"Colossal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brown eyes like a thrush's, and the voice of a siren, and the red lips of Hebe—will be invited to reign as l'ambassadrice! If I am not as mad with jealous despair as Othello, attribute my escape either to a sublime faith in your adorable constancy and incorruptibility, or to my own colossal vanity, fatuous ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... investigation of the mechanism of animal locomotion, recognize the fact that our knowledge is not yet advanced enough to hope to succeed in making real walking machines. But they conceive that the time may come hereafter when colossal figures will be constructed whose giant strides will not be arrested by the obstacles which are impassable to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... temples or stone buildings, as some other natives of Central America have done. They, however, formed stone figures of considerable size, which remind us greatly of those which exist in Easter Island in the Pacific. These stone figures, often of colossal dimensions, are of two different descriptions—the one having a mild, inoffensive expression of countenance; while the others, presenting a combination of both human and animal, have invariably a wild, savage look, apparently ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... quoted Gibbon's narrative of the destruction of the colossal statue of Serapis by Theophilus, Mr. Garfield said: "So slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled the temple of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. Lincoln, on the 1st of January, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... these propositions may be regarded as mere commonplaces, and while they are acknowledged in a general way, they are in effect denied by many of the legislative experiments and the tendencies of public opinion of the present day. The story, therefore, of the colossal folly of France in the closing part Of the eighteenth century and its terrible fruits, is full of instruction for all men who think upon the ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... there is no such state of things, and that the life of the soul accordingly ends with the life of the body, is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy. No evidence for it can be alleged beyond the familiar fact that during the present life we know Soul only in its association with Body, and therefore cannot discover disembodied soul without ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... we had the whole house to chat in, and were everlastingly intruding upon each other. I invaded the retirement of his study where the principal feature was a colossal silver inkstand presented to him on his fiftieth year by a subscription of all his wards then living. He had been guardian of many orphans of land-owning families from the three southern provinces—ever since the year 1860. Some of them had been my school fellows and playmates, but not one of ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves!' Is it not truly a den of thieves? What has the Man of Sorrows to do with all the evil splendour of St. Peter's?—its bronzes, its marbles, its colossal statues of dead gods, its glittering altars, its miserable dreary immensity, its flaring gilding and insolent vulgarity of cost! Oh, what a loneliness is that of Christ in this world! What ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... cousin's guilt as proved so readily as Mark had affected to do in his own case, refusing absolutely to hear a word of the evidence against him, and maintaining that the whole thing was a mistake as colossal as it was ghastly. ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... sacred to hunger and impecuniosity. There a dinner of three courses, with a quarter bottle of wine or a bottle of beer, could be had for eighteen sous; or for twenty-two sous the quarter bottle becomes a bottle. Flicoteaux, that friend of youth, would beyond a doubt have amassed a colossal fortune but for a line on his bill of fare, a line which rival establishments are wont to print in capital letters, thus—BREAD AT DISCRETION, which, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... who is remembered at all by all ranks and conditions; - perhaps he took the surest means for preventing his name being forgotten, by erecting a durable monument in every large town, - we do not mean a pillar surmounted by a statue, or a colossal figure on horseback, but some useful and stately public edifice. All the magnificent modern buildings which attract the eye of the traveller in Spain, sprang up during the reign of Carlos Tercero, - for example, the museum at Madrid, the gigantic tobacco fabric at Seville, - ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Durance, swollen to enormous proportions and washing the two hillsides, passed between dark masses of cultivated land, and was the sole thing displaying life in the inanimate space bounded by the horizon. It thundered with a sovereign voice, maintaining in its anger the majesty of its colossal wave. Clumps of trees emerged in places, staining the sheet of pale water with black streaks. Opposite us I recognised the tops of the oaks along the walk; the current carried us towards these branches, which for us were so many reefs. Around the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... plan, which he had ordered Knobelsdorf to sketch for him, for the new palace of the dowager-queen. It is to be a colossal wonder—the capitol of the north! the building of which will cost from four to five millions! These millions must come from Boden's treasury; he must respect the royal order. If he does, he is an unscrupulous officer, and the king ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... we note a steady improvement in the various forms of art. Recent discoveries in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and other lands indicate that their early inhabitants were able architects, often building on a colossal scale. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... palatial rooms with balconies overlooking the sea, and have large bathrooms opening out of our rooms; it is rather like the Riffel in the middle of a forest of pines, and the sea immediately in front. The expense of it all must be colossal! Every one is too sick at the state of affairs to enjoy it at all; some bathe, and you can sit about in the pines or on the sands. We have had no letters since we left Havre last Thursday, and no news of the war. We took till Sunday morning to reach St Nazaire, and at ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... woods were not likely to be possessed of tails for Gyp to tug, and if they were, that they would have striven to crush the dog by one blow of the hand; my dream arranged itself, and the howling was continued as I started up, all wakefulness, and saw a dark figure bending over me and looking colossal as seen against the ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... an Asiatic, and a soldier in a colonial regiment. Of a colossal stature, short hair, a nose extremely large, an enormous mouth and dark complexion, he made a most hideous appearance. At first he had placed himself in the middle of the raft, and, at each blow of his fist, knocked down every one who opposed him; he inspired the greatest ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... also a very pretty picture of a cat in the act of effecting its escape from the basket in which it had been confined, and a wonderful crayon sketch of Maria-Theresa's stepson, Archduke Francis-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The colossal fire-place niched in one of the corners of the studio, is surmounted, not by a mirror, but by a panel of well-nigh priceless Oriental embroidery, the brilliant colors of which have been softened and rendered harmonious and ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... I may be wrong in my opinion, but I see no beauty in a horse standing still and a man's legs dangling down from the beast's back; nor do I think that the matter is mended by the horse and rider being of colossal size, though they ought to be larger than life. Perhaps we shall not have any more of these statues; but is it impossible to remove those that ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... may be measured in accordance with their present deviation from or conformity to this suppositious pyramidal standard in their modes of national measurement.[253] "For the linear measure" (says Professor Smyth) "of the base line of this colossal monument, viewed in the light of the philosophical connection between time and space, has yielded a standard measure of length which is more admirably and learnedly earth-commensurable than anything which has ever yet entered into the mind of man to conceive, even up to the last discovery ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... me if I am too impetuous, too precipitate," he said, "but won't you make me doubly happy, Fay, before I go." He rose and came towards her. She looked down, half frightened, and he suddenly felt himself colossal, irresistible, a man not to be trifled with. "You have known for a long time that I love you," he said. "Won't you tell me that you love me ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... you fellows have your bullocks last night?" demanded Martin, his eye resting on the sun-cracked stucco which covered three-fourths of Damper's colossal personality. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... master's hand, and by reason of his embarrassments, there were general wreck and ruin in his affairs; and Mrs. Allen was soon compelled to face the fact, even more awful to her than her husband's death, that not a penny remained of his colossal fortune, and that she had yawningly signed away all of her own means. But she could only wring her hands in view of these blighting truths, and indulge in half-uttered complaints against her husband's "folly," as she termed it. From the first her grief had been more emotional than deep, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... looks out of her eyes if he plays checkers with Edith! My darling," said Henry Houghton, "as I have before remarked, your ignorance on this one subject is colossal. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... were never so overrun with rotten banks as now. Shoemakers, cheesemongers, grocers, write up 'Bank' over one of their windows, and deal their rotten paper by the foolscap ream. The issue of their larger notes is colossal, and renders a panic inevitable soon or late; but, to make it doubly sure, they have been allowed to utter 1 pound and 2 pound notes. They have done it, and on a frightful scale. Then, to make it trebly sure, the just balance between ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and nothing but the crashing weight of his tread could have saved the lives of the two unsuspecting persons before him. Startled, however, by the noise of his footsteps, Lamh Laudher turned round to observe who it was that followed them, and immediately the massy and colossal black now stripped of his cloak—for he had thrown it aside—stood in their presence. The female instinctively drew the cloak round her face, and Lamh Laudher was about to ask why he followed them, when the Boxer approached him in ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with a Doric facade and columns; it is peculiarly striking from its noble simplicity. On the facade are bas-reliefs representing actions in Napoleon's life. The flight of steps leading to the facade is very grand, and there are colossal figures representing Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and other legislative virtues. The Chamber itself where the Deputies hold their sittings is in the form of a Greek theatre; the arch of the semi-circle forms the gallery appropriated to the audience, and comprehends ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... their white pocket-handkerchiefs, and all shouted "Viva l'Emperador." The cortege approached slowly; the Emperor, from the superior richness of his uniform, glittering amidst the splendid throng, like Syrius in the starry sky. His colossal figure seemed literally covered with gold lace; his breast sparkled with diamonds, and his strong features were shaded by a hat richly decorated with jewels. The Express was more tastefully attired in a simple black riding-dress, embroidered ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... man-hunting wolf, enlarged many times, and instinct with exultation and ferocity. That terrible cry, rising at regular intervals, dominated the battle in Robert's mind, and he looked eagerly for the colossal form of the chief that he might send his bullet through it, but in vain; the voice was there though his eyes saw nothing ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... delighted and understanding eye of the fat traveling man, who was a symphony in brown—brown suit, brown oxfords, brown scarf, brown bat, brown-bordered handkerchief just peeping over the edge of his pocket. He looked like a colossal chocolate fudge. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... bright and amusing idea. What is really funny about Christmas charades in any average home is that there is a contrast between commonplace resources and one comic idea. What is deadly dull about the millionaire-banquets is that there is a contrast between colossal resources and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... executed many portrait busts, some animal subjects, two colossal heads, symbolic of the Thames and the Isis, intended for the adornment of the bridge at Henley. Her statue of the king, in marble, was placed in the Register Office in Edinburgh. She made a portrait ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... prayed that Geoffrey might be given back to her, and the gods had heard her prayer. They had given her back Geoffrey, and with a careless generosity they had given her twice as much of him as she had expected. She had asked for the slim Apollo whom she had loved in Wales, and this colossal changeling had arrived in ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... trees. I immediately hid myself behind a bush, and was soon gratified with the sight of a female gorilla; but before I had time to notice its movements, a second and third emerged from the masses of colossal foliage; at length no less than four came ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper was obliged to drape a small, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... rising sun. To the East, where Nofuhl was pointing, his fingers trembling with excitement, lay the ruins of an endless city. It stretched far away into the land beyond, further even than our eyes could see. And in the smaller river on the right stood two colossal structures, rising high in the air, and standing like twin brothers, as if to guard the deserted streets beneath. Not a sound reached us—not a floating thing disturbed the surface of the water. Verily, it seemed ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... remarkable statue (minutely described by Pausanias) which the Athenians, in the time of Pericles, caused to be hewn out of a huge block of marble, which, it was believed, had been provided by Datis to form a trophy of the anticipated victory of the Persians. Phidias fashioned out of this a colossal image of the goddess Nemesis, the deity whose peculiar function was to visit the exuberant prosperity both of nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about eight ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... Pearl. Speaking with all possible respect, the Senora Montfort, though high-born and accomplished, is a hysterical wildcat. You did well, my child; you did extremely well. So long as I have found you, nothing matters; but, nothing at all. As my great, my gigantic friend, my colossal preserver, el Capitan ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... and worth, the Game itself, the biggest thing in the world—or what had been the biggest thing in the world until that chance afternoon and that chance purchase in Silverstein's candy store, when Genevieve loomed suddenly colossal in his life, overshadowing all other things. He was beginning to see, though vaguely, the sharp conflict between woman and career, between a man's work in the world and woman's need of the man. But he was not capable of generalization. He saw only the antagonism between ...
— The Game • Jack London
... staring at the Yale team as it left the field for the intermission. He had forgotten about his story of the game. The old spectre of failure obsessed him. It was already haunting the pathway of his boy. Was he also to be beaten by one colossal blunder? Henry Seeley felt that Ernest's whole career hung upon his behavior in the second half. How would the lad "take his medicine"? Would it break his heart or rouse him to fight more valiantly? As if the father had been thinking aloud, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... fragments of burned timbers. At another place on the breast of Zion was a chaos of rock where a mansion had been literally pulled down. Somewhere near Akra pale columns of pungent, wind-blown smoke still rose from a colossal heap of fused matter that the Ephesian could not identify. About it were neglected houses; not a sign of festivity was apparent; windows hung open carelessly; the hangings in colonnades were stripped away entirely or whipped loose from the fastenings and abandoned to the winds. ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... simply staggered at this colossal treasure-trove, this majestic piece of gossip that had fallen on her like rain from Heaven. Mr. Grant's daughter! Going out to Kuryong! What a piece of news! Hardly knowing what she did, she shuffled out of the room, and interrupted ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... made familiar with this image in the decorations of the temple of Solomon, including colossal cherubim. Also the great molten sea of brass was supported upon oxen ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... smaller enclosures, stretched in every direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every side. Surely, I had never before seen this city, nor one comparable to it. Raising my eyes at last towards the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... entirely new was substituted for one which was worn out; an establishment had been created, which, combining the functions of a commercial bank and the administration of the finances, must become the most colossal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... various marine animals of the order Cetacea, including the most colossal of all animated beings. From their general form and mode of life they are frequently confounded with fish, from which, however, they differ essentially in their organization, as they are warm-blooded, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... spirit as that with which the surgeon lifts his knife against a patient,—that is, with the same reluctance and the same determination,—and I think we shall have and hear much less of charlatanism in and out of the profession. The disgrace of medicine has been that colossal system of self-deception, in obedience to which mines have been emptied of their cankering minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its noxious growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Fifth avenue gate is a fine bronze colossal bust of Alexander Von Humboldt, the work of Professor Blaiser of Berlin, which was presented to the park by the German citizens of New York, and inaugurated on the 14th of September, 1869, the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... district a real superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed themselves on the eve of the great renovation; the Scriptures, tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... parliamentary influence, and was in time duly admitted into the sanctuary. But those vast and successful invasions of society by new classes which have since occurred, though impending, had not yet commenced. The manufacturers, the railway kings, the colossal contractors, the discoverers of nuggets, had not yet found their place in society and the senate. There were then, perhaps, more great houses open than at the present day, but there were very few little ones. The necessity of providing regular occasions for the assembling ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... memory still survived in the barracks through the later editions of his former delightful stupidities,—many of them, it is to be feared, were inventions,—and stories that were supposed to have come from Rheinfestung were described in the slang of the Offiziere as being "colossal." But the consul remembered Rheinfestung, and could not imagine it as a home for Karl, or in any way fostering his peculiar qualities. For it was eminently a fortress of fortresses, a magazine of magazines, a depot of depots. It was the key of the Rhine, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Mr. and Mrs. Mornington left England for America. Five years later they were rich. Mr. Mornington died in 1878; but his widow continued to administer the fortune bequeathed to her and, as she had a genius for business and speculation, she increased this fortune until it attained a colossal figure. At her decease, in 1900, she left her son the sum of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... no need for us to essay this futile expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their attack; and presently, shortly after six bells, when we really experienced pretty nearly the worst of it, there was a muttered growl of thunder, accompanied by a lightning flash that illuminated the whole of the heavens from ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... therefore, under the humble shelter of Rockel's roof, I was immediately struck by his singular and altogether imposing personality. He was in the full bloom of manhood, anywhere between thirty and forty years of age. Everything about him was colossal, and he was full of a primitive exuberance and strength. I never gathered that he set much store by my acquaintance. Indeed, he did not seem to care for merely intellectual men; what he demanded was men of reckless ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... memory of that little dingy room! It, too, is dear to my soul; for there, as I lay in quiet and darkness, I first heard the great bell of St. Paul's telling London it was midnight, and well do I recall the deep, deliberate tones, so full charged with colossal phlegm and force. From the small, narrow window of that room, I first saw THE dome, looming through a London mist. I suppose the sensations, stirred by those first sounds, first sights, are felt but once; treasure them, Memory; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... sitting position, pressing my left elbow into the pillow, and with the right hand rubbing both eyes in an endeavor to see once more my natural surroundings. But no! Instead, suspended in this endless light, appeared a wonderful colossal cross of indescribable splendor. This wonderful cross can be likened only to a gigantic opal. Its rays of light seemed to penetrate me through and through as over my mind flashed the thought, "I must have died, and this ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... that instant he was plucked from her by a resistless force and hurled violently to the ground. Dazed and half-stunned he looked up and saw the elephant standing over him with one colossal foot poised over his prostrate body, ready to crush him to pulp. Brave as the Chinaman was he trembled with terror at the imminent, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... liberally praised, that there is no occasion to add another tittle of commendation. A swinging St. Christopher, fording a brook with a child on his shoulders, cannot fail of attracting your attention. This colossal personage is painted on the folding-doors which defend the capital performance just mentioned from vulgar eyes; and here Rubens has selected a very proper subject to display the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... John Law, gambler, student and financier. Before every ruler on the continent he laid his system of financial revolution, and one by one they smiled, or shrugged, or scoffed at him. Baffled once more in his dearest purpose, he took again to play, play in such colossal and audacious form as never yet had been seen even in the gayest courts of a time when gaming was a vice to be called national. No hazard was too great for him, no success and no reverse sufficiently keen to cause him ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... political, social or religious, which was doomed to utter destruction. It became known among us that the sentence was about to be carried out on a colossal scale; but we remained in absolute ignorance as to the place and method of the intended execution. Thus far my dream gave me no intimation of the horrible scene which next burst on me,—a scene which strained to their utmost tension every sense of sight, hearing and touch, in a manner unprecedented ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... parasitical vegetation, stand out boldly from the sheet of silver light which blends the horizon with the limpid blue of the heavens. Some rays of the moon, gliding through the opening on one of these porticoes, fall upon two colossal statues at the foot of an immense staircase, the loose stones of which are almost entirely concealed by grass, moss, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... age! How was it that You let Colossal genius and colossal crime Walk for a hundred years across the earth, Like giant twins? How was it then that men, Conceiving such vast beauty for the world, And such large hopes of heaven, could entertain Such hellish projects ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... then, come, conduct me to him," said Andreas, rising from his chair, and drawing up his colossal form to its full height. "I should like to know who this countryman is. Lead the way, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... employed. To adorn the new city, the cities of Greece and Asia were despoiled of their choicest treasures of art. In the Forum was placed a lofty column of porphyry, one hundred and twenty feet in height, on whose summit stood a colossal statue of Apollo, supposed to be the work of Phidias. In the stately circus or hippodrome, the space between the goals, round which the chariots turned in their swift flight, was filled with ancient statues and obelisks. Here was also a trophy of striking historical value, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... did he loiter about the passages after the curtain was down, on the chance of being permitted to escort her to her doorstep. Such privileges were the Strong Man's alone. She was affianced to him! At the swelling thought, his chest became Brobdingnagian. His bounce in company was now colossal; and it afforded the troupe a popular entertainment to see him drop to servility in her presence. Her frown was sufficient to reduce him to a cringe. They called him the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the thriving town of Eastman, almost of a size to call itself a young city and boast of a mayor, could have heard him they might not have been flattered. Yet when they remembered that this was the owner of a business so colossal that its immense buildings and branches were to be found in three great cities, they might have understood that to him the corner store of Hugh Benson looked like a toy concern, indeed. But he liked the look of it, as it had been presented to his mind's eye that night; no doubt ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... but the largest temples are supposed to have been ninety feet high. They were all constructed of solid stone, everywhere decorated with carvings and bas-reliefs, and adorned with numbers of statues, many of which still remain entire. At Chandi Sewa, or the "Thousand Temples," are many fine colossal figures. Captain Baker, who surveyed these ruins, said he had never in his life seen "such stupendous and finished specimens of human labour, and of the science and taste of ages long since forgot, crowded together in so small a compass as in this spot." They cover a space of nearly ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is but one egress from this narrow defile: the absolute international disarmament of the world. There is no longer any object in such colossal fleets if the states of the world guarantee the freedom of the seas, and armies must be reduced to the lowest limit requisite for the maintenance of order in the interior. This will only be possible on an international basis; that is, under ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... solutions to the question were left, creating two very distinct groups of supporters: on one side, those favoring a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favoring an "underwater boat" of ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the War of Troy. We listen, we admire, but we do not compare the heroes of St. Jean d'Acre with the great generals of the nineteenth century. They seem a different race of men from those who are now living, and poetry and tradition have lent to their royal frames such colossal proportions that we hardly dare to criticise the legendary history of their chivalrous achievements. It was a time of heroes, of saints, of martyrs, of miracles! Thomas a Becket was murdered at Canterbury, but ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... extensive, huge, unwieldy, vast, massive, immense, colossal, gigantic, bulky; ample, copious, liberal, unstinted; generous, liberal, munificent, princely; hypertrophied; spacious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... history. A people's greatness should be measured, not by its magnificent palaces, decked out in all the gaudy splendors of art and needless luxuries, the price of piracy or direct thievery; not in the number of colossal fortunes accumulated out of the stipend of the orphan and widow and the son of toil; not in the extent and richness of its public buildings and palaces of idle amusement; not in vast aggregations of capital in the coffers of the common ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... of the most striking and perfect of the monuments left by the Romans in Gaul, or anywhere; and it is certainly remarkable that the two most complete relics of this great people that remain, should have been the work of Agrippa, the Pantheon and the Pont du Gard. This latter is a colossal work. Its length is 873 feet at top, and may well be compared to its advantage with the modern aqueduct that conveys water to the Prado of Montpellier, a more lengthy, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... for Hera and Aphrodite. But we know the sculptor of the first statue of Serapis that stood in the great sanctuary of Alexandria until the end of paganism. This statue, the prototype of all the copies that have been preserved, is a colossal work of art made of precious materials by a famous Athenian sculptor named Bryaxis, a contemporary of Scopas. It was one of the last divine creations of Hellenic genius. The majestic head, with its somber and yet benevolent ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... looked he saw a vessel rounding a point in the distance. Suppose this was the ship of the pirate and murderer? The fancy diverted him. His eyes drew away from the indistinct craft—first to the reefs, and then to that spot where the colossal needle stretched up under the water. It was as Pierre speculated. Brigond, the French pirate, who had hidden his gold at such shameless cost, was, after twenty years in the galleys at Toulon, come back to find his treasure. He had doubted little that he would find it. The lonely spot, the superstition ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... autocracy the throbbing nerve centre of world revolution.... And from its frowning gates they sally forth in their high power limousines on affairs of state even as the Czars in their day went forth to superintend the administration of their colossal heritage. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... pursuits of the honest Turks is what they call Kief etmek, literally "creating a mood." It consists of drinking coffee in a comfortable place and smoking. Such a place par excellence I found in the village where we made a stop. Imagine a plane which extends its colossal branches horizontally for almost one hundred feet, burying in its deep shadow the nearest houses. The trunk of the tree is surrounded by a small terrace of stone, below which water is gushing from twenty-seven pipes in streams as thick as your arm, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... the colossal many-tabled dining-saloon of the Lithuania Edward Henry sat as usual to the left of the purser's empty chair, at the purser's table, where were about a dozen other men. A page brought him a marconigram. He opened it and read the single word "Nineteen." ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... an outfit! With my haggard eyes and my sallow complexion, with my hair cut short, and my nose with the bumps shining; with my long mouse-gray coat, my pants stained russet, my great hedless shoes, my colossal cotton cap, I am prodigiously ugly. I could not keep from laughing. I turn my head toward the side of my bed neighbor, a tall boy of Jewish type, who is sketching my portrait in a notebook. We become friends at once; I tell him to call me Eugene Lejantel; he responds by telling ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... his death. But it is a singular example of reticent fortitude, that, although for the next fourteen years the subject never left his mind, and during the latter half of that period he was constantly engaged in amassing facts bearing upon it from wide reading, a colossal correspondence, and a long series of experiments, only two or three friends were cognisant of his views. To the outside world he seemed to have his hands quite sufficiently full of other matters. In ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... starveling steal a roll in despair, and Law conducts them to the Prison, for evil commune to mellow them for the gibbet. But let a man spend one apprenticeship from youth to old age in vice—let him devote a fortune, perhaps colossal, to the wholesale demoralisation of his kind—and he may be surrounded with the adulation of the so-called virtuous, and be served upon its knee, by that Lackey—the Modern World! I say not that Law can, or that Law should, reach the Vice as it does the Crime; but I say, that ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... book, The Conquest of Mexico, might almost as well have been laid in this far-famed capital of the North. Great antiquity, isolation from the Western world, pride of race and empire, veneration for their own colossal literature, arrested civilisation and profound contempt for all things foreign, create a picture rich in detail, very mournful in subject and ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... continents, and of the species now existing,—it is easy to perceive what extravagant systems they would frame, while under the influence of this delusion, to account for the monuments discovered in Egypt. The sight of the pyramids, obelisks, colossal statues, and ruined temples, would fill them with such astonishment, that for a time they would be as men spell-bound—wholly incapable of reasoning with sobriety. They might incline at first to refer the construction of such stupendous works to some superhuman powers of the primeval world. A system ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... crude ideas, pertaining to dwellings of all kinds, were roughly outlined on the different pages. Antiquities had been copied; fragments of Indian columns, colossal statues, and outlandish ornament from the temples of Elephanta and Kenneri, were carelessly intruded upon by outlines of modern doors, windows, roofs, cooking-stoves, and household furniture; everything, in short, which comes within the range of a practising architect's experience, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... elected, the former as consul, the latter as praetor. But for 699 there even appeared as candidate for the consulship Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whose election it was difficult to prevent owing to his influence in the capital and his colossal wealth, and who, it was sufficiently well known, would not be content with a concealed opposition. The comitia thus rebelled; and the senate chimed in. It solemnly deliberated over an