"Astonishingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... easy to classify. Mary Datchet had begun this confusion two years ago by bursting into laughter at some remark of his, almost the first time they met. She could not explain why it was. She thought him quite astonishingly odd. When he knew her well enough to tell her how he spent Monday and Wednesday and Saturday, she was still more amused; she laughed till he laughed, too, without knowing why. It seemed to her very odd that he should ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the nose. But when you saw his eyes it was difficult to think of the rest of his face, which was indeed plain enough, for their look was full of a wonderful variety of expression; they seemed to have a soul in their depths. At one moment astonishingly clear and piercing, at another full of heavenly sweetness, those eyes became dull, almost colorless, as it seemed, when he was lost in meditation. They then looked like a window from which the sun had suddenly vanished after lighting it up. His strength ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... me!" says Jurgen, "this is astonishingly inadequate impersonation, as any married man would see at once. Well, I made no contract to love any such plain and short-tempered person. I repudiate the claims of any such person, as manifestly unfair. And I pledge undying affection to this high and noble Princess Guenevere, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... as well as such an anomalous, volcanic, torrid character ought to be. At first she puzzled me (and that is an insult I find it hard to forgive), but finally I found the clue. She is indefatigable and astonishingly faithful as a nurse; does all her duty, and more, which is saying a good deal—for I am a hard taskmaster. Aren't you afraid that I will work you more unmercifully than a Yankee factory-child, or a Cornwall miner? See here, Queen; what do you ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Experience shows, however, that there is little likelihood of such influence except in the case of a small minority of the tests. Experiments in the psychology of testimony have demonstrated that children's ability to report upon a complex set of experiences is astonishingly weak. In testing with the Stanford revision a child is ordinarily given from twenty-four to thirty different tests, many of which are made up of three or more items. Of the total forty to fifty items the child is ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... hopeless glances that Hugh Van Orden cast toward her caused Adele to flush, and Mrs. Haggage to become despondent and speechless and astonishingly rigid; and Petheridge Jukesbury's vaguely apologetic attitude toward the world struck Miss Hugonin as infinitely diverting. Kennaston she pitied a little; but his bearing toward her ranged ludicrously from that of proprietorship ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... for the great Wild Bill in a way that spoke volumes for her sentimental heart. Wild Bill? Well, she would never have owned it, but there was just one man in the world that scared Birdie to death, and at the same time made her think her path was a bed of roses, and that was Wild Bill. In an astonishingly short time she was sitting at the table poring over a writing-pad, and biting the already ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... responsible for the government and for the training in responsibility of some 350,000,000 members of the more politically inexperienced and backward races of mankind, or about one-fifth of the human race. The growth of the British Commonwealth, about which so astonishingly little is known either by ourselves or by other peoples, is not a mere happy or unhappy accident. It is one of the inevitable and decisive developments in the history of mankind. It is the direct ...
— Progress and History • Various
... persons. If in your career you had knocked against painted pots, labelled: birthplace, fatherland, humanity, charity, etc., you would have gone at considerably less speed, and not gone so far. But you were astonishingly logical. With amazing strength and unsparingness you have known how to will. It is from this point precisely that I looked, and I was filled with real admiration. During your absence, of more than three years, I called you frequently, in thought, a superhuman. Friederich Nietsche ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... liberal education not only to obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify the natural differences between the two. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys. To the first, there is shown but a very small field of experience, and taught a very trenchant principle for judgment and action; to the other, the world of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But no: Mordax's self-respect seems to be of that fiery quality which demands that none but the monarchs of thought shall have an advantage over him, and in the presence of contradiction or the threat of having his notions corrected, he becomes astonishingly unscrupulous and cruel for so kindly ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the Bolsheviks, astonishingly credulous of "secret" news from Moscow, and skeptical of every one's opinion but their own, were bolsheviking Marxian Utopia beneath a screen of such arrogant innocence that even the streetcorner police constables ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... symbol of the cross may be briefly considered. Why should a form so simple and so familiar have acquired an astonishingly wide range and be generally regarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the problem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain—the choice has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an intuitional, ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... animals with which he came in contact gladly made way