"Frightful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sound of my voice, the left hand swung out revealing a frightful gash; and the next thing I knew, his left arm had encircled my neck like the coil of a strangler, five fingers were digging into the flesh of my throat and Le Grand Diable was making frantic efforts to free his right hand and plunge that dagger into ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... temporary wearer will in some way be influenced to wear mourning very soon for some lost relative. No doubt fifty other and similar superstitions connected with death and burial might be adduced, even without alluding to those of more frightful import and now very little regarded, which belong more peculiarly to the Eastern world, and which inculcate the leaving open of a window at the moment of death, to allow the unrestrained flight of the passing soul, and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... worse over failing to hold the ball than he felt over half killing himself against the bleachers. He spent the remainder of that never-to-be-forgotten game sitting on the bench. But to watch his fellow-players try to play was almost as frightful as being back there in right field. It was no consolation for Ken to see his successor chasing long hits, misjudging flies, failing weakly on wicked grounders. Even Graves weakened toward the close and spoiled his good beginning by miserable ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... alone in the cabin, gave small heed to their departure. He had risen with a frightful headache and a fever. He lay on the bed and thought of his situation, his past life, and his future chances, in bitter, heartrending, self-condemnatory sarcasm which made his condition even less tolerable than it ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... Answer me soon! The melancholy into which we are thrown by the idea of a wrong done is frightful; it casts a shroud over life, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... a boy, Cradock by name, who was choking with secret laughter as he tilted little Eden's bed—leaving a pause of frightful suspense now and then to let him recover breath and realise his situation—was as raw and ill-trained a fellow as you like, but he had nothing in him wilfully or diabolically wicked. If he had been similarly treated he would have broken into ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the sentence was never finished. There was a frightful crash, mingled with the terrific ringing of car-bells, a violent plunge forward, and Jay Gardiner ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... are now all thy highly-prized treasures, thy boasted glory, and those beloved ones who rendered that glory most precious to thee? Alas! all are withdrawn; vanished like a scene of enchantment, from which I have indeed awakened to a frightful solitude." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... tremendous strain bravely; and, the laws of nature asserting their supremacy even in this wild scene, the little Lily rose and shook herself clear of the water which had swept in over her, and then away she flew, at a perfectly frightful ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.] was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called Mrs. McWilliams's attention ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tremulous, uncertain hand] I am wretched and lonely. Fred and Irene are away, and Mr. Lawrence has gone West on business. Will you not, out of the generosity of your heart, come and cheer me up a bit? I was in bed all day yesterday with a frightful headache, and can just crawl to-day. Do not disappoint me. I have set my heart on hearing you read, and have ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... historians of the French Revolution wished to convey an idea of the utmost agonies they were called on to portray, they contented themselves with saying it equalled all that the imagination of Dante had conceived of the terrible. Sir Joshua Reynolds has exerted his highest genius in depicting the frightful scene described by him, when Ugolino perished of hunger in the tower of Pisa. Alfieri, Metastasio, Corneille, Lope de Vega, and all the great masters of the tragic muse, have sought in his works the germs of their finest conceptions. The first of these tragedians marked two-thirds of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... conception of a plan, and with that largeness of view which foresees all its consequences, and embraces all its results at a glance—"have you thought that we must assemble the nobility, the clergy, and the third estate of the realm; that we shall have to depose the reigning sovereign, to disturb by so frightful a scandal the tomb of their dead father, to sacrifice the life, the honor of a woman, Anne of Austria, the life and peace of mind and heart of another woman, Maria Theresa; and suppose that all were done, if we were to ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... their foul tomb. Just at the time when Eustace had found his weary way back to health and strength; just at the time when we were united again and happy again—when a month or two more might make us father and mother, as well as husband and wife—that frightful record of suffering and sin had risen against us like an avenging spirit. There it faced me on the table, threatening my husband's tranquillity; nay, for all I knew (if he read it at the present critical stage of his ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... care and anxious thought. So he removed from that site into another stead and was stirred up and went awandering about. Then he set his head upon the pillow but was unable to close his eyelids and the Voice drew nearer and cried upon him in frightful accents and said, "O Mihrjan, dost thou not hearken to my words and understand my verse; to wit, that thy daughter Al-Hayfa shall bequeath to thee shame and thou shalt perish by cause of her?" Then the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... undressed the little, red, swollen body. The rough clothes had stuck to the blistered skin in one place and the pain was so frightful he nearly fainted before ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... utter impossibility of our ever being able to recross the fearful country we had passed through with such difficulty, under circumstances so much more favourable than we were now in, was so strong that I never for a moment entertained the idea myself. I knew the many and frightful pushes without water we should have to make in any such attempt, and though the country before us was unknown, it could not well be worse than that we had passed through, whilst the probability was, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... to the right.] 