opinion, which Etruscan soothsayers of acknowledged wisdom had furnished respecting ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with branches strong enough to bear animals as large as elephants. Professor Owen, with far more probability, believes that, instead of climbing on the trees, they pulled the branches down to them, and tore up the smaller ones by the roots, and so fed on the leaves. The colossal breadth and weight of their hinder quarters, which can hardly be imagined without having been seen, become, on this view, of obvious service, instead of being an encumbrance: their apparent clumsiness disappears. With their great tails and their huge heels firmly fixed ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... he looks out from the Pincian hill, and sees Nivea Soracte as Horace beheld it; and he is overawed (if Hawthorne could be) by the Forum of Trajan and the Column of Antoninus. He makes a great discovery, or rediscovery, that Phidias's colossal statues of Castor and Pollux on the Monte Cavallo are the finest figures in Rome. They are late Roman copies, but probably from Phidias,—not by Lysippus or Praxiteles; and he felt the presence of Michel Angelo in the Baths of Diocletian. It is not long before he goes to ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the Renaissance, as represented in its literature and its art, is the very negation of Elizabethan horrors. Of all the mystery, the colossal horror and terror of our dramatists, there is not the faintest trace in the intellectual productions of the Italian Renaissance. The art is absolutely stainless: no scenes of horror, no frightful martyrdoms, as with the Germans ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... invented about the year 1858, has been practically applied on the large scale at Schleissheim, Bavaria. Mannhardt's machine consists of two colossal iron rolls, each of 15 feet diameter, and 6-1/2 feet length, geared into each other so as to revolve horizontally in opposite directions and with equal velocity. These rolls are hollow, their circumference consists of stout iron plate perforated with numerous small holes, and is supported by iron ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... she murmured in response. Then she roused herself, and spoke almost sharply. "What would you have done had he struck you? He is a man of colossal strength." ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the colossal war has been achieved in these seven months. It has been demonstrated that no single nation in any part of the world can dominate the other nations, or, indeed, any other nation, unless the other principal powers consent to that domination; and, in the present state of the world, it ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... intense desire to understand the present. Only a day home—and what colossal enigma! The war had been chaos. Was this its aftermath? Had people been rocked on their foundations? What were they doing—how living—how changing? He would see, and be grateful for a little time to prove his faith. He knew he would find the same ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... position of secretary of state, and then withdrew it with the promise of sending him as minister to France; but the South again defeated him. From that time until his appointment as postmaster of New York, following the discovery, in May, 1860, of Isaac V. Fowler's colossal defalcation,[645] Dix had taken little part in politics. If the President, however, needed a man of his ability and honesty in the crisis precipitated by Fowler's embezzlement, such characteristics were ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... series of improvements notwithstanding the illusions which were dispersed by the Krach. One of the most conspicuous and charming municipal displays in the Paris Exposition is the group of charts and plans sent from Pesth. The patriot Deak is to have a colossal monument; the quays are to be rendered more substantial against inundations than they are at present; and many massive public edifices are to be erected. The Danube is often unruly, and once nearly destroyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... us, a mammoth in size, with huge drivers and a colossal tender. The engine leaped aside, as if just in time to save us from destruction, with a glimpse of a stooping fireman and a grimy engineer. The long train of sleepers followed. From a forward vestibule a porter in a white coat waved his hand. The rest of the cars seemed still ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bathed the huge trees and giant leaves with that habitual extravagance which made it seem ordinary, almost cheap and wonderless. Very silent the wooden house lay all about me, there were no footsteps, there was no human voice. I heard only the wash of the heavy-scented wind through the colossal foliage that hardly stirred, and watched, as a hundred times before, the immense heated sky, drenched in its brilliant and intolerable moonlight. All seemed a riot of ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... dry logic of law and fact, but also for flashes of unique eloquence. In presenting a certain brief before the United States Supreme Court he had occasion to animadvert upon some of our great men. Among other things he said, as related to the writer by one who heard him: "The colossal name of Washington is growing year by year, and the fame of Franklin is still climbing to heaven," accompanying the latter words by such a movement of his right hand that not one of his hearers failed to see the immortal kite ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... conferring with the priests the emperor conducted the Spaniards into the building, which was adorned with sculptured figures; at one end was a recess, with a roof of timber richly carved and gilt, and here stood a colossal image of Huitzilopochtli, the war-god. His countenance was hideous; in his right hand he held a bow, and in his left a bunch of golden arrows, which a mystic legend connected with the victories of his people. A huge serpent of pearls ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang |
