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Stirring   Listen
adjective
Stirring  adj.  Putting in motion, or being in motion; active; active in business; habitually employed in some kind of business; accustomed to a busy life. "A more stirring and intellectual age than any which had gone before it."
Synonyms: Animating; arousing; awakening; stimulating; quickening; exciting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Stirring" Quotes from Famous Books



... Well, I'm sorry for Adam, for he is a well-grown young man, a proper young man, blue ribbon, with money in the Post Office. Still some one must suffer, else how could we be purified. If the milk's left alone it won't ever turn into butter. It wants troubling and stirring and churning. That's what we want, too, before we can turn angels. It's ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... hour in the thick darkness, getting stiff as stiff, as we kep' one another from doing mischief. And then at last came the light, with the fog hanging over the river, thick as the old washus at home when Sally Smith took off the copper-lid and got stirring up the clothes. Then the sun came cutting through the mist, chopping it up like golden wires through a cake of soap. There was the green stuff like a hedge on both sides of the river, the parrots a-screaming, the crockydiles ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... of appreciation of his version of the familiar legend ran from jury-box to door, and Shelby, a psychologist, like every real orator, perceived it with stirring pulse. The instrument he knew best lay attuned to ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... of Magna Carta, back in 1215, the English people had been exacting from their sovereigns written promises by which the crown surrendered certain powers. Greatest progress in this direction had been made amid those stirring scenes of the seventeenth century which have been described already in the chapter on the Triumph of Parliamentary Government in England. In addition to formal documents, there had been slowly evolved a body of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... cargoes in the early autumn; and employing the winter months in watching the preparation of the oil from the blubber in the melting-sheds, and learning navigation from some quaint but experienced teacher, half schoolmaster, half sailor, who seasoned his instructions by stirring narrations of the wild adventures of his youth. The house of the ship-owner to whom he was apprenticed was his home and that of his companions during the idle season between October and March. The domestic position ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... her eyes with an invidious lustre which rendered the restlessness of her mood more wearying. Her thoughts flew from idea to idea without asking for the slightest link of connection between one and another. One moment she was full of the wild music and stirring scene with Manston—-the next, Edward's image rose before her like a shadowy ghost. Then Manston's black eyes seemed piercing her again, and the reckless voluptuous mouth appeared bending to the curves of his special ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... this note was, it showed me again plainer than ever what a noble clear-hearted man he was who had written it. But this is not to the purpose. Charles Hawker departed, carrying this, before the others were stirring, and held his way through the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... richly endowed with these, and could sit and walk alone, year after year (except for occasional warm reunions with friends of the cleanest joviality), and feel the intercourse with the world, of his ancestors, stirring in his veins. He tells us that this was ghostly pastime; but it is an inheritance that makes a man well equipped and self-sustained, for all that. When too late, the great men about him realized that they had estimated his presence very ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... the lives of Fathers Geronimo de Christo and Diego de Jesus, the first of whom was a missionary in the Philippines and the second in Mexico—who, being captured by the English, passed through many stirring adventures.] ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... place, so low and gentle at first that it seemed like a whisper, but growing in sweetness and volume until Roscoe Cummins sat erect, his eyes flashing, his hands clenched, looking at Oachi. The storm rose, and with it the song—a song that reached down into his soul, stirring him now with its gladness, now with a half savage pain; but always with a sweetness that engulfed for him all other things, until he was listening only to the voice. And then silence came again within the tepee. Over the mountain the wind burst more fiercely. The chief ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... were quickly followed by stirring events on the sea. The delays of the British Admiralty of this time seem almost incredible. Two hundred ships waited at Spithead for three months for convoy to the West Indies, while all the time the people of the West Indies, cut ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong

... O'er the smoking hills, Stirring a million rills To laughter low and clear Till winds are hushed ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... announced that here he held Asclepius. The people, who had been sufficiently astonished by the discovery of the egg in the water, were now all eyes for what was to come. He broke it, and received in his hollowed palm the hardly developed reptile; the crowd could see it stirring and winding about his fingers; they raised a shout, hailed the God, blessed the city, and every mouth was full of prayers—for treasure and wealth and health and all the other good things that he might give. Our hero now departed homewards, still running, with the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... skilfully organised agencies. The police and various civilians between them—there is no super-sleuth to weary us with his machine-like prowess—run the thing to earth, partly by skill and partly by good luck, and the civilians in particular have a stirring time doing it. Bombs, automatic pistols, even soldiers and a submarine, assist quite naturally in sustaining the interest. And a pleasant little romance is really woven into the plot, not just pushed in anyhow. Altogether The Man with the Rubber ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various

... restlessness which presaged war was stirring among the tribes, becoming more and more pronounced, and one of the Indian Chiefs said frankly, "Now our enemies are all about us, and we can do nothing but fight, but if the Beloved Ones should ever give us to be at peace, then we would ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... didn't answer. He was taking his afternoon nap. So the Toyman slipped in and put the surprise at the foot of the bed. After that he sat by the fire, watching the little sick soldier. He sat very still, stirring the embers just once in a while ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... screen found that 'twas closed, and yet I could have sworn I saw the latch fall to its place as I walked towards it. Then I dashed forward, and in a trice had the door open, and was in the street. But the night was moonless and black, and I neither saw nor heard aught stirring, save the gentle sea-wash on Moonfleet beach beyond ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... intense that they could wait no longer, and they hurried the event with a high-handed vigour that was not altogether seemly. The assembly was on the eve of breaking up, and a new election was to be held on the first Tuesday of November. The Antifederalists hoped to make a stirring campaign, and secure such a majority in the new legislature as to prevent the Constitution from being laid before the people. But their game was frustrated by George Clymer, who had sat in the Federal Convention, and now most unexpectedly moved that a state convention ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... companions behind him, had a stimulating effect on the crowd. Not that he did anything else than pass beyond the soldiers and thrust himself well among his fellow-citizens, flourishing his axe; but he served as a stirring symbol of street-fighting, like the waving of a well-known gonfalon. And the first sign that fire was ready to burst out was something as rapid as a little leaping tongue of flame: it was an act of the conjuror's impish lad Lollo, who was dancing and jeering in front of the ingenuous boys that ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... my thoughts have flown back to the hills and brooks of Winby and to this little old school-house. I could shut my eyes and call back the buzz of voices, and fear my teacher's frown, and feel my boyish ambitions waking and stirring in my breast. On that bench where I just sat I saw some notches that I cut with my first jackknife fifty-eight years ago this very spring. I remember the faces of the boys and girls who went to school with me, and I see their grandchildren ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... The great animals were stirring uneasily and their hoarse, threatening grunts had dropped to a kind of frightened whine. Again the scream rose shrill and clear, and, with a grunt of fear, the big leader charged into the forest followed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... and superstitious pilgrimage, as though a return to this spot might somehow change the current of her life. Julien had been gone since daybreak, she knew not whither. She had the little white horse, which she sometimes rode, saddled, and she set out. It was one of those days when nothing seemed stirring, not a blade of grass, not a leaf. All seemed wrapped in a golden mist beneath the blazing sun. Jeanne walked her horse, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... returned Bill and the other men were all stirring, and Stephen sitting up on his trestle rubbing his ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... some such feeling was stirring in Angela's heart as with slow steps she led the way into the little village churchyard, a similar spot to that which is to be found in many a country parish, except that, the population being very small, there were but few recent graves. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... in men who have had adventures, and when they are privileged to read of such exploits in thrilling story form, that is the "seventh heaven" for them. Such a "boys' man" was Jack London, whose whole life was one of stirring action on land and sea. Gifted as a story teller, he wrote books almost without end. Some of them, "The Call of the Wild," "The Sea Wolf" and "White Fang," have already been recognized as fine books ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... tongue. It was not without satisfaction that she stood at her door of an evening, newspaper in hand, with three or four cottagers standing round, and poured down their open throats any paragraph that she might choose to select from the stirring ones of the period. When she had done with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed it on to the miller, the miller to the grinder, and the grinder to the grinder's boy, in whose hands it became subdivided into half pages, quarter pages, and irregular triangles, and ended its career as a paper cap, a ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... downstream, to be floated here and there by idle little eddies, to be sucked down and spat out of tiny suction-holes. Then cautiously you draw them across the surface of the waters. Thump—thump—thump—your heart slows up with disappointment. Then mysteriously, like the stirring of the waters by some invisible hand, the molten silver is broken in its smoothness. The Royal Coachman quietly disappears. With all the brakes shrieking on your desire to shut your eyes and heave a mighty heave, you depress your ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... of the Japanese sunshade she was sitting very still, the lace on her white shoulders stirring with the soft rise and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... made evident by the fact that all but one stanza of it appears in "Moll Pitcher," published two years later. It was probably because of the self-assertion of the concluding lines that the omitted stanza was canceled, and these lines reveal the ambition then stirring his young blood. ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... These are stirring words, and they fall amid a hushed silence. Then the debate grows hot, as members rise to speak in opposition to ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy

... lingered on, soughing gently in the drowsy reeds, whispering among the branches of the cedars, and gently stirring the tender ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... things I like better," ses the policeman, sniffing agin. "It's just like the foreshore when somebody 'as been stirring the mud up ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... the falling folds behind her, these made up the physical pose, and the pride, the tense nervousness, the defiance of her own feelings gave its meaning expression. I raised my hand and called to her to pause just so, to be still, if she could, without stirring. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... really extraordinary woman is the sovereign disposer of the votes of the democratic party in the arrondissement of Arcis. Until now, the existence of that party in Arcis has been considered problematical; but it is actually, by its nature, active and stirring, and our candidate proposes to present himself under its banner. Evidently, therefore, the support the good mother has promised ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... the story with great interest, for here was the shepherd-boy turned into a hero. No more fidgets now; the sermon was no longer heard, the fan flapped unfelt, and Billy Barton's spirited sketches in the hymn-book were vainly held up for admiration. Ben was quite absorbed in the stirring history of King David, told in a way that fitted it for children's reading, and illustrated with fine pictures which charmed the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... Grim got home his wife took the bag from off his shoulders and cast it upon the ground within doors; and Grim told her of his errand. Now as it drew to midnight he said, "Rise up, wife, and blow up the fire to light a candle, and get me my clothes, for I must be stirring." But when the woman came into the room where Havelok lay, she saw a bright light round the boy's head, like a sunbeam, and she called to her husband to come and see. And when he came they both marveled at the light and what ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... ran down the valley, stirring the trees to a furtive whispering. Again, subconsciously, she was aware of the cold, and moved to return. At the same moment there came a sound like the report of a cannon half a mile away, followed by a long roar that was unlike anything she had ever heard—a sound so appalling, ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... quickly, as he and his brother glanced at one another. They had not forgotten the stirring times when they were on the trail of the ruthless men who had raided Diamond X ranch, and their own ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... no sign of stirring, he was seized by many hands and boosted over the edge of the pit. He rolled over, knocking down some of the bushes and finally rose to his feet, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... attentions that were received with the surliness of one too miserable to know what to do with himself. She yearned over him with a new awakening of tenderness, longing, yet unable, to console or soothe. The light surface-intercourse of the brother and sister, each selfishly refraining from stirring the depths of the other's mind, rendered them mere strangers in the time of trouble; and vainly did Lucy gaze wistfully at the swollen eyelids and flushed cheeks, watch every peevish gesture, and tend each sullen wish, with pitying sweetness; ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stirring times when we come back again, Hal. Burgundy is arming, and it is like enough that France may join him, and in that case there will be fighting enough even to satisfy you; but we may have a few months at home before that is likely ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... is named." The faithful angels are then told to "have swords and staves ready for Lucifer," who, we are informed, "voideth and goeth down to Hell apparelled foul, with fire about him, turning to Hell, with every degree of devils and lost spirits on cords running into the plain." With this stirring scene the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... was very fine—shiny black horses, shapely and spirited; and presently when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering a command which we couldn't hear) and a division came tearing down on a gallop it was a stirring and gallant sight, until the dust rose an inch—the Duke thought more—and swallowed it up in a rolling and tumbling long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparkling ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... saucy as to open your lips before you were spoken to? Give me —Patience! By gold! this is the first time since I have reigned that anyone has had the impudence to speak before he was bidden. How came this mad fellow to break loose? (Villain, thou liest, said Friar John, without stirring his lips.) Sirrah, sirrah, continued Gripe-men-all, I doubt thou wilt have business enough on thy hands when it comes to thy turn to answer. (Damme, thou liest, said Friar John, silently.) Dost thou think, continued my lord, thou art in the wilderness of your foolish university, wrangling and bawling ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... before tasted such warm, invigorating wine." And his eyes sparkled with new life; a glow diffused itself over his frame; it seemed as if every sorrow, every oppression were banished from his mind, and a fresh, free nature were stirring within him. "You are surely Annette, the schoolmaster's daughter," cried he; "will you give ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... with a dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... vivid and sweet and stirring, and all about her the sunlight, the golden gleams on the sage hills, and Wade's heart and brain and spirit sustained a subtle transformation. It was as if what had been beautiful with light had suddenly, strangely darkened. Then Wade imagined he stood alone ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... masses of people thronged the streets. The heavy, oppressive atmosphere weighed upon the spirit—a leaden pressure which increased with every hour. Then came the stirring events on the evening of July 3ist, when the drums beat 'general march' on the Marienplatz, and a commissioner read the articles of war to a crowd numbered by thousands. Thirty drummers and commissioners in motors rushed through the streets of ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... muffled excitement. The beach was hard as a floor under me and I almost ran along it toward the sanded cottage. The merest glance at it showed that no one watched there; the windows were dark. I skirted the rocky wall that protected its back and sides; no one was stirring in stable or outhouse. On the shore side a straggling grass stretch ran down to a sheltered, inland bay; a fair sized vegetable garden, glistening with dew, and a few fruit trees gave a domestic air to the place, utterly unguessed from the forbidding ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... unusually raw even for that uncooked month. The sun had to cross the line before it could make much impression on the deep frost. After the 15th, however, we began to find evidences that things were stirring below ground. The red and yellow willows took on brighter colors, the bark of the dogwood assumed a higher tone, and the catkins and lilac buds began to swell with ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... guardian, Hirate Masahide, and showed so much indifference to the latter's remonstrances, that finally Masahide had recourse to the faithful vassal's last expedient—he committed suicide, leaving a letter in which the explanation of his act was accompanied by a stirring appeal to the better instincts of his pupil and ward. This proved the turning-point in Nobunaga's career. He became as circumspect as he had previously been careless, and he subsequently erected to the memory of his brave monitor a temple which may ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Running to the door she threw it open and listened intently. She heard Mrs. Elwood's voice raised in pleased surprise, then, could she believe her ears? she heard another never-to-be-forgotten voice say, "I could see that there was some one awake and stirring." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... The son, fifteen years of age, got the same habit, and there was a prospect that the other children, as they got old enough, would take the same turn. One day the wife aroused to the consideration that she had better save her husband and her boy. Interesting and stirring games were introduced into the house. The mother studied up interesting things to tell her children. One ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... out. He closed the door and lit the gas, and after taking off his overcoat moved to the door leading into the passage to listen if anybody was still stirring. To his utter astonishment he found it locked. What was more remarkable—the key was also INSIDE! An inexplicable feeling took possession of him. He glanced suddenly around the room, and then his eye fell upon the bed. Lying there, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... and still, Stirring not from her safe place: He marked the glow, he felt the thrill, He saw the dawn ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... say, Mr. Toast," the steward commenced, as he kept stirring the punch, "that I am werry much rejoiced Captain Truck has resuscertated his old nature, and remembers the festivals and fasts, as is becoming the master of a liner. I can see no good reason because a ship is under jury-masts, that the passengers should ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... proper shape and fled shrieking out of Paradise. Prohibition is another evil spirit that is breeding trouble in man's Eden; but when touched by the spear-point of legitimate criticism its disguise falls away, and we see, instead of a harmless toad, a malicious Meddlesome Mattie stirring up ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... but little since the days when he had served on the staff of Monsieur Lefevre, the Prefect of Police of Paris, and had taken part in the stirring adventures of the Million Francs, the Ivory Snuff Box and the Changing Lights. The same delightful spirit of camaraderie existed between his wife, Grace, and himself, a spirit which had enabled them, together, to solve some of the most exciting mysteries in the annals of the French detective ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... takes his boys on outings to the country. The country minister will bring his boys on "innings" to the city. As they see him he is pre-eminently the apostle of that stirring, larger world. What abilities may not be awakened, what horizons that now settle about the neighboring farm or village may not be gloriously lifted and broadened, what riches that printed page cannot convey may not be planted in the ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... He remained standing, without stirring, till the first rays of the twilight appeared, bold and unconquerable, and seeming to defy the tempest ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... than hindered this bent. I was born in a party camp and grew to manhood on a political battlefield. I have lived through stirring times and in the thick of events. In a vein colloquial and reminiscential, not ambitious, let me recall some impressions which these have left upon the mind of one who long ago reached and turned the corner of the Scriptural limitation; who, approaching fourscore, does not yet feel painfully ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... regarding which we possess so many detailed narratives of those who took part in it on both sides, and it would be easy to compile a long list of stirring incidents and heroic deeds. Though the battle lasted till about five o'clock, it had been practically decided in the first hour. In that space of time many of the enemy's ships had been disabled, two had been actually taken; ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... still all about him. It might have been a night in June. Only very far away a faint breeze was stirring, whispering furtively in the bare boughs of the elm trees that bordered the park. Overhead the stars shone dimly behind a floating veil of mist, and from the garden sleeping at his feet there arose a faint, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... "wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing fascination of ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... pictures, such as troops of soldiers, and it is an open secret that for weeks during the Boer War regularly equipped British and Boer armies confronted each other on the peaceful hills of Orange, New Jersey, ready to enact before the camera the stirring events told by the cable from the seat of hostilities. These conflicts were essentially harmless, except in one case during the battle of Spion Kopje, when "General Cronje," in his efforts to fire a wooden cannon, inadvertently dropped his fuse into a large glass bottle containing gunpowder. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... was so, I sprang to loose out the reefs, which done, I saw the enemy's boat lie wallowing in the trough and never so much as an oar stirring. But beyond this was another boat hasting to their assistance and beyond this again the ship herself, so that I joyed to feel our little vessel bounding shore-wards. But hearing a groan, I saw Sir Richard crouched at the tiller, his white ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... the care they have of their duty to Christ and you, &c. the wisdom of your council is, that you may be served with all sorts of men, that you may come to your purpose, and because the ministers and protestants of Scotland are strong, they must be weakened and brought low, by stirring up a party against them, but, Sire, this is not the wisdom of God, and his curse must light upon it, whereas, in cleaving to God, his servants shall be your true friends, and he shall compel the rest to serve you." There is little difficulty to conjecture how this discourse ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... see what's what!" Anastasio Montanez said, examining his rifle springs. Yet he was previous; an hour or more elapsed with no sound or stir save the song of the locust in the brush or the frog stirring in his mudhole. At last, when the ultimate faint rays of the moon were spent in the rosy dimness of the dawn, the silhouette of a soldier loomed at the end of the trail. As they strained their eyes, they could distinguish others behind ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... Western Sea, not so much for his own advantage as for the honour and glory of his native country. This great idea had been taking form in his mind from the days of his early boyhood, when, seated before the great log fire in his father's home in Three Rivers, he had first listened to the stirring tales of the woodrunners. ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee

... Time, reason, and religion—not the hollow mockery of solemn words and looks—must heal the heart lacerated by the tremendous deathblow. Abraham Allcraft had waited for this day. He saw the gloomy curtains drawn aside—he beheld life stirring in the house again. He dressed himself more carefully than he had ever done before, and straightaway hobbled to the door, before another and less hasty foot could reach it. A painter, wishing to arrest the look of one who smiles, and smiles, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... prey, while a whitish saliva dripped from the jaws. The body of the beast, which they knew to be enormous, was hidden beneath the water, but the agitation on the surface showed that powerful feet and legs were stirring. ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding something quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring disquiet of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... for that has already been done by far abler hands than mine, and with a fullness of detail which leaves nothing to be desired; moreover, I have another and entirely different, although, as I think, equally stirring story to tell. I will therefore dismiss the events connected with my service in the ranks of the Somerset East Mounted Rifles with the bare statement that during the nine months so covered I participated in many deeply stirring episodes, and on several occasions found myself ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... repeated the same words, and it was no use my knowing that they were but words—words uttered in her absence, which she could not hear, words without virtue in themselves, repeating what were, indeed, facts, but powerless to modify them—for still it seemed to me that by dint of handling, of stirring in this way everything that had reference to Gilberte, I might perhaps make emerge from it something that would bring me happiness. I told my parents again that Gilberte was very fond of her governess, as if the statement, when repeated ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... uplifted, and my father's shield thrust over me. I can well-nigh hear his voice saying, 'Flinch not, Gaston, my brave wolf-cub!' But then came a fall, man and horse together, and I went down stunned, and knew no more till a voice over me said, 'That whelp is stirring—another sword-thrust!' But another replied, 'He bears the features of Alienor, I ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Tavern and sat there till nearly morning. Alexander had much to tell but more to hear, and before they parted at Mr. Mulligan's door he knew all of the New World that young Stevens had patiently accumulated in four years. It was a stirring story, that account of the rising impatience of the British colonies, and Stevens told it with animation and brevity. Alexander became so interested that he forgot his personal mission, but he would not subscribe to his friend's opinion ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... greater part of all this gratulation was merely amusing, and did no harm except stirring up the bile of a few old bachelors, and imbittering them worse than ever against clucking cocks, crowing hens, inflated parents, and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... the fall of man to that splendid address of Emmanuel with which it concludes, has been the study of the Editor for more than forty years, and he hopes that no future year of the residue of his life will be spent without reading this solemn, soul-stirring, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... them early astir, to greet the glory of June sunlight over the shoulder of Storm King. A perfect morning, if ever any one was perfect since the world began—soft airs stirring in the forest, golden robins' full-throated song, the melody of the scarlet tropic birds they had named "fire-birds" for want of any more descriptive title, the chatter of gray squirrels on the branches overhead, all blent, under a sky ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... to Sesenheim is the experience that called forth this poem. (Compare Goethe's first letter to Friederike, October 15, 1770) Notice how all nature is personified and assumes human attributes. In the opening stanzas impetuous haste is stirring, the first two lines have a marked rising rhythm. Notice the quieting effect of the metrical inversion at the beginning of 17, 18, and 19 and of the break in 25 after ach and how the whole poem ends with a note ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various

... darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, "Make haste, general, those rascally Blues are stirring." ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... stimulating the parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may suggest one reason for the decline as well as for the rise of the new genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he should be in sympathy with his hearers—that he should talk the language which they understand, and adopt the traditions, conventions, and symbols with which they are already more or less familiar. ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... Aswins in the Nandana garden of Indra. And, O Bharata, the high-souled Krishna and the son of Pandu (Dhananjaya) entering the beautiful hall of assembly at Indraprastha, whiled away their time in great merriment. And there, O prince, they passed their time in recounting the stirring incidents of the war, and the sufferings of their past lives. And those two high-souled ancient sages, glad at heart, recited the genealogy of the races of saints and gods. Then Kesava, knowing the full import of all matters, addressed Partha in a sweet and beautiful speech of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... In this stirring romance Mr. Henty gives us the further adventures of Terence O'Connor, the hero of With Moore at Corunna. We are told how, in alliance with a small force of Spanish guerrillas, the gallant regiment of Portuguese levies commanded by Terence keeps the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... learned that long before any overt military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice and the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt

... quietly; then, both shrinking from speaking again, we sat listening to the sounds outside. From time to time one or other of the men on guard looked in to see that we were safe, though for the matter of that we had hardly thought of stirring, as escape seemed ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... Ypsilante, in gallant style, opened her fire on the harbour, making as much blaze and noise as she could. The British seamen, believing that all necessity for further silence was at an end, gave three hearty, soul-stirring cheers, which rung among the rocks, even above the roar of the artillery, and they then rushed on into the fosse after their companions. The sound, though it struck a panic into the hearts of the more timid of the pirates, at the same time showed ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... and wonderfully incline to the worse; of our laws and customs there are many that are barbarous and monstrous nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger of stirring things, if I could put something under to stop the wheel, and keep it where it is, I would do it with all ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... came into the kitchen to her mother, who was standing by the fire with a pan of hot water before her which she was constantly stirring round. "Mother," said Marlinchen, "brother is sitting at the door, and he looks quite white and has an apple in his hand. I asked him to give me the apple, but he did not answer me, and I was quite frightened." "Go back to him," ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... first time, with all the fervor, the unworn freshness, the hopeful confidence of thirty. We are carried back to the period when Coleridge, Byron, Scott, Rogers, and Moore were in their youthful prime. We live again in the stirring days when the poets who divided public attention and interest with the Fabian struggle in Portugal and Spain, with the wild and terrible events of the Russian campaign, with the uprising of the Teutonic nations, and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... and soul of the expedition. When all was over, she made no arrests, and wisely avoided throwing Scotland into despair. This conduct much augmented her authority in England, attached all hearts to her, and took away all desire of stirring again by taking away all hope of success. Thus failed a project so well and so secretly conducted until the end, which was pitiable; and with this project failed that of the Low Countries, which was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Bill," the man panted hoarsely. "Le' me fix 'im." He swung his heavy shoe, and Bill cursed with stirring eloquence. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... them down with a sharp splash. A splendid avenue of kanari-trees extends along the shore, the usual Dutch church symbolises the uncompromising grimness of Calvinistic creed, and the crumbling fort of Orange-Nassau, the scene of many stirring incidents in the island past, adjoins the beautiful thatched bungalow of the Resident, the broad eaves emerging from depths of richest foliage. A subterranean passage connects the deserted stronghold on the shore with Fort Belgica, the citadel now used as barracks, but formerly for ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... Fulton's kid," exclaimed Bignold, for the first time recognizing him. "Say, you tell your dad that he's been stirring up this town till it's wild with excitement. Three telegrams this day, not to mention a special delivery letter that they've been hunting all over the country for him with. And on top of that, an important little man with brass buttons and shoulder-straps, struttin' all over the place and askin' ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... this day of trial, as saith Malachi; brought out and made manifest by the second advent doctrine, which you began to give to the world some few years ago. Many of them, at that time, bound down by the sectarian creeds and formulas in Babylon, were aroused and won away by the soul-stirring doctrine of the coming of Christ, in 1843 and '44. No wonder that your friends, who then gathered around you, shouted for joy when they began critically and earnestly to examine the curiously wrought casket, (the word of God,) and to see, the more they examined ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... warfare, to the habits of a nation just emerging from a savage state, and which recognised no other merit than physical force and warlike valour, as that of encouraging those sanguinary and ruthless propensities, sanctifying them in some way or other by religious sentiment, and stirring up and inflaming the passions of the nation, with a view of exterminating all persons who did not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the church and the power of its ministers. Thus it happened that Christianity, from a very early period ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... to be stirring there, and breathing or blowing. Naum looked over his shoulder towards Fyodor and cautiously descending the steps went towards the sound.... Once or twice he stopped, listened and stole on further.... Suddenly he started.... ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... not now, more than at any previous time, separate Washington from the affairs of the country. He continued to take a keen interest in all that went on, to correspond with his friends, and to use his influence for what he thought wisest and best for the general welfare. These were stirring times, too, and the progress of events brought him to take a more active part than he had ever expected to play again; for France, having failed, thanks to his policy, to draw us either by fair words or trickery from our independent ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... himself rode over to the canyon; it was a good mile, and the trail was rough in the extreme. He did not dismount when he reached the lonely log lodge, but rapping on the door with the butt of his quirt, he awaited its opening. There was some slight stirring about inside before this occurred; then the door slowly opened, and she stood before him—a rather tall woman, clad in buckskin garments, with a rug made of coyote skins about her shoulders; she wore the beaded leggings and moccasins of her race, and her hair, jet black, hung in ragged plaits about ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... before I was stirring. I sent him to Smith's to inquire how the lady was; and ordered him to call upon me when he came back. I was pleased to hear she had tolerable rest. As soon as I had dispatched him with the letter I had written over night, I ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... turned away indignant at this remark, and replied, "I was better pleased with his falsehood than with this truth that you have told; for that bore the face of good policy, and this was founded in malignity; and the intelligent have said, 'A peace-mingling falsehood is preferable to a mischief-stirring truth':—Whatever prince may do that which he (his counsellor) will recommend, it must be a subject of regret if he shall advise ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... or allowing her even the appearance of choice as to the time or mode of her travelling; of two days, the earliest fixed on, and of that almost the earliest hour, as if resolved to have her gone before he was stirring in the morning, that he might not be obliged even to see her. What could all this mean but an intentional affront? By some means or other she must have had the misfortune to offend him. Eleanor had wished to spare her from so painful a notion, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... his training for the throne, in two ways, 'The Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.' There was an actual communication of divine gifts fitting him for his unknown office, and he was conscious of a new spirit stirring in him. Beside this, the consciousness of a call to unknown tasks would mature him fast, and bring graver thoughts, humbler sense of weakness, and clinging trust in God who had laid the burden on him; and the necessity for repressing his dreams of the future, in order to do his obscure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... mine, and the trafficking priest, de la Vente, they are constantly stirring up strife against me here, and putting lies in the hands of my enemies at court. The king, too, is wearied out with this endless drain upon his treasury for money and supplies, and is now, so I am informed, almost ready to accede ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... cheering while I was on my feet that I am afraid that they did not appreciate all the good things that I said in regard to England's future ruler. "The National Value of Athletics" brought out a stirring address from Major Henry Turner, and John M. Ward expressed himself most happily on "The World As I Found It." Ex-Mayor Carter H. Harrison responded to the toast, "My Own Experience," and compared in humorous fashion his own trip around the world with the one that we had just completed. After ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were full of stirring adventure on the part of the colonists along the Atlantic coast, how crowded must they have been for the almost forgotten pioneers who daringly invaded the trackless wilds! None there was to chronicle the fight of these sturdy, travelers toward the setting sun. The story of their ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... that of The Lady of the Lake Scott was very busy in bookmaking and bookselling projects. It was characteristic of the mixture of bad luck and bad management which hung on the Ballantynes from the first that even their Edinburgh Annual Register, published as it was in the most stirring times, and written by Scott, by Southey, and others of the very best hands, was a failure. He made some visits to London, and (for the scenery of the new poem) to the Trossachs and Loch Lomond; and had other matters of concern, the chief of which were the death of his famous ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... Faith, and I did not affect to disguise from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... day appropriated for the splendid and soul-stirring celebration of a bull-fight; and accordingly, the inhabitants soon began, by an unusual bustle, to evince the absorbing interest they are accustomed to take in this favorite amusement. Before the hour of nine, the beautiful street of Alcala was thronged with a promiscuous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... morning, in summer, to be milked. The strained milk is put into large cans holding forty quarts, such as the milkmen use in distributing it through the city. These cans are then put into tanks made in some cool running stream, where the water comes nearly to the top of the can. Frequent stirring is necessary until the animal heat is quite gone. The milk is then fit to be sent to the cars. This process can never safely be omitted for, paradoxical though it may seem, milk is "fresher" and sweeter when it reaches the consumer if it is delayed at the farm for at least twelve ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... day at sea. The Jupiter seemed to be slinking through the mist and drizzle, so still was the world of waters. The ocean was as smooth as a mill pond; the reflected sky came down bleak and drab and no wind was stirring. The rush of the ship through the glassy, sullen sea produced a fictitious gale across the decks; aside from that there was dead ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, she came downstairs, dressed to go out, and bade her father come to walk with her again. It was a repetition of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings. They came back, and she got tea for them, and after that they heard her stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things; but they did not dare to look in upon her, even after all the noises had ceased, and they knew she had gone ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... interfused 405 Roll through the grosser and material mass In organizing surge! Holies of God! (And what if Monads of the infinite mind?) I haply journeying my immortal course Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then 410 I discipline my young and novice thought In ministeries of heart-stirring song, And aye on Meditation's heaven-ward wing Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, 415 Whose day-spring rises glorious in my soul As the great Sun, when he his influence Sheds on the frost-bound ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... rites; they are not bringing to Ascraean Zeus the firstfruits of Lydian produce,[319] nor are they celebrating in honour of Dionysus the Bacchic orgies on festival nights with common revellings; but a mighty plague stirring up Asia in annual cycles drives them here for litigation and suits at law at stated times: and the mass of business, like the confluence of mighty rivers, has inundated one forum, and festers and teems with ruiners and ruined. What fevers, what agues, do not these things cause? What obstructions, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... and awake next morning to the note of the Cathedral bell, and hear the bugles answering from the barracks up the hill beyond the mediaeval gateway. As he sits down to breakfast the bugles will start sounding nigher, with music absurd and barbarous, but stirring, as the Riflemen come marching down the High Street to Divine Service. In the Minster to which they wend, their disused regimental colours droop along the aisles; tattered, a hundred years since, in Spanish battlefields, and ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... existence by its over-weening consciousness of power to understand, strength to escape or overcome them. Such a one, she says, can only learn by sad experience what the wind in its moaning means: that subtle change which arrests the course of happiness, as the same wind, stirring however softly in a summer dawn, may annul the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... case detection would mean hopeless incarceration for the poor remainder of my days. To the world at large I may seem nothing but a simple country gentleman, living a dull life in a spot remote from all stirring interests. But I may tell you, sir (in strictest confidence, mind), that although I stand a little aside from the noise and heat of the battle, I work for it with heart and brain as busily, and to better purpose, let us hope, than when I was a much younger man. I am still a conspirator, and a conspirator ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... without leaders, and life without aim." To this we may add the testimony of another high authority in English letters, politically at the opposite pole: "Carlyle's influence in kindling enthusiasm for virtues worthy of it, and in stirring a sense of the reality on the one hand and the unreality on the other, of all that men can do and suffer, has not been surpassed by any teacher now living. Whatever later teachers may have done in definitely shaping opinion ... here is the friendly fire-bearer who first conveyed the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... did it only know it, about to enjoy a week that would long be remembered in its history. Miss Mangan's marriage, which alone would have made an epoch, was fixed for Thursday, December 12th; but this, it need scarcely be said, was a matter that, though soul-stirring, was devoid of the element of surprise. Not so, however, was the sudden evacuation of Mount Music. Father Hogan's indefinite information was as much as was generally known, but much that was not generally ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... be at Etampes; in seven hours you have the letter from the comte, and I shall have won my wager without stirring from my bed, which suits me and you too, at the same time, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and stood looking over the river. Menard sat on the log and waited. The moments slipped by, and still they said nothing. They could hear the stirring of Colin, back at the camp, and the rustle of the low night breeze. They could almost hear the great silent rush ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... about the house, the lowing of the cattle, the morning breeze stirring in the trees—something startled them. They drew apart, smiling into each other's eyes. She placed ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller



Words linked to "Stirring" :   stir, rousing, agitation, inspiration, stimulating, arousal, moving, soul-stirring



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