"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Lisieux, is the pleasant country-house of M. Guizot. There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, a pretty patriarchal picture, the veteran statesman and historian reposes after the prodigious labors and tragic vicissitudes of his life. I say he reposes; but his pen is as active as ever, only that he has turned from politics and history to the more enduring and consoling topic of religion. He has just given us a volume on Christianity; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... father, with a prodigious yawn, had ended his narration and had betaken himself to sleep, for a long while Chona sat there in the open space before the jacal alone with her own thoughts. In the darkness and stillness—for only the low, soft rippling of the water broke in upon the peacefulness ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... three ready-made pin-cushions, four ink-wipers, seven paper matches, and a paste-board watch-case; these are welcomed with acclamations, and the youngest lady present deposits them carefully on shelves, amid a prodigious quantity of similar articles. She then produces her thimble, and asks for work; it is presented to her, and the eight ladies all stitch together for some hours. Their talk is of priests and of missions; of the profits of ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... mentioning Elkanah and his two wives, Elkanah means Christ and the two wives the Synagogue and the Church. Even such men as Alfred the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas were added to the forces at work in building above the sacred books this prodigious ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the Silence? Brotherhood prodigious, A babble-ridden age might well rejoice Could you but give instead of talk litigious, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... water and he was devoutly glad that he had built his platform of dead wood, upon which he could remain untouched by the flood, at least for the present. That it would suffice permanently he was not sure, as the rain was coming down at a prodigious rate, and there was no sign that ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brave. He and fear never met. The solitary fear he knew was fear of himself, and lest he might not live for good as the bishop had bidden him; but fear from without had never crossed his path. His was the bravery of conscience. His strength was prodigious, and he scrupled not to use it. Self-sparing was no trait of his character. Like another hero we have read of, he would "gladly spend and be spent" for others, and bankrupt himself, if thereby he might make others rich. There is a physical courage, brilliant ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... attainment intellectual or moral. But let us leave these impotent railers, and attend a little to more equitable judges. "Luther," says Wharton, in his appendix to Cave's Historia Literaria, "was a man of prodigious sagacity and acuteness, very warm, and formed for great undertakings; being a man, if ever there was one, whom nothing could daunt or intimidate. When the cause of religion was concerned, he never regarded whose love he was likely to gain, or whose displeasure ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... intendant was the royal man-of-all-work. The king spoke and the intendant transformed his words into action. As the sovereign's great interest in the colony moved him to speak often, the intendant's activity was prodigious. Ordinances, edicts, judgments and decrees fairly flew from his pen like sparks from an anvil. Nothing that needed setting aright was too inconsequential for a paternal order. An ordinance establishing ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... I made a trip to Crocky's Island, situated on the opposite side of the Strait. On landing at Hellgate, within Fools' Inlet my surprise was much excited by the prodigious flocks of gulls, pigeons, and geese, which were directing their flight towards the Great Fish Lake, whither I, too, was making my way. I concluded their object was to procure food, of which a profusion was here spread ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... minute by the assassins. The girl's presence of mind saved me; she flew back to the end of the gallery, threw open a small door which led to the roof; and I was in the open air, with the stars bright above me, and a prodigious extent of the country, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of the river and over the bank on which I stood, are neither to be expressed nor conceived. When the snow falls, with the largest flakes and with the least interval between them, the air is not so full of them as that which surrounded the Ephemerae." The occurrence of such prodigious numbers is, I believe, unknown in the British isles. In the perfect or imago state the May-fly lives but a short time. The word ephemera means "living only for a day;" and though individuals may live ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... saw, I stepped a little farther in. The narrow paved way descended swiftly. Prodigious tall houses sprang up on each side and bulged out, one story beyond another, as they rose. At the top only a ribbon of sky showed in. By what I could spy in the windows, and by the respectable persons that passed out and in, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... strength was in the City yesterday; and though Grote beat Palmer at last, and after a severe struggle, by a very small majority, it is so far consolatory to the Conservative interest that it shows a prodigious change since the last general election, when the Conservative candidate was 2,000 ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the wide strip of beach, was clothed with an enormous and riotous growth of calamaries, tree-ferns, cane and palm, which rocked and crashed in places as if some colossal wayfarers were pushing through them. Here and there along the edge of the cliffs sat tall beings with prodigious, saw-toothed beaks, like some species of bird conceived ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... headlong across the bridge or were drowned in the stream, which is said to have been literally choked with dead. But for a time the advance of the English was stayed; for one Norseman, a man of great stature and prodigious strength, took post in the middle of the narrow bridge and barred the way to the English host. But one foe could attack him at a time, and so great was his strength and prowess that it is said forty Englishmen fell under the mighty blows of his two-handed sword, and at last he was only over-powered ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... continued, "By Allah, O my lady, I cannot fill my eye with the twain!"