'E's so 'orribly jealous. When Lil tells 'im 'oo was at the party, there'll be a frightful kick-up! ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... difficulties of a commercial nature between Turkey and Italy led to the mobilization of the Italian fleet. Turkey, however, thereupon acceded to all of Italy's demands. Foreign affairs were overshadowed entirely throughout 1909 by the frightful destruction wrought by a series of violent earthquakes which shook the Strait of Messina on December 28, 1908, killing over 50,000 people. King Edward, Emperor William, and Czar Nicholas again visited Italy at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... it was said that she was out of danger and would probably suffer no serious consequences Ruth recalled the doctor's frightful words: "You did it: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... into this country from Holland, sold and bought at the prices I have mentioned; and at present there are very few cobblers in any of the burghs of this country who do not sit down gravely with their wives and families to tea.'[Footnote: Culloden Papers, 191.] What a frightful picture! We may laugh at it, but it really was frightful to one who sincerely believed that the money paid for tea was a dead loss to the country, and who did not know that the tea was paid for by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... the world and art, such a life could not last long: his passions were too overpowering for his feeble strength. Attacks of madness began to recur more frequently, and ended at last in the most frightful illness. A violent fever, combined with galloping consumption, seized upon him with such violence, that in three days there remained only a shadow of his former self. To this was added indications of hopeless insanity. Sometimes several men were unable to hold him. The long-forgotten, living ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... way with her desire to urinate. Every night she had a frightful need to urinate and hunted for the chamber, but, although it always stood in its accustomed place, she was not able to find it. Meanwhile the desire grew more severe, so that she began moaning fearfully in her sleep while hunting. She sought all over the ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... don't lose your temper," Chia Yuen protested, "but listen and let me tell you what happened!" After which, he went on to tell Ni Erh the whole affair with Pu Shih-jen. As soon as Ni Erh heard him, he got into a frightful rage; "Were he not," he shouted, a "relative of yours, master Secundus, I would readily give him a bit of my mind! Really resentment will stifle my breath! but never mind! you needn't however distress yourself. I've got here ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... It was almost frightful to an unpunctual mind! This again was another phase of his extreme tidiness; it was also the outcome of his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for others. His sympathy, also, with all pain and suffering made him quite invaluable in a sick room. Quick, active, sensible, bright and cheery, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... had been the victim appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of all, the gypsy, that ravishing dancer, who had so often dazzled the passers-by with her grace, was no longer anything but a frightful vampire. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... yet I die murdered!'" It so happened by one chance out of a hundred, that those last words were written at the top of a new sheet of paper. I left the room, and went out into the garden intoxicated with a frightful opportunity. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Ingred. "Each of them seems to think we've nothing to do but her own particular subject. Dr. Linton actually asked me if I could practise two hours a day. Why, he might as well have suggested four! I can only get the piano for an hour, even if I wanted it longer. It's a frightful business at the hostel to cram in all our practicing, isn't it? I nearly had a free fight with Janie Potter yesterday. She commandeered the piano, and though I showed her the music time-table, with my name down for '5 to 6' she wouldn't budge. I had ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... investigation twenty times repeated, I should still arrive at the frightful conclusion that I am driven to choose between the Desirable and the Good, I would reject the science, plunge into a voluntary ignorance, above all, avoid participation in the affairs of my country, and leave to others ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... the dance, the gossamer dresses of these ballet-girls are caught in the blaze of the footlights, instantly enveloping them in fire, and burning them to a crisp,—and they are borne from the theatre to the grave. Yet these girls, thus nightly exposed to so frightful a death, are paid a third to a half less than men employed in the same vocation, and who by dress are exempt from such hazards. Moreover, the wardrobe of the men is furnished by the theatrical manager,—while the girls, those even who receive but five dollars a week, are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... water, and fought the men in the boats who were trying to pick up the captives. The Bishop and Mr. Walters were fully occupied doctoring friends and foes, arresting hemorrhage, extracting balls, and closing frightful sword or chopper wounds. One man came on board with the top of his skull as cleanly lifted up by a Sooloo knife, as if a surgeon had desired to take a peep at the brain inside! It took considerable ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... an entire book to narrations of frightful cruelties perpetrated by Japanese on Koreans, Siberians and Formosans; but that would not be so strong as the setting forth of the underlying ethical reasons for this universal hatred in ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... encouraging, and some features marking many of their literary works are positively revolting. Of the social evils of the time, none infected literature so deeply as the depravation of morals, into which the court and aristocracy plunged, and many of the people followed. The drama sunk to a frightful grossness, and the tone of all other poetry was lowered. The reinstated courtiers imported a mania for foreign models, especially French, literary works were anxiously moulded on the tastes of Paris, and this prevalence of exotic predilections lasted ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... sadly changed. So, indeed, it was. Mattie and Evey could not, for instance, begin naturally by asking, "Cally, did you have a lovely summer?"—when of course they knew very well that she had had a perfectly frightful summer. Mattie came in before eleven o'clock on the first morning, chirping affectionate greetings; but neither then nor later did she manage to convey any real sense of sympathy with Cally, or of understanding what she had been through, or even of wanting to understand. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the fire, and sat down on the floor in front of it to talk over what they should do. Then it happened,—the strange, the beautiful, the frightful thing! Eric saw a face at the window. It was so perfectly beautiful, that face, that he wanted to shut his eyes against it. It almost hurt. It was the face of a young woman, very pale, but when her eyes met Eric's they filled with dancing laughter. Her hair ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... over the spot where the schooner went down. Here, in the flashes, I saw many heads, the men swimming in confusion, and at random. By this time, little was said, the whole scene being one of fearful struggling and frightful silence. It still rained; but the flashes were less frequent, and less fierce. They told me, afterwards, in the squadron, that it thundered awfully; but I cannot say I heard a clap, after I struck the water. The next man caught the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of them, who had two balls through his body, sprang to his feet, the blood streaming from his skinned head, and uttering a hideous howl. An old squaw, possibly his mother, stopped and looked back from the mountainsides she was climbing, threatening and lamenting. The frightful spectacle appalled the stout hearts of our men; but they did what humanity required, and quickly terminated the agonies of the gory savage. They were now masters of the camp, which was a pretty little recess in the mountain, with a fine spring, and apparently safe from ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... announcement the head of the aruji—distinctly visible in the moonlight—assumed a frightful aspect: its eyes opened monstrously; its hair stood up bristling; and its teeth gnashed. Then a cry burst from its lips; and—weeping ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... Tracey, with that deep-rooted sexual inferiority complex of his, would have been so flattered if Flora had told him she killed Nita out of jealousy that he would have forgiven her on the spot. On the other hand," she went on, "if Flora had told him that Nita had documentary proofs of some frightful scandal against her, can't you see how violently Tracey would have reacted against her?... Oh, no! Tracey would not have taken the trouble to murder Sprague, when Sprague popped up ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, if a large family were considered not as an encumbrance but as a blessing, the principal objections to Universal Suffrage would, I think, be removed. Universal Suffrage exists in the United States, without producing any very frightful consequences; and I do not believe that the people of those States, or of any part of the world, are in any good quality naturally superior to our own countrymen. But, unhappily, the labouring classes in England, and in all old countries, are occasionally in a state of great distress. Some of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The whole affair had not taken more than a few seconds. The negro's fury was now roused to its highest pitch by the wounds he had received: he gnashed his teeth at us like a wild beast, and flourished his knife with frightful rapidity. The Count, in his turn, had received a cut right across the hand, and we had been irrevocably lost, had not Providence sent us assistance. We heard the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the road, upon which the negro instantly left us and sprang into the wood. Immediately afterwards two horsemen ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Pryer with warmth; and he went on to show that this good woman was an experimentalist whose experiment, though disastrous in its effects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction to other people. She was thus a true martyr or witness to the frightful consequences of intemperance, to the saving, doubtless, of many who but for her martyrdom would have taken to drinking. She was one of a forlorn hope whose failure to take a certain position went to the proving it to be impregnable and therefore to the abandonment of all attempt to take ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... concerned ever since her battle with the Swiss, has piqued herself upon dressing me with exquisite taste. I am every day mise a ravir!—and with such perfection of art, that no art appears—all is negligent simplicity. I let Josephine please herself; for you know I am not bound to be frightful, because I have a friend whose husband may chance to turn his eye upon my figure, when he is tired of admiring hers. I rallied L—— the other day upon his having no eyes or ears but for his wife. Be assured I did it in such a manner that he ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only one wish—that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... yet tremble at the frightful event which has just occurred, I am disquieted and distressed through fear of the punishment necessarily to be inflicted on the guilty, who belong, it is said, to families with whom I once lived in habits of intercourse. I shall be solicited by ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... others) being depressed means being cross, and very cross he was to his mother and his friend, and occasionally to his brother, who, in some moods, seemed to him merely a rival invalid and candidate for attention, and whom he now and then threatened with becoming as frightful a muff as Fordham. He missed Johnny, too, and perhaps longed after Eton. He was more savage to Cecil than to any one else, treating his best attentions with growls, railings, and occasionally showers of slippers, books, and cushions, but, strange as it sounds, the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the horse, which broke up and fled. Many of the frantic animals were killed by their own riders or by the Persians on whom they were trampling, while others succumbed to the blows dealt them by the enemy. There was a frightful carnage, ending in the repulse of the Persians and the resumption of the Roman march. Shortly before night fell, Jovian and his army reached Samarah, then a fort of no great size upon the Tigris, and, encamping in ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Plate XXIV, STEPHENS.) "The image bore on its head a bird of wrought plumes," "its right hand rested upon a crooked serpent." "Upon the left arm was a buckler bearing five white plums arranged in form of a cross." SAHAGUN describes his device as a dragon's head, "frightful in the extreme, and casting fire out ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... startled to find how little she suffered from that jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in such circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage. Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation to herself. People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... They drew up liturgies to resemble the Buddhist Sutras, and also prayers for the dead. They adopted the idea of a Trinity, consisting of Lao Tzu, P'an Ku, and the Ruler of the Universe; and they further appropriated the Buddhist Purgatory with all its frightful ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... another place, where the pressure is simply frightful. When the air rises at A the air from B rushes over to A to fill up the gap, and that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... the heat and stench were frightful. The constant cries for water rendered the crew nervous and the captain irritable. He now punished the men severely for the slightest infraction ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... now looming near at hand, and they could see it shift and sway, grow thin, and roll up in a dense, black mass. It cast a gloom over their spirits, and made them all feel as if some frightful disaster ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... uneven ground, still dizzy and weak from the bludgeoning he had undergone, unable to help his precarious balance by the use of his arms, doubly bound now by the rope about his middle which the Texans had drawn in running noose. It was Morgan's hope in the first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the ditch at the trackside might ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... was not without reason that her son had been brought before the Emir. She therefore trembled for him. Ivan Ogareff was not a man to forgive having been struck in public by the knout, and his vengeance would be merciless. Some frightful punishment familiar to the barbarians of Central Asia would, no doubt, be inflicted on Michael Ogareff had protected him against the soldiers because he well knew what would happen by reserving him for ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... hearts. It seemed to us, that all this was a dream, a frightful illusion, that clung to our hearts, to our souls; and yet, without a tear, without a complaint, we resigned ourselves ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... peer through the cane in front of them, in the hope of obtaining a view of the animal, which had been disturbed by their approach, while Dan, crouching low in his place of concealment, looked first at his father and then glanced timidly about, as if in momentary expectation of seeing something frightful. He could hardly bring himself to believe that the noise, which so greatly terrified him, had been made by his father, but such was ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... Well he knew that the presence of the monster was slowly killing his beloved. She complained not, but her dreams were disturbed with frightful visions, and often Omega awakened to find her at a window staring out over the lake ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... descending in torrents from the mountains our people are ordered not to go out. The bagpipes begin to play, but the dance in a quarter of an hour is interrupted by a battle. The cries of children and infirm persons incite them, as the rabble does when dogs fight. The men, like frightful wild animals, are clad in coarse woollen jackets with large girdles of leather studded with copper nails. Their gigantic stature is heightened by high wooden clogs. Their faces are haggard and covered with ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... worried to death. Isn't it wonderful, Aunt Jennie, how some people have the faculty of causing themselves to be loved by every one? Of course, his coming here has been such a great thing for these poor fishermen that they have learned to regard him as their best friend, one whose loss would be a frightful calamity. He certainly has never ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... one to me. His speciality is birds, and he must be a frightful nuisance to them. I shouldn't care to be a bird if Brown knew where my nest was. It isn't that he takes their eggs. If he would merely rob them and go away it wouldn't matter so much. They could always begin again after a decent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... she, as I approached the tent, "he has altered your appearance wonderfully. Oh! you are not so frightful now. Come in! Here is pinole, and a little broiled goat's flesh. I am sorry I did not bring some of the wild sheep. It is most excellent; but in my haste I did not think of it. Bread I cannot give you: we never have ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... morning, while Paul was out among the tribe trying to keep them quiet, and surrounding the house and store of Captain Godfrey they demanded his surrender. The yells and whoops of the Indians were terrific, demons from the depths of perdition could not have made a more frightful noise. The children were terrified; the youngest fainted with fright. At this crisis Margaret Godfrey calmly walked to the door while her husband and son Charlie stood a few paces in her rear. She opened the door, and as she ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... awaited her beyond those formidable barriers, her delicate frame and still more sensitive feelings must have sunk beneath the horrors of such a journey. But she remembered the Duchess had said the inns and roads were execrable; and the face of the country, as well as the lower orders of people, frightful; but what signified those things? There were balls, and sailing parties, and rowing matches, and shooting parties, and fishing parties, and parties of every description; and the certainty of being recompensed by the festivities ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... prevailed. They lacked a leader, however, in order to make their work successful. Now they had come to Dordrecht and were approaching the castle of the Count of Oberthal. All the peasants got into a frightful tangle of trouble and riot, and they called and hammered at the Count's doors till he and his retainers ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... fire in a grate, thinned away by the sunlight? How could there be a grate where there was neither house nor wall? Even in heraldry the combination he beheld would have been a strange one. There stood in fact a frightful-looking creature half consumed in light—yet a pale light, seemingly not strong enough to burn. It could not be a phoenix, for he saw no wings, and thought he saw four legs. Suddenly he burst out laughing, and laughed that the hills echoed. His sleep-blinded ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... after this period, a grand lady, an acquaintance of one of my many patients among the noblesse, consulted me; and here the case was wholly different to that of the Duchesse, for this lady had grown so thin, that wrinkles—those most frightful of all symptoms of decaying beauty—had made their appearance. My new patient told me that, hearing that hitherto my great celebrity had been acquired by the cure of obesity, she feared it was useless to consult me for a disease ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... father, "men don't make such frightful examples, because these things mean less to men than they do to women. Romance is an incident to a man; he can even come through an affaire with no ideals gone, with his mental fineness unimpaired; but it is different ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees, has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and when he rejoices to see the stem rise, is disposed ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... Rhymester was very disappointed at not being able to publish more of his poems, so the Doctor-in-Law, to console him, allowed him to contribute an article on "Fashions for the Month by Our Paris Model." He made a frightful muddle of it though, not knowing the proper terms in which to describe the various materials and styles. Here is an extract, which will show you better than I can tell, the stupid blunders ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... uneasily, "a multitude of circumstances. Pretty nearly every conventional barrier the world has invented, existed between him and her. She was a frightful swell, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... new forms of cloth binding should have a word of praise, but the many more which we see of gaudy, fantastic, and meretricious bindings, and frightful combinations of colors must be viewed with ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... knew. He knew and was helpless. A frightful thing had been launched and there could be no turning; nothing now but the constant fear, the trap without end, the perilous thing above all their heads ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... Under the grading system employed by the chief surgeons a man, who was still all in one piece and who probably would not break apart in transit, was designated as being lightly wounded. This statement is no attempt upon my part to indulge in levity concerning the most frightful situation I have encountered in nearly twenty years of active newspaper work; it ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... obliged to practise a great deal of economy. I've discharged my maid, and share the children's nurse with them, and Adele is growing quite discontented with double duty. I parted with Baptiste also: it was a frightful sacrifice, for he was just a perfect butler. I'm always having economy talked at me by my husband's family, and I hate it!" with a discontented sigh. "I had a house in New York," she continued, "which they urged me to give up. They said I couldn't afford to keep both, and it was better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... new field. Cicero, being relieved of fear from him as a rival, was wise enough to see that the collapse might not continue, and that his real qualities might again bring him to the front. The Clodius business had been a frightful scandal, and, smooth as the surface might seem, ugly cracks were opening all round the constitution. The disbanded legions were impatient for their farms. The knights, who were already offended with the Senate for having thrown the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... like those of a bull-dog or angry mastiff, whose mouth, confined in a muzzle, hinders him from giving full vent to his anger. At the same time, instead of rising erect, as a human being under similar circumstances would have done, the frightful ape, that had been already in the most upright position possible to it, dropped down upon all fours, which still, however, from the great length of its arms, enabled it to preserve a ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... because the guilt-burthened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mirror—rising (like the mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) from the fens of death—most of all are reflected the sweet countenances which the man ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... keep it? It's a frightful habit. You are naughty, Daddy. One of these days you'll get yourself ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... precaution of stopping up every opening by which air could possibly get in; and when at last, in such a case, uneasy friends have forced open the well-closed door, they have found nothing within but a corpse. Then, too, there are those frightful accidents of which we hear so often, of workmen groping their way down into long disused wells, who have died as they reached the bottom; or of sudden deaths in coal-pits. In general these have been owing to the poor victims encountering ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... so than Bengal, uttering a frightful roar, whirled. The force of the jerk as the brute turned hurled Phil Forrest against the bars of the cage with a crash, and Bengal's sharp-clawed feet made a vicious sweep for the body of the lad pressed so tightly ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... frightful! No one in all the world was so unhappy as he. He was no longer a human being—but ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... mostly burned. Mr. Willard described to me a scene of incremation that he once witnessed, which was frightful for its exhibitions of fanatic frenzy and infatuation. The corpse was that of a wealthy chieftain, and as he lay upon the funeral pyre they placed in his month two gold twenties, and other smaller coins in ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... the situation of some now known to us.—O frightful thought! O horrible image! Forbid it, O Father of mercy! If it be possible, let no creature of thine ever be the object of that wrath, against which the strength of thy whole creation united, would stand but as the moth against the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... more than forty words of this language, but believes that there are perhaps thirty more. Much however is expressed, as he says, by mere intonation. Anger, for instance; and scores of allied words, such as terrible, frightful, kill, whether noun, verb or adjective, are expressed, he says, by a mere growl. Nor is there any word for "Why,'' but queries are signified by the inflexion ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... of them are so ignorant of the present conditions that they would not have seen the necessity of informing their daughters. But coming, as it does, through the avenues of daily reading, it reaches the daughter as well as the mother, thus giving her the knowledge gleaned at a frightful cost ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... been too grotesque. She did not want to give Pa and Ma the satisfaction of seeing her unhappily married. Lily armed herself with patience; and she needed it! Trampy was in a frightful temper, said that he would have been the ideal husband, if she had been the little wife he had dreamed of: but to think that she had ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... relations of all Europe, has not yet taken a single step toward ensuring the maintenance of his successors."[12128] In 1809, adds the same diplomat:[12129] "His death will be the signal for a new and frightful upheaval; so many divided elements all tend to combine. Deposed sovereigns will be recalled by former subjects; new princes will have new crowns to defend. A veritable civil war will rage for half a century over the vast empire of the continent the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... matter is"—this after a minute's thought—"I have a frightful headache. I suppose it comes from this trouble with my eyes. I thought I wasn't going to be able to keep up, and in my efforts to do it, I"—he paused and then laughed ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... said he, "I hadn't advised you to take that treasurership. If we could only be quite sure there wasn't some mistake in the accounts, it would be different. It would be a frightful thing to suspect Rollitt unless it was ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Cossacks and other light troops could inflict on a disordered and disheartened mass of men. The soldiers moved on, while under the eye of Napoleon, in gloomy silence: wherever he was not present, they set every rule of discipline at nought, and were guilty of the most frightful excesses. The Emperor conducted himself as became a great mind amidst great misfortunes. He appeared at all times calm and self-possessed; receiving, every day that he advanced, new ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... extensive woods in course of destruction. That best of Rishis, Vasishtha, O king, became angry, O monarch, with Vishvamitra. He commanded his own (homa) cow, saying, 'Create a number of terrible Savaras!' Thus addressed, the cow created a swarm of men of frightful visages. These encountered the army of Vishvamitra and began to cause a great carnage everywhere. Seeing this, his troops fled away. Vishvamitra, the son of Gadhi, however, regarding ascetic austerities highly efficacious, set his heart upon them. In this foremost ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... before had made it capital for any person to propose a treaty or accommodation with Demetrius, immediately opened the nearest gates to send ambassadors to him, not so much out of hopes of obtaining any honorable conditions from his clemency as out of necessity, to avoid death by famine. For among many frightful instances of the distress they were reduced to, it is said that a father and son were sitting in a room together, having abandoned every hope, when a dead mouse fell from the ceiling; and for this prize they leaped up and came to blows. In this famine, it is also related, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... one cause and the defeat of the other. To determine in any particular case the side of right and justice is a very difficult matter. And perhaps it is just as well that it is so; for could this be done with truth and accuracy, frightful responsibilities would have to be placed on the shoulders of somebody; and we shrink instinctively from the thought of any one individual or body of individuals standing before God with the crime of war ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... he clutched her right hand, and, having secured her, bound her with cords so that she could not move. As soon as he had recovered from his surprise, he looked about him, and searched the house, when, to his horror, he found one of his apprentices dead, and the other lying bleeding from a frightful gash across the face. With the first dawn of day, he reported the affair to the proper authorities, and gave Kashiku in custody. So, after due examination, the two pirate brothers and the girl Kashiku were executed, and their heads were ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the mother country that frightful acts of bigotry and lust for wealth were enacted. In Peru the Spaniards found a splendid civilisation among the strange races of the Incas, a condition of order which many modern states might envy, a religion absolutely free from fetish worship, and a standard ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... as I am, I would have fought for you, Miss Platanova, if I could have got through that door. Thank you for what you have done to convince these dogs! I would to God I could save you from this thing you are pledged to do. It is frightful! I cannot think it of you! Give it up! All of you, give this thing up! I will promise secrecy—I will never betray what I have heard. Only don't do this awful thing! Think of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... our chances once we settled into the frightful Maelstrom beneath us and at the same time mentally computing the hours which must elapse before aid could reach us, the wireless operator clambered up the ladder to the bridge, and, disheveled and breathless, stood before me at salute. It ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a good and noble soldier. The casualties on our side were frightful. Generals, colonels, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates were piled indiscriminately everywhere. Cannon, caissons, and dead horses were piled pell-mell. It was the picture of a real battlefield. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... abandoned in this frightful solitude, remained without movement, as if stupefied, with hands joined and eyes turned towards heaven, till at last, pouring forth a torrent of tears, she exclaimed: "Cruel fortune, have you not yet exhausted your rage against me? To what new miseries ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... guarded—that is a very bad sign—I shall watch her closer," muttered Grim behind his closed teeth. And when the professor went home that day, his keen, pallid face was frightful to look upon. And many were the comments made ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... be sailed around on this yacht till you weaken, till we've caught the head devil, and then it only depends on him as to whether you go to the 'chair' with him or not!" It was a frightful alternative. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... sort of painful suspense, Jerusalem did not appear. We were two thousand feet above the Mediterranean, whose blue we could dimly see far to the west, through notches in the chain of hills. To the north, the mountains were gray, desolate, and awful. Not a shrub or a tree relieved their frightful barrenness. An upland tract, covered with white volcanic rock, lay before us. We met peasants with asses, who looked (to my eyes) as if they had just left Jerusalem. Still forward we urged our horses, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... problems in radar electronics during WWII. Indeed, the use of 'bug' to mean an industrial defect was already established in Thomas Edison's time, and 'bug' in the sense of an disruptive event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of 'bug' is "A frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to 'bugbear', a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced into the popular lexicon through fantasy ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... although I'm sure she was too hurt about it to go to him. She cried all the afternoon. It's a wonder she didn't look frightful! But that's Betty! Cry all day and come out looking like a star without any paint either. It's a pity somebody that would have appreciated it couldn't have had ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... frightful," I bleated. "Harris, this might conceivably be read by a real pilot. Heaven forbid, of course! And he'd simply hate this scout 'bus with the engine ahead to change into a 'pusher' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... dwellers in that town, And glad in soul; for help was come to pass After their grief. The flood subsided straight, And at the saint's behest the storm was stilled, The waters ceased. Then was the mountain cloven— A frightful chasm—into itself it drew The flood, and swallowed up the fallow waves, The struggling sea—the abyss devoured it all. 1590 Yet not the waves alone it swallowed up; But fourteen men, worst caitiffs of the throng, Went headlong ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... troops waited thus in the frightful tropical heat, monuments of patient endurance. The dead and the living lay side by side, though such of the wounded as could be reached were dragged back to dressing-stations on the river-banks. Even here they ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... European powers that are at present engaged in war, Austria-Hungary and Russia, whose differences for years have been constantly increasing in sharpness, and after the tragedy in Serajevo became impossible to be bridged by diplomacy, conjured up the frightful struggle. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... superior magnitude of the cliffs, which exceed in loftiness, and which rise perpendicularly—and, in some instances, in an impending manner—two or three hundred feet; and by which the entrance on this side is almost environed, as it were, by an amphitheatre of rude and frightful precipices. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... let him play 'Ha til mi tulidh' (we return no more) as long as I breathe." He was obeyed,—he died, it is said, before the dirge was finished. His tempestuous life was closed at the farm of Inverlochlarigbeg, (the scene, afterwards, of his son's frightful crimes,) in the Braes of Balquhidder. He died in 1735, and his remains repose in the parish churchyard, beneath a stone upon which some admirer of this extraordinary man has carved a sword. His funeral is said to have been attended by all ranks of people, and a deep regret was expressed for one whose ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... house-maid would find it there. Then she had an inspiration—the deep well of her uncle's battered old inkstand! Oh, to blacken the pearls, to stain the heavenly blue of the turquoise! It was almost too frightful. But it was right. She had hurt his feelings by saying she wished she didn't have to live with him, and she had insulted his dear, dear, dear picture! So, with a tearful hiccup, she dropped the locket into the ink-pot that ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... lunatic asylum, into which he had declared that he would throw her, flitted across her, and made her whole body shiver and shake; and again she remembered the horrid glare of his eye, the hot breath, and the frightful form of his visage, on the night when he almost told her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... "A frightful gorge," said Bourne; "but we seem to have come to the end. It closes in yonder. A ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... one of the mops, and dipping it in the pitch-pot, he and his man threw it among them so plentifully that, in short, of all the men in the three boats, there was not one that escaped being scalded in a most frightful manner, and made such a howling and crying that I never heard ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... it: all Picardy, for example, and all Sologne; nothing is uglier—and, oh my life! what frightful men ...
— English Satires • Various
... condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of Justice inclining ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the case of tropical plants and birds. When we see some of the monstrous and flamboyant blossoms that enrich the equatorial woods, we do not feel that they are conflagrations of nature; silent explosions of her frightful energy. We simply find it hard to believe that they are not wax flowers grown under a glass case. When we see some of the tropic birds, with their tiny bodies attached to gigantic beaks, we do not feel that they are freaks of the fierce ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... this moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... forever be abolished. Their day was over. The Netherlands were free provinces, they were surrounded by free countries, they were determined to vindicate their ancient privileges. Moreover, his Majesty was to be plainly informed of the frightful corruption which made the whole judicial and administrative system loathsome. The venality which notoriously existed every where, on the bench, in the council chamber, in all public offices, where ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Then he thought that Poseidon smiled at him, and held out his right hand, and said that for his sake he would give the Megarians a large shoal of anchovies. Those, then, that have such pleasant, clear, and painless dreams, and no frightful, or harsh, or malignant, or untoward apparition, may be said to have reflections of their progress in virtue; whereas agitation and panics and ignoble flights, and boyish delights, and lamentations ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... hell, accompanied by the curses of all wives and mothers." The executioner, in order to dispatch him, rudely tore away the bandage from his wound. He uttered a cry of horror; his lower jaw separated itself from the upper. The blood again flowed, and his head exhibited a spectacle of the most frightful kind. He died at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... plants, but especially of animals; and on the contrary, coldness and dryness are very noxious to both. And therefore Homer elegantly calls men moist and juicy: to rejoice he calls to be warmed; and anything that is grievous and frightful he calls cold and icy. Besides, the words [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted] are applied to the dead, those names intimating their extreme dryness. But more, our blood, the principal thing in our whole body, is moist and hot. And old ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... seeming to defy me. I turned my horse full round, so that his very chest almost touched the stones, and with a bold cut of the whip and a loud halloo, the gallant animal rose, as if rearing, pawed for an instant to regain his balance, and then, with a frightful struggle, fell backwards, and rolled from top to bottom of the hill, carrying me along with him; the last object that crossed my sight, as I lay bruised and motionless, being the captain as he took the wall in a flying ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... nerves. Then the great stay which supports the men is a profound, vague feeling of brotherhood which turns all hearts towards those who are fighting. Each one feels that the slight discomfort which he endures is only a feeble tribute to the frightful expense of all energy and all devotedness at ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... a fretful invalid. So I was seventeen, earning half a guinea a week, and she was eighteen, with no money, when we ran away to Brighton and got married. Poor old Pater, he took it awfully well, I have been a frightful drag on ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... were in a frightful mess; work had been suspended and everybody had gone away leaving everything as it was. Some were in perfect order, ready to go into operation again as soon as power was put on. It had depended, apparently, upon the personal character of whoever had been in charge in the end. The nuclear-electric ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with it; it has pride; it is the extreme of individual ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mountains which are so arid or so rough, or where the water is so bad that as yet they have not to any great extent been invaded by the white man. Again to the south and southwest, in portions of Arizona, Old Mexico, and Lower California, there rise out of frightful deserts buttes and mountain ranges inhabited by different forms of sheep. In that country water is extremely scarce, and the few water holes that exist are visited by the sheep only at long intervals. There are many men who believe that the sheep do not drink at ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... was, or whither I was going, I knew not. My only thought was to place as much distance as possible between me and that frightful chamber of torture. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissensions, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and, sooner or later, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly |
