"Bombshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Delavan, Antoinette L. Brown and nine others, vice-presidents; Susan B. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer, secretaries. In accepting the presidency, Mrs. Stanton made a powerful speech, certain parts of which acted as a bombshell not only at this meeting, but in press, pulpit and society. The two points which aroused ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... time on the Fourth with the exception of my ankle, which was somewhat dislocated because my foot stepped on an infant bombshell which same exploded ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... is, I suppose, that there are different ways of serving up the news and we each get used to our own. Some people like the news fed to them gently: others like it thrown at them in a bombshell: some prefer it to be made as little of as possible; they want it minimised: others ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... than they have been in recent years, for the good reason that the chances of detection were very much less. Some of the practical jokes were of a much too serious character. The college Bible was abstracted from the Chapel and sent to Yale; the communion wine was stolen; a paper bombshell was exploded behind a curtain in the Greek recitation-room; and Professor Pierce discovered one morning that all his black-boards had been painted white. All the copies of Cooke's Chemical Physics suddenly disappeared one afternoon, and next morning the best scholars in the Junior ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... abrupt desertion of the "old guard" and plunge into old age. But even he did not know it. For he loved her in a still, determined, undeviating way. And no woman would care to tell such a secret to a man who loved her and who was almost certain, barring the explosion of a moral bombshell, and perhaps even then, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... this fact and determined to punish him. Turning suddenly towards Woodbury, he thundered out in a tone of indignant scorn, as he shook his fist over his head: "I employ no scavengers;" and the poor New Hampshire Senator ducked his bald head as if struck by a bombshell. The closing passage of that memorable speech could not have been extemporized. No mortal man could have thrown off that magnificent piece of Miltonic prose at the heat, without some deep premeditation. It is well known now ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... that my presence surprises you, madame," he began; "and I must confess that—hum!—it does not surprise me less than it does you. But extraordinary circumstances require exceptional action. On any other occasion, I would not fall upon you like a bombshell. But we had no time to waste in ceremonious formalities. I will, therefore, ask your leave to introduce myself: I ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... Highlanders, and took possession of the hills in front of the Lighthouse battery, where a lodgement was made under a fire from the town and the ships. On the 21st one of the French ships was set on fire by a bombshell and blew up, and the fire being communicated to two others, they were burned to the water's edge. The fate of the town was now almost decided, the enemy's fire nearly silenced and the fortifications shattered to the ground. All ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the letter, which, had it contained a bombshell, could scarce have wrought more damage in so short a space of time. Tearing it across and across, he flung it into the fire, and derived a gloomy satisfaction from watching it burn. But though paper and ink were reduced to ashes, neither fire nor steel could ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... upon him a bob-wig and a little cocked hat; imagine "God Save the King" ending with a jig; fancy a polonaise, or procession of slim, stately, elegant court beauties, headed by a buffoon dancing a hornpipe. Marshal Gerard should have discharged a bombshell at that abomination, and have given the noble steeple a chance to be finished in the grand style of the early fifteenth century, in which it ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very pretty, but that in Paris they spelled it with the ei. This moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them perhaps with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the apprehensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... it is fond of building in holes, and will generally obtain them ready-made if possible. Burroughs has said of the wren that it "will build in anything that has a hole in it, from an old boot to a bombshell." In similar whim our little solitary hornet has been known to favor nail-holes, hollow reeds, straws, the barrels of a pistol, holes in kegs, worm-holes in wood, and spools, to which we may now ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... his attitude and objection, united with Mr. Thurman and Mr. Bayard in completing the bill and reporting it to the Democratic Advisory Committee, as, by a caucus rule, had to be done with all measures relating to the great issue then before us. No intimation had preceded it. It fell like a bombshell upon the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the ride. 'Twas all a sort of constant changin' sameness. I remember passin' a blurred life-savin' station, with three—or maybe thirty—blurred men jumpin' and laughin' and hollerin'. I found out afterwards that they'd been on the lookout for the bombshell for half an hour. Billings had told around town what he was goin' to do to me, and some kind friend had telephoned it to the station. So the life-savers was full of anticipations. I hope they were satisfied. I hadn't rehearsed my part of the show none, but I feel what the parson calls a consciousness ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... making the room resound as he struck the floor with his spurred heels. Every thing around him seemed to vibrate; the very curtains waved like trees in a storm. At length the pent-up rage found vent, and burst forth like a bombshell which explodes, "Comedian, say you? Ah, ha! I am he that will play you comedies to make you weep like women and children. Comedian, indeed! But you are greatly mistaken if you think you can play off on me, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Had a bombshell burst over my head the effect could have been no greater. Cold perspiration began to ooze out on my forehead. In a flash I saw the significance of the entire situation. That was why Norris had been so insistent that we always return to the ship before dark. He didn't want ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... us. And we borrowed the boat from him," demurely answered Jack, watching the effect of this bombshell ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... The great bombshell which Luther cast forth on June 24, 1520, in his address to the German nobility,[11] indeed, contains strong appeals to the economical and political necessities of Germany, and therein we see the ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... jumped as if somebody'd touched off a bombshell under our main hatches. The windows of the dining room was right astern of us. We whirled round, and there was Effie. She'd been clearin' off one of the tables and there she stood, with the smashed pieces of an ice-cream ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... complacently sit down allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bombshell,—a picture of native ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Had a bombshell exploded in the car, there would not have been a greater sensation. The woman rose without a word, and signaled to ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... A bombshell flung at her feet could hardly have produced a greater sensation than this apparently harmless speech. All at once there rushes back upon her the recollection of that fatal day when she lay upon a cart-load of hay and ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... like a bombshell into the little group. Margery first found a voice, but it was a most ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... A bombshell exploding in the room could not have astonished them as did my answer. I realized to the full the probable result, but my spirit was high, and I felt the utter uselessness of prolonging the interview. Sooner or later the same ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... suit was pending. Old suits were revived and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought in ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... two following Devereau's unsatisfactory laconism nothing developed. And then a bombshell exploded. Hughie Gay made a statement. He took oath, solemn oath (and cheap, too, for it cost Dunham but two hundred dollars), that he had sold out. Blair had realized that he was no champion; he had feared even him, Gay. So before the fight Blair had paid him well to throw ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... colonel declined the invitation on account of his dear boy. Mr. Lamb intimated that he had business with Miss Du Plessis on Crown Land matters, as the department wished to get back into its possession the land owned by her. This was a bombshell in the camp. Miss Du Plessis declined to have any conference on the subject, referring the civil servant to her uncle, to Squire Carruthers, and to her solicitor, Mr. Coristine. The lawyer was disposed to be liberal in politics, although his friend Wilkinson was a strong Conservative; ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... effect, Miss Durant could discover no outward evidence that Swot's bombshell had moved Dr. Armstrong a particle more than her less pointed attempts to bring to him a realisation that he was behaving in a manner displeasing to her. When she entered the ward the next morning, the doctor was again there, and this time ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... returned my stare; four faces, and all dismayed as though a live bombshell had dropped through the doorway. To the priest, whom my impact had flung aside against the wall, I paid no attention. My eyes fastened themselves on the table at which, with a lantern and some scattered papers between them, sat two men—the Prince, and a grey-haired officer in the blue-and-white ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... their glasses in hand, the refectory door is once more opened; this time with a hurried violence that causes them to start, as though a bombshell had ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... young ladies said they wouldn't marry a man who couldn't do it. This arrogant perpetual invitation to draw and come on, this idea which possessed the whole section, which originated no one knows when, grew no one knows how, was a devil's own bombshell, the fuse of which sparkled when Mr. Brooks struck Mr. Sumner upon the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... his generosity before the poor girl's eyes, and so keep her in constant suspense between gratitude and apprehension, to such an extent as to make her a friend at court, interested, as an accomplice, in trying to make his fortune, while she was making her own. As far as concerned the day when the bombshell of the past should burst, if ever there were any occasion, Saint-Aignan promised himself that he would by that time have taken all possible precautions, and would pretend an entire ignorance of the matter to the king; while, with regard to La Valliere, he would still have an opportunity of being ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... too heavy a charge, and it blew all to pieces. I'll know better next time. There are lots more chunks of meat, and we'll soon have a feast. I'll make another bombshell." ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... could utter another syllable his attention was drawn to the doorway. The view to the outer office was blocked by a bundle of curves. The most alluring female bombshell his eyes had ever beheld put everything important out of ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... scored a propaganda bombshell!" he reported. "In a news announcement released less than half an hour ago, they stated that their Navy has perfected ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... monopolised at first the greater part of the conversation. Mr. Sabin was unusually silent. The German attache, whose name was Baron von Opperman, did not speak until the champagne was served, when he threw a bombshell into the midst of ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... take his word for it, and begin where I left off at Bretton Woods, only hurrying on, perhaps, a little faster than I should if there were no bombshell to explode later. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... and her big hands fell from the round box. Thomas stared, and reddened even to his ears, which were large and over-prominent. To both, the project cherished so long and constantly was in the nature of a bombshell. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been 'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... emigrants. Still the Government, from fear of international complications and of alienating its Socialist supporters, who, of course, opposed all idea of territorial expansion, refused to do anything. Then the Franco-German Morocco bombshell burst, and Agadir made the Italian people realize that the question of Tripoli called for immediate solution. The whole of the rest of Mediterranean Africa was about to be partitioned among the Powers, and Tripoli would ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... atmosphere, a large ball of fire appeared suddenly at the extremity of the horizontal parent branch, as thick as a man's wrist, and surrounded with black smoke. This ball, after turning round and round for a few seconds, burst like a bombshell, and with so much noise that the explosion was distinctly audible above the general FRACAS. A sulphurous smoke filled the air, and complete silence reigned till the voice of Tom Austin ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... once so caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of Nopolis. Groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. Every one awaited, with heartfelt anxiety, the reply of the dignified Smith. Next morning it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to a meeting of our American delegation, when another bombshell was thrown among us—nothing less than the question whether the Pope is to be allowed to become one of the signatory powers; and this question has now taken a very acute form. Italy is, of course, utterly ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... I expected. I flung the announcement like a bombshell and was ready for almost any sort of explosion ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... not risen as his dupes dreamed, lived in heaven, knew him, Saul, and all that he had been doing, was 'apparelled in celestial light,' and yet in heavenly glory was so closely identified with these poor people whom he had been hunting to death that to strike them was to hurt Him! A bombshell had burst, shattering the foundation of his fortifications. A deluge had swept away the ground on which he had stood. His whole life was revolutionised. Its most solid elements were dissolved into vapour, and what he had thought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... bombshell to Rand, Frapley, Poole, and their cohorts, and it was equally surprising to all of the others who had ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... a market-day, and the country-people were all assembled with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things; the postilion had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a great cabbage came whirling like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my lord laughed more, for it knocked my lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... features, were rather exceptional people. Things have changed since then, and the so-called Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively, and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... say a word or show the least dissatisfaction; his only son was a child; neither the Duke (of Berry), his brothers, nor the Prince of Conti, were of an age or of standing, in the king's eyes, to make the least trouble in the world about it. The bombshell dropped all at once when nobody could have expected it, and everybody fell on his stomach as is done when a shell drops; everybody was gloomy and almost wild; the king himself appeared as if exhausted by so great an ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... even the smile in her welcoming dark eyes could make him quite forget the Widow. She was an uncertain quantity, like a stick of frozen dynamite that will explode if it is thawed too soon; and there was a bombshell to come which gave more than even promise of producing spontaneous combustion. So Wiley sighed as he fired his cook, and told his men that they would board with ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... medical writers sometimes advocate the principles of this so-called liberalism. In a recently published work, there are enumerated only two demerits of polygamy and six of monogamy. These six demerits which the author is pleased to term a "bombshell," he introduces on account of his moral convictions no less than humanitarian considerations. The same author terms monogamy a "worm-eaten and rotten-rooted tree." The worm that is devastating the fairest tree of Eden and draining its richest juices is what our contemporary ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... ready for the final conference and the signatures, Austria intervened and announced her opposition. Then suddenly followed the bombshell of the ultimatum to Servia, timed at the precise moment to stop the signing of ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... strange occurrence took place. Mickey O'Rooney was looking straight at the man, when he saw him fling up his arms, yell and pitch forward to the ground, while the group instantly scattered, as if a bombshell ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... said I, "is a thing of joy. Mr. Westonhaugh was a griffin when he gave Mr. Isaacs that historical rupee." I cast my little bombshell into the conversation, and placidly went ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... impulse like that it was possible for it to result in something dangerous, especially in those earlier days. This time it produced a bombshell; not just an ordinary bombshell, or even a twelve-inch projectile, but a shell of planetary size. It was a sort of hoax-always a doubtful plaything—and in this case it brought even quicker and more terrible retribution than usual. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