[FN174] Then cried her father Al-Shisban to her, What be this laughing?" So she bespoke him in a tongue none understood but they two and acquainted him with that which Tohfah had said; whereat he laughed a prodigious loud laugh, as it were the roaring thunder. Presently they ate and the tables were removed and they washed their hands; after which Iblis the Accursed came up to Tohfah and said to her, "O my lady, thou gladdenest the place and enlightenest and embellishes" it with thy presence; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the power of seeing analogies. The number that Fechner could perceive was prodigious; but he insisted on the differences as well. Neglect to make allowance for these, he said, is the common fallacy in analogical reasoning. Most of us, for example, reasoning justly that, since all the minds we know are connected with bodies, therefore God's ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... since his early, dreamy days, or since the period of his honest exertions as a drover. Rob Roy had become in repute with Robin Hood of the Lowlands. His personal appearance added greatly to the impression of his singular qualities. The author of "the Highland Rogue" describes him as a man of prodigious strength, and of such uncommon stature as to approach almost to a gigantic size. He wore a beard above a foot long, and his face as well as his body was covered with dark red hair, from which his nick-name originated. The description given by Sir Walter Scott does not entirely ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... egregious mood—rather moved, Lord forgive me, at the pathos of poor Stroud's career of failure being crowned by the glory of my painting him! Of course I meant to do the picture for nothing—I told Mrs. Stroud so when she began to stammer something about her poverty. I remember getting off a prodigious phrase about the honour being mine—oh, I was princely, my dear Rickham! I was posing to myself like ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... I don't deny," said Herries, "that volume and vitality are what matters most. Scott's imagination was at once prodigious and profound. He seems to me to have said to his creations, 'Let the young men now arise and play before us.' But I don't think his art was the better for his carelessness. Great and noble as the result was, I think it would have been greater if he had taken more pains. Of course one regards ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... especially interesting at the present juncture. A general, who had served in the famous campaigns of Europe, commanded Cossacks, fought with Turks, talked with Frederick the Great, and been aide-de-camp to the king of Poland, was a prodigious acquisition to the patriot cause! On the other hand, his visit to Boston was looked upon with uneasiness by the British officers, who knew his adventurous character. It was surmised that he was exciting a spirit of revolt, with a view to putting himself ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... here in the Preface those under-headed Poets, Retainers to seven shares and a halfe; Madrigall fellowes, whose onely business in verse, is to rime a poore six-penny soule a Suburb sinner into hell;—May such arrogant pretenders to Poetry vanish, with their prodigious issue of tumorous heats, and flashes of their adulterate braines, and for ever after, may this our Poet fill up the better roome of man. Oh! when the generall arraignment of Poets shall be, to give an accompt of their higher ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Nature still waited for a full return of the capital she had invested in the ancient club-mosses. The eighteenth century arrived, and with it James Watt. The brain of that man was the spore out of which was developed the modern steam-engine, and all the prodigious trees and branches of modern industry which have grown out of this. But coal is as much an essential condition of this growth and development as carbonic acid is for that of a club-moss. Wanting coal, we could not have smelted the iron needed to make our engines, nor have worked ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... corybantic dancing! No, he rejected the theory. Music is sometimes hypnotic, but not such music; dancing is the most alluring of the spatial arts, and Debora's miming was a delight to the eye; but could it have so obscured his judgments as to paint upon the canvas of his fancy those prodigious frescoes of time ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... The library, which was kept in the episcopal residence in Ely Place, Holborn, where it occupied 'eight chambers,' is mentioned in Notices of London Libraries, by John Bagford and William Oldys, where it is stated that 'Dr. John Moore, the late Bishop of Ely, had also a prodigious collection of books, written as well as printed on vellum, some very ancient, others finely illuminated. He had a Capgrave's Chronicle, books of the first printing at Mentz, and other places abroad, as also at Oxford, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... married. All his own children are illegitimate, but he has everything in his power, though nobody has any notion of the manner in which he will dispose of his property. It is impossible not to reflect upon the prodigious wealth of the Earls of Northumberland, and of the proud Duke of Somerset who married the last heiress of that house, the betrothed of three husbands. All that Lord Egremont has, all the Duke of Northumberland's property, and the Duke of Rutland's Cambridgeshire estate belonged to them, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... and Balzac take much in common; as individuals they strongly resemble each other; their differences are chiefly differences of race. Each was a man of affairs, an active, practical man, with a temperament of almost phenomenal vigor and a prodigious quantity of life to expend. Each had a character and a will—what is nowadays called a personality—which imposed themselves irresistibly; each had a boundless self-confidence and a magnificent egotism. Each had always a hundred irons on the fire; ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... dwelt until such time as he went forth with Higelac on his fatal expedition against the Frisians, who were backed by a strong alliance of Chauci, and Chattuarii, and Franks; and there Higelac fell, and his army perished. Beowulf, by prodigious swimming, reached his home again, where now was a young widowed queen and her infant son. She offered herself and her kingdom to Beowulf; he preferred the office of the faithful guardian. At a later time the young king fell in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... my heart in my throat. The noise seemed to come from the hall,—a prodigious pounding. Presently it stopped, and a man's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... battle, let us remember, also, that the battle is to those who fight with faith and undespairing devotion. Knowing that nothing is worth fighting for at all unless God reigns, let us, at least, believe as much in the goodness of God as we do in the dexterity of the devil. And, viewing this prodigious spectacle of our country—this hope of humanity, this young America, our America—taking the sun full in its front, and making for the future as boldly and blithely as the young David for Goliath, let us believe with all our hearts, and from that ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... accepted an offer from Thomas Wedgwood to become his companion on a tour, and he spent this and the greater part of the following month in South Wales with some temporary advantage, it would seem, to his health and spirits. "Coleridge," writes Mr. Wedgwood to a friend, "is all kindness to me, and in prodigious favour here. He is quite easy, cheerful, and takes great pains to make himself pleasant. He is willing, indeed desirous, to accompany me to any part of the globe." "Coll and I," he writes on another occasion, the abbreviation of name ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably not far from the mark),—what almost prodigious saving may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... hardly out of his mouth when his voice was silenced for ever. With one prodigious heave of his whole physical force, Israel smote him over the taffrail into the sea, as if the man had fallen backwards over a teetering chair. By this time the two officers were hurrying aft. Ere meeting them midway, Israel, quick as lightning, cast off the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... at a distance of thirteen miles the mean effect of the new light is very much superior to the mean effect of the old light (perhaps in the ratio of two to one). 2. That at all distances the new light has a prodigious superiority to the old, from the equality of its effects in all azimuths. 3. That the new light fulfils rigorously the conditions required for the distribution of light to the greatest advantage. 4. That at distances much exceeding thirteen miles, the new light must ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... restored. A Thanksgiving dinner in the year 1906 would have been found more like a Thanksgiving dinner in 1806 than the dinner to which Mr. Homos was asked in 1893, and which he has studied so interestingly, though not quite without some faults of taste and discretion. The prodigious change for the better in some material aspects of our status which has taken place in the last twelve years could nowhere be so well noted as in the picture he gives us of the housing of our people in 1893. His study ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... all Hellenic actions which are on record, this was the greatest—the most glorious to the victors, the most ruinous to the vanquished; for they were utterly and at all points defeated, and their sufferings were prodigious. Fleet and army perished from the face of the earth; nothing was saved, and of the many who ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... of light we have little more than conjectures. It is considered by most philosophers as a real substance, immediately emanating from the sun, and from all luminous bodies, from which it is projected in right lines with prodigious velocity. Light, however, being imponderable, it cannot be confined and examined by itself; and therefore it is to the effects it produces on other bodies, rather than to its immediate nature, that ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... an enormous head and a spare body and short legs. His face was wrinkled like a piece of wet shrivelled silk and his skin was the colour of parchment. His eyes, very small and deep-set, were surmounted by heavy brows once black, now of an iron grey. His mouth was of prodigious width, the lips thin and straight and his nose long, narrow and pointed. He wore a dirty wig which was always awry, a faded mulberry coloured coat, and a frayed velvet waistcoat reaching halfway down ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... furnaces and mills at the foundry, which, with the levels, roads, and more than twenty miles of iron railways, gave employment to a very large number of people. "The advancement of the iron trade within these few years," said he, "has been prodigious. It was thought, and justly, that the making of pig-iron with pit coal was a great acquisition to the country by saving the wood and supplying a material to manufactures, the production of which, by the consumption of all the wood the country produced, was formerly unequal to the demand, and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Doubter falling on a stercoraceous heap of compost, in the rear of the house, began forthwith to vegetate. Its broad brim, spread forth grandly and exfoliated, and its round crown swelled and crimped and consolidated until the whole became a prodigious cabbage, rivalling in magnitude the capacious head of the Doubter. In a word, it was the origin of that renowned species of cabbage known, by all Dutch epicures, by the name of the Governor's Head, and which is to this day ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... that was lying upon the plain; with this he struck the shield of Ajax on the boss that was in its middle, so that the bronze rang again. But Ajax in turn caught up a far larger stone, swung it aloft, and hurled it with prodigious force. This millstone of a rock broke Hector's shield inwards and threw him down on his back with the shield crushing him under it, but Apollo raised him at once. Thereon they would have hacked at one another in close combat with their swords, had not heralds, messengers of gods ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... qualm, whatever instruments they found at hand. They had been obliged, in 1861, to turn aside and waste immense energy in settling what had been settled a thousand years before, and should never have been revived. At prodigious expense, by sheer force, they broke resistance down, leaving everything but the mere fact of power untouched, since nothing else had a solution. Race and thought were beyond reach. Having cleared its path so far, society went back to its work, and threw itself on ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a motley crowd of woebegone wretches who had spent the night in the rain. Such prodigious misery! and so much of it! Old men, young men, all manner of men, and boys to boot, and all manner of boys. Some were drowsing standing up; half a score of them were stretched out on the stone steps in most painful postures, all of them sound asleep, the skin of their bodies ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... his fingers. Maudron saw a chance of getting it without committing himself, and quick as the thought leapt up in his mind he stooped, and grasped the paper, and would have leapt back with it! But quick as he, and quicker, Tavannes too stooped, gripped him by the waist, and with a prodigious effort, and a yell in which all the man's stormy nature, restrained to a part during the last few minutes, broke forth, he flung the ill-fated wretch ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... have the light properly distributed so that the rooms may be suffused with just the proper glow, but never a glare; so that the base outlets for reading-lamps shall be at convenient angles, so that the wall lights shall be beautifully balanced,—all this means prodigious thought and care before the actual placing ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... rain came pouring down; they passed the time chatting about women, thefts and crimes. Two or three of these youngsters had a home to go to, but they didn't care to go. One, who was called El Mariane, related a number of notable tricks and swindles; others, who displayed prodigious skill and ingenuity, roused the gathering to enthusiasm. After this theme had been exhausted, a few suggested a game of cane, and the idler with the long black locks, whom they called El Canco, sang in a low ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... it," exclaimed Crosby in dismay. He saw a prodigious fee slipping through his fingers. "Gad, I must see her about this," he went on, starting down the ladder, only to go back again