at his approach, so that in a few seconds he stood in the front row of a large circle, the centre of which was occupied by a fat, overgrown pig, with an astonishingly long snout, and a couple of rings through it by way of ornament; two equally long ears, that had evidently been submitted to some curious operation, for they were slit in various places, and hung down from his head like uncombed locks of hair; and a pair of very sharp little ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Mr. Stevens caught up the tray from the piano and glided away on his toe-points; whereupon Mr. Brimberly (being alone) became astonishingly agile and nimble all at once, diving down to straighten a rug here and there, rearranging chairs and tables; he even opened the window and hurled two half-smoked cigars far out into the night; and his eye was as calm, his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... farther down he found them,—two astonishingly small bear-cubs. One whined pitifully and struggled to his feet as though in anticipation of supper, but the other was cold and stiff. It had evidently ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... doubt Germany would have been happy to invade the only country on earth rich enough to pay her war debt. And you were astonishingly open to invasion. It is one of the historical facts that a student of history of this twenty-first century finds ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... round his arm, for all his fingers were frostbitten. His nose and his ears were in the same plight, and had been treated by a Polish barber who, indeed, effected a cure. One eye was almost closed. His face was astonishingly red. But he carried himself like a soldier, and faced the world with the audacity that Napoleon ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... again, the rocks on the sides disappeared, and deep pools were passed, though often the water ran very shallow, so the prahus were dragged along with difficulty. Fish were plentiful, some astonishingly large. In leaping for something on the surface they made splashes as if a man had jumped into the water. On the last day, as the morning mist began to rise, our thirty odd men, eager to get home, poling the prahus with long sticks, made a picturesque sight. In early March, after a successful ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... she owes to Miss FAY COMPTON'S interpretation of Sheila she would be the first to make generous acknowledgment. It was an astonishingly sensitive performance. Miss COMPTON can be eloquent with a single word or none at all. By a turn of her eyes or lips she can make you free of her inarticulate thoughts. I must go again just to hear her say "Yes," and give that sigh of content at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... toward the thought and action of the world about him. How important personality is may be judged by the widely advertised efforts of the manufacturers of piano-playing machines to convince the public that their products, often astonishingly fine, do actually reproduce the individual effects which come from the playing of the living artist. Piano-playing machines have their place, and it is an important one. However, wonderful as they may be, they can never be anything but machines. They bring unquestioned joy to ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... of a rough mechanic. The business man was merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most rigorous and exacting standards to his work, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... ecology, distribution, comparative physiology. He takes a special interest in the comparative physiology of reproduction. The Historia Animalium contains a description of the form and structure of man and of as many animals as Aristotle was acquainted with—and he was acquainted with an astonishingly large number. The later De Partibus Animalium is a treatise on the causes of the form and structure of animals. Owing to the importance which Aristotle ascribed to the final cause this work became ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... that of a man. In his own Calvinistic Dissenting society the pious women who were members of the church took little or no interest in the mental life of their husband. They read no books, knew nothing of politics, were astonishingly ignorant, and lived in their household duties. To be with a woman who could stand up against him was a new experience. Here was a girl to whom every thought her father ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... a week when Bloomah's family remained astonishingly quiet and self-sufficient, and it looked as if the Banner might once again adorn the dry, scholastic room and throw a halo of romance round ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... execution, though it miscarried in some essential points, was attended with surprising success. The same good fortune that prospered the British arms so remarkably in the conquest of Guadaloupe, seemed to interpose still more astonishingly in their favour at Quebec, the siege of which we shall record in its proper place. At present, we must attend the operations of general Amherst, whose separate army was first in motion, though such impediments were thrown in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... her. Demosthenes De Grapion—he who, tradition says, first hoisted the flag of France over the little fort—seemed to think he ought to have a chance, and being accorded it, cast an astonishingly high number; but Epaminondas cast a number higher by one (which Demosthenes never could quite understand), and got a wife who had loved him from ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... this President manifestly deemed himself chosen of Heaven to make an end of British rule from the Zambesi to the sea. "The Transvaal shall never be shut up in a kraal," said he. A Sovereign International State he declared it was, or should be, with free access to the ocean; and how astonishingly near he came to the accomplishment of these bold aims we now know to our exceeding cost. Nevertheless, to this persistent dreamer of dreams the two South African Republics owe their extinction; while the British Empire owes to him more than to any other living ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... younger man. "We can talk about the spaceship later. You see, I'm an explorer and it's my job to explore new worlds." He spoke slowly, simply, as he would speak to a child. Somehow, although the girl was not a child and was quite the most astonishingly beautiful girl he had ever seen, he thought ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... heart-breaking sobs. These softened the mother's heart, as many and many a woman's heart has been melted through all the ages. She soothed the truant child and petted him, until the cramping in his throat relaxed sufficiently to admit of the passage of an astonishingly large slice of bread and butter and sugar. After it was disposed of, Harold busied himself by assorting his old iron scraps on the back porch, and his mother smiled as she fancied she heard the boy trying to whistle ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... and rode over to Eagles ten days later, to pay Ruth a visit. He found her astonishingly cheerful. The sum left by Sir Oliver for her stewardship had scared her at first. It scared her worse to discover how the heap began to drain away as through a sieve. But slowly she saw her way to stop some of the holes in ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... I am astonishingly restored, and have not had a trace of heart trouble for months. But I am quite aware that I am, physically speaking, on good behaviour—and maintain my condition only by taking an amount of care which is very ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... the grossness of Falstaff and the subtlety of Iago? Making allowance for the different art medium that the singing actor must work in, and despite the larger curves of operatic pose and gesture, Maurel kept astonishingly near to the characters he assumed. He was Shakespearian; his Falstaff was the most wonderful ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... of the nature about them, and with the dark complexions of the natives. Some very slender, graceful brown lads are bathing with them,—lightly built as deer: these are probably creoles. Some of the black bathers are clumsy-looking, and have astonishingly long legs.... Then little boys come down, leading horses;—they strip, leap naked on the animals' backs, and ride into the sea,—yelling, screaming, splashing, in the morning light. Some are a fine brown color, like old bronze. Nothing could-be more statuesque than the unconscious attitudes ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... Britain, in spite of the already immense extent of her domains, obtained an astonishingly large share. The protectorates of British East Africa, Uganda, Nigeria, Nyasaland, and Somaliland gave her nearly 25,000,000 new negro subjects, and these, added to her older settlements of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, whose area was now extended, outnumbered the whole population of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... even astonishingly right about Eugene Wrayburne. So far from reproaching him with not understanding a gentleman, the critic will be astonished at the accuracy with which he has really observed the worth and the weakness of the aristocrat. He is quite right when he suggests that such a man has intelligence ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... as fully developed in point of simplicity and preciseness as are the main languages of Europe they are, nevertheless, by reason of their peculiar genius, capable of being rapidly developed into as perfect a means for the expression of human thought as any of the European types of speech; they are astonishingly rich in verbs which make it easy to express motion and action clearly and vividly; the impersonal, or abstract article "it" is used exactly as in European languages, and the particular prefix provided in some of the Bantu types for the class ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... year he received the astonishingly bold and grand idea of ascertaining the truth of his doctrine by actually drawing down the lightning, by means of sharp-pointed iron rods raised into the region of the clouds. Even in this uncertain state his passion to be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... 'How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... became a great fish; it grew, in fact, astonishingly. Then it said to Manu, 'In such a year the Deluge will come. Thou must build a vessel, and then pay me homage. When the waters of the Deluge mount up, enter the vessel. I ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... were tired of it. Then I found a "soft-water" pond hidden behind a fringe of scrub-willow and poplar. The mid-day sun had warmed it to a tempting temperature. So I hobbled Paddy, peeled off and had a most glorious bath. I had just soaped down with bank-mud (which is an astonishingly good solvent) and had taken a header and was swimming about on my back, blinking up at the blue sky, as happy as a mud-turtle in a mill-pond, when I heard Paddy nicker. That disturbed me a little, but ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... weather is extremely hot, the thermometer more than 90 deg. above zero. Vegetation is making an astonishingly rapid progress, and the grain in its luxuriant growth upon a rich soil, presents to the eye the fairest prospects of a good harvest. But the locust, an insect very like the large grasshopper, is beginning ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... matter by their mass meetings nearly every rebel would have been hanged—a very poor way, one would think, of making loyal subjects. But the reasons that were urged in support of such drastic punishment were astonishingly frank: "It doesn't pay to be loyal," one was told; "we might as well have been rebels." Not a very ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... I have read of Braddock's Field, yonder terrain most astonishingly resembles it. What an ambuscade could Butler lay for our army yonder, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... rare even in men at hers, gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face. The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade or two perhaps too light,—a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,—at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its trust,—their expression was rather vague and abstracted. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are Kitty's sisters. They are twins, and there present age is, I think, nineteen. Though I say it who should not, they are both astonishingly attractive young persons, and the more I see of them the more the fact is borne in upon me. Indeed, a casual remark of mine to that effect, uttered to my wife, by an unfortunate coincidence, on the very morning upon which one of the ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... are immensely thick, and are clipped so as to present the smooth, velvety appearance peculiar to the finest yew and box hedges. The colour and texture of these walls of ancient vegetation, contrasting with the vivid green lawns at their feet, are astonishingly beautiful. One of the peculiar charms of such hedges is that where yew of a different kind or age, or a bush of box, forms part of the mass, it shows like an inlay of a different material, and the same effect is given merely by the trick that some yews have of growing their leaves or shoots ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... Some "modern" preparations are astonishingly ancient, and vice versa. Our anchovy sauce is used freely to season fish, to mix with butter, to be made into solid anchovy or fish paste. There are sardine pastes, lobster pastes, fish forcemeats found in the larder of every good kitchen—preparations of Apician ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... 'Animals and Plants.' A letter to Sir J.D. Hooker gives some account of the re- commencement of the work: "I have begun looking over my old MS., and it is as fresh as if I had never written it; parts are astonishingly dull, but yet worth printing, I think; and other parts strike me as very good. I am a complete millionaire in odd and curious little facts, and I have been really astounded at my own industry whilst reading my chapters ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... adorned the houses of the other professors. While waiting with Genie Linderbeck for the Frazers to come down, Carl found in a rack on the oak table such books as he had never seen: exquisite books from England, bound in terra-cotta and olive-green cloth with intricate gold designs, heavy-looking, but astonishingly light to the hand; books about Celtic legends and Provencal jongleurs, and Japanese prints and other matters of which he had never heard; so different from the stained text-books and the shallow novels by brisk ladies which ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the teachers made a little girl present me with a hair chain which she had just completed. Great order and decorum prevailed. Amongst the permanent scholars in the upper part of the institution, there are some who embroider astonishingly well—surplices, altar-hangings, in short, all the church vestments in gold or silk. In the room where these are kept are the confessionals for the pupils. The priests are in a separate room, and the penitents kneel before the grating which separates the two apartments. All the sleeping-rooms ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. Here the growth of large private fortunes was marked by much greater celerity than in the East, although these fortunes are not as large as those based upon land ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... I really do not know why, inspire puerile repulsion, became astonishingly tame as soon as they found out that no harm was intended them. They allowed themselves to be petted just like cats, and would catch my finger in their ideally delicate little rosy hands, and lick it in the friendliest way. They used to be let ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... been made in this direction are astonishingly rewarding to those who regard the power of self-expression as one of the most precious boons of education. The Children's Theater in New York is the most successful example, but every settlement in which dramatics have been systematically fostered ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... a Regatta Day differs astonishingly from Troy on any other day in the year, and yet until you have seen us on a Regatta Day you have not ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... abashed, and her hearing was as strained as her alert wits. So the two hard personalities encountered. Presently Madam smiled—a smile that was tortured, like Gaga's, and showed anaemic gums but a row of astonishingly good teeth. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the pleasantest town to wander in, and an astonishingly large one. A surprising expansiveness, when one begins to explore them, is an idiosyncrasy of Dutch towns. From the railway, seeing a church spire and a few roofs, one had expected only a village; and behold street runs into street until one's legs ache. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... money. I've watched you with your dog. I've watched you with your nigger boy. I've watched you with your beer. And just because your heart isn't set on a great buried treasure of gold, you are harder to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most astonishingly easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man, a very old man. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... and the beautiful, youth, love, passion, nature and so forth. It is curious how rapidly one turns from good to bad in this book. How clever the descriptions are! how neatly some of the minor events and personalities are hit off! and yet, how astonishingly vile and contemptible the chief part of it is!—that part, we mean, which contains the adventures of the hero, and, of course, the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... we choose, within two blocks, on either hand we find nothing but the infinitely small and astonishingly numerous forms of traffic on which the hordes around us thrive. No corner is too cramped for the squatting street cobbler; and as for the pipe cleaners, the cigarette rollers, the venders of sweetmeats and conserves, they gather on the curb or crouch under ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... saw prowling about them any of those vicious, ruffianly looking characters that generally infest the neighborhood of our great cities, especially of a Sunday. There were troops of boys, but they were astonishingly quiet and innoxious, very unlike American boys, white or black, a band of whom making excursions into the country are always a band of outlaws. Ruffianism with us is no doubt much more brazen and pronounced, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... languages differ, men (and above all early men) have the same kind of thoughts, desires, fancies, habits, institutions. It is not that in which all races formally differ—their language—but that in which all early races are astonishingly the same—their ideas, fancies, habits, desires—that causes the ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... who is made to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague.* It is one of the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers' in old silverware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words: "Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen"—"In the year 1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... girl detective. "For one thing, old Hezekiah Cragg pays taxes on just one bit of land besides that little homestead of his. It is a five-acre tract, but the assessment puts it at an astonishingly low valuation—scarcely ten per cent of the value of all surrounding property. That strikes me as queer. I've got the plat of it and to-morrow we will look ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... the girl searchingly. Her eyes were closed, she had the look of complete exhaustion. He could almost not believe she had spoken those significant words. Did she know what she was saying? Was it mere accident that her last sentence had sounded so astonishingly rational? ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... inside the commission were going on, the agents of the colonists were active in presenting their side of the case. Fray Antonio was likewise losing no time, and was astonishingly successful in that he won over the very Franciscan whom the colonists had sent to plead their cause, and converted him into his staunch ally ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... old regime. But the modern man, full of admiration for the great virtue of chivalry which is at the heart of aristocracies, and the great virtue of reverence which is at the heart of ceremonial religion, is not in a position to form any idea of how profoundly unchivalrous, how astonishingly irreverent, how utterly mean, and material, and devoid of mystery or sentiment were the despotic systems of Europe which survived, and for a time conquered, the Revolution. The case against the Church in Italy in the time of Pio Nono was not the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... was about to land, and turned it back. Two or three of the dogs were swimming. We were more than half the breadth of the river away from the tapir, and somewhat down-stream, when it dived. It made an astonishingly long swim beneath the water this time, almost as if it had been a hippopotamus, for it passed completely under our canoe and rose between us and the hither bank. I shot it, the bullet going into its brain, while it was thirty or forty yards from ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... the spiritual part of a monikin, the farther it was removed from the mass of matter, or the body, the more likely it was to be independent, consecutive, logical, and spiritualized. The idea had succeeded astonishingly at first; but time, which will wear out even a cauda, had given birth to schisms in the church on this interesting subject; one party contending that two more joints ought to be added to the archbishop's embellishment, by way of sustaining ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... what had always been her inexhaustible strength. The snow was deep and soft, heavy with moisture, the March air was moist, too, not keen with frost, and the green firs were softly dark against an even, stone-colored sky of cloud. To Joan's eyes, so long imprisoned, it was all astonishingly beautiful, clean and grave, part of the old life back to which she was running. Down the canyon trail she floundered, her short skirt gathering a weight of snow, her webs lifting a mass of it at every tugging ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than elsewhere in India. Gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and Mr. Campbell informs us that a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "The longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become;" and we need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency of the system. The hill tribes, on the contrary, are remarkable ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Nivernois too is astonishingly good to me. In short, Madam, I am going down hill, but the sun sets pleasingly. Your two other friends have been in Paris; