted upon the gorgeous vision of loveliness before him, and the contagion of the girl's animation showed itself even in him, for he brightened a little, and was clever enough to startle himself. It was a new delight and stimulus to Helen to perceive it, and she was soon swept away in much the same kind of nervous delight as her phantasy with the thunderstorm. The sofa upon which the two were seated ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... greater part of the valley, it as suddenly disappeared, leaving an evanescent trail of flame behind it. There could be little doubt that the old shepherd had merely seen one of those shooting lights that in mountain districts so frequently startle the night traveller; but the apparition now filled his whole mind, as one vouchsafed from the spiritual world, and of strange ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... all things round about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay." ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... not him who needs it most: Allow thyself some share.—He's gone too soon; I had to tell him of his holy jugglings; Things that would startle faith, and make us deem Not this, or ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... lightning, burglars, and a thousand other things. Their days are haunted by fear of this thing or that. Their peace is marred and their hearts are troubled. For all this, trust is the cure. I do not mean to say that if you trust, nothing will ever startle you or frighten you, or that you will never feel physical fear in time of danger; but in such times trust will bring to us a consciousness that the Lord knows and cares, and that his ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... and looked for it anxiously in vain. Perhaps Elizabeth might remember where it was last seen. She hurried to her. Elizabeth had a sitting-room and bedroom at the end of the corridor, and Mrs. Gaddesden went into the sitting-room first, as quietly as possible, so as not to startle her daughter. ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, Might startle this dull pain, and make it move ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... momentous consequences, so well calculated to startle the public mind, so hostile to the established order of things, demands of us, as the official representatives of the American Society, a statement of the reasons which led to it. This is due not only to the Society, but also to the country and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... quite enough to startle and alarm them, for Nanahboozhoo was also much feared, as he sometimes ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... was bald to the heart inhabiting me then, as if quite shaven. She could speak her affectionate mind as plain as print, and it was dull print facing me, not the arches of the sunset. Julia had only to lisp, 'my husband,' to startle and agitate me beyond expression. She said simple things—'I slept well last night,' or 'I dreamed,' or 'I shivered,' and plunged me headlong down impenetrable forests. The mould of her mouth to a reluctant 'No,' and her almost invariable drawing in of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and still there was no word of Nina; at times he was visited by sudden sharp misgivings that terrified him. The heading of a paragraph in a newspaper would startle his eyes; and then he would breathe again when he found that this poor wretch who had grown weary of the world was unknown to him. Every evening, when Mlle. Girond came into the theatre, she was met by the same anxious, wondering question; and her reply ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... a solemn vow, To startle all beholders: I wore white muslin on my brow, Green velvet on my shoulders— My trousers were supremely wide, I learn'd to swear "by Allah"— I stuck a poniard by my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... another aspect of this matter which would perhaps startle those who think that all piety and orthodoxy reside in the rural districts; and that is, that the city, as it is, affords far greater encouragements to well developed piety than the country; and that if the church were fully awake to her duty towards young men, and actually employing all the means ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... the same queer wavering movement. There was something so strange and uncanny about it—for I by this time knew the ground well enough to be fully aware that there ought not to be any moving thing there—that I stopped playing and sprang to my feet so suddenly that my movement appeared to startle Ama, who uttered a little cry of alarm, or surprise, and made as though she too would ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... my mind to startle the "boys" by running, mother-naked, in a circle, whooping, about them, where they were sawing up ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: ". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has collapsed inexcusably, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... had by that time burned low, and the gale was still raging around them, driving the snowdrift wildly against the hut, and sometimes giving the door so violent a shake as to startle poor Quashy out of sweet memories of Sooz'n into awful thoughts of the ghost that ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Gertrude admiringly. "You're just storing up ideas and information to startle the ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... nothing in his advances to startle or alarm. He never even talked of love, but there are modes of making it more eloquent than language, and which convey it subtilely and irresistibly to the heart. The beam of the eye, the tone of voice, the thousand tendernesses which emanate from every word and look and ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... he'll simper. You do not know what a vile creature he can be. I can take care of myself. You needn't be a bit afraid about that. I fancy I could give him a slap on the face which would startle him a little. And if we came to blows, I do believe that he would not have a leg to stand upon. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... to investigate. He had therefore a difficult part to act; one that required great nerve, and such a talent of throwing a fair semblance over foul facts, as few men, civilized or savage, are likely to possess. With the consciousness of guilt upon him, causing him to startle at the first aspect of peril, it is singular that the man should have had the temerity to trust himself in so trying a position. His version of the Mary Carver affair was a very wretched piece of fiction. He declared that Captain Farwell had killed ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Pope is most reprehensible—and it is insincere. For he has the sense to see Chaucer's broadest satire in its true light, and its fearless expositions. Yet from his justification of pictures and all their colouring in the ancient poet, that might well startle people by no means timid, he turns with frowning forehead and reproving hand to corresponding delineations in the modern, that stand less in need of it, and spits his spite on Pope, which we wipe off that it may not corrode. "This translation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... ground of the wood goes up in this place steep as a ladder, the wind began to sound straight on, and the leaves to toss and switch open and let in the sun. This suited me better; it was the same noise all the time, and nothing to startle. Well, I had got to a place where there was an underwood of what they call wild cocoa-nut—mighty pretty with its scarlet fruit—when there came a sound of singing in the wind that I thought I had never heard the like of. It was all very fine to tell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... men of the mountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... "But startle ye not when the tempests blow? Have you no dread of a wily foe? Do you not tremble, when the serpents hiss Mid leaves that the ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... to the Lords, Will the atmosphere, I wonder, With the placid balm of its dreamful calm Bring his nimble spirit under? Or will he act on the Peers Like an intellectual cat-fish, Or startle their sleep with the flying leap Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... over,' said Yule. He was in visible agitation and his voice shook. 'The idea may well startle you at first. It will seem to you that I propose to make away with your property before you have even come into possession of it.' He laughed. 'But, in fact, what I have in mind is merely an investment for your capital, and that an admirable one. Five thousand pounds at three per cent.—one ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the present moment I am a gentleman who is in search of a house of residence, and I have a weakness for Brunswick Square in particular, especially for No. 218. Unless I am greatly mistaken I am going to show you something that will startle even the most ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... confidential, ingratiating manner: "I wish you'd write to her and put some reason into her. She mustn't give it up. With her help—and you know in the management she's simply wonderful—with her help, I think I shall be able to bring something about that'll startle folks. Only, she mustn't throw me over. And she mustn't get too crotchety with the boarders. I've had some difficulty in that line, as it is. In fact, I've had to be rather cross. You know about the Boutwoods, for instance! Well, I've smoothed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Novalis, ist dephlegmatisiren vivificiren. The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it into sharp and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... sometimes, as Mrs. Ashe watched the color deepen in her cheeks while she read, her heart would bound hopefully within her. But she was a wise woman in her way, and she wanted Katy for a sister very much; so she never said a word or looked a look to startle or surprise her, but left the thing to work itself out, which is the best course always in ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... broad and open brow, like the shadow of clouds drifting over a harvest-field; while his attendants, on whom the name of the sixth knight seemed to produce an effect almost electrical, hung in suspense upon their master's looks. But when Rowena spoke, the sound of her voice seemed to startle him ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... shocking impiety; I could almost recommend to you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... extends but a short distance in a horizontal direction. The floor is littered with the bones of the animals slaughtered for food during the war. Some eager archaeologist may hereafter discover this cabin and startle his world by announcing another of the Stone Age caves. The sun shines freely into its mouth, and graceful bunches of grass and eriogonums and sage grow about it, doing what they can toward its redemption from degrading ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... absurd for the commander of the Hugh Frazer, amid the quiet waters of Loch-Lomond, to give orders to the little boy that holds the helm, or point out the beauties of Inversnaid, through an instrument that would startle all the cattle on the surrounding hills? Just so with Shakspeare's kings and lovers. They have "prave 'ords enough, look you," to fill the biggest speaking-trumpet that ever was cast; but miserable is it for men who have not such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... when she had finished her relation of the old man's derangement, and of Jennie's devotion and love toward him, the minister arose, and walked backward and forward in the room with an absorbed and meditative air, and then stopping so suddenly before the young girl as to startle her, he said abruptly: "Will you give me one moment in the garden? I have a single word to say to you alone." Jennie laid aside her work, and as they stepped from the colonnade into the garden of their lodgings, she opened an adjoining wicket that led to her uncle's grounds, and, motioning Mr. Colbert ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... her voice. Her natural conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from her powerful eye hush an audience—I have seen her acting sometimes even startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage—a faculty of instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some unaccountable sympathy, the power to create which belongs to but one in millions, and which, where it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of Lulli, the long famed composer of Louis XIV. Purcell followed in the new track, taking for his models the productions of the first Italian composers. The fact, that Purcell was under obligations to the Italians, may startle many of his modern admirers; but with a candour worthy of himself, in the dedication of his Dioclesian to Charles Duke of Somerset, he says, that "music is yet but in its nonage, a forward child. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... prison? He thought he could bear it. A man must stand by his opinions—even through sacrifice. It would startle the public into attention. Such outrages on the freedom, on the ancient rights of Englishmen, must not pass without protest. Yes—he felt it in him to be a martyr! They would hardly refuse him a ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... what you say"? The unescapable impression that one sometimes gets by a glance at these public-inflicted trade-marks, and without having heard or seen any of their music, is that the one great underlying desire of these appearing-artists, is to impress, perhaps startle and shock their audiences and at any cost. This may have some such effect upon some of the lady-part (male or female) of their listeners but possibly the members of the men-part, who as boys liked hockey better than birthday-parties, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... cross purposes. Should his child sicken unto death, why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160 Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why—"'t is but a word," object— "A gesture"—he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet was not always—as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always was—superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. Bossuet was a great ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... surprise. It is like the true reading of the passage—"God said, Let there be light, and there was light;"—not, there was light. As the feeling with which we startle at a shooting star compared with that of watching the sunrise at the pre-established moment, such and so low ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... occupied her broncho threw up his head and gave a tremendous neigh. The sound startled her, as these things will startle the strongest when all is profoundly silent. But what followed was more startling still. Not one, but half a dozen echoes at least responded, and, with a thrill, the girl sat up. The next moment she had spurred her horse and charged, regardless of the thorns, into the midst ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... it he sank back in his chair, pitifully white and limp. He begged for air. We opened the window. Zura ran for water. While I bathed his face he said, looking at Zura: "I beg your pardon. I'm not at all well, but I didn't mean to startle you." ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... blendest thus The dirge note and the song of festival; But in one heart, one changeful human heart,— Ay, and within one hour of that strange world,— Thou call'st their music forth, with all its tones To startle and to pierce!—the dying Swan's, And ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some campaign—matter infinitely less real than the name of the ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the opposite side of the lane, so that their hurried approach did not startle the strangers; but Phoebe, looking up at the sound of the footsteps, saw a face she knew looking wistfully, eagerly at her, with evident recognition. Phoebe had a faculty quite royal of remembering faces, and it took but a moment to recall Ursula's to her. Another moment ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... sward for a couch as an inalienable privilege; John Steele encountered him on every hand. Once, beneath a great tree, where Jocelyn Wray and he had stopped their horses to talk for a moment, the bleared, bloated face of what had been a man looked up at him. The sight for an instant seemed to startle the beholder; a wave of anger at that face, set in a place where imagination had an instant before played with a picture altogether different, passed over him; then ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... attitudes, as no wonder it should. What they have just seen is sufficient to terrify the stoutest hearts—even those of tried tars, as all of them are. A ship manned by hairy men—a crew of veritable Orsons! Certainly enough to startle the most phlegmatic mariner, and make him tremble as he tugs at his oar. But they have ceased tugging at their oars, and hold them, blades suspended. Almost the same is their breath. One alone, at length, musters ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... minutes. Then the pangs of hunger would render him restless, and he would draw out his watch to note the time of day. The next step in the formula would bring him back to my room door while I was still sleepily trying to reconnect the broken links of a dream, from which vain effort he would startle me into wide-awake reality by a stentorian ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... when to-morrow's rising sun goes forth and his rays unveil the world. On them, while the beaters run up and down, and the lawns are girt with toils, will I pour down a blackening rain-cloud mingled with hail, and startle all the sky in thunder. Their company will scatter for shelter in the dim darkness; Dido and the Trojan captain [125-159]shall take refuge in the same cavern. I will be there, and if thy goodwill is assured me, I will unite them in wedlock, and make her wholly his; here shall ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... rows of small boxes like dog-kennels with heart-shaped openings. Round these openings, names, dates, and pious ejaculations are written. Looking through the aperture, a glimpse of a skull may startle one, for it is a gruesome custom of the country to dig up the bones of the dead and preserve the skulls in this way. The name upon the box is that once borne by the deceased, the date that of his death, and the charitable prayer is for ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... for I had shot four rare humming-birds; but so far we had seen no specimens of the gorgeous quetzal, and it was for these that our eyes wandered whenever we reached a patch of woodland, but only to startle macaws, parroquets, or the clumsy-looking—but really light and active—big-billed toucans, which made ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... me—be sure there is only one thing good for you, and that is the sea in hot climates. Mount, sir, into "a little frigot" of 5000 tons or so, and steer peremptorily for the tropics; and what if the ancient mariner, who guides your frigot, should startle the silence of the ocean with the cry of land ho!—say, when the day is dawning—and you should see the turquoise mountain tops of Upolu coming hand over fist above the horizon? Mr. Barrie, sir, 'tis then there would be larks! And though I cannot be certain that our climate would suit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first appeared in sight, and as George peered beyond the projecting point of the ledge, he threw up his hands and burst out in laughter. Angel was in the boat, imitating Harry in the building operation. The sudden appearance did not startle him in the least, nor did he stop beating his lullaby, after he noticed the broad ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... New York. A young girl and a young man are in love, and engaged to be married. The striking originality of this idea will startle any one who has never heard of such a thing before. Lilian Westbrook and Harold Routledge have a lover's quarrel. Never mind what the cause of it. To quote a passage from the play itself: "A woman never quarrels with ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... restlessly up and down; she gave him a look, and then stood quite still, shrinking a little to one side, as if she expected a blow. Something in that frightened, sidewise attitude made him hesitate to tell her of Benjamin Wright; she hardly knew the old gentleman, but it would startle her, the doctor reasoned. And yet, when very carefully, almost casually, he said that Mr. Wright had had a slight shock—"his life is not in danger just now," said William, "but he can't speak;"—she lifted her head and looked at him, drawing a full ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... intent had been to startle her, and thus catch her off her guard. If so, he succeeded, for the girl was certainly startled, if only at ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... ROSALIND. Patience herself would startle at this letter, And play the swaggerer; bear this, bear all: She says I am not fair; that I lack manners; She calls me proud, and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as Phoenix. Od's my will! Her love is not the hare ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for an instant; then he said, "Mother, I'll try. Give me time, for all these things startle me. To think of Susan having to do ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... soon plain enough, and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... that th' town humorist has named him th' orange-peel hero, an' he'll go to his grave with that name. Th' war is over an' th' state iv war exists. If ye saw a man fall fr'm th' top iv a tin-story buildin' 'twud startle ye, wanst. If it happened again, 'twud surprise ye. But if ye saw a man fall ivry fifteen minyits ye'd go home afther awhile f'r supper an' ye wuddent even mintion ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... distance to the ruin was trifling, but it was necessary to make a small circuit in order to reach it. While doing this, the young mariner discovered a boat pulling from the direction of the marinella, at the foot of the Scaricatojo, which had got so near, unseen, as at first to startle him by its proximity. A second look, however, satisfied him that no cause of apprehension existed in that quarter. His eye could not be deceived. The boat contained Ghita and her uncle; the latter rowing, and the former seated in the stern, with her head bowed ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... impossible to give an idea of the imperious tone and stern look of the princess, as she pronounced these words which were calculated to startle a girl, until now accustomed to live in a great measure as she pleased: yet, contrary perhaps to the expectation of Madame de Saint Dizier, instead of answering impetuously, Adrienne looked her full in the face, and said, laughing: "This is a perfect declaration of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... There is a tradition that a summer visitor once hired a "shay," and drove, all by herself, up to Horn o' the Moon, drawn on by the elusive splendor of its name. But she met such a dissuading flood of comment by the way as to startle her into the state of mind commonly associated with the Gully Road. Farmers, haying in the field, came forward, to lean on the fence, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... horrid barbarities exercised by the Spaniards on the innocent and unoffending natives of America. Indeed, the barbarities were such, that they would scarce seen credible from their enormity, and the victims so many, that they would startle belief by their numbers, if the facts were not indisputably ascertained, and the circumstances admitted by their own writers, some of whom have even gloried in their inhumanity, and, as Roman catholics, deemed these atrocious actions meritorious, which would make ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... this struggle which animates the nature of Holland with a varied and fantastic life, and by the act of reproducing it the struggle passed into their minds, and then, instead of imitating, they created. Then they themselves made the two elements contend; they increased the darkness to startle and disperse it with every manner of luminous effects and flashes of light; sunbeams stole through the gloom and then gradually died away; the reflections of twilight and the mellow light of lamps were ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... was a bold test! Not only should they covenant to give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle Plantation." Historically, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... fancy,' rejoined the other, breathing on his fictitious nose, and polishing it with the cuff of his coat, 'but he was a queer subject altogether—a kind of gipsy—one of the finest, stand-up men, you ever see. Ah! He told me some things that would startle you a bit, did that friend of mine, on the morning when ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... It did startle them, I fancy. Something very much like a feminine screech rose in the oomiak. It was quickly hushed up, though, with no fainting, but any quantity of heh-heh-ing and ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... not startle a wolf, or turn the Royal Americans from a discharge; but I have seen the time when you had a better favored look; your streaked countenances are not ill-judged of by the squaws, but young women of white blood ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... be. He never startles for the sake of startling; neither does he mock. Certainly, unlike the best of his contemporaries, he seems almost as indifferent to the tradition as he is to the public; but he no more laughs at the one than he tries to startle the other. Only amongst the whipper-snappers of painting will you discover a will to affront tradition, or attract attention by deliberate eccentricity. Only, I think, the Italian Futurists, their transalpine ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... present at any time during this period, and, if accidentally injured by any of these things, it would become very angry and bring sickness or death to the people. The relatives must also be very careful at this time not to make any loud or harsh noises that may startle or anger the shade." We have seen that in like manner after killing a white whale these Esquimaux abstain from the use of cutting or pointed instruments for four days, lest they should unwittingly cut or stab the whale's ghost. The same ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... that you ought to visit Europe. Don't startle at the suggestion! I have thought of it frequently. You might easily procure some person to execute your duties, &c., and I think there would be no difficulty in procuring permission from the government. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... the purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon] whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See Condorcet "On the Progress of the Human Mind," written some years after the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rampart all assaults to bear, Till time to dust their frames should wear! A wood, like that enchanted grove In which with fiends Rinaldo strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life; So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... light of adoration that I will regard my husband. Ten to one I shall never have the chance again; but n'importe. Moreover, I was aware that he knew so little of me he could hardly be conscious to whom he was writing. Why! it would startle him to see me in my natural home character; he would think I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed. I could not sit all day long making a grave face before my husband. I would laugh, and satirize, and say whatever came into my head first. And if he were a clever man, and loved me, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... as a warning to malefactors—extended itself in a kind of grim appeal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins—a sad losel, we fear—who ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken place in him during an hour passed in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... isle looked its fairest for our wanderers. Just as a woman adorns herself with all her jewels when she wishes to startle or enthrall, wishes to make a lover of a friend, so Devorgilla arrayed herself to conquer these two pairs of fresh eyes, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... moved a mite. That is one of the peculiarities of the boy, you can't surprise him: nothin' seems to startle him. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... necessarily be real cannons. I don't think our funds would run to real cannons. Besides, what good would they be when we had them? But you've got the main idea all right. Our game is to pull off something which will startle the blessed British public, impress it with the fact that we're just as desperate ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... he might. Not that he was afraid—you may be pretty sure of that; but to hear this quiet, bashful lad, who looked as if he had nothing in him, coolly propose to hold a lighted shell in his arms to see if it would go off, and ask him to stand by and watch it, was enough to startle anybody. However, he wasn't one to think twice about accepting a challenge; so he folded his arms and stood there like a statue. The young officer lighted the fuse, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... he supposed they were after—with the design of breaking the terrible truth to me as gently as possible. But I had now better than half divined it, and his communication did not startle me. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... six weeks of this before the boy's dreadful secret was revealed to Winona; six weeks before he appeared to startle her with one eye radiating the rich hues of a ripened eggplant. It had been simple enough. He had seen his chance to step in and punish Spike, and he had stepped—and Spike's straight ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... grip and keep lest it take wings at some other's word—a mind skilled at scheming"—he stopped and laughed—"Why, Esther, before the new moon which in the courts of the Temple on the Holy Hill they are this moment celebrating passes into its next quartering I could ring the world so as to startle even Caesar; for know you, child, I have that faculty which is better than any one sense, better than a perfect body, better than courage and will, better than experience, ordinarily the best product ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... that she walked with a cane, having had a severe attack of rheumatics since her arrival in "the great Norrurd," and at every step she hit the pavements in such a manner as to startle the rising generation of Abolitionists, and it had the good effect of preventing any of them from calling out to her, "Where did you get your face painted, you black nigger, you?" which would ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... clung to each other, and for some time not a sound had broken the stillness. Naught save the ticking of the clock, and that did not startle them, but, rather, by its monotonous tune, seemed like a friend ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... ye loathe the accursed thing, It is given to you to foreknow the end. But they who the unwise challenge fling Shall startle foe at the risk of friend As yet unready to endure - And can ye fend Goliath's swipe? The slowly grinding mills are sure, Let terror alone till the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Ah! do you not see? It is a device of the Senate to startle our friends from Bosphorus. The faggots and straw blaze up fiercely round the wall; then, when all is confusion, the substance in the sealed vessels escapes and at once puts out the fire, and the laugh is with us. Our ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... and day, Over and over, score upon score, Wherein to live, and love, and pray, And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ball and rout ye dance and shout, Shutting men's cries of suffering out, That startle the white-tressed silences Musing beside the fount of light, In the eternal space, to press Their roses, each a nebula bright, More close to their lips serene, While ye wear ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... there are the transport-wagons, with their long span of oxen straggling all across the road, and a nervous bullock precipitating himself under your horse's nose. The driver, too, invariably takes the opportunity of a lady passing him to crack his whip violently, enough to startle any horse except Scotsman. Then when you have passed the place where the wagons most do congregate, and think you are tolerably safe and need only look out for ruts and holes in the street, lo! a furious galloping behind you, and some half dozen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... he was never quite sure what kept him from doing it. He thought at the time it was herself, a sort of wall of purity and loveliness that surrounded her and made her sacred, so that he felt he must go slowly, must not startle her nor make her afraid of him. It never occurred to him that the wall might be surrounding himself. He had entirely forgotten that first visit to Gila in the Mephistophelian garments, with the red light filling all the unholy ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... speak of this now; yet I have spoken, for the subject makes me feel too much. I could give instances that would startle the most vulgar and callous; but I will not, for the public opinion of their own sex is already against such men, and where cases of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the wife's favor. But she ought not to need this, nor, I think, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Then his first lesson ebbed away. He sidled out into the path again, came towards me two dainty, halting steps, and stamped prettily with his left fore foot. He was a young buck, and had that trick of stamping without any instruction. It is an old, old ruse to make you move, to startle you by the sound and threatening motion into showing who you are and what ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... that is what I must find out. I have my suspicions. My dear, don't let me startle you, but have you ever thought that ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... ourselves almost opposite to it, and then began to keep watch. What we should see pass up the avenue we could only surmise, but our suppositions certainly did not lead us to imagine in the faintest degree the sight which before long was destined to completely startle us. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... comprehensiveness; the mental decrepitude it occasions he dignifies with the appellation of repose; and, on the strength of comprehensiveness and repose, is of course qualified to take his seat beside Shakspeare, and chat cosily with Bacon, and wink knowingly at Goethe, and startle Leibnitz with a slap on the shoulder,—the true Red-Republican sign of liberty in manners, equality in power, and fraternity in ideas! These men, to be sure, have a way of saying things which he has not yet caught; but then their wide-reaching ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... First Lord of the Bedchamber, she should have a suite of apartments appropriated to her use in the Louvre; but in a few days, when he had accustomed her to converse freely with him upon the subject, Henry put a leading question which must, after all these gracious promises, have tended to startle Mademoiselle de Montmorency, by demanding to know if she personally desired the marriage, as, should it be otherwise, she need only confess the truth with frankness, when he would break off the match, and procure for her an alliance more ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the winter. Merchants were compelled to supply themselves with enough goods to last from November till April, as it was too expensive to ship goods by express during the winter. Occasionally some enterprising merchant would startle the community by announcing through the newspapers that he had just received by Burbank's express a new pattern in dress goods, or a few cans of fresh oysters. The stages on most of the routes left St. Paul at 4 o'clock in ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... and dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground. "You sure did startle me. You're one of those boys ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... he is famous is called Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth (1651). It is partly political, partly a philosophical book, combining two central ideas which challenge and startle the attention, namely, that self-interest is the only guiding power of humanity, and that blind submission to rulers is the only true basis of government.[179] In a word, Hobbes reduced human nature to its purely animal aspects, and then asserted confidently that there was nothing more to study. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... door, and stepped out into the little observatory the sound was so plain as to startle him. He looked up quickly, and, directly overhead ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Bob Cochrane, coming round into the streak of lamplight, carrying his boots in his hands. "I just strolled over to see if you were all right. When I got to the steps it struck me I might startle you if I came thundering up, so I took my boots off and crept round to find out where you were. You were so quiet I thought you must have gone to bed and left ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... car, picking out Troubletonians with his undeceivable eye, and leaned toward us with outstretched fingers. Mr. Riley rose to his whole gaunt height at a jerk, and laid his hand on the official's arm with a fierce, bony gripe, which seemed to startle him as if it were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... coil backwards, but all with the same calm will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it, the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... did the community at large. Men in power then ruled more for their own ends than in these latter times; and use and wont sanctioned and sanctified many doings, from the days of our ancestors, that, but to imagine, will astonish and startle posterity. Accordingly, when Mr Pittle, after a lingering illness, was removed from us, which happened in the first year of my third provostry, I bethought me of the consequences which had ensued from ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... likely that panic would have sent her fleeing headlong from a presence that filled her with nothing but loathing. But she had been spared all this knowledge, and Nicol saw to it that nothing should startle her, nothing should excite her distrust until, in the fulness of time, his ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... until it faced his back; but this was easily remedied. When, at last, the man was set up facing the turn in the path where old Mombi was to appear, he looked natural enough to be a fair imitation of a Gillikin farmer, — and unnatural enough to startle anyone that ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... man's dominion Hath broken Nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... down the barriers between them—Thyrsis became bolder, and more open in his speech. He lost his awe of her maidenhood and her innocence—he wooed her, he lured her on; he rejoiced in his power to agitate her, to startle her, to speak to her about secret things. He would clasp her in his arms and shower his kisses upon her; and she would yield to him, almost fainting with bliss—and then shrink from him ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... however, can only occur when the hunter travels against the wind. Otherwise he finds the buffalo as shy and difficult to approach as most game, and many along spoil of crouching and crawling has been made to no purpose—a single sniff of the approaching enemy proving enough to startle the game, and send ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... whirled over to the exit, and crawled out. And what his eyes beheld was enough to startle anybody, let alone a boy. If a genuine cyclone had not struck the camp on the Little Machias, then something almost as bad must have dropped down upon them, Thad thought, as he stared, hardly able to believe his eyes, or understand what ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... arm, asking what message the orderly had brought. He answered strangely, saying he had received orders to go at once to Ripley on the stage; that he might be gone several days. There was nothing about all that to startle a soldier's daughter, but Dupont kept his hand on my father's arm, urging him to hurry. The actions of the man aroused my suspicions. I knew my father was acting paymaster, and I could perceive the outlines of a leather bag bulging beneath his overcoat. If this contained money, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... chamber of the Sangraal, Rowena IV was arranging the red samite cover around the Grail. She jumped when she saw him. "Marry! fair sir, ye did startle me. Methinketh ye be asleep in ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... open the door to them, and the gladness which irradiated her face as Sir Jasper's first 'All right,' lighted up her features, which were so unlike the shop-girl prettiness that Mr. White expected as quite to startle him. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my dear Dorothy, that the time will be long ere any but fortified places will be safe abodes. It is a question in my mind whether it would not be better to seek refuge for you—. But stay; let me suggest my proposal, rather than startle you with it in sudden form complete. You are related to the Somersets, are ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... needle finds the pole. Three boys are also working; but they're big babies, with young-chicken-coloured hair and merry, heather-mixture eyes. They talk no language but slang. They come to grief in a preposterous automobile about every ten miles and attract their idol's attention and startle horses by giving vent to S. O. S. yells. Whenever they have to enter a room they plunge in as if the door had broken away before them. Their only conception of a "good time" is ragtime. If one of them shows signs for a moment of having been trained to house manners, his chums taunt him. "None ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." Notice what the Apostle says: "To him that worketh not." That is plain language, is it not? I may perhaps startle some of you by saying that many of you have been kept out of the kingdom of God by your good works. Nevertheless it is true. If you put works in the place of faith, they become a snare to you. It is "to him that worketh not, ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... traversed the greater part of the valley, it as suddenly disappeared, leaving an evanescent trail of flame behind it. There could be little doubt that the old shepherd had merely seen one of those shooting lights that in mountain districts so frequently startle the night traveller; but the apparition now filled his whole mind, as one vouchsafed from the spiritual world, and of strange ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... this aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: ". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... a quandary. She had heard all the rumours that were going about, but she knew that they had been kept from Mary Grant, and she thought that if Blake meant to talk business he might shock or startle the girl terribly. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... to startle her. Evidently she had thought to tell only as little as necessary, and in her own way. She gave a little nervous laugh, as if to pass it off. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pass you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied by their fellows for their "good luck," startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too dear ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... daytime, but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his chariot. A broken summer for us. Now and then a few continuous days—perhaps a whole week—but, if that ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... over and over again! What a pity that she is at her old Marshal's now! We would have had a good laugh! So that old woman wants to take the bread out of my mouth. I will startle ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... that met the fixed gaze of the adventurous officer, was one to startle and excite in no ordinary degree. The room into which he looked was square, with deep recesses on the side where he lingered, formed by the projection of a chimney in which, however, owing to the sultry season of the year, no traces of recent fire were ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... sometimes decousues. Southey said that Gifford cut out his middle joints. When John comes to use the carving-knife I fear Dr. Southey will not be so tractable. Nous verrons. I will not show Southey's letter to Lockhart, for there is to him personally no friendly tone, and it would startle the Hidalgo's pride. It is to be wished they may draw kindly together. Southey says most truly that even those who most undervalue his reputation would, were he to withdraw from the Review, exaggerate the loss it would thereby sustain. The bottom of all these feuds, though not named, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... struck the cap. The critical moment had come; and, without the loss of a second, our lieutenant darted towards the Union lines. This movement was followed by a shrill yell from the Mississippian, which might have been a howl of disappointment at his failure; or it might have been intended to startle, and ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... sporting ventures. These, usually to be addressed in reply under initials at a country post-office, inquire in feminine hands, Dare one who cannot disclose herself to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, but whose name might startle him were it revealed, solicit the immediate advance of two hundred pounds from unexpected riches exercising their noblest privilege in the trust of a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... systematic methods, their thousands of trained scientists in all branches of industry, their tremendous capacity for work and resourcefulness, they would take a hold of Canada and develop it in a way that would startle the world. Germany has millions of surplus population that she would transfer to Canada for development purposes. She would have 100 million people to the south of her for a market and in ten years she would control ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... village street, the slender column grey against the green trees, sometimes in the churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like a sudden enigma. It requires an effort to grasp their meaning, so long have the ideas passed away which led to their erection. They almost startle modern thought. How many years since the peasant women knelt at their steps! On the base of one which has a sculptured shaft the wall-rue fern was growing. A young starling was perched on the yew by it; he ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... a silence of several minutes, and neither looked at the other. At last Edmund rose and went to the side of the boat and looked over at the water, and then, turning half-way towards her, said: "Why does it startle you ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... "My expressions startle you. You must allow for an injured, angry woman. But I will try to command myself. I will not abuse him. I will only tell you what I have found him. Facts shall speak. He was the intimate friend of my dear husband, who trusted and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... take from the clouds something that appeals to us, work it into life, by it interpret the problems to hand, make our choice between opposing standards, and maintain our fidelity to the true one against every opposition and through every fitful though terrible depression; so shall we startle people with its reality, and make for it a disciple or an opponent, but always at once convince the generation that there is a serious ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... associate them with sensible objects which have previously given us pleasure. In his letter to the author, acknowledging the receipt of his book, Burns says, "I own, sir, at first glance, several of your propositions startle me as paradoxical: that the martial clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a Jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridors ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... one arrive starved at an inn, one can obtain nothing till such hours as those who are not starving desire to eat;—and if one is foredone with travel, weary, and wanting rest, the pitiless alarum-bell, calling those who may have had twelve hours' sleep from their beds, must startle those who have only just closed their eyes for the first time, perhaps for three nights,—as if the whole traveling community were again at boarding-school, and as if a private summons by the boots or chambermaid to each apartment would ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... pistol from his belt. "You won't hit me!" yelled Davis, gnashing his teeth and trying to startle the captain by rolling his eye-balls hideously. The latter fired, and whoever was looking at Davis at the moment saw a bloody star on his forehead where the bullet entered. The pirate suddenly grasped the handle of his hammer with both hands and ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... stillness of all voices leaves nothing for the perception of the hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in the direction of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... thrice, swept by the stand, The prince saw that another round would test, Not overtax, their powers, and gave the sign, When three loud trumpet-blasts to all proclaimed That running one more round would end the race. These ringing trumpet-calls that brought defeat Or victory so near, startle and rouse. The charioteers more ardent urge their steeds; The steeds are with hot emulation fired; The social multitude now cease to talk— Even age stops short in stories often told; Boys, downy-chinned, in rough-and-tumble sports Like half-grown bears engaged, turn quick and look; And blooming ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... slim, young cousin of hers and Colby Macdonald had been fascinated by the mystery of her innocent youth. Mrs. Mallory was like steel beneath the soft and indolent surface. Swiftly she mapped her plan of attack. The Alaskan could not be moved, but it might be possible to startle the girl into breaking the engagement. Genevieve Mallory would have used the weapon at hand without scruple in any case, but she justified herself on the ground that such a marriage could ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... this is intensified by some of the women who, when in the street, grasp the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap it about so that the outline of the American divinity is sufficiently well defined to startle one. Such a trick in China could but originate with the demimonde, yet it is taken up by certain of the Americans who are constantly seeking for variety. There can be no question but that the middle-class fashion designer revenges himself upon the beau monde. They will ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... thing to keep the same sense of surprise in one's home town that one would have in a strange city. You will find much to startle you if you keep your eyes open. Yesterday, for instance, I was lucky enough to meet a gentleman who had stood only a few feet away from Lincoln when he made the Gettysburg Speech. Then I found that in a certain cafeteria which I frequent the price you pay for your lunch is always just one ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... about it; but he seemed to think that he was not responsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away; and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us from unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, the question was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could find somebody who was willing to pasture her. To this dilemma had my excellent neighbor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... needs a new language, or, at least, a parcel of new adjectives, sparkling with bright and vivid meaning, as crisp and fresh as just-minted bank-notes. They should have no taint of flatness or insipidity. They should show not the faintest trace of wear. With them, one might hope, now and then, to startle the imagination, to set it running in channels which are strange and delightful to it. For there is something new under the sun: aerial adventure; and the most lively and unjaded fancy may, at first, need direction toward the realization of this fact. Soon it ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... curious in his inquiries about American oysters, as marvellous stories, which he did not believe, had been told him of their great size. We apologized—although we had taken care that the largest specimens to be procured should startle his unwonted vision when he came to the table—for what we called the extreme smallness of the oysters, promising that we would do better next time. Six bloated Falstaffian bivalves lay before him in their shells. I ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... speak—"aye, lass, tha wert right enow. I'm glad tha wert there and heard it, and saw what I was thinking. I didn't say much. I let the chap have rope enow to hang himself with. When he comes back I'll give him a bit o' my mind as'll startle him. It was right-down clever of thee to see just what I had i' my head about all that there gab about things as didn't matter, an' the leavin' out them as did—thinking I wouldn't notice. Many's the time I've said, 'It is na so much what's put into a contract as what's left ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the father, is just the case with every love-sick girl in her condition, who will not be allowed to have her own way; but of what use is a father unless he puts all this nonsense down, and substitutes his own judgment for that of a silly girl. I will say something now that will startle her, and I will say nothing but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... drama substantially so fearful, that was constantly proceeding in a quiet and religious parsonage—the bare possibility that sufferings so durable in their effects should be sweeping with their eternal storms a heart so capacious and so passively unresisting—are calculated to startle and to oppress us with the sense of a fate long prepared, vested in the very seeds of constitution and character; temperament and the effects of early experience combining to thwart all the morning promise of greatness and splendour; the flower unfolding its silken leaves only to suffer canker ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... be as originally stated. The well-known lawyer had been interviewed. He had told the reporter that the contents of Field's letter were surprising beyond words and that as soon as he had made full preparations some arrests would follow that would startle the country. The lawyer, whose name was withheld for obvious reasons, was a man whose integrity was beyond question. He had no intention of using the funds willed him by Field, for he and Field had grown up together in a little New England town. The money would be put in trust for Field's son, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... The musk-rat in a quiescent state is not offensive, and its odour is more powerful at certain seasons. I am peculiarly sensitive to smells, and dislike that of musk in particular, yet I have no objection to a musk-rat running about my room quietly if I do not startle him. I never allow one to be killed, and encourage their presence in the house, for I think the temporary inconvenience of a whiff of musk is amply repaid by the destruction of the numerous objectionable insects which lurk in the corners of Indian houses. The notion that they do damage by gnawing ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... went from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven that Margaret might have more strength ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... following year they were made to taste the full bitterness of the draught. An alarm for the solvency of the Bank, an impending invasion, a mutiny in the fleet, and an organized rebellion in Ireland,—such were the fruits of four years' warfare, and they were enough to startle even the most sanguine and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... chap himself," he whispered. "He's the devil of a night-bird. Not a sound, Bunny! We'll startle the life out of ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... day I called upon the Professor's solicitors, in accordance with his instructions, and handed them the letter he had entrusted to me. They read it with many exclamations of surprise, for the news it contained was enough to startle even staid ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... and I used him sore, So you never shall startle Frankie more, Without capsizing Earth and her waters. (All round ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... and making his beard wag with enjoyment. "Yes, that would startle them. White man's magic. Fancy, Fred, old chap, a wounded man with a bullet in him, and I at work with my black slave, Frank, here, to help me, in a dark tent, while I made the poor wretch transparent to find ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... though we have the whole treasury of natural forms to draw from, of these we can only properly employ such as are abstract. The reason for this is clear to any one who conceives of an art of mobile color, not as a moving picture show—a thing of quick-passing concrete images, to shock, to startle, or to charm—but as a rich and various language in which light, proverbially the symbol of the spirit, is made to speak, through the senses, some healing message to the soul. For such a consummation, "devoutly to be wished," natural forms—forms abounding ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... ours—tossing it up, catching it again—easily as a child plays with its party-coloured ball. His mere book-knowledge was not much to boast of, though early in life he must have received a fair education. He had a smattering of the ancient classics, sufficient, perhaps, to startle the unlearned. If he had not read them, he had read about them; and at various odds and ends of his life he had picked up acquaintance with the popular standard modern writers. But literature with him was the smallest stripe in the party-coloured ball. Still it was ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beauty of several of the males; the superb robes they wear; the expression of their faces and their figures; the details of hair, stuffs, ornaments, jewels; the refinement and feminine taste of the whole, are enough to startle our interest if we recognize what meaning they had ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... yet natural things which sometimes startle us is the value some minds attach to mere modernity in art. An old thing is tossed up in a new way, and there are those who attach more value to the way than the thing, and are instantly agape with admiration of originality. But originality and modishness are different things. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Mahya, the party was made up to sixty, seven married couples and seven unmarried girls among them. The female population was stowed away at night in the after cabins, with 'arrangements quite satisfactory to them, as they were quite consistent with propriety, but which would somewhat startle unaccustomed folk.' ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... asleep thinking of Ringtail. As he slept, he dreamed of walking in the forest and of hearing the distant barking of dogs. Louder and louder grew the sound until suddenly he awoke to find that it had not all been a dream. So close at hand as to startle him, he heard a wild clamor in which he could distinguish Pal's excited voice. Leaping from his hammock he quickly rounded the corner of the cabin and beheld a weird sight. A torch borne in the hand of a tall man cast a flickering light over a melee of dogs, leaping and barking about the ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... moments she opened it again, and, stepping down to the station platform, began to pace up and down it. If I had only dared, I could have put my finger through the crack of the planks and touched her foot as she walked over my head, but I was afraid it might startle her into a shriek, and there was no explaining to her what it meant without telling the cowboys how close they ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... "You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things? They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... among these rocks is guarded, Yield at once your arms and lives, Or this pistol, this cold aspic Formed of steel, the penetrating Poison of two balls will scatter, The report and fire of which Will the air astound and startle. ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... frequently; and now sometimes when I stand at night in the forest and hear a sudden heavy thump in the underbrush, as if a big moose were striking the ground and shaking his antlers at me, it doesn't startle me in the least. It is only Br'er ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... in order of time, to influence me, was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly refrain from applying. ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... limited beings God can express His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do it we shall miss ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Philosophy itself, mental and moral, has its preparation, its forethoughts, in the poetry that preceded it. A powerful generalisation thrown into some salient phrase, such as [6] that of Heraclitus—"Panta rhei," all things fleet away—may startle a particular age by its novelty, but takes possession only because all along its root was somewhere among the natural though but half- developed instincts of the ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... He was rather ostentatious in his preference of the writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so absorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; and though his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact, do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of literature. The poor, brave Captain! he looked older, and more worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as bright and cheerful as ever, unless he ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... are free disdain oppression, lust And infamous raid. We have been pioneers For freedom and our code of honor must Dry and not startle tears. ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... little strong men of the mountains and the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... her mind death-like. Mary had not been sheltered from taking part in scenes of suffering; she had seen sickness and death in cottages, as well as in her own home, and she had none of the fanciful alarms, either of novelty or imagination, to startle her in the strange watch that had so suddenly been thrust on her but what did fill her with a certain apprehension, was the new and lofty beauty of expression that sat on that sleeping countenance. 'A nice boy,' 'rather a handsome lad,' 'a boy of ingenuous ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seventeen," its vitality, discretion and general maturity of tone seem little short of amazing. Realism is the note of it. The modern schoolboy, as Mr. WAUGH paints him, employs, for example, a vocabulary whose frequency, and freedom may possibly startle the parental reader. Apart from this one might call the book an indictment of hero-worship, as heroism is understood in a society where (still!) athletic eminence places its possessor above all laws. This in itself is so old an educational problem that it is interesting to find it handled afresh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... Pilgrims doctrines upon the subject of conscience and repentance will startle those who do not ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... upon his side, and she remained on hers, both trembling; but at last the King, dreading to startle her away, rose softly and went round the Pond to where ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... orchard. Neither did she guess at the quiet approach of a tall figure through the mist, until it stood upon the edge of the garden. The first she knew of its presence was the sound of a familiar voice, speaking quietly so that it might not startle her, yet with a note of joy plainly perceptible ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... you not here startle, to see every day some of your inventions taken from you ; for I remember long since you told me as much, that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles. So you taught me the curious way to observe weight in Water, ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... interest manifested in my first lecture, I conclude that my method of investigation has not proved altogether unsatisfactory to you, and I hope ere long to produce certain investigations which will probably startle you, and revolutionize the current thought of the age. The application of mathematics to the study of Social Science and Political Government has curiously enough escaped the attention of those who ought to be most conversant with these matters. I shall endeavour to prove in the ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... in social matters, and especially in the planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even of miracles. In some way or other she must have discovered the state of my desires towards Agnes. She had written, or something. She and Agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me, and perhaps telegraphing. Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she could not possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had delightfully fibbed. And my mother had got her concealed somewhere in the house, or was momentarily expecting ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... caldron on a tripod holds fortunes tied in nut-shells. The prevailing colors are yellow and black: a deep yellow is the color of most ripe grain and fruit; black stands for black magic and demoniac influence. Ghosts and skulls and cross-bones, symbols of death, startle the beholder. Since Hallowe'en is a time for lovers to learn their fate, hearts and other sentimental tokens are used to good effect, as the Scotch lads of Burns's time ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... uttered the words his whole expression changed, and so suddenly as to startle me. He sprang up from the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... said she, with a second laugh, but it did not startle me like the first. "We should all be perfect, of ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... her broncho threw up his head and gave a tremendous neigh. The sound startled her, as these things will startle the strongest when all is profoundly silent. But what followed was more startling still. Not one, but half a dozen echoes at least responded, and, with a thrill, the girl sat up. The next moment she had spurred her horse and charged, regardless of the thorns, ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... came to her now, one that she could utter, was able to utter. 'I couldn't live in America. Yes, you did startle me. But ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where the right of representation is so limited even among men, women do not feel the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... after a while, you may come to feel differently —I didn't mean to startle you," she heard him reply gently. This humility, in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... made no moan, exacted no sympathy. She had come alone to the parting of the ways, and she had thought only for the boy whom she had mothered tenderly and successfully. Ledyard did not interrupt the gentle flow of her thoughts. There was time; he would not startle or hurry her, although her first statement had shocked and surprised him ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... yourself up to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours, watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them. Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the mind at first almost imperceptibly: they exist only as vague indistinct surmises, and by no means take the precise shape or the substance of a formed opinion. At first, probably, they even offend and startle by their intrusion: but by degrees the unpleasant sensations which they once excited wear off: the mind grows more familiar with them. A confused sense (for such it is, rather than a formed idea) of its being desirable ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... replied, "and I'm sorry, Ada, but cannot help it now. This will I say, however: I had no wish or intention to hear when I hid myself. My desire was only to startle thee and Hilda, and before I thought what thou wert talking of the thing was out, and now I have got ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... society, his vote might certainly have created much annoyance to his party for a very brief period—just as other votes given from the usual motives—sometimes right and honorable—sometimes wrong and corrupt—usually do. In his case, however, there was something calculated to startle and alarm all those who knew and were capable of appreciating the stainless honor and hereditary integrity of the family. The M'Mahon's, though inoffensive and liberal in their intercourse with the world, even upon matters of a polemical nature, were nevertheless deeply ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... me that she will kill herself," I answered, thinking that this resolve would startle Henriette. But when she heard it a disdainful smile, more expressive than the thoughts it conveyed, flickered on her lips. "My dear conscience," I continued, "if you would take into account my resistance and the seductions that led to my fall ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... such momentous consequences, so well calculated to startle the public mind, so hostile to the established order of things, demands of us, as the official representatives of the American Society, a statement of the reasons which led to it. This is due not only to the Society, but also to the country and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... occasions he dignifies with the appellation of repose; and, on the strength of comprehensiveness and repose, is of course qualified to take his seat beside Shakspeare, and chat cosily with Bacon, and wink knowingly at Goethe, and startle Leibnitz with a slap on the shoulder,—the true Red-Republican sign of liberty in manners, equality in power, and fraternity in ideas! These men, to be sure, have a way of saying things which he has not yet caught; but then their wide-reaching thoughts are his as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... up, nor moved a mite. That is one of the peculiarities of the boy, you can't surprise him: nothin' seems to startle him. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... all, there are the transport-wagons, with their long span of oxen straggling all across the road, and a nervous bullock precipitating himself under your horse's nose. The driver, too, invariably takes the opportunity of a lady passing him to crack his whip violently, enough to startle any horse except Scotsman. Then when you have passed the place where the wagons most do congregate, and think you are tolerably safe and need only look out for ruts and holes in the street, lo! a furious galloping behind you, and some half dozen of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... We don't know!" The professor slapped the magazine with an emphatic hand. "Emil Mundson hasn't written this article for nothing. He's paving the way for some announcement that will startle the scientific world. I know him. In the same manner he gave out veiled hints of his various brilliant discoveries and inventions long before he offered them to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hunting for one on the 20th, we realized it before we reached home. The flock was very timid, and when disturbed on North Head invariably came past the wireless station close to the engine-hut. Sandell concealed himself there with a gun, while I went out to startle the animals. They did not fail to do their part, but Sandell missed and the shot frightened them. He then rushed out and fired another shot as they were running, managing to hit one, which immediately dropped behind and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... was heard, and looking toward the sound, I perceived the Chancellor cantering down the road. When abreast of the carriage he dismounted, and walking up to it, saluted the Emperor in a quick, brusque way that seemed to startle him. After a word or two, the party moved perhaps a hundred yards further on, where they stopped opposite the weaver's cottage so famous from that day. This little house is on the east side of the Donchery road, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... her fingers trembling violently, and the large dish which she was washing nearly slipping out of them. "Lor, miss, you do startle me. I was in the dumps, and you are for all the world like the sun coming out. Why, deary me, the back scullery ain't by no means such a bad sort of place when ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... enough, and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the light that ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... never do anything for Lois Willoughby. Whatever his sentiment toward the woman-friend of his youth, he was tied and bound by the stress of a love of which the call was primitive. He might be over-abrupt; he might startle her; but at the worst he should escape from this unbearable ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... of the weather, the performances of Dick and Jack upon strong venison essence and roast gazelle were enough to startle any housekeeper of small income and an anxiety about the state of the butcher's bill. But of course the outdoor life and constant exertion produced a tremendous appetite; and as Mr Rogers noted the change in Dick, whose palate had to be tempted only a short time back, he felt ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... you, good fellow," replied the artist, laying down his weapons and grasping Gibault's proffered hand with a sigh of evident relief, "I am well, excellently well. You did, indeed, startle me by your sudden appearance; but no harm is done, and where none was intended no apology is necessary. You are a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and to spare. It is not like the works of Carlyle, which can be read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will be always something to startle and ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the most ordinary way in the world—or perhaps that is too strongly put. The beginning was ordinary indeed, and tame, compared with the sequel. Yet even the beginning had a flavor of the unusual about it, strong enough to startle a man so used to a humdrum life and so unversed in anything out of the common as I. Here, then, is ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... the light fantastic toe; And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise: Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While the cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... thoughts. Naturally they were of the man whom he still saw, in his imagination, picking his jailer up off the door-step and going back to prison. Who could say that this man might not any day make just such a lion's leap into the world's arena as Garibaldi had made, and startle the nations as Garibaldi had done? What was that red-shirted scourge of tyrants that this man might not be? Sailor, soldier, hero, patriot, prisoner! See Garibaldi: despising the restraints of law; ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of my Hero and Heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavoured to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... an apple fall, he found In that slight startle from his contemplation— 'T is said (for I 'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)— A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation;' And ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... back was towards us, and he was standing at some little distance so as not to startle the boy, who rose again, crouched, and looked wildly at us, as the rope which had been simply passed through the iron shackles began to run through a link till the end was drawn out, and run over the ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... him with faults proceeding from the weakness and blindness of the decadence—the faults of men too blind to read his art aright, too weak to stand on their own feet without him—would be either stupid or malicious. If at the close of the sixteenth century the mannerists sought to startle and entrance the world by empty exhibitions of muscular anatomy misunderstood, and by a braggadocio display of meaningless effects—crowding their compositions with studies from the nude, and painting agitated groups without a discernible ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... really was, it stood as a symbol of the whole miserable situation to me. It was just enough to startle me into contempt for myself. That night Breck came stealing down to me along the dark roads in his quiet car about eleven-thirty. I knew he had been to the Jackson dinner and was surprised to find he had changed into street clothes. He ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... him! No, that's nonsense, or she'd have turned up in better time, and wouldn't have risked his neck up to the last moment. Though I make it a rule never to be surprised at anything, I expect what Brian Fitzgerald has to tell me will startle me considerably. I've never met with such an extraordinary case, and from all appearances the end isn't reached yet. After all," said Mr. Calton, thoughtfully, "truth is ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... years of further dosing and experimentation along the materialistic lines of the 'regular' school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that expresses itself in the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... like to hear your opinions regarding the antiquity of our race: geologists are daily becoming bolder and more unhesitating in their assertions on the subject; and we are fast drifting toward conclusions that seem to startle the religious world, and threaten to upset our confidence in that Book which we have been accustomed to regard with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... brief seconds, during which, however, it had traversed the greater part of the valley, it as suddenly disappeared, leaving an evanescent trail of flame behind it. There could be little doubt that the old shepherd had merely seen one of those shooting lights that in mountain districts so frequently startle the night traveller; but the apparition now filled his whole mind, as one vouchsafed from the spiritual world, and of strange and ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... doctor's munificence flashed through to its four corners like lightning. It became the one topic of spirited conversation. We had always voted the doctor a jolly good fellow, but now he was the hero of the hour. When he next came into the camp he received such a thundering and spontaneous ovation as to startle him, until at last the reason for this outburst dawned upon him. But he turned it off with his characteristic ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... There is a third kind of marriage, and that is what I should recommend for you. It's the matrimonium ex usu, or consuetudine; the great advantage here is, that you have no ceremonies whatever, nothing which can in any way startle your sensitive mind. In that case, a couple are at length man and wife praescriptione. You are afraid of making a stir in Sicca; in this case you would make none. You would simply take her home here; if, as time ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... late at night, and even if they startle me a little when I'm in bed, the pleasure of going to sleep again is all the greater. But in the morning I awaken them, when I put my room in order. Then they scold a little and go." I had been observing him in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... pointed out to him, and he only delayed at the inn long enough to arrange his dress as might appear to the Abbess most respectful, and, poor boy, be least likely to startle the babe on whom his heart was set. At almost every inn, the little children had shrieked and run from his white and gashed face, and his tall, lank figure in deep black; and it was very sadly that he said to Philip, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we would we might seduce the reader into an utter debauch of spelling. But a sudden Maenad dance of the letters on the page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader—the printer's reader—to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this authority, begging his mercy, to let the little flowers of spelling alone. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... variety of game, among which were a crow, a kite, and a laughing jackass (alcedo gigantea,) a species of king's-fisher, a singular bird, found in every part of Australia. Its cry, which resembles a chorus of wild spirits, is apt to startle the traveller who may be in jeopardy, as if laughing and mocking at his misfortune. It is a harmless bird, and I seldom allowed them to be destroyed, as they were sure to rouse us with the earliest dawn. To this list ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet, he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled must (sapa), which seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi.[39] He cared so little for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well in the days when people ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... as quietly as possible. It will not be long. She at least is suspicionless. Never did creature so happily delude herself. Yet what a judgment in some things! What keen discrimination! What a wild, governless imagination! She would be a prize, if it were only to exhibit. How she would startle the dull, insipid, tea-table simperers on our Helicon—nay, with what scorn she would traverse the Helicon itself. The devil is that she would have a will in spite of her keeper. Such an animal is never tamed. There could be no prescribing ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... day, it will be realised in some great festival of delight. There is, too, a subtle selfishness in this quest after the ideal—the Holy Grail of the imagination. The artist keeps the secret from his brother artists until he can startle them with some gracious surprise. He almost pities them, as he thinks of the revelation that is about to dawn upon unsuspecting and slumberous minds. Postponement of this surprise is a torment to the mind which had planned ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a start of astonishment. In his own mind he had arrived at the conclusion that the will would never be executed, and to have Miss Merrick thus suddenly declare her decision was enough to startle even the lawyer's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... lads. Ye must hold on," he said, in an eager but subdued voice. "Doubtless it would be pleasant to vent our feelings in a hearty cheer, but it would startle the old gentleman inside. Get along with you, and let us get ready ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano, drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle-nothing to wound. The very atmosphere is saturated with "the spirit of the rural press;" and even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly up again, tries to look as if he were not sleepy in the least. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... is not to perform feats which startle the world and give him fame, but rather to live the life of the moderate and harmonious one; yet how often for lack of true discernment he fails! This middle path is not, however, hidden from the sincere ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... by which we have crossed the Jordan soon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path through the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open plain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of storks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling the blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... trial. Most of the translations which exist give questions as well as answers: but these are but occasionally given in the original document, and Jeanne's narrative reads like a calm, continuous statement, only interrupted now and then by a question, usually a cunning attempt to startle her with a new subject, and to hurry some admission from her. The great dignity with which she makes her replies, the occasional flash of high spirit, the calm determination with which she refuses to be ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... don't know about that," said Miss Ingate. "It wouldn't startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley's been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about the house now, though she never goes into the garden ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but would be attended in the fields by whole acres of hearers ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... astonishing and yet natural things which sometimes startle us is the value some minds attach to mere modernity in art. An old thing is tossed up in a new way, and there are those who attach more value to the way than the thing, and are instantly agape with admiration of originality. But originality and modishness are different things. People who have ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... In any case, music. I am in a mood for music. I am in a mood where if something be not done To startle me, I shall ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... a natural instinct, and these sudden lapses from virtue which startle a small portion of community and afford a filthy kind of pleasure to the other part, are but the outgrowths of mental unchastity. "Filthy dreamers," before they are aware, become filthy in action. The thoughts ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... breast of my River, and startle the birds on the edge, To land on a newly found island, a boat that is caught in the sedge, The rays of the sun are still level, not yet has the heat of the day Deflowered the mists of the morning, that linger in ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... the earliest if not the first remarkable animal to startle a stranger on arriving in Ceylon, whilst wending his way from Point-de-Galle to Colombo, is a huge lizard of from four to five feet in length, the Talla-goya of the Singhalese, and Iguana[1] of the Europeans. It may be seen at noonday searching for ants and insects in the middle of the highway ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights, out of the shadows in the hall—first Stephen's face, with its shocked compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless; then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective. But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their mother nor they cared about anybody's private ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... enough to startle you, lad. I should say the best thing you could do would be to take a good strong tumbler of grog, and then ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... excavations during the last fifty years have laid bare much that was hidden, and "learning and research" have in parts revealed the "obliterated plan;" but, in 1817, the "shapeless mass of ruins" defied the guesses of antiquarians. "Your walks in the Palatine ruins ... will be undisturbed, unless you startle a fox in breaking through the brambles in the corridors, or burst unawares through the hole of some shivered fragments into one of the half-buried chambers, which the peasants have blocked up to serve as stalls for their jackasses, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... began. And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... stopping at his door to see if he were asleep. He lay silently; through his eyelashes he could see her outlined in the soft light from the hall. She was coming in to see if he was tucked in. In a moment he would jump up and startle her with a hug, as she leaned over him. In ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... indeed! so wonderful, in fact, that I may be pardoned for refusing to credit the essay as being your own composition. Do you think it is natural for a dunce (I repeat the word), who has been in the habit of writing the most childish nonsense, to break on the world suddenly as a genius, and startle every one with her wonderful thoughts? It stands to reason that some underhand work has been going on; and such being the case, I prefer to hold myself aloof from one who could be guilty of any ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... reeling battle; two main waves Meeting, one hurled sheer from the sea-wall back That shocks it sideways, one right in from sea Charging, that full in face takes at one blow That whole recoil and ruin, with less fear Startle men's eyes late shipwrecked; for a breath Crest fronting crest hung, wave to wave rose poised, Then clashed, breaker to breaker; cloud with cloud 1550 In heaven, chariot with chariot closed on earth, One fourfold flash and thunder; yet a breath, And with the king's ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... it. He would wander about the big wood at Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the day among the rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams from the hills, or watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting so quiet as not to startle the deer that came down from the heather to the grass and the tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days went by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of sight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that ...
— Stories of Red Hanrahan • W. B. Yeats
... bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... well to fear. For the main purpose of the article was to emphasize the fact that, in the existing conditions of things, nothing was ever likely to be done for the relief of the hungry sufferers from bad laws and bad social conditions, unless some deeds of violence were employed to startle the public into the knowledge that the sufferings existed and would not be endured in patience any longer. It is unfortunately only too true that, at all periods of history, even the most recent history of ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the luck to startle him out of his reserve. Miss Kit came down to the yard that morning, and for the first time for more than a ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... the abnormal conditions of an island where black and white were in relations impossible in the countries from which the white man had come. It did not even startle Dyck that all the planters, and the people generally in the island, from the chief justice and custos rotulorum down to the deckswabber, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thoughts of both of them; and this broke down the barriers between them—Thyrsis became bolder, and more open in his speech. He lost his awe of her maidenhood and her innocence—he wooed her, he lured her on; he rejoiced in his power to agitate her, to startle her, to speak to her about secret things. He would clasp her in his arms and shower his kisses upon her; and she would yield to him, almost fainting with bliss—and then shrink from ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... midnight when I saw a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw—for the excited dogs had pushed the door ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... doctor. At any rate, you are a brick, I will say that. But I'll think of all this, I'll think of it; but it does startle me to find that poor Mary has a child living ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... sulphurous smoke, which gives perpetual warning of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate the surrounding country. Subterranean activity increases during the rainy season, and tremors of earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of those unused to the perils of existence on this thin crust of Mother Earth, for Java's teeming soil and population rest upon an ominous fissure of the globe's surface, and twelve of the forty-five ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... finding a husband a young lady would then add the not less important business of making herself a rational person, instead of a more or less tastefully decorated doll with a passion for a great deal of money. She might awaken to the fact, which would at first startle her very much no doubt, that there is a great portion of a universe outside her own circle and her own mind. This simple discovery would of itself effect a revolution that might transform her from being an insipid idiot into ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the Niebelungen of the Night Startle sun's radiance ... And ye, the Rhine's Water-born Nymphs, are lashed and swept away By ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... vanity of human hopes and the folly of friendship?" inquired Adrien, so coldly as to startle both the company and Lord Standon himself, who not being in Lady Constance's confidence, was naturally at a loss for the reason of this sudden anger on the part of Leroy. He drew back in surprise, but any further reference ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... as an inalienable privilege; John Steele encountered him on every hand. Once, beneath a great tree, where Jocelyn Wray and he had stopped their horses to talk for a moment, the bleared, bloated face of what had been a man looked up at him. The sight for an instant seemed to startle the beholder; a wave of anger at that face, set in a place where imagination had an instant before played with a picture altogether different, passed over him; then ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Psyche," in close imitation of Lulli, the long famed composer of Louis XIV. Purcell followed in the new track, taking for his models the productions of the first Italian composers. The fact, that Purcell was under obligations to the Italians, may startle many of his modern admirers; but with a candour worthy of himself, in the dedication of his Dioclesian to Charles Duke of Somerset, he says, that "music is yet but in its nonage, a forward child. 'Tis now learning Italian, which is its best master." And in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... that when some one might see us—I forgot, for a minute, that there was any one else in the world! Besides, I'm afraid, if we do, I'll let myself go more than I mean to—it's all been stifled inside me so long—and be almost rough, and startle or hurt you. I couldn't bear to have that happen to you—again. I want you always to feel safe and shielded ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... though but for pins, may be taken in by customers for pins, sooner than by a direct bribe of ten times the value; especially if pretenders to conscience: for the offer of a bribe would not only give room for suspicion, but would startle and alarm their scrupulousness; while a high price paid for what you buy, is but submitting to be cheated in the method of the person makes a profession to get by. Have I not said that human nature is a rogue?**—And do not I know ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... However, he did startle the poor old parish clergyman effectually by calling on him to publish the banns of marriage between Dermot Edward St. Glear Tracy and Lucy Percy Alison, both residing in this parish. He evidently thought ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... after considering the following statistics. The progressive increase of the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the world during the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as to startle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 into five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of several great nations for army and navy purposes during the first ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... came out gradually before me. Nor did I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good landlords—never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... faggots of myrtle-branches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude's offer and explanations; indifferently to my admonitions not to accept. The thought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudder through our most brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her, immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not answer, but sat under the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that moment Waldemar came up to us; he had followed with the intention of putting an end ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... makes men feel young is great—a great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new things that men tire—of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of change who ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... we ourselves could) that the appraisements made by our officers were not above half of what he had been offered for one of them, and did make it good by bringing a gentleman to give us L700 for the Wildboare, which they valued but at L276, which made us all startle and stop the sale, and I did propose to acquaint the Duke of York with it, and accordingly we did agree on it, and I wrote a severe letter about it, and we are to attend him with it to-morrow about it. This afternoon my Lord Anglesey tells us that the House of Commons have this morning ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of night, too much the ghosts come through Your crazy doors, to vex and startle me, Touching with curious fingers cold as dew Kissing with unloved kisses fierily That dwell, slow fever, through my veins all day, And fill my senses as the dead their graves. They are builded in my castles and bridges? Yea, Not therefore must my dreams become their ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... do you not see? It is a device of the Senate to startle our friends from Bosphorus. The faggots and straw blaze up fiercely round the wall; then, when all is confusion, the substance in the sealed vessels escapes and at once puts out the fire, and the laugh is with us. Our friends from Bosphorus know what ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... due offences Do not fright me, do not startle, For if they through arrogance And ambition sought this garden, Me the worship of the gods Here has led, and so I 'm guarded 'Gainst all sorceries whatsoever, 'Gainst all forms of Christian magic:— ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... She went about in a quiet matter-of-fact way which was even gentler than her customary gentleness because in these days, while trying to preserve a quite ordinary demeanour, she felt as though she must move as one would move in making sure that one would not startle a bird one loved. ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... indifferent and friendly sentences which he answered with languid readiness, just as any decent sick man would do, I produced the word Patna wrapped up in a delicate question as in a wisp of floss silk. I was delicate selfishly; I did not want to startle him; I had no solicitude for him; I was not furious with him and sorry for him: his experience was of no importance, his redemption would have had no point for me. He had grown old in minor iniquities, and could no longer inspire aversion or pity. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... do not pray for anybody or any party to commit outrages, still I do pray, and that earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women of this nation into a self-respect which will compel them to see the abject degradation of their present position; which will force them to break their yoke of bondage, and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to woman first; which will ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... way. I never saw better acting, even in Kean. His look, his manner, his long arm, his elvish fore-finger,—like an exclamation-point, punctuating his bitter thought,—showed the skill of a master. The effect of the whole was to startle everybody, as if a pistol-shot had rung through the hall."—Recollections, Vol. II. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... urged Cranston, "then they'll answer." But Chrome said that wouldn't do; it would wake up or startle everybody in ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... again, and Priscilla quickly moved to the mother's side, but great joys do not kill even though they startle, and presently the white white face was raised with a smile almost of heaven illuminating it, and the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... accept. An impure young woman is an awful sight. She outrages all just ideas of womankind, all proper conceptions of spiritual beauty. To have evil imaginings, corrupt longings, or deceitful propensities ought to startle any young woman. To feel a disposition to sensuality, a craving for the glitter of a worldly life, or a selfish ambition for unmerited distinction is dangerous in the extreme. It is the exuding of impure waters ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... was to command the Egyptian Army, asked the Cabinet for such large figures as to startle them.' ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... before, the fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece, and looking up into the eyes of the girl above, smiling and talking softly to her, Miss Ludington entered the room and laid her hand gently on his arm. Her appearance did not seem to startle him in the least. "Paul, my dear boy!" she said, "you had ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... family-secrets to, unsnecking the cupboard, And setting the skeleton rattling his bones? I took you For one of us, who'd ken our pretty ways; And reckoned naught I could tell of Jim to Jim's wife Could startle her, though she'd ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... rocking-chair and a book. But much as I detest the smell of car-smoke, and to find my face spotted with soot, and ill as it makes me to ride backward, I would willingly travel every month of the year over the road from Athens to Patras. The mountains are not so high as to startle, the gulf not so vast as to shock. But with gentleness you are drawn more and more into the net of its fascination until the tears well to your eyes and there is a positive ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... had them. If one reads Turgenieff's stories with the knowledge that they were composed—or rather that they came into being—in this way, one can trace the process in every line. Story, in the conventional sense of the word—a fable constructed, like Wordsworth's phantom, 'to startle and waylay'—there is as little as possible. The thing consists of the motions of a group of selected creatures, which are not the result of a preconceived action, but a consequence of the qualities of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... were staggering under the weight of the deer, and the spare guns were carried by my tracker. We were proceeding slowly along, when the tracker, who was in advance, suddenly sprang back and pointed to some object in the path. It was certainly enough to startle any man. An enormous serpent lay coiled in the path. His head was about the size of a very small cocoa-nut, divided lengthways, and this was raised about eighteen inches above the coil. His eyes were fixed upon us, and his forked tongue played in and out of his mouth with a continued hiss. Aiming ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... with the company. He was to open with "Hamlet," and Mrs. Bradshaw, who by right should have played the part of Queen Mother, was laid up with a broken ankle. Miss Morris says: "It took a good deal in the way of being asked to do strange parts to startle me, but the Queen Mother did it. I was just nicely past sixteen, and I was to go on the stage for the serious Shakesperian mother of ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of vocabulary. A remarkable experience has occurred in this room within an hour. I can no more describe it than the man born blind could describe sight. I can only call it by one name, which may startle you. ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... said Kate, who now stood, unassisted, in the light of the lantern, "but in woeful case, and more like to startle you than if I were the biggest fish. I am Mistress Kate Bonnet, just out of the river between here and the town. No, I will not enter your house, I am not fit; I will stand here and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell: no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would wait in the porch—she ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... light under the window; and at the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and again I looked ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... French Ambassador to Germany, the United States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine might startle us with a diary ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Mary had not been sheltered from taking part in scenes of suffering; she had seen sickness and death in cottages, as well as in her own home, and she had none of the fanciful alarms, either of novelty or imagination, to startle her in the strange watch that had so suddenly been thrust on her but what did fill her with a certain apprehension, was the new and lofty beauty of expression that sat on that sleeping countenance. 'A nice boy,' 'rather a handsome lad,' 'a boy of ingenuous ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at large has truly said of the labors of Dr. Tuckerman: "From the beginning he had the moral and pecuniary support of the leaders of life in Boston; her first merchants and her statesmen were watching these experiments with a curious interest, and although he was often so radical as to startle the most conservative notions of men engaged in trade, or learned in the old-fashioned science of government, there was that in the persistence of his life and the accuracy of his method which engaged ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... to the fact that he owned a good voice, and that one of the enemies for whom he and the rest of the Pawnees were hunting, was much nearer than was supposed. He emitted a screeching yell, enough to startle all who heard it, and, looking around and seeing nothing of the white archer, he stopped and again signaled for the rest to hasten while it ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... same," he said to the man behind the bar, and then to me with a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resign this rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the business long enough to know that the average newspaper man is forever threatening to resign. Most of them—to hear them talk—are always just on the point of throwing up their jobs and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... room. If your patient be well enough, and wishes you to talk to him, speak in a low, distinct voice, on cheerful subjects. Don't relate painful hospital experiences, nor give details of the maladies of former patients, and remember never to startle him with accounts of dreadful crimes or accidents that you have ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... appealing to your future dictates with the lowest and most resigned submission, fate having decreed you sole arbiter of the productions of human wit in this polite and most accomplished age. Methinks the number of appellants were enough to shock and startle any judge of a genius less unlimited than yours; but in order to prevent such glorious trials, the person, it seems, to whose care the education of your Highness is committed, has resolved, as I am told, to keep you in almost an universal ignorance of our ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... I had read that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... were stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as any of ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... the barrels and the caps of his gun to see if all was right; then he said to uncle Ralph, "You and Tom had better stay here; for too many of us may startle the deer." ...
— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... vengeance is kin to roguery, d'ye see. If you're for murdering the father what's to hinder you from giving the proud daughter up to—steady, Martin, steady it is! Your sudden ways be apt to startle a timid man and my finger's on the trigger. Look'ee now, shipmate, if your scheme of fine-gentlemanly vengeance doth not permit of such methods towards a woman, what's to prevent you going on another track and carrying her with you, safe from all chance of brutality? ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... in Flanders. All the medical officers of the garrison were immediately in requisition; and the sights which I saw, even when standing at the gate, as the carts and cars rolled over the drawbridge, were sufficient to startle feelings more used to such terrible demonstrations of the folly or the frenzy of the world. But this was no time to indulge indolent sensibilities. Of course, I have no desire to enter into the startling details ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... in general, he makes abundant use of that apprehension of death, which is far stronger in the uneducated than in the more refined, as a source from which he may gather thunderbolt after thunderbolt with which to startle the indifferent and hardened heart. What matter though the sentiment to which he appeals be a perverted sentiment? what matter how severely wrenched out of its normal channel? if through this tortuous channel something of the divine truth reaches the awakened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was seized from behind, and Walters ran past. She struggled fiercely, biting her lips as she stopped the scream that might startle her lover, and heard the man who held her breathing hard. But he held her firmly and she stopped struggling, with a paralyzing horror that made her muscles limp. Still, she could see and think, and the scene fixed itself upon her brain like a photograph; long afterwards ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... not fire, because of the men. I dared not move, lest I should disturb the robber. I was even afraid the click of cocking the pistol would startle him and prevent my getting a quiet shot. But patience was rewarded. When satiated, the brute retired as stealthily as he had advanced; and as he passed within seven or eight yards of me I let him have it. Great was my disappointment to ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... with a second laugh, but it did not startle me like the first. "We should all be perfect, ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
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