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More "Thunderbolt" Quotes from Famous Books



... to seize the murderer, who thus braved me beside the corpse of his last victim; but as I did so I experienced a strange stunning sensation, and fell, as though struck by a thunderbolt, lifeless to the ground. The first persons who entered the church upon the following morning found me in this state, and carried me to the nearest house, where I lay for weeks in a raging fever, during which time Natalie was buried, and the flowers that sprang up on her grave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... prefaced with some simile—the simile of a powder-mine, a thunderbolt, an earthquake—for it blew Philip up in the air and flattened him on the ground and swallowed him up in the depths. Lilia turned on her gallant ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... events to be with Orlando, had joined the hero in the fatal valley; so that the little Christian host, considering the tremendous valor of their lord and his friends, were not to be sold for nothing. Rinaldo, alas! the second thunderbolt of Christendom, was destined not to be there in time to meet the issue. The paladins in vain begged Orlando to be on his guard against treachery, and send for a more numerous body of men. The great heart ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... scene like that in the 13th and 14th Iliads? where the reader sees at one view the prospect of Troy, with the army drawn up before it; the Grecian army, camp, and fleet; Jupiter sitting on Mount Ida, with his head wrapt in a cloud, and a thunderbolt in his hand, looking towards Thrace; Neptune driving through the sea, which divides on each side to permit his passage, and then seating himself on Mount Samos; the heavens opened, and the deities all seated on their thrones. This is sublime! ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... observe how popular are become your Dialogues of the Dead. Nothing can be so gratifying and satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule. It hath scattered the crowd of heathen gods as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them. Now, I am confident you never would have assailed the false religion, unless you were prepared for the reception of the true. For it hath always been an indication of rashness and precipitancy, to throw down an edifice before ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... I loose a thunderbolt for thy destruction. Is it wise to forget that Naraini holds thy fate in the hollow of her hands?" She sat forward, speaking swiftly and with malice. "Thou art pledged to produce Har Dyal Rutton in the Hall of the Bell before another sunrise, and none but Naraini knows to what a perilous resort ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... of Acton's campaign against Phil, and asked him to release me—and Phil—from our promise of secrecy regarding the football-match accident. His reply comforted me, and I knew that, come what might, I had a thunderbolt in my pocket in Aspinall's letter, which could knock Acton off the Captain's chair if he ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... surprised to find how little his wife was affected by the terrible thunderbolt which had fallen among them. On him the blow had been almost as terrible as on his mother. He had taken a house in town, at the instance of the Dean, and in consequence of a promise made before his marriage, which was sacred to him but which he regretted. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... bring the mute figure of the ruined man between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... of these walls, a thunderbolt, the heavy column, already warned, was to seek the Union left, and strike a Stonewall Jackson blow. Its march will be covered by the friendly woods. The keen-eyed adjutants are already warning the captains of every detail of the attack. Calm and unmoved, the gaunt centurions of the thinned host ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... wanted to pay the innkeeper, but, alas! a new misfortune was in store for me! Let the reader imagine my sad position! I recollected that I had forgotten my purse, containing seven sequins, on the table of the inn at Tolentino. What a thunderbolt! I was in despair, but I gave up the idea of going back, as it was very doubtful whether I would find my money. Yet it contained all I possessed, save a few copper coins I had in my pocket. I paid ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... ball of the straggling threads and dropped it into the waste-basket. A woman who has the support of beauty can always force a man to lower his gaze. James looked at his boots. His heart gave one great bound toward his throat, then sank what seemed to be fathoms deep in his breast. This was a thunderbolt out of heaven itself. Had she seen him, then? For a space he was tempted to utter a falsehood; but there was that in her eyes which warned him of the uselessness of such an expedient. Yet, to give up that rose would be like giving up some part of his being. She repeated ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... if struck by a thunderbolt, and for some time was unable to speak. At last I asked him how a servant could dare to behave so towards his master. He interrupted me by saying, quite coolly, "A servant may be a very honorable man, and unwilling to serve a shadowless master—I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various

... Lionel Dale had struck like a thunderbolt on the baronet; but it was a thunderbolt whose falling he had anticipated with shuddering horror during every day and every hour ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... you can't tell what trick they'll sarve you; I was once riding through these very mountains, on the back of a horse that I picked up—it isn't necessary to say how—when his owner gave a signal and the critter was off like a thunderbolt. If I hadn't slipped from his back at the risk of breaking my neck, he would have carried me right into a camp of hostiles and you would have been without your invaluable ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... ubiquity, Claude Duval's sang-froid, the personal attractiveness of Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety in the same colony a few ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... that, what a thunderbolt you would have had with which to attempt to crush us, Mr. Attorney! and nevertheless, the ritual adds: "The sick man ought, at this moment, to detest anew all illicit pleasures, ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... blood and thunder for ye! We went down the Great War-path which lies below us, and when we was through there wasn't a corn-shuck or a wigwam or a war post left. We didn't harm the squaws nor the children, but there warn't no prisoners took. When Nollichucky Jack strikes I reckon it's more like a thunderbolt nor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... disappointed. Perhaps we hurried on things too quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the 'Gazette' came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think. I'm afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst—that you had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one to know? Your ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... friend the prior, when he came to me to borrow the thousand crowns. It was Heaven's will. Unexpected like the thunderbolt, and to be borne as such. Every man must bear his own burden. How could I lend ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... of a mighty resistless force, But Geralda Conners was nothing to her except the target for a thunderbolt. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... revised your opinion very materially. But, as I said before, I can scarcely complain, when I remember my own action. But you will never know how bitterly I have repented of my folly. When that terrible charge was made against me last Monday—it came, when I was so happy and hopeful, like a sudden thunderbolt—I thought I should lose my reason. I felt that you had gone away believing I was utterly false and had been insincere in everything from first to last. I was like one who had fallen from a great height, and I scarcely spoke ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... that man, the god of war, surrounded by a cloud of regiments, armed with a thousand cannon, harnessing to his chariot golden eagles beside those of silver,32 was flying from the deserts of Libya to the lofty Alps, casting thunderbolt on thunderbolt, at the Pyramids, at Tabor, Marengo, Ulm, and Austerlitz. Victory and Conquest ran before and after him. The glory of so many exploits, heavy with the names of heroes, went roaring from the Nile to the North, until at the shores of the Niemen it was beaten ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... Zola well defined this illusion: "We congratulated him," said he, "upon that health which seemed unbreakable, and justly credited him with the soundest constitution of our band, as well as with the clearest mind and the sanest reason. It was then that this frightful thunderbolt ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... things which most wives would have been delighted to do for their husbands' comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or feeling, or ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... a tyrant in the ship greater than I—it is that horrible Dr Thompson. He is plotting to take away my commission, and to get me into a madhouse!— oh, my God!—my God! remove from me this agony. Hath Thine awful storm no thunderbolt—Thy wave no tomb! Must I die on the straw, like a beast of burden worn to death by loathsome toil?—and so many swords to have flashed harmlessly over my head, so many balls to have whistled idly past my body! But, God's will be done! Bear yourself, my dear body, carefully in the presence ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... thirty-two years, &c. (Ch. Up. VIII, 7 ff.), clearly shows that the devas possess bodies and sense- organs. Analogously, mantras and arthavdas, which are complementary to injunctions of works, contain unmistakeable references to the corporeal nature of the gods ('Indra holding in his hand the thunderbolt'; 'Indra lifted the thunderbolt', &c.); and as the latter is not contradicted by any other means of proof it must be accepted on the authority stated. Nor can it be said that those mantras and arthavdas are really meant to express something else (than those details mentioned above), ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... recede. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche—the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gathers around these summits, as to show How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... mob—and that is the trouble with mobs—who seemed willing to make a sacrifice of himself that the others might gain their end. For one moment they halted, cursing and waving; their pistols, preparing for a charge; and in that crucial moment the tutor from New England came like a thunderbolt to the rescue. Shrieks of terror from children, shrieks of outraged modesty from women, rent the air down the street where the huddled crowd was rushing right and left in wild confusion, and, through the parting crowd, the tutor flew into sight on horseback, bareheaded, barefooted, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... the great elephant, Airavata, of huge body and with two pair of white tusks. And him took Indra the wielder of the thunderbolt. But with the churning still going on, the poison Kalakuta appeared at last. Engulfing the Earth it suddenly blazed up like a fire attended with fumes. And by the scent of the fearful Kalakuta, the three worlds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... a short time it took to read), and had asked a word of explanation, that Dreda seemed suddenly galvanised into fresh life, but as usual with her, when the awakening came, it came with a vengeance. She leapt to her feet, and disregarding the question, launched her thunderbolt with dramatic vehemence. ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... but her sister, Mrs. Glynn, was not perturbed. She launched her thunderbolt of news at once, aware that the critical moment had come, when the quarry of suspicion had left ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... fluttered, and became intensely interested. The major's eyes twinkled as he assumed a perfectly impassive expression, and rapidly delivered himself of the following thunderbolt,— ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... is, according to the succeeding words in the psalm, "to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth." This is a terrible, an appalling sentence, before which a heart may well be prostrated as from a thunderbolt. And ungodly hearts would be thus appalled were they not so hardened as to despise ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... been more than two minutes afterwards until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek—such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waterpipes of many thousand steam vessels, letting off their steam all together. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... with terror and anger. Upward he went, up, up, up, until he plunged into the cold, misty bosom of a cloud at which, only a little while before, Bellerophon had been gazing and fancying it a very pleasant spot. Then again, out of the heart of the cloud, Pegasus shot down like a thunderbolt, as if he meant to dash both himself and his rider head-long against a rock. Then he went through about a thousand of the wildest caprioles that had ever been performed either by a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... his thunderbolt, Mr. Pantin stood above his wife regarding her imperturbably as she lay with her face buried in a sofa pillow. Unmoved, he even felt a certain interest in the rise and fall of her shoulder blades as she sobbed. Actually, she seemed to breathe with them—"like ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... temerity to attack you, and so has made a lawful target of itself. But against your friend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all over you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... upon the garden; but the walls were of great thickness (for the tower was old), and the windows were heavily barred. The Prince, followed by the Chancellor, still trotting to keep up with him, brushed swiftly through the little library and the long saloon, and burst like a thunderbolt into the bedroom at the farther end. Sir John was finishing his toilet; a man of fifty, hard, uncompromising, able, with the eye and teeth of physical courage. He was unmoved by the irruption, and bowed with a sort of ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... bidding, were a still smaller minority. The bulk of Englishmen were striving to cling to their religious prejudice and to loyalty as well, to obey their conscience and their Queen at once, and in such a temper of men's minds any sudden and decisive change would have fallen like a thunderbolt. Elizabeth had no will to follow in the track of Rome, and to help the Pope to drive every waverer into action. Weakened and broken as it was, she clung obstinately to her system of compromise; and the general opinion gave her a strength which enabled her to resist the pressure of her council ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... have no cause for sorrow in consequence of that knowledge. As the final resting-place of all rivers is the ocean, even so the end of all embodied creatures is death. Those persons that know this well are never stupefied, O wielder of the thunderbolt! They, however, who are overwhelmed with Passion and loss of judgment, do not know this, they whose understanding is lost, sink under the weight of misfortune. A person who acquires a keen understanding succeeds in destroying ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... raise troops in the province of La Puglia.—In one of these Magius is seen returning to Venice; his final departure,—a thunderbolt is viewed falling on his vessel—his passage by Corfu and Zante, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... thunderbolt! All at once Bernhard's flushed countenance became livid, his eyes glared savagely, and there suddenly spread a choking, suffocating expression on his large handsome face. The noise and clamour of hoarse angry ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... like the storm-driven cloud of summer that, having cast off its crown of gold, hangs as a sword the thunderbolt upon a chain ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... or the "Spanish" Legion, or it might, for example, wear a crested lark upon its helmet and be called the Legion of the "Lark." The commander of the whole legion is a man of senatorial rank; its standard is a silver eagle on the top of a staff, commonly holding a thunderbolt in its claw. To each legion there are ten regiments, called "cohorts," averaging six hundred men, and every such regiment has its colonel, or, as the translation of the Bible calls Claudius Lysias, "its chief captain." The regiment in its turn consists of six companies or "hundreds," with a "centurion" ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... arrived news, which fell upon him with the force of a thunderbolt, that the revolt had extended to the Spanish provinces, and was headed by Galba. He fainted upon hearing this; and falling to the ground, lay for a long time lifeless, as it seemed, and speechless. Upon coming to himself again, he tore his ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... were the words that stood out before her widening gaze. She remained as one transfixed, staring at them. It was as if a thunderbolt had ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... tidings of the white men with predictions long extant in the country, and with supernatural appearances, which filled the hearts of the whole nation with dismay. Comets were seen flaming athwart the heavens. Earthquakes shook the land; the moon was girdled with rings of fire of many colors; a thunderbolt fell on one of the royal palaces and consumed it to ashes; and an eagle, chased by several hawks, was seen, screaming in the air, to hover above the great square of Cuzco, when, pierced by the talons of his tormentors, the king of birds fell lifeless in the presence of many of ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... which did not permit him distinctly to understand what had taken place; and so inaccurate was his consciousness of what had passed, that he might have supposed the bull had been arrested in its career by a thunderbolt, had he not observed among the branches of the thicket the figure of a man, with a short gun or musquetoon in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... among the men as the best part of their booty. There was not a wickeder place on God's earth at that hour than the island, and its sins, as I thought, should be blotted out by a thunderbolt from Heaven. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the most heroic of any of Shakspeare's actors; but it is, perhaps, that one also of which his reader last acquires the intelligence. The intellectual and warlike energy of his mind—his tenderness of affection—his loftiness of spirit—his frank, generous magnanimity—impetuosity like a thunderbolt—and that dark, fierce flood of boiling passion, polluting even his imagination,—compose a character entirely original, most difficult to delineate, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... the first and foremost instance, to take a vizzy of the depredation the flames had made in our neighbourhood. Losh keep us all, what a spectacle of wreck and ruination! The roof was clean off and away, as if a thunderbolt from heaven had knocked it down through the two floors, carrying every thing before it like a perfect whirlwind. Nought were standing but black, bare walls, a perfect picture of desolation; some with the bit pictures on nails still hanging up where the rooms were like; and others with old coats ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... disorder. It appeared singular to me that, seeing my embarrassment, she did not rearrange it, and I turned my head to give her an opportunity. She did nothing. Finally, meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she was in, I felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I now clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery, that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses. I took my hat without a word, bowed ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... Spaniards landed when divers adventures overtook them. An excellent doctor of Seville, whom the authority of the bishop[4] and likewise his desire to obtain gold prevented from peacefully ending his days in his native country, was surprised by a thunderbolt when sleeping quietly with his wife. The house with all its furniture was burnt and the bewildered doctor and his wife barely escaped, almost naked and half roasted. Once when a dog eight months old was wandering on the shore, a big crocodile snapped him up, like a hawk seizing a chicken as its ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... the deserted yard and up to a tangle of neglected shrubbery. He had some difficulty in getting Thunderbolt—who was as restless a beast as his name implied—to stand still long enough to allow him to pick a bunch of the buds; he would have nothing but buds just breaking into bloom. These he presently brought back to Roberta. ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond

... reckless of the two, and she is striving by the exercise of her attractions to silence Sebald's remorse. She has succeeded for the moment, when Pippa passes—singing. Something in her song strikes his conscience like a thunderbolt, and its reviving force awakens Ottima's ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... would destroy him by their internal violence; but their first ebullition was soon expended and he began to grow calm. The electric fires of his anger were no longer permitted to play at random, but were gathered up into a thunderbolt to be hurled at his foe; this half-crazed man suddenly became as cool and calculating as ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... AEther, in the classical system. Vul indeed corresponds in great measure with the classical Zeus or Jupiter, being, like him, the real "Prince of the power of the air," the lord of the whirlwind and the tempest, and the wielder of the thunderbolt. His standard titles are "the minister of heaven and earth," "the Lord of the air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are assigned to him. He ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... cloud whose densing firmly compacts it, by breaking the cloud it causeth a great noise, and by striking and rending the cloud it gives the flame; and in the swiftness of its motion, the sun imparting heat to it, it throws out the bolt. The weak declining of the thunderbolt ends in a violent tempest. Anaxagoras, that when heat and cold meet and are mixed together (that is, ethereal parts with airy), thereby a great noise of thunder is produced, and the color observed against the blackness of the cloud occasions the flashing of ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... far from the fugitive as the space between first and second base—thirty yards—when the stone left his hand like a thunderbolt. As before, it sped true to its aim, but struck higher than then, sending the scoundrel forward on his face, and stunning him; only for a minute or so, but ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... If a thunderbolt had fallen it would not have created a greater sensation. The ladies at first grew indignant and uttered protestations. When they grew calmer, the corresponding secretary was ordered to furnish the editor ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... out a chair. He had not seen her for two weeks. He had known nothing of her movements, save that her splendid talents had saved a play from utter ruin. Her declaration was like a thunderbolt. "Explain!" ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... participation has been constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believed in you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you with tenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already—the horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... drive out Catiline, as it were with a thunderbolt of eloquence, often used that figure of repetition, Vivit? Vivit; immo in Senatum venit, &c. Indeed, inflamed with a well-grounded rage, he would have his words (as it were) double out of his mouth: and so do that artificially, which we see ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... metal, there were no such flints, lying there yesterday, and the finder is puzzled about the origin of the objects on which he has lighted. He carries them home, and the village wisdom determines that the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a 'thunderbolt,' or that the bits of flint are 'elf-shots,' the heads of fairy arrows. Such things are still treasured in remote nooks of England, and the 'thunderbolt' is applied to cure ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... room while she was gone, full of sadness. He had been very fond of the Squire, and that awfully sudden death, an apopleptic seizure, instantaneous as a thunderbolt, had impressed him very painfully. It was his first experience of the kind, and it was infinitely terrible to him. It seemed to him a long time before Vixen appeared, and then the door opened, and a slim black figure came in, a white fixed face looked at him piteously, with tearless eyes made ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... mighty hero, King Dushyanta, Protector of the earth; who, at the head Of the celestial armies of thy son, Does battle with the enemies of heaven. Thanks to his bow, the thunderbolt of Indra Rests from its work, no more the minister Of death and desolation to the world, But a mere symbol ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... trembling at the feet of their master. The next instant the dark, thundering mass passed over head, being nothing less than an immense herd of buffalo driven forwards by the flames! The horses bowed their heads as if a thunderbolt was passing. The fire and the heavens were hid from view, and the roar above resembled the rush of mighty waters. When the last animal had sprung over the chasm, Glenn thanked the propitious accident that thus providentially ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... I move you," said Mr. Caryll, his hand raised to stay the other, "not to mercy, but to horror of the thing you contemplate." And then, in an oddly impressive manner, he launched his thunderbolt. "Know, then, that if that morning I would not spill your blood, it was because I should have been spilling the same blood that flows in my own veins; it was because you are my brother; because your father was my father. No less than that was the reason ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... consent; and Tom Faggus, wishing to look his best, and be clean of course, had a tailor at work upstairs for him, who had come all the way from Exeter. And Betsy's things were ready too—for which they accused him afterwards, as if he could help that—when suddenly, like a thunderbolt, a lawyer's writ ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... offensive. On the 20th Hood made a furious attack on Hooker's front, but was repulsed with heavy losses. On the 22d he struck again, and harder. By a night march, Hardee's corps at dawn fell upon the Union left flank and rear like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, rolling up the Army of the Tennessee in great confusion. The brave and talented McPherson was killed early in the action, Logan succeeding. "McPherson and revenge," he cried, as upon his coal-black steed he careered from post to post of danger, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... no less than two archbishoprics and twelve bishoprics, besides innumerable abbacies. The edict came like a thunderbolt on the whole of Protestant Germany; dreadful even in its immediate consequences; but yet more so from the further calamities it seemed to threaten. The Protestants were now convinced that the suppression of their religion had ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband knows his wrongs, her shame will be published—may be spreading while she thinks about it—and in addition to the thunderbolt so long foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an invisible accuser as the ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... good array. When 102 the Emperor Decius learned of his departure, he was eager to bring relief to his own city and, crossing Mount Haemus, came to Beroa. While he was resting his horses and his weary army in that place, all at once Cniva and his Goths fell upon him like a thunderbolt. He cut the Roman army to pieces and drove the Emperor, with a few who had succeeded in escaping, across the Alps again to Euscia in Moesia, where Gallus was then stationed with a large force of soldiers as guardian of the frontier. Collecting an army from this region as well as from Oescus, ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... with burning torches and was hurled into Tartarus by a thunderbolt from Jupiter.—Hyginus, "Fab." "Vidi et crudelis dantem Salmonea poenas Dum flammas louis et sonitus imitatur Olympi." VIRG., Aen., vi, 585. And see the Excursus of Heyne on the ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... in his hands a net wherewith to catch Tiamat, and he placed the four winds near it, to prevent her from escaping from it when he had snared her. He created mighty winds and tempests to assist him, and grasped the thunderbolt in his hand; and then, mounting upon the Storm, which was drawn by four horses, he went out to meet and defeat Tiamat. It seems pretty certain that this description of the equipment of Marduk was taken over from a very ancient account of the Fight with Tiamat in which the hero was Enlil, i.e., ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... happened so instantaneously and unexpectedly that for the moment Mainwaring sat like one petrified. Had a thunderbolt fallen from the silent sky and burst at his feet he could not have been more stunned. He was like one held in the meshes of a horrid nightmare, and he gazed as through a mist of impossibility into the lineaments of the well-known, sober face ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... a thunderbolt cleave the impious tongue which utters the criminal proposal! Thou hast murdered my beloved Charles; and shall Amelia, his betrothed, call ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... this, sent the flies to ascertain who the dead one was; but, as the flies did not dare to go, Captan sent the weevil, who brought back the news of the shark's death. The god Captan was displeased at these obsequies to a fish. He and Maguayen made a thunderbolt, with which they killed Pandaguan; he remained thirty days in the infernal regions, at the end of which time the gods took pity upon him, brought him back to life, and returned him to the world. While Pandaguan was dead, his wife Lubluban became the concubine ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... not otherwise. The Shiuana, he had been taught, dwelt in the clouds, and they were good; why, then, was it that from one and the same cloud the beneficial rain descended, which caused the food of mankind to grow, and also the destructive hail and the deadly thunderbolt?[9] ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... Jars had bestowed the title and name of Chevalier de Moranges, and whose acquaintance the reader has already made at the tavern in the rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. His appearance had as great an effect on the notary as a thunderbolt. He stood motionless, trembling, breathless; his knees ready to give way beneath him; everything black before his eyes. However, he soon pulled himself together, and succeeded in overcoming the effects of his surprise and terror. He looked once more through the hole in the partition, and became ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... failure of Francis Skiddy & Co, and another old-established mercantile house similarly situated, had not died out when the suspension of Kenyon Cox & Co., involving that, also, of the Chicago and Canada Southern Railway Company, fell like a thunderbolt on Wall street. This failure derived its importance from the fact of Daniel Drew being a general partner in the house, although originally he had gone into it as a special partner with $300,000 capital, and from its being the financial agent of this new but important enterprise—a line of large ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... in great disquiet again. Arnold's treason and its sad outcome in the death of the handsome and accomplished Major Andre fell like a thunderbolt on the town where he had been the leader of the gay life under Howe. Many women wept over his sad end. Washington had been doubtful of Arnold's integrity for some time, but thought giving him the command at West Point would surely attach ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... moment's dread silence. The thunderbolt had fallen. The festival felicity of two households trembled in the balance. Michael muttered impatiently and went out on ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... say," he announced like an oracle. "Your daughter wants to marry him!" He imagined this would prove a thunderbolt; but Hardy calmly asked: ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... into the first hack I could find, and bade the driver follow the Cumberland sleigh post-haste. I was determined to see Carmel and have Carmel see me. Whatever cold judgment might say against the meeting, I could not live in my present anxiety. If the thunderbolt which had struck her had spared her life and reason she must know from my own lips that I was not only a free man, but as innocent of the awful charge conveyed in Sweetwater's action as was the brother, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... time to straighten, Your brain to bubble cool, — Deals one imperial thunderbolt ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... the calm came forth a thunderbolt," said Nicodemus, watching as Myleia brought a bowl of water, with cloths and soothing herbs. She thrust the bowl into his hands, and he stood, great and hairy and patient, holding it for her while she cut away Nicanor's tunic, where it had stuck ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... grade over-high for nerve an' is a long way from bein' clean strain game; but he figgers, so I allers reckons, that the Colonel ain't no thunderbolt of war himse'f, so when he reads as to him an' Peets an' them treemors an' the whiskey checks, he starts in to drink an' discuss about his honor, an' gives it out he'll ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the valet like a thunderbolt, for little John, who regarded him and his wife as his parents, had become as dear to the childless couple as if he was their own. To part from the beautiful, frank, merry boy would darken Frau Traut's whole life. He, Adrian, had warned ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... this the idea of a God infinite in power, as in wisdom and goodness? Are we to think that the Almighty has just for once set a universe in motion, and forever withdrawn Himself from all meddling with its affairs? He permits us to control the electric power: but is never permitted to direct a thunderbolt upon the guilty, or to turn one aside from any path it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... like a streak of lightning, Lit on the moon like a thunderbolt. Nought could he find but a man with a lantern, Riding about on a pea-green colt. Oh! Heigh-ho! . . . Why did I come here? oh! . . . A fling and a swing and a flap of my wing, And back to the ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... villa. Agrippina, picked up by a boat, had succeeded in reaching one of her villas near by; she sent the freedman to tell the Emperor about the accident and to assure him of her safety. Agrippina alive! It was like a thunderbolt to Nero, and he lost his head: he saw his mother hurrying on to Rome, denouncing the abominable attempt to Senate and people, rousing against him the Praetorian guard and the legions. Thoroughly frightened, he summoned Seneca and Burrhus ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... figure of a man appeared, inside the circle of the dome. He had an angry, brutal face, and he wore a black tunic piped with silver, and black breeches, and polished black boots, and there was an insignia, composed of a cross and thunderbolt, on his cap. He held an ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... himself ready to break through the line the moment the ball was snapped back. Here was his chance to break up the play and make Judd look more ridiculous than ever. The revenge would be sweet. Back went the ball! Benz shot through the line like a thunderbolt; Judd was raising his arms, his foot was swinging up. Benz leaped desperately into the air to block the punt. There was a firm, hollow sound of pigskin meeting toe and Benz felt the leather whiz past his face. Far down the field, even yet high in the air, soared the ball, twisting and ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman

... There Pirga, Arimon, Orindo are, Brimarte the scaler, and with him Suifant The breaker of wild horses brought from far; Then the great wresteler strong Aridamant, And Tisapherne, the thunderbolt of war, Whom none surpassed, whom none to match durst vaunt At tilt, at tourney, or in combat brave, With spear or lance, with sword, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... ancestors. To confront you with your father and grandfather, I have called you to Paris, and when I have talked with Uncle Orme, whose step I hear, I shall be able to tell you definitely of the hour when the thunderbolt will be hurled into the camp of our enemies. Kiss me good-night. God ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... it,—and that letter proved a shock. The Forrests had built upon the story of his engagement to the beauty and heiress Miss Allison, and had long been awaiting his announcement to write the glowing letters of welcome, but here was a thunderbolt. Floyd had fallen in love with a working-girl, a shop-girl, a nobody, and actually wished his mother and sister to send gushing letters expressive of their approval and assurance of loving welcome. It was preposterous. They had expected a Florence ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... other things, changed daily. There were prayer-wheels, cymbals, horns and drums, and a prayer-cylinder six feet high, which it took the strength of two men to turn. On a shelf immediately below the idols were the brazen sceptre, bell, and thunderbolt, a brass lotus blossom, and the spouted brass flagon decorated with peacocks' feathers, which is used at baptisms, and for pouring holy water upon the hands at festivals. In houses in which there is not a roof ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... a glance which would have shivered him like a thunderbolt if he had not been a man of stone. But being a man of stone, the thunderbolt harmlessly glanced off from him. With a peculiar smile, he assisted the enraged counsellor in putting on his cloak, handed him his hat with a polite bow, and then hastened to the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... eighty-five centimes, the amount of the three bills and expenses already incurred. On the morning of the very day when Doublon served the writ upon Eve, requiring her to pay a sum so enormous in her eyes, there came a letter like a thunderbolt from Metivier:— ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... over the audience like a fog; people would settle back in their pews, sigh and determine to endure. And then suddenly the speaker would glide to the front, his great chest would fill, his immense mouth would open and there would leap forth a sentence like a thunderbolt. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... spirit of chivalry pervades the encounter of the two young princes with their father. Some brilliant thoughts occur, the justice and beauty of which are not surpassed in any literature. The comparison of Chandraketu to a lion's cub turning to brave the thunderbolt is one of these; and another is the illustration of the effects of education upon minds possessed or destitute of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... one only pip. No doubt 'twas destined for some lofty soul Who in a deck-chair lolls, and marks the map And says, "Push here," while I and all my kind Scrabble and slaughter in the appointed slough. But I, presumptuous, wore it, till the gods Called for my laundry with a thunderbolt. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various

... fragments the stone upon which he fell without his infant body being injured in the least. And he fell from his mother's lap because Kunti, frightened by a tiger, had risen up suddenly, unconscious of the child that lay asleep on her lap. And as she had risen, the infant, of body hard as the thunderbolt, falling down upon the mountain breast, broke into a hundred fragments the rocky mass upon which he fell. And beholding this, Pandu wondered much. And it so happened that that very day on which Vrikodara was born, was also, O best of Bharatas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... country, and the household daps becomes the more elaborate epulum Iovis, in which the whole community, as it were, entertained him at a banquet. As a sky-deity, too, he is particularly concerned with the thunderbolt and the lightning-flash (Iuppiter Fulmen, Fulgur), and to him are sacred the always ominous spots which had been struck by lightning (bidentalia): with the more alarming occurrence of lightning by night he has a special connection under the cult-title Iuppiter Summanus. ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey

... which we entered as an opportunity offered—being finished we return to our chief topic, i.e. the enquiry into the purport of the Vedanta-texts.—We read (Ka. Up. II, 6, 2), 'Whatever there is, the whole world when gone forth trembles in the pra/n/a. It (the pra/n/a) is a great terror, a raised thunderbolt. Those who know it become immortal[226].'—This passage declares that this whole world trembles, abiding in pra/n/a, and that there is raised something very terrible, called a thunderbolt, and that through its knowledge immortality is obtained. But as it is not immediately ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... us with any trace of that famous Tribune, from which the Roman people were governed by eloquence. Three pillars remain of a temple, raised by Augustus in honour of Jupiter Tonans, when the thunderbolt fell at his feet without striking him, and an arch which the senate raised to Septimus Severus in reward of his exploits. The names of his two sons, Caracalla and Geta, were inscribed on the fronton of ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... Is this the idea of a God infinite in power, as in wisdom and goodness? Are we to think that the Almighty has just for once set a universe in motion, and forever withdrawn Himself from all meddling with its affairs? He permits us to control the electric power: but is never permitted to direct a thunderbolt upon the guilty, or to turn one aside from any path it might incline ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a human expression of terror, the Landgrave fell, as if shot by a thunderbolt, stretched at his full length upon the ground, lifeless apparently, and bereft of consciousness or sensation. A sympathetic cry of horror arose from the spectators. All rushed towards The Masque. The young cavaliers, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... being a mighty physician, raised men from the dead. But Zeus was wroth that a man should have such power, and so make of no effect the ordinance of the Gods. Wherefore he smote Asclepius with a thunderbolt and slew him. And when Apollo knew this, he slew the Cyclopes that had made the thunderbolts for his father Zeus, for men say that they make them on their forges that are in the mountain of Etna. But Zeus suffered not this deed to go unpunished, but passed this sentence on his son Apollo, that ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... profound sorrow. Just at that moment I saw a man hurrying up the path which led into the village from the valley below. Almost breathless with exertion, he uttered a few words to the first he met. His communication flew like lightning among the crowd. They scattered in every direction, as if a thunderbolt had fallen among them. Masks were torn off and hastily concealed, dresses were changed, and the block and axe, and all the things connected with the representation, were carried away, while the people ran along the streets, and shut themselves up in their houses ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston

... compound of several characters. He has Turpin's ubiquity, Claude Duval's sang-froid, the personal attractiveness of Gardiner (leader of a gang which made a business of robbing gold-escorts in New South Wales about forty years ago), and the humorous daredevilry of the 'Captain Thunderbolt' who obtained notoriety in the same colony ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... matter-of-course preparation, suddenly, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, came orders to leave. The whole garrison, officers and men, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... The doctors told me, later, I had fallen into what they were pleased to call "a Second State." I was examined and reported upon as a Psychological Curiosity. But at the time, I knew nothing of all this. A thunderbolt, as it were, destroyed at one blow every relic, every trace of my previous existence; and I began life all over again, with that terrible scene of blood as my first birthday ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... {119} Like a thunderbolt, Colonel Washington and his troopers, flying their famous crimson flag, sweep down in a semicircle round the hill, and charge the ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... heard of her much sooner, and no thunderbolt that ever rent the heavens could have startled him more than the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... weakness; but the more facility I have as King to gratify myself, the more I ought to be on my guard against sin and scandal. I pardon you this time, but never address to me a similar discourse again if you wish that I should continue to love you." This was a thunderbolt for my father; the scales fell from his eyes; the idea of the King's timidity in love disappeared before the display of a virtue ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... for him. And truly Selim was not much his debtor; for, at the first flash and glimpse of a red coat, he would paw and champ his iron bit with rage; and the moment he heard the word "go", off he was among them like a thunderbolt. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... of the Prince. It was delicious, on account of his profound astonishment, and that remnant of grand airs which the pose of his head and arms still betrayed. The Prince had remained as if struck by a thunderbolt; from time to time, he exclaimed, in his high-pitched voice, shrill and perturbed, as though articulating with difficulty: "How is this? how is this?" After concluding her compliment, the Duchess, as though from respect, afforded him ample time ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Madame des Ursins, who up to this time had been on such good terms with the King and Madame de Maintenon, did not appear to me to be favourable. I was confirmed in this view by what had just happened with regard to her sovereignty; but I was a thousand leagues from the thunderbolt which this lightning announced, and which only declared itself to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... fell, Is this of melancholy, brat of hell. There born in hellish darkness doth it dwell, The Furies brought it up, Megara's teat, Alecto gave it bitter milk to eat. And all conspir'd a bane to mortal men, To bring this devil out of that black den. Jupiter's thunderbolt, not storm at sea, Nor whirlwind doth our hearts so much dismay. What? am I bit by that fierce Cerberus? Or stung by [2751]serpent so pestiferous? Or put on shirt that's dipt in Nessus' blood? My pain's past cure; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... news fell like a thunderbolt, and Mark felt a curious chilling sensation come over him, as he tried to keep it from his mother and Mrs O'Halloran. But the latter was quick at seeing there was something wrong, and she stopped and asked what it was, and wrung it unwillingly from ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn

... images, then woe betide him if a sudden noise strikes sharply on his senses and calls his errant soul back to its prison-house of flesh and bones. The shock of the reunion of these two powers, body and mind,—one of which partakes of the unseen qualities of a thunderbolt, while the other shares with sentient nature that soft resistant force which deifies destruction,—this shock, this struggle, or, rather let us say, this painful meeting and co-mingling, gives rise to frightful sufferings. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... him. Emancipation must be given sooner or later, or all goes down in a hideous ruin; and no experience can calculate nicely when the last moment of safety is reached. It may come, and the crashing thunderbolt tell that ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman

... storm as fierce as ever I did see," remarked Chissel. "Why, there was a thunderbolt as big as six of my fists put together, fell right through the decks, and out through the ship's bottom; and if I hadn't been there to plug the hole, we should all have gone to Davy Jones' locker, as sure as fate. You was there, Trundle, and you know, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... mother-in-law those little things which most wives would have been delighted to do for their husbands' comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or feeling, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... felt the presence of the slaves behind him, and shrank back numbed and appalled. A mist came before his eyes; the voice he heard summoning him to stand up seemed to come from infinite distances. The hand of doom had fallen like a thunderbolt. The leathern thong in the hands of the slave was the token of instant death. There was no chance of escape. The Nubians had him at their mercy. As his brain struggled to regain its understanding, he saw, as in a dream, David enter the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... or it might, for example, wear a crested lark upon its helmet and be called the Legion of the "Lark." The commander of the whole legion is a man of senatorial rank; its standard is a silver eagle on the top of a staff, commonly holding a thunderbolt in its claw. To each legion there are ten regiments, called "cohorts," averaging six hundred men, and every such regiment has its colonel, or, as the translation of the Bible calls Claudius Lysias, "its chief captain." The regiment in its turn consists of six companies ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... four o'clock in the morning of the Fourth of July when the thunderbolt struck Fort Ryan. It was not very loud; it damaged no building; but it struck the very souls of men. A thousand thunder claps, a year's tornadoes in an hour, could not have been more staggering; and yet ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... beamed upon her in that more horrible Gomorrah. The marble trembled under her feet—a sulphurous stench shot through its crevices—the virgin shrieked and fell forwards, scorched and blackened to a cinder. She was blasted, as if by a thunderbolt.[11] Cagliostro looked with horror upon the ashes of the Bacchante. He had seen youth stricken down by age; he had seen virtue annihilated, so to speak, at the mandate of vice; he had seen—and even his callous heart exulted at the thought—he had seen innocence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... western nations in the kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the first crusaders in 1099, had greatly diminished, still the news of the loss of the Holy City—which was taken by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, in 1187—fell like a thunderbolt on men's minds. Once more the flame which had kindled the mystic war of God blazed high. "What a disgrace, what an affliction," cried Pope Urban III, "that the jewel which the second Urban won for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra) when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... shoulders of the one nearest, and crushed him to the ground with his weight. His clenched fist caught the lieutenant between the eyes and stretched him on his back—the third man wisely drew aside to let this human thunderbolt pass by! ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... lion the courser was seized with terror, and his strength instantly failed him. He fell, and died as if he had been struck with a thunderbolt. The valiant knight soon got upon his feet, and, invoking the name of the great Prophet, he plunged his spear into the enormous jaws which were opened to devour him. This exploit of courage and intrepidity gained him, together with the applauses of his ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... to eager crowds as they passed through hamlet, village, and town—swept like a thrill of electric fire throughout the land. News was news in those days! You didn't get it at all till you got it altogether, and then you got it like a thunderbolt. There was no dribbling of advance telegrams; no daily papers to spread the news (or lies), and contradict 'em next day, in the same columns with commentaries or prophetic remarks on what might or should have been, but wasn't, until news got muddled up into a hopeless entanglement, so ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... small brass cups, containing minute offerings of rice and other things, changed daily. There were prayer-wheels, cymbals, horns and drums, and a prayer-cylinder six feet high, which it took the strength of two men to turn. On a shelf immediately below the idols were the brazen sceptre, bell, and thunderbolt, a brass lotus blossom, and the spouted brass flagon decorated with peacocks' feathers, which is used at baptisms, and for pouring holy water upon the hands at festivals. In houses in which there is not a roof temple the best room is set apart for religious use ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... encounter of the two young princes with their father. Some brilliant thoughts occur, the justice and beauty of which are not surpassed in any literature. The comparison of Chandraketu to a lion's cub turning to brave the thunderbolt is one of these; and another is the illustration of the effects of education upon minds possessed or destitute ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... him]. In the midst of connubial and communal peace the thunderbolt has fallen on the King.[MENELAUS tugs at ANALYTIKOS' robe.] Broken in spirit as he is, he is already pawing the ground like a battle steed. Never will we lay down our arms! We and Jupiter! [Cheers.] Never until the Queen is restored to Menelaus. ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... the Cyclops seated at their imperishable work, forging a thunderbolt for King Zeus; by now it was almost finished in its brightness and still it wanted but one ray, which they were beating out with their iron hammers as it spurted forth a breath of ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... Up he went like a streak of lightning, Lit on the moon like a thunderbolt. Nought could he find but a man with a lantern, Riding about on a pea-green colt. Oh! Heigh-ho! . . . Why did I come here? oh! . . . A fling and a swing and a flap of my wing, And back to the earth ...
— The Nursery, April 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... beings, while snakes' heads, growing out of the human bodies, rendered the aspect of the group still more portentous. The center of the pediment was probably occupied by a figure of Zeus, hurling his thunderbolt at this strange enemy. We have therefore here a scene from one of the favorite subjects of Greek art at all periods—the gigantomachy, or battle of gods and giants. Fig. 81 gives a better idea of the nearest of the three heads. [Footnote: It is ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... seen the unknown knight employing the same dreadful weapon! Hitherto he had been on his defence; now he began the attack; and the gleaming axe whirred in his hand like a reed, but descended like a thunderbolt! "Yield! yield! Sir Rowski," shouted he, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the prayer of Malachy that roused the elements, the tempest fell upon those who sought his life,[418] the dark whirlwind[419] enveloped only those who had made ready the works of darkness.[420] Finally, he who was the leader of so great wickedness was struck by a thunderbolt and perished with three others, companions in death as they had been partners in crime; and the next day their bodies were found half-burnt and putrid, clinging to the branches of trees, each where the wind[421] had lifted him up and cast ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... the wisest of us start, and back, and think it incumbent on our pride in love affairs, to resist the slightest interference, or the best advice, from the best friends. What! love upon compulsion! No—Jupiter is not more tenacious of his thunderbolt than Cupid is of his arrows. Blind as he is, none may presume to direct the hand of that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six months' term: that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into two fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit alternately for six months. "A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court, for by the six months' term," says M. Floquet, "there was no longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... waiting. Took the air for a look about. Manitou left me a mile up. Evidently likes the Alps. Soared over Mount Terrible whither I dared not venture—yet! Saw no Huns. Back by sundown. Manitou dropped in to dinner—like a thunderbolt from the zenith. Astonishment of Blue Devils on guard. Much curiosity. Manitou a hero. All see in him an omen of American victory. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... contingency. Why had she not thought of it before? Why had he never thought of it? If it should come to pass! The prospect did not appal her; it did not overwhelm her with confusion or oppress her with shame; it did not threaten to fall like a thunderbolt; the thought of it came down like ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... The sight of you two gave me such a shock, it threw me into such a transport of rage that, unable to break my irons, I rose upon my feet, and, with my hands still pinioned behind me, my legs still loaded with heavy chains, I bounded out of my stall with two leaps, and fell like a thunderbolt upon the old patrician. The shock caused the old man to roll under me. In default of the liberty of my hands to strangle him, I bit him in the face, near the neck. The "horse-dealers" and their keepers threw themselves upon me; but bearing with all my weight ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... a reanimation of external Venice. But there was a thunderbolt in it; for about an hour before sunset, when the ladies were superintending and trying not to criticize the ingenious efforts to produce a make-believe of comfort on board for them, word was brought down to the boat by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Had a thunderbolt burst on board, or had the vessel struck on a rock in the middle of the ocean, the alarm that was instantly spread on board could not have been greater; and where all had been listless inactivity but a moment before, was now all life, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... better, then," Tom admitted. "For the moment it came over me, like a thunderbolt, that Dalton might nip all our work in the bud by sending a cablegram. Still, couldn't he send it ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... people, and produced on my mind a feeling of fear and awe. But how different it is now. If a minister was to preach now about all wicked people going to hell, it would produce no more effect on their minds than water on a duck's back, for the word hell is now a spent thunderbolt, used uselessly by the mouths of so many. It may be well for theologians to know (if any of them believe in hell as preached) whether or not they have got through discussing hell; their views have no weight whatever on the minds of the masses, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... Senate in Cicero's time was convened according to expedience, or perhaps as to the dignity of the occasion, in various temples. Of these none had a higher reputation than that of the special Jupiter who is held to have befriended Romulus in his fight with the Sabines. Here was launched that thunderbolt of eloquence which all English school-boys have known for its "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra." Whether it be from the awe which has come down to me from my earliest years, mixed perhaps with something of dread for the great pedagogue who first made the words to sound grandly ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... put constraint on her. And 'twas only when I led her to this terrace, after the thunderbolt, and pointed out the scattered soldiery, that she came to herself, that at length she perceived that your God was the most powerful. "What," she cried, "'tis he, he, my Satni, who shakes the heavens and the earth for me! For me!" she murmured, "for me!" She would have ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... quickly and tried you too high all at once. I ought to have known. Oh, my poor dear boy, you must have had a dreadful time. Why didn't you tell me? The news in the 'Gazette' came upon me like a thunderbolt. I didn't know what to think. I'm afraid I thought the worst, the very horrid worst—that you had got tired of it and resigned of your own accord. How was one to know? Your letter was ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... these men, and they sent down fire from heaven upon the pyramid, which caused its building to be discontinued. It is stated that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the inhabitants of Cholula preserved with great veneration a large aerolite, which they said was the thunderbolt that fell upon the top of the pyramid ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... the enslaver or the enslaved." The solemn conclusion of the illustrious signers of this mighty protest was that: "That society is, in our estimation, not deserving of the countenance of the British public." This powerful instrument fell, as Garrison wrote at the time, "like a thunderbolt upon the society." The damage inflicted upon it was immense, irreparable. The name of Thomas Clarkson was conspicuous by its absence from the protest. He could not be induced to take positive ground against the society. Garrison had visited him for this purpose. But the venerable ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... at him. There was no malice in the thunderbolt that he unleashed then. He simply told what he ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... calamity, and the Rocky Morning News and other Colorado journals shed copious tears over the sad lot of the abandoned pilgrims. Even the American newspapers, which so often foresee events that never happen, had not been able to foresee this thunderbolt that had descended in the ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... imprisonment. In point of fact, in most of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been instantly apprehended. Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is but an instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on Esther's house with the swiftness of a thunderbolt. Even if there had not been the reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by Corentin, there was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... arms around the waist of the tower. Throughout the tumult, flocks of sea-birds, driven from the surface, and bewildered in the dense darkness of the storm, would fly for the light and smite the lantern; and then they would fall backward into the surf, as if struck with a thunderbolt. Other creatures flew with more care; and Nancy shuddered as she saw the gleaming eyes of huge fish hawks outside, and beheld their dusky wings waving ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... great elephant, Airavata, of huge body and with two pair of white tusks. And him took Indra the wielder of the thunderbolt. But with the churning still going on, the poison Kalakuta appeared at last. Engulfing the Earth it suddenly blazed up like a fire attended with fumes. And by the scent of the fearful Kalakuta, the three worlds were stupefied. And then Siva, being solicited by Brahman, swallowed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... had struck like a thunderbolt on the baronet; but it was a thunderbolt whose falling he had anticipated with shuddering horror during every day and every hour since his arrival ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the teleview. Through clutching beds of seaweed the enemy submarine was ploughing. Her great, smooth bow lay straight ahead, metal hawser arm spanning the thirty feet between them. In another second, Keith thought grimly, two dynamite packed tubes of sudden death would thunderbolt into that hull, and— ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... fell like a thunderbolt on the assembled group. Even Frida was shocked. Your most open-minded woman begins to draw a line when you touch her class prejudices in the matter of marriage, especially with reference to her own relations. "Why, really, Mr. Ingledew," she ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... poetry almost as much as they admired it. They could not believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under by the wave ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... to him as though his heart was beating as noisily as a clock-pendulum, and that every one would turn to inquire whence came the noise. But every one was occupied; no one turned round; no one suspected that there was a man present on whom a thunderbolt had ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... shot and killed men himself. I'm afraid he's been rather wicked, you know. He's lived alone in the woods like a hermit without seeing a soul, and then, again, he's been a chief among the Indians, with Heaven knows how many Indian wives! They called him 'The Pale-faced Thunderbolt,' my dear, and 'The Young Man who Swallows the Lightning,' or something ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... brilliancy seemed to fall like a meteor a few yards in front of our eyes. At first we were sure the house had been struck, so that the first impulse was to rush out of doors; but the succeeding report being much less severe, confidence was restored. The general conclusion was that a thunderbolt had fallen, and, missing the house by a few yards, had disappeared in the earth. A search next morning on the lawn did not throw any light on the matter. Probably, if there was a thunderbolt, it fell into the river; for it is well known that water is a great conductor of ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... Rich Mountain came. It fell like a thunderbolt from the summer sky, that the people deluded themselves was to sail over them with never a cloud! The flood-tide of success, upon which they had been floating so gaily, was suddenly dammed and flowed back upon them in ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... conscience at ease in the absolution which he had wrung from Mother Church after his own fashion, he was entirely absorbed in preparations for a campaign against the Moors which was to widen his dominions. Therefore when at length the thunderbolt descended, it fell—so far as he was ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... each? Therefore he was a councillor before the usual age, And a popular leader and an acute judge, And upon enemies he breathed a strategic flame (such as military rules required), And was an irresistible thunderbolt upon their serried ranks. He presided over the army like a father, Guarding the commonweal lest any advantage to it should be stolen. Contracting a highly-born and seemly marriage connection, And securing thus again royal ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... over-high for nerve an' is a long way from bein' clean strain game; but he figgers, so I allers reckons, that the Colonel ain't no thunderbolt of war himse'f, so when he reads as to him an' Peets an' them treemors an' the whiskey checks, he starts in to drink an' discuss about his honor, an' gives it ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... publishing day is Thursday. The Encore is the Times of the music-hall world. It casts its curses here, bestows its benedictions (sparely) there. The Encore criticising the latest action of the Variety Artists' Federation is the nearest modern approach to Jove hurling the thunderbolt. Its motto is, "Cry havoc, and let loose the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... West Indiaman, the night had set in and a stiff breeze had arisen, so that the long and laborious search that was made for the body of poor Mrs. Ellice proved utterly fruitless. Captain Ellice, whose wound was very severe, was struck down as if by a thunderbolt, and for a long time his life was despaired of. During his illness Fred nursed him with the utmost tenderness, and in seeking to comfort his father, found some relief to ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... this sentence on me was like that of a thunderbolt; I returned home like a man in a dream. I immediately sat down and wrote to Manucci, asking him why I had been subjected to such an insult; but Philippe, my man, brought me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the Ohio, through all the gigantic valley of a river so great that it seems a fable, south to New Orleans, and westward to the undiscovered lies the country that is to be! And Napoleon, in order that he may brandish over England one thunderbolt the more, sells it for a song!—and we buy it for a song—and not one man in fifty guesses that we have bought the song of the future! The man who bought it knows its value—but Mr. Jefferson cares only for Done lays. He'll not have the Phrygian. He dreams of cotton and olives, of flocks and herds, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... sure. At a loud peal overhead the boy I was playing with deliberately stuck up his scornful lips at the clouds and in other ways expressed his defiance. I fairly cringed in my tracks; I expected to see my companion smitten with a thunderbolt at my side. That I recall the incident so vividly shows what a deep impression it made upon me. But I have long ceased to think that the Ruler of the storms sees or cares whether we make faces at the clouds or not—do ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... people, like mice, compared with old Aladdin. They only wanted a tower that would reach heaven— a mere trifle. He wanted a tower that would pass heaven and rise above it, and go on rising for ever and ever. And Allah cast him down to earth with a thunderbolt, which sank into the earth, boring a hole deeper and deeper, till it made a well that was without a bottom as the tower was to have been without a top. And down that inverted tower of darkness the soul of the proud Sultan is falling forever ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... nimble, fleeting. raro, -a strange, unusual. rasgar tear, rend. raudal m. torrent, stream. raudo, -a rapid, swift, precipitate.. raya f. stripe, streak. rayar border upon. rayo m. ray, thunderbolt, beam, light. razn f. reason, reasoning. realidad f. reality. realizar realize, make real, bring about. rebelde adj. rebellious. rebramar bellow. recatado, -a cautious, careful, prudent. recato m. modesty, prudence, coyness. recelo m. misgiving, apprehension, fear. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... forest trees waved their heads on high, And shrunk from the storm's fierce stroke; The lightning flash'd as from GOD'S own eye, The thunderbolt crash'd through the startled sky, As it ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... temper had reached its breaking point. It snapped. In a twinkling, things were happening. Using quick, almost superhuman strength, he picked up the half-breed by the neck and one leg and hurled him, like a thunderbolt, into the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... Galilean?" Like a thunderbolt the question struck Peter. He stiffened with terror and cursed himself for having dared to come near the fire. "Of course not!" he answered gruffly, and backed away. The man who had seen him strike Malchus with his sword had not heard the question. Peter sighed. His luck ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith

... let for years, and there was quite a pleasant little place in town, 3 Southwick Crescent—yes, she would probably prefer to go, even had he not meant to marry Mary. The announcement of that little affair would be something in the nature of a thunderbolt. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... two other things happened. Grim Morgan hit the guard like a crashing thunderbolt and Hilary's gun barked once. The monster tottered under the impact. A puzzled expression flitted over his pinkish eyes, a filmy sheath spread over them like a veil, and he fell heavily, a neat bullet hole square between ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... What a thunderbolt! All at once Bernhard's flushed countenance became livid, his eyes glared savagely, and there suddenly spread a choking, suffocating expression on his large handsome face. The noise and clamour of hoarse angry voices became almost stupefying, but in the end the Teutons ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... sooner given the signal than the champions vanished from their posts with the speed of lightning and closed in the center of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil 5 backwards upon its haunches. The address of the riders ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... the Prophet Ilya that the power once attributed to Perun is now ascribed. The pagan wielder of the thunderbolt is represented in modern traditions by more than one Christian saint. Sometimes, as St. George, he transfixes monsters with his lance; sometimes, as St. Andrew, he smites with his mace a spot given over to witchcraft. There was a village (says one of the legends of the Chernigof Government) in ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... cured. When you command the skies clear, the wind suddenly blows or likewise abates; the falling thunderbolt at your command moves back to the clouds. Oh, I implore you, who in the air can keep up the beneficent dew or let it pour its welcome freshness on the withering plant, impart fresh vigor to my old limbs. See me; I am dying; revive my drooping energy; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... the army, and of its treasures, its provisions, a crowd of enormous waggons, loaded with the Emperor's equipage, a large quantity of artillery, and a great number of wounded men. Our retreat had come upon them like an unexpected storm, almost like a thunderbolt. Some were terrified and thrown into confusion, while consternation kept others motionless. Orders, men, horses, and carriages, were running about in all directions, crossing and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... were removing from the bit table, I poppit out, in the first and foremost instance, to take a vizzy of the depredation the flames had made in our neighbourhood. Losh keep us all, what a spectacle of wreck and ruination! The roof was clean off and away, as if a thunderbolt from heaven had knocked it down through the two floors, carrying every thing before it like a perfect whirlwind. Nought were standing but black, bare walls, a perfect picture of desolation; some with the bit pictures on nails still hanging up where the rooms were like; and others ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... of the cathedral rose high above the framework of broken arches and single pillars, like a white rock which had been split from end to end by a thunderbolt. A recent shell had torn out a slice so that the top of the tower was supported only upon broken buttresses, and the great pile was hollowed out like a decayed tooth. The Cloth Hall was but a skeleton in stone, with immense gaunt ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... strong and compact Body of Figures. The Genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a Sword in her Hand, and a Lawrel on her Head. Tragedy was crowned with Cypress, and covered with Robes dipped in Blood. Satyr had Smiles in her Look, and a Dagger under her Garment. Rhetorick was known by her Thunderbolt; and Comedy by her Mask. After several other Figures, Epigram marched up in the Rear, who had been posted there at the Beginning of the Expedition, that he might not revolt to the Enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in his Heart. I was very much awed and delighted with the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... is fierce, irascible, haughty; and what slighted lover is not revengeful? For my sake, Cleonice, for your poor father's sake, show no scorn, no repugnance; be gentle, play with him, draw not down the thunderbolt, even if you turn ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... not killed by a thunderbolt," Matvey went on, crossing himself before the ikon and moving his lips. "My dead mother must have been praying for me in the other world. When everyone in the town looked upon me as a saint, and even the ladies and gentlemen of good family used to come to me in secret for consolation, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... superinduced upon solid excellence. This peculiarity is especially noticeable in narratives where the element of horror is central, as in 'The Avenger.' The gentle whisper rises, gradually and by insensible degrees, to the awful voice of the thunderbolt. The prelude is calm enough, sweet enough, but soon the music ascends to a fiercer key; the plot darkens; the crisis gathers; louder and more tumultuous waxes the fiendish tumult, until all lesser passions ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... turning in his onward course—the momentary pause to fix more accurately the position of his prey—the arrow-like descent— the plunge—the white spray dancing upward, and then the hiatus occasioned by the total disappearance of the winged thunderbolt, until the white object starts forth again above the blue surface—all these points are incomparable to behold. No ingenuity of man, aided by all the elements of air, water, or fire, can produce an exhibition with ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... compared to the hurtling arrow or the whizzing lance. Especially did this apply to the phenomenon of the lightning. The belief that a stone is shot from the sky with each thunderclap is shown in our word "thunderbolt," and even yet the vulgar in many countries point out certain forms of stones as derived from this source. As the refreshing rain which accompanies the thunder gust instills new life into vegetation, and covers the ground ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... glistening thread about their shriveled stems, seemed for a short space to lift Philip Steele from out of the world he was in, to another in which his mind was only vaguely conscious, stunned by this letter that had come with the unexpectedness of a thunderbolt to change, in a single instant, every current of life in his body. For a few moments he made no effort to grasp the individual significance of the letter, the flowers, the golden hair. One thought filled his brain—one great, overpowering truth, which excluded everything else—and this was the ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... depends on preconceived ideas of conversions. I have heard of sudden and violent crises of the soul, of a thunderbolt, or even of faith exploding at last in ground slowly and cleverly mined. It is quite evident that conversions may happen in one or other of these two ways, for God acts as may seem good to Him, but there must be also a third means, and this no doubt the most usual, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... expectation, grinds up obstacles, crushes men like flies. All the terror of the situation is in the fluctuations of the flooring. How fight an inclined plane subject to caprices? The ship has, so to speak, in its belly, an imprisoned thunderstorm, striving to escape; something like a thunderbolt rumbling above ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... the thunderbolt will fall? when the tempest is about to burst? where the prairie-fire will break ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... had known of the disappearance of the will, except the lawyer and the secretary, it came as a thunderbolt. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... fleet, and followed the same route. All who were sincere hoped to arrive the same day at the coast of the Desert, and that every one would get on shore; but MM. Schmaltz and Lachaumareys gave orders to take the route for Senegal. This sudden change in the resolutions of the chiefs was like a thunderbolt to the officers commanding the boats. Having nothing on board but what was barely necessary to enable us to allay the cravings of hunger for one day, we were all sensibly affected. The other boats, which, like ourselves, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... eastward and was dispersed. Black though had been its shadow, it endured but for a moment; the echo of its fury passed away, and its deadly thunderbolt left behind a purer atmosphere. So sweeps and rages over men's heads the storm of calamity; and so dissolves, though ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... Borizow we halted at the sound of loud shouts, thinking ourselves cut off by the Russian army. I saw the Emperor grow pale; it was like a thunderbolt. A few lancers were hastily dispatched, and we saw them soon returning waving their banners in the air. His Majesty understood the signal, and even before the cuirassiers had reassured us, so clearly did he keep in mind even the possible position of each corps of his army, he exclaimed, "I bet it ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... relation to any persons better disposed to use all possible means to comfort you." "Madam," replied Abou Ayoub's disconsolate widow, "a favourite of the commander of the true believers, a lady whose name is Fetnah, is the occasion of all our misfortunes." These words were like a thunderbolt to the favourite; but suppressing her agitation and concern, she suffered Ganem's mother to proceed in the following manner: "I am the widow of Abou Ayoub, a merchant of Damascus; I had a son called Ganem, who, coming to trade at Bagdad, has been accused of carrying ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... flames. For this policy he was suspected by both sides. At one time he was accused before an English court of being in league with the Americans. At another time he was accused by the Americans of being in league with the English. At length the thunderbolt fell. As the Christian Indians of Gnadenhtten were engaged one day in tilling the soil, the American troops of Colonel Williamson appeared upon the scene, asked for quarters, were comfortably, lodged, and then, disarming ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... cool. This morning a little cold and raw. Now's the time for catching coughs and cold;—people are coughing already. Just before day-break, a thunderbolt was said to be discharged over the city, accompanied with a long, low growling muttering sound, which reverberated from the Saharan hills. The circumstance remarkable, in the falling of this dread bolt of heaven's artillery, at the time the sky was perfectly ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... his listener sufficiently excited, Tom launched his thunderbolt in one brief sentence, and fell back to watch ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... me take a little nourishment, and noticing that with my strength my melancholy and anxiety were returning, Marcasse announced, with a simple, genuine delight, that Edmee was not dead, and that they did not despair of saving her. These words fell upon me like a thunderbolt; for I was still under the impression that this frightful adventure was a delusion of my delirium. I began to shout and to brandish my arms in a terrible manner. Marcasse fell on his knees by my bed and implored ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... [Greek: hek kakistou korakost kakiston hoon]. This I am astonished at, if the report is true: that there are among the Parisian divines those who pride themselves on having at length secured a man who by the thunderbolt of his eloquence is to break asunder the whole party of Luther and restore the church to its pristine tranquility. For he wrote also against Luther as I hear. And then the divines complain that they are slandered by me, who aid their studies in so many night-watches; while they themselves ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... from the time I received the first message until we pulled out and started on our wild ride of rescue. Forty miles in forty minutes, with one slow down was our time. The old derrick and wreck outfit swayed to and fro like reeds in the wind, as we went down the track like a thunderbolt, but fortunately we held to the rails. There was scarcely a word spoken in the caboose, every one being intent upon holding on and thinking of the horrible scene we were soon to view. When we reached Truxton we found the track walker there, and after ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... forgotten that in his entire emotional life Strindberg was an artist and as such a man of impulse, with the spontaneity and naivity and intensity of a child. For him love had nothing to do with respectability and worldly calculations; he liked to think of it as a thunderbolt striking mortals with a destructive force like the lightning hurled by the almighty Zeus. It is easy to understand that a man of such temperament would not be particularly suited for married life, where self-sacrifice and strong-minded patience may ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... cannot tell; but take this quantity as certain, and consider that this represents merely the results of the labor of the constant summer streams, utterly irrespective of all sudden falls of stones and of masses of mountain (a single thunderbolt will sometimes leave a scar on the flank of a soft rock, looking like a trench for a railroad); and we shall then begin to apprehend something of the operation of the great laws of change, which are the conditions of all material existence, however apparently enduring. The ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... to Proserpine the possession of Adonis, caused the women of Thrace to become enamoured of her son, and to tear him in pieces while disputing the possession of him. An ancient author, quoted by Hyginus, says that Orpheus was killed by the stroke of a thunderbolt, while he was accompanying the Argonauts; and Apollodorus says the same. Diodorus Siculus calls him one of the kings of Thrace; while other writers, among whom are Cicero and Aristotle, assert that there never ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... before, I can scarcely complain, when I remember my own action. But you will never know how bitterly I have repented of my folly. When that terrible charge was made against me last Monday—it came, when I was so happy and hopeful, like a sudden thunderbolt—I thought I should lose my reason. I felt that you had gone away believing I was utterly false and had been insincere in everything from first to last. I was like one who had fallen from a great height, and I scarcely spoke or moved for two days. I was not like ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... meat. When she seems to lose ground with him by her slander against the Round Table which he loved, she recovers it by making him believe that she saw all other men, "the knights, the Court, the King, dark in his light": and when in answer to her imprecation on herself a fearful thunderbolt descends and storm rages, then, nestling in his bosom, part in fear but more in craft, she overcomes the last remnant of his resolution, wins the secret she has so indefatigably wooed, and that instant uses it to close ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... extinguished in them; nothing was—heard but the rolling of the thunder and the dash of the water against the rocks, for the men in the half-ruined cabin, grouped round a corpse and a villain, were silent, tongue-tied with horror, and fearing lest God himself should send a thunderbolt upon them. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... following the death of her mother, a thunderbolt fell at Constance's feet, which eventually ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... Klictsò they went to a place called Tse'binà yol (Wind Circles Around a Rock). When they drew near the place they heard loud peals of thunder and the lightning struck close to them in four different places. They were now approaching the home of the lightning gods; this is why destruction by the thunderbolt seemed to threaten them. Then the Navajo spoke to the lightning, as he had formerly spoken to the whirlwind, saying, "'Tis I, Reared Within the Mountains. Who art thou?" whereat the thunder and the lightning ceased, and ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews

... air, and heavy cannonading, and occasionally an explosion, like the blowing up of a powder-wagon. Mingled with this was the sound of thunder-bells from a village not far off. They were all ringing dolefully to ward off the thunderbolt. At the entrance of the village stood a large wooden crucifix; around which was a crowd of priests and peasants, kneeling in the wet grass, by the roadside, with their hands and eyes lifted toheaven, and praying for rain. Their prayer ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... contains some objects deserving of attention. There are two altars with wheels carved on them, both small, the largest only two feet three inches high, and that has on it not the wheel only, but the thunderbolt. These are altars to the Gaulish god of the sun. The second bears an inscription "et terrae matri." It was dedicated doubtless to the "sun and to the earth mother," but the first portion of the legend is lost. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... Shakespeare readings, my dearest. Can I forget anything that recalls you to me, half of my heart? If there had been time, indeed, I might have written to my uncle; I might even have come to you; but the hour descended like a thunderbolt; I fled, Manuela with me. The manner of my flight? you will ask. Marguerite, it was managed—I do not boast, I am the soul of humility, you know it!—the manner of it was perfect. Listen, and you shall hear all. You remember that in my last letter—written, alas! ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... albatross moving athwart the sky, no longer slow sailing as before, but with the swift-cutting flight of a falcon pouncing down upon its prey. It seemed descending not in a straight line, but in an acute parabolic curve, like a thunderbolt or some aerolite projected toward the surface of the sea. But the bird, with a whirr like the sound of running spindles, was going in a definite direction, the point evidently aimed at being the ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... It was only at intervals they spoke, for there was no call to do so, and it was not wise to allow any cause to interfere with their watchfulness for the peril which was liable to come with the suddenness of the thunderbolt. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... a sort of family resemblance to the freaks of lightning or the thunderbolt. Indeed, so striking is the similarity, that people have been prone to think, that, previously to an explosion, the steam in the boiler must have become in some inexplicable way charged with electricity like a thunder-cloud, and that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... exertions greater than my strength could bear; or that the policy which I initiated was not honourable, and worthy of Athens, and indeed necessary: and then denounce me, but not before. {194} But if the thunderbolt [or the storm] which fell has proved too mighty, not only for us, but for all the other Hellenes, what are we to do? It is as though a ship-owner, who had done all that he could to ensure safety, and had equipped the ship with all ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... through the city like a thunderbolt, that the renowned financial operator and millionnaire, Aloysius Darvid, had, during the night, in his study, taken his own life with a revolver. The first and universal thought was of bankruptcy. But no. Soon it became clear and most certain ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... a miserable thing for a question of truth {319} to be confined to mere presumption and counter-presumption, with no decisive thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling darkness. And, sooth to say, in talking so much of the merely presumption-weakening value of our records, I have myself been wilfully taking the point of view of the so-called 'rigorously ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... could not do, and giving way utterly, she shrieked and rushed from the room. She rushed upstairs. She stood in the middle of the floor listening to the silence, her thoughts falling about her like shaken leaves. It was as if a thunderbolt had destroyed the world, and left her alone in a desert. The furniture of the room, the bed, the chairs, the books she loved, seemed to have become as grains of sand, and she forgot all connection between them and herself. She ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... medicable by any antidote. Once administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... shame Of Greece in peace, her thunderbolt in war— Demetrius the Macedonian, and Taker ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... the verge of the ditch for an instant, and then sprang in and crouched trembling at the feet of their master. The next instant the dark, thundering mass passed over head, being nothing less than an immense herd of buffalo driven forwards by the flames! The horses bowed their heads as if a thunderbolt was passing. The fire and the heavens were hid from view, and the roar above resembled the rush of mighty waters. When the last animal had sprung over the chasm, Glenn thanked the propitious accident that thus providentially prevented him ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... stairs, with the door double-locked, lay a hope of safety in the present, and of ultimate deliverance; there she had a respite from terror, as long as she kept the world outside. To her, therefore, the notion of sending for Tavannes, or communicating with him, came as a thunderbolt. Was her mistress mad? Did she wish to court her fate? To reach Tavannes they must apply to his riders, for Carlat and the men-servants were confined above. Those riders were grim, brutal men, who might resort ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... the sum-total of four thousand and eighteen francs eighty-five centimes, the amount of the three bills and expenses already incurred. On the morning of the very day when Doublon served the writ upon Eve, requiring her to pay a sum so enormous in her eyes, there came a letter like a thunderbolt from Metivier:— ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... could not destroy the ship merely by staring at her! Somewhere, somewhere, concealed but not far distant, that accomplice must have awaited the first beam of the rising sun as the signal to hurl his thunderbolt, to loose his ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... received the honors due to Zeus and his fiat had ruined the happiness of a contented home as completely as the thunderbolt wielded by the Father of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... those—be they men or women—who yesterday drove you away, shall to-morrow tremble before you—to-morrow, do I say? nay, this very day I have already shown my displeasure—have already threatened. It is in my power, even now, to hurl the thunderbolt I have hitherto withheld. Louise, Louise, you shall be bitterly revenged; tears of blood shall repay you for the tears you have shed. Give me only ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... was like a thunderbolt to Mrs. Grizzle, who began to perceive that she had not succeeded quite so well as she imagined, in selecting for her brother a gentle and obedient yoke-fellow, who would always treat her with that profound respect which ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... that I am to blame, but I could not help glancing at the letter, picking it out of the senseless hand of Monsieur Otto. My God! the thunderbolt that it was! I did not faint, but I sat down beside my chief and I burst into tears. It was but a few words, but they told us that Egypt had been evacuated by our troops a month before. All our treaty was undone then, and the one consideration which had induced our enemies ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Suddenly, like a thunderbolt, seventy-five pieces of artillery belched forth their sheets of flame and howling shells; and in an instant, our whole division was thrown into the most perfect confusion by the deadly missiles which flew among us in every direction. Such cannonading ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... Heep.) The clouds have gathered, the storm has broken, and the thunderbolt has fallen on the devoted head of Wilkins Micawber! Emma, my dear, the die is cast. All is over. Leave me ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... saved her from shame! Yes, and I knew, too, that some day I must find her. I have carried the terror of that in my heart all these years. Yet I dared to take your love, and dared to fly from my sin; and then there comes this thunderbolt—oh, merciful heaven, it is too much to bear, too much to bear!" He sank down again; poor Helen could find no word of comfort, no utterance of her own bursting heart except the same frantic clasp ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... too long forgotten that the earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste. Nature has provided against the absolute destruction of any of her elementary matter, the raw material of her works; the thunderbolt and the tornado, the most convulsive throes of even the volcano and the earthquake, being only phenomena of decomposition and recomposition. But she has left it within the power of man irreparably to derange the combinations of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... driver follow the Cumberland sleigh post-haste. I was determined to see Carmel and have Carmel see me. Whatever cold judgment might say against the meeting, I could not live in my present anxiety. If the thunderbolt which had struck her had spared her life and reason she must know from my own lips that I was not only a free man, but as innocent of the awful charge conveyed in Sweetwater's action as was the brother, who had just been acquitted of it by ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... the animal right upon the breast; and what with the force by which it had been launched from Pouchskin's powerful arm, and the impetus it had gained in its descent, it acted on Bruin like a thunderbolt—not only knocking him over on his back, but carrying his body along with it full ten paces down ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... remained innocent. For, in short, can a heart be truly enamoured which does not dread as well as hope? And could you believe I loved you if this ominous letter had not alarmed me; if I had not trembled at the thunderbolt which I imagined had destroyed all my happiness? I leave it to yourself to judge if such an accident would not have caused any other lover to commit the same error; if I could disbelieve, alas, a proof which seemed ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... clear notes fell like a thunderbolt upon the men. With a start they brought themselves up, and stared—only to see a little white-robed figure, with its astonished eyes uplifted with childlike, earnest gaze, as ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... to Phillis and talking himself, he had time to compass the situation that this thunderbolt created for him. Evidently, the first thing to do was to prevent a suspicion from arising in Phillis's mind, and it was to this that he applied himself on explaining the different kinds of paralysis. ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot

... fetishes whence he was evolved, the Indra of Vedic India is shepherd of the herd of heavenly kine. Vritra, a three-headed monster in the form of a serpent, steals away the herd and hides it in his cave. Indra pursues the robber, enters the cave with fury, overwhelms the monster with his thunderbolt, and leads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. This myth gradually assumed in the Vedic hymns more splendid and artistic forms, and more amazing personifications. The original motive of the myth, as it has been interpreted even by Indian commentators, was the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli









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