hastily. The growling dog leaped forward and stood ready to receive ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... of defense was begun at dawn, and Robert, whom no one disturbed, witnessed a scene of prodigious energy. The whole French army threw itself heart and soul into the task. The men, hot under the July sun, threw aside their coats, and the officers, putting their own hands to the work, did likewise. There was a continuous ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... difference? I answer fearlessly,—The prodigious development of physical science within the last ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... days occurred to break the monotony of our existence except innumerable unsuccessful chases which sorely tried our first lieutenant's temper, and the capture of a prodigious quantity of fish. So abundant was the supply that it was the business of the mate of the dog-watch to see that what were not eaten were thrown overboard every night, to prevent the people from keeping them too long. At length I was ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... he forgot Ruby, he forgot Egypt, he forgot everything except that greatest creation which man has ever accomplished; that creation which by its inexorable calm and prodigious power rouses in some hearts terror and sets peace in some, stirs some natures to aspiration, and crushes others to the ground with an overwhelming sense of their impotence, their smallness, their fugitive existence, and ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... naval authorities, who in 1833 backed the side paddles, have since adopted the screw in most of the ships-of-war. In all long sea-going voyages, also, the screw is now the favourite mode of propulsion. Screw ships of prodigious size are now built and launched in all the ship-building ports of Britain, and are sent out to navigate in every part ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... shall come, that great avenging day Which Troy's proud glories in the dust shall lay, When Priam's powers and Priam's self shall fall, And one prodigious ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... fitting time to make a pilgrimage to the last resting-place of the great humanist philosopher of Rotterdam and Louvain, for in that prodigious upheaval of the sixteenth century, which has passed into history as the Reformation, Erasmus was the one noble spirit who looked with a tolerant and philosophical mind upon both parties to the great controversy. He suffered the fate of the ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... beside the rock with a prodigious whoof that roused Muskwa. The cub got up, blinked at Thor and then at the sun, and shook himself ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... blessing of a father's love. As I entered the proud portal of the ancestral palace, my emotions were so great that I could not speak. No one knew me. The servants gazed at me with curiosity and surprise. A few years of intellectual elevation and development had made a prodigious change in the poor fugitive stripling from the convent. Still that no one should know me in my rightful home was overpowering. I felt like the prodigal son returned. I was a stranger in the house of my father. I burst into tears, and wept aloud. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and a large proportion of the discoveries are the result of his courage, intelligence, and untiring zeal. His vocation has brought him into contact with many intellectual and scientific men, and a prodigious memory, he has profited much by intercourse with superior minds. He can recollect every body that ever visited the cave, and all the terms of geology and mineralogy are at his tongue's end. He is extremely attentive, and peculiarly polite to ladies. Like most of his race, he is fond of grandiloquent ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... agent; and when the latter returned, after making a double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase of cottons at a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his family in the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the principles of banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of a native ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... as, dishevelled and perspiring, she waddled toward the steps of her coach; while the Mayor, his Adam's apple fairly pumping importance, led a sturdy band of thirsters recruited from among the train passengers across the flat toward a building over the door of which was fixed a pair of horns of prodigious spread. Lest some pilgrim of erring judgment should mistake the horns for short ones, or misapprehend the nature of the business conducted within, the white false front of the building proclaimed in letters of black a foot high: LONG HORN SALOON. While beneath the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Hank Butts, vainly trying to stifle a prodigious yawn. "This may be what Mr. Seaton calls a vacation on full pay, ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... that "as this disease is communicated very easily and can infect in a very short time a prodigious number of horses by means of the discharges which may be licked up, animals infected with glanders should ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him. "'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it, considering ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... arrived at the creek, the British were scuttling a ferry boat on the opposite side. He took a position behind trees, and gave them a well directed and deadly fire; they ran to their arms and returned a prodigious volley, which did no more harm than that of knocking off the limbs of trees among the riflemen. Doyle had received news, which occasioned him to retreat for Camden. The ferry boat being now scuttled and sunk on the opposite side, and Lynch's creek ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... before the public—and my publisher credibly informs me that it has not yet appeared—I beg and entreat the public to state which it likes best, the life of Abershaw, or that of Sell, for which latter work I am informed that during the last few months there has been a prodigious demand. My old friend, however, after talking of Abershaw, would frequently add that, good rider as Abershaw certainly was, he was decidedly inferior to Richard Ferguson, generally called Galloping Dick, who was a pal of Abershaw's, and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... "I feel for your sorrows more than I can express. Might I but have the happiness to be presented to your mama; for 'tis the most prodigious circumstance—I am the son of Sir Francis Lepel of Tarrington in Yorkshire, and I have heard him speak of my Lord Mayo many a time. His Lordship stood second to my grandfather in his famous duel with Lord Ayrshire thirty year since. My name will not ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... constantly one Way half the Year, might carry them directly to America, over the vast South Sea Ocean; in which Passage their greatest Danger of Death might be Hunger and Thirst; but they, that know the Indians, know also, that they can bear Want a prodigious while; and what might they not bear, when the Divine Power was miraculously concerned in it, for Purposes known to the ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones
... only by long-continued industry.[231] South American Indians made tools for printing tattoo patterns on the body. They were blocks, on each face of which a pattern was raised, perhaps a different one on each side.[232] It should be noticed what prodigious power a large body of men can put forth when they all work at the same task and are greatly interested in it. They begin by the same process, but the process differentiates and improves in their hands. Each gains skill and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... her intimate friends says that "in every line of her face there was powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what otherwise might have been terror into fascination!" We are told that ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... distance on the way toward London with Home, when he carried his tragedy of "Douglas" for examination to the critics. Six other clergymen, accompanied the precious manuscript on that expedition, and the fun was prodigious. Garrick read the play and pronounced it totally unfit for the stage! "Douglas" was afterwards brought out in Edinburgh with unbounded success. David Hume ran about crying it up as the first performance he world had seen for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... brain—never did a wretch fevered with gluttony and intemperance, and writhing under the pressure of the night-mare, dream of more horrible circumstances than those which Mr. Lewis has offered in this prodigious melo-drame, for the ENTERTAINMENT of the British nation. Where will the taste of England stop in its descent? Where will the impositions on it by bastard genius end? Yet since this monster has produced a powerful effect, and is managed with such perverted skill ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of monstrous shape. A fish like a man. Plinie writeth of the like fish.] Furthermore, from the springs of the same riuer, the riuer Cassima hath his originall, which running through Lucomoria, falleth into the great riuer Tachnin, beyond the which (as is said) dwell men of prodigious shape, of whom some are ouergrowen with haire like wilde beastes, other haue heads like dogges, and their faces in their breasts, without neckes, and with long hands also, and without feete. There is likewise in the riuer Tachnin a certaine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... not have realized, is that will-power can over-rule external forces and principles—as for example—gravity. As a matter of fact, airships and aeroplanes are absolutely superfluous—and the time, money and labour they involve is a prodigious waste. Any man with strong mental capacity can fly without the aid of mechanism. He has only to will himself to be in the air—and he is there. Look!" And to the amazement—the indescribable, unparalleled amazement—of all present, Mr. Kelson knit his brows, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... with anywhere else. One of the greatest dangers, he told me, in passing this mount in winter, arises from a ball of snow, which is blown down from the top by the wind, or falls down by some other accident; which, gathering all the way in its descent, becomes instantly of such a prodigious bigness, that there is hardly any avoiding being carried away with it, man and beast, and smothered in it. One of these balls we saw rolling down; but as it took another course than ours, we had no ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... Anxious to behold this prodigious illumination at its best, Leonard Holt committed the replenishing of the pile and the custody of the house to Dallison, and hastened to Saint Paul's. A great fire was burning at each angle of the cathedral, but without pausing to notice the effect ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... five years. It has made a history. It has become ever greater and more firmly fixed in and on American society. It has made itself to be the foundation of all things financial and political in the United States. The story of the process by which this prodigious result has been reached is narrated by Mr. Clews in the manner of one who gives an account of the formation of a temperance society or a Sunday school! In the whole article there does not appear a symptom of a suspicion ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... annually a Pope's Bula or Bull—a small pardon, or indulgence, or plenary remission of sins. The exact meaning of these things is a little obscure; the high authorities themselves do not universally agree about them, except so far as to say that they are of prodigious value of some sort. The orthodox explanation, I believe, is something of this kind. With every sin there is the moral guilt and the temporal penalty. The pardon cannot touch the guilt; but when the guilt ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... ships. But he was a powerful young man, and an expert swimmer; he seized on one of the projecting ribs of the nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair, uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the prodigious rush of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... merry again, Mr Lorton," she said, with a prodigious sigh, which seemed to come from the depths of her heart, "since poor dear papa died;" and she then passed on mournfully homewards, with Bessie and Seraphine in her wake. Their cheerful faces, as they nodded back and smiled at Horner and myself, contrasted strongly with their mother's lugubrious ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... so long since an instance at Christie's, and a second at Sotheby's, where the high quotations were entirely due to the competition of a so-called interloper, who bade, as he thought, on the judgment of the room, and was signally handicapped. Again, something has ere now been carried to a prodigious figure owing to an unlimited commission inadvertently given to two agents. The old Duke of Wellington once gave L105 in this way for a shilling pamphlet, and even then the bidding was only stopped by arrangement. However, of all the miraculous surprises, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Towns; the Lord of this Place was very poor, rather because he coveted much, than that he wanted any Thing. God has afflicted the Inhabitants with a general Inclination in them all to be Projectors, so that the Land seemed to be infested with as many Monsters as there were Men: So prodigious was the natural Proneness to projecting in that Country, that the very sucking Babes cried out Project, before they could say Papa or Mamma; the whole island was a confused Chaos, for Man and Wife, Father and Son, Neighbour and Neighbor, were ever jangling about their ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... impenetrable woods, except where paths have been cut. It has three lakes, one communicating with the other, containing great quantities of fish. The Monastery, it is evident from the remains of its ruins, and from the boundary wall, still entire, must have been of prodigious extent. M. Boderie informed me, that the plan, of which he had seen an engraving, showed it to have been one of the most considerable in the kingdom: some idea may be formed of its former celebrity and extent by the remains of six hundred fire-places being still traceable. A colonnade ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... permission to milk a cow; and after bringing the senora some of the milk, under pretext of being the interpreter of my wishes, he would maintain such a flow of ingeniously courteous conversation, praising the beauty and grace of the lady, and most modestly allowing his prodigious travelling adventures to be extracted from him, that both knight and esquire beamed with brilliant radiance. A present was always welcome, and brought us many a little basket of oranges; and carabao milk is excellent with chocolate: ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... crumpled and disordered garments, I turned to face the formidable row of Mission staff drawn up in solemn array to greet us. As the doctor-in-charge stepped forward and with a bland smile hoped I had had a "comfortable journey," and bade me welcome to St. Antoine, with a prodigious effort I contorted my features into something resembling a grin, and limply shook his outstretched hand. To-morrow I mean to make enquiries about ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... children, or of their nephews and nieces, if they had no children, or of their cousins, if they had no nephews, obliged them, they said, to seek employment from the government. The great strength of the heads of the state in France, is the prodigious taste that the people have for places; vanity even makes them more sought for, than the emolument attached to them. Bonaparte received thousands of petitions for every office, from the highest to the lowest. ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... George estimated that it must have been thirty or forty feet diameter at the base. If, now, you ask your father, or some friend, how high the steeple is of the nearest church to where you live, and multiply that height by the necessary number, you will get some idea of the magnitude of this prodigious column. The lightning rod, that came down the side of it in a spiral line, looked like a spider's web that had been, by chance, blown against the chimney by ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... mistaken, it was assuredly a condor. This magnificent bird is the king of the Southern Andes, and was formerly worshiped by the Incas. It attains an extraordinary development in those regions. Its strength is prodigious. It has frequently driven oxen over the edge of precipices down into the depths of abysses. It seizes sheep, and kids, and young calves, browsing on the plains, and carries them off to inaccessible ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... up to the boat—in fact was within the length of his own body of touching it. Believing himself now near enough, he made one of his prodigious bounds, and launched himself forward. His sharp claws rattled against the birch-bark, tearing a large flake from the craft. Had this not given way, his hold would have been complete; and the boat would, in all likelihood, have been dragged, stern foremost, under ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... the Fairfaxes have intermarried, ascending to very great antiquity; besides, every pane of glass in a very large bay window in the same room is stained with one of these coats of arms. Every morning after breakfast a prodigious flock of pea-fowl came from the woods around to ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... convince you of the propriety of doing so. My brother was curate on a time to Mr. Fawkes, of Orpington, in Kent: it was when I lived in the Temple. One morning, as I was reading by the fireside, I heard a prodigious lumbering at the door. I opened it, and beheld a most rural figure, with very dirty boots, and a great coat as dirty. Supposing that my great fame as a barrister had drawn upon me a client from some remote ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of hound, with a thick tawny coat and large paws, possessing prodigious strength. He was good-tempered and obedient, but at the same time it was very evident that he could fight desperately with those powerful jaws of his. Patting his head, I told him that he was to accompany us, and he ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... half closed I watched the sale of these tins, and grew familiar with the ham's inevitable trademark—that label with the devil and his horns and hoofs and tail very pronounced, all colored a sultry prodigious scarlet. And when each horseman had made his purchase, he would trail his spurs over the floor, and presently the sound of his horse's hoofs would be the last of him. Through my dozing attention came various fragments of talk, and sometimes useful bits of knowledge. For instance, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of circumstances," he observed, "produces revolutions in governments, from democracy, to aristocracy, and monarchy. Great wealth produces a desire of distinctions, rank, and titles. The revolutions of property, in this country, have created a prodigious inequality of circumstances. Government has contributed to this inequality. The bank of the United States is a most important machine in promoting the objects of this monied interest. This bank will be the most powerful engine ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... destroying the fortress, she ascended several thousand feet, and continued her eastward course at such a prodigious speed, that in less than five minutes ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... verses entitled "Harzreise im Winter," thoughts lie scattered about like erratic strata in the world of geology, and feelings that are as big and terrible as the flames from burning planets. In Daniel's work the whole of Goethe's prodigious sorrow and solemnity seemed to have been transformed automatically ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... through these mountains last summer and reflecting upon the prodigious changes which the sheep have brought about in a few years, it occurred to me that we must look to Oriental countries in order to see the final results of sheep and goat grazing in semi-arid climates. I have proposed as an historical thesis a subject which at first appears somewhat humorous, namely, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... wish that the grounds of the little "porcelain house" at Trianon be chosen as the scene of the second fete, which took place a week later. In an open-air enclosure, decorated by "a prodigious quantity of flowers," the guests listened to the "Eglogue de Versailles," composed for the occasion by Lully, leader of the Petits-Violons, Louis' favorite Court orchestra. Afterwards all the nobles and their fair companions returned to sup at Versailles ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... said, quietly. "There must be something great about a man capable of such prodigious self-sacrifice. For at heart Lawrence Mannering is an ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was the greatest town in England for large colliers or coal-ships employed between Newcastle and London. Also they built the biggest ships and the best, for the said fetching of coals of any that were employed in that trade. They built, also, there so prodigious strong, that it was an ordinary thing for an Ipswich collier, if no disaster happened to him, to reign (as seamen call it) forty or fifty years, ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, 'Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 'and tell me what thou seest.' 'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.' 'The valley that thou seest,' said he, 'is the Vale of Misery, and the Tide of Water that thou seest is part of the great Tide of Eternity,' 'What is the reason,' said ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... to grow into the soil, and his feet ground deeper into the soft dirt, and ever there was something in him remaining to be tapped. It seemed to the brothers to be merely vast, unexplored recesses of muscle, but even then it was a prodigious thing to watch the strain on the stump increase moment by moment. That something of the spirit was being called upon to aid in the work was ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... that way?" he asked, with a laugh to ease matters a little, while Simpson, too sleepy to notice this subtle by-play, moved off to bed with a prodigious yawn; "or—or anything wrong with the country?" he added, when his nephew ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... unconnected with the people is essential to a ministry unconnected with the people; and therefore those who saw through what mighty difficulties the interior ministry waded, and the exterior were dragged, in this business, will conceive of what prodigious importance, the new corps of king's men held this principle of occasional and personal incapacitation, to the whole body of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... King Harold showed himself a man. He turned at once from the North of England to the South. He raised the folk of the Southern, as he had raised those of the Central and Northern shires; and in sixteen days—after a march which in those times was a prodigious feat—he was entrenched upon the fatal down which men called Heathfield then, and Senlac, but Battle to this day—with William and his French Normans opposite ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... was formed of blocks of prodigious size, and closed by stone gates which no human power could have forced unless the secret of opening them were known. Within these halls were kept the riches of the Pharaoh, and the booty taken from conquered nations. They held ingots of precious metals, crowns of gold and silver, neckplates and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... successor as manager at Drury Lane, and Thomas Shadwell, the fashionable writer of comedies, largely echoed their old mentor's words when, in conversation with Aubrey, they credited Shakespeare with "a most prodigious wit," and declared that they "did admire his natural parts beyond all ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... gipsies, stupidly obedient, placed themselves in their usual corners of the platform. Then Ursus became wonderful. It was no longer a man, but a crowd. Obliged to make abundance out of emptiness, he called to aid his prodigious powers of ventriloquism. The whole orchestra of human and animal voices which was within him he called ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... time before between two and three pounds had been scraped out of the rectum. Cases are reported by Dr. Graves of Dublin, which he saw in women, where from the great distentions in certain directions of the abdomen, the one was considered to be owing to a prodigious hypertrophy of the liver, and the other of the ovary; in the latter of which he removed a bucket-full of feces in two days. Mr. Wilmot of London has recently given a case where a gallon of matter was lodged in the caecum, and ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... avoid by dexterously springing aside. The respective armies and their leaders animated the courage of their warriors by battle-songs, till the horns were blown again; the armies once more slowly approached each other; the champions retired into their ranks, and the battle was renewed with a prodigious noise; spears waved in the air; pandana seed flew from the delicate hands of the female warriors, over the heads of their husbands, upon the enemy, but the armies never came near enough to be really engaged. The leaders remained ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... a howdah may be subjected to the most severe strain, especially should a tiger spring upon the head of an elephant, and the animal exert its prodigious strength to throw off its assailant. The irons for fastening the girths should therefore be of the toughest quality, and, instead of actual girths, only thick ropes of cotton ought to be used. A girth secured with a buckle is most dangerous, as, should the buckle give way, an ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Roger. Then it may well be that, even if you carried the scheme to a successful end, and returned laden with wealth, the king and his counselors, when the matter came to their ears—which it would be sure to do on your return, for it would make a prodigious talk—might be grievously offended, accuse us of embroiling England with Spain, confiscate the cargo, visit me with fine and imprisonment, and treat you and the crew ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... accomplishments were very great. His fecundity was prodigious, and he wrote at will in seven languages. 'This polyglot facility was not in itself a very remarkable circumstance, for it grew out of his necessary education and geographical position. Few men in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sight of horses down a ship's hold is a novel one. Each is in a stall of such dimensions that the animal cannot be knocked about. All heads are inwards, and each horse has his own trough. At a certain time in the day lucerne hay is issued. This is the signal for a prodigious amount of stamping and noise on the part of the animals. They throw their heads about, snort and neigh, and seem as if they would jump over the barriers in their frantic effort to get a good feed. Horses on land are nice ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... East, who had a pinched wasp-waist, such as you may see on the old Hindoo sculptures, and such as you may see in any street in a British town. And when the Greek ladies of the neighbourhood found her out, they sent for her from house to house, to behold, with astonishment and laughter, this new and prodigious, waist, with which it seemed to them it was impossible for a human being to breathe or live; and they petted the poor girl, and fed her, as they might a dwarf or a giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our present ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... inch longer than in the rock-pigeon. The upper mandible is often slightly arched. The tongue is very long. The development of the carunculated skin or wattle round the eyes, over the nostrils, and on the lower mandible, is prodigious. The eyelids, measured longitudinally, were in some specimens exactly twice as long as in the rock-pigeon. The external orifice or furrow of the nostrils was also twice as long. The open mouth in its widest part was in one case .75 of an inch in width, whereas in the rock-pigeon it is only about ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... by a loud noise, and looking out, saw a wonderful scene. The superb plumes of the cocoa-nut trees were motionless against a sky blazing with stars. Four large elephants, part of the regalia of a deposed Sultan, one of them, the Royal Elephant, a beast of prodigious size, were standing at the door, looking majestic; mahouts were flitting about with torches; Sikhs, whose great stature was exaggerated by the fitful light—some in their undress white robes, and others ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... himself. It was said of a famous French commander, that, in attacking an enemy, he did not say to his men 'go on,' but 'come on;' and, whoever has well observed the movements of domestics, must know what a prodigious difference there is in the effect of ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... "No, not at all; he was a man quite other than that; a man of an immense head and great jaws like a crocodile's, cast in a mold designed for prodigious work." ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... snow line, past the fir woods, into the depths of a lovely lake, far down in the valley below. It was a lake of liquid amber, and as he looked it seemed to become two lakes, and they were like two great eyes looking up at him and summoning him to leap. He thought that he leaped, a prodigious leap, far out into space; then fell—fell—fell. When he splashed into the amber deeps they became churned up in a milky foam, and this closed about him with a strangle grip. But it was no longer foam, but the clinging ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... heard us, and was making for the opposite shore of the fiord with prodigious bounds. I jumped to the up-standers of the flying sledge, leaving Egingwah to throw himself on it and get his breath, and away we went, wild with excitement, across the snow-covered surface of ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... it may, the chances were that the tarag alone would profit by the law of the arena. A few more of his long strides, a prodigious leap, and he would be upon the girl. I raised a revolver and fired. The bullet struck him in the left hind leg. It couldn't have damaged him much; but the report of the shot ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that none but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. Then I could stand it no more. ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... wall removed for your better view. It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment that was to the whole corps,—actors, actresses, and scene-painter!—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... there a little before by Fundanus, the bishop of Abitina, who in that same place had given up to the magistrates the sacred books to be burnt: but a violent shower suddenly falling, put out the fire, and a prodigious ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... destruction, ruin within ruin! 295 The wrecks beside of many a city vast, Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons, Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes 300 Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these, The anatomies of unknown winged things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... use of these means to shelter himself against the possibility of the Marechal's return, and to attach himself to the King without reserve. The prodigious success of his schemes has been only too ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... insertion of the tail, above 16 feet in circumference round the body, and stands above 7 feet high. It runs with astonishing swiftness for its great bulk, at the bottom of lakes and rivers, but not with as much ease on land. When excited, it puts forth its full strength, which is prodigious. "I have seen," says a mariner, as we find it in Dampier, "one of these animals open its jaws, and seizing a boat between its teeth, at once bite and sink it to the bottom. I have seen it on another occasion place itself under one of our boats, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... Persian army. Weeks passed by, the time of the inundation was approaching, and it seemed as if this policy of delay would have its accustomed success, when an unforeseen incident decided in a moment the fate of Egypt. Among the officers of Ochus was a certain Nicostratus of Argos, who on account of his prodigious strength was often compared to Heracles, and who out of vanity dressed himself up in the traditional costume of that hero, the lion's skin and the club. Having imbibed, doubtless, the ideas formerly propounded ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... slightly more than a mile, during every fraction of which the fugitive put forth his highest possible effort. Such a terrific strain cannot fail to tell upon the most highly trained animal, and so, despite all he could do, the buck found himself unable to keep up his prodigious tension. He was losing ground, and he could not fail to know that escape was out of the question: he was as much doomed as if surrounded and driven at bay by a dozen hunters and their hounds. He was still running at his highest bent, ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... whirled among the masses of rock that had fallen into its channel. As they crept cautiously on, leading their solitary pack-horse along these giddy heights, they all at once came to where the river thundered down a succession of precipices, throwing up clouds of spray, and making a prodigious din and uproar. The travellers remained, for a time, gazing with mingled awe and delight, at this furious cataract, to which Mr. Stuart gave, from the color of the impending rocks, the name ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... the leg and the wing of the capercailzie without any further mastication, and launched out in a torrent of admiration of the most prodigious courage the world ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... De Quincey psychologically preconformed to opium. The prodigious mental activity so early awakened in him counteracted the narcotic despotism of the drug, and made it a sort of ally. The reader sees from this how much depends upon predispositions as to the effect of opium. De Quincey himself says that the man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... got forward with their business this day, that they might be ready with a clear conscience to receive their friends on the first occasion when they had to exercise hospitality. Isabella found her watch a prodigious assistance, ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... it, than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort. Some of the most efficient workers I know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type. One friend, who does a prodigious quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming through his mind-wanderings. This is perhaps an epigrammatic exaggeration on his part; but I seriously think ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... of it, and presently it came flying into sight, going at what seemed to me to be a prodigious speed. Whence it had come, or how far, we had no means of knowing. Only by some miracle of luck could it have gone any distance. But now we were to see the terrific end of its career. A train of coal trucks stood motionless upon the line. We held our breath as the express ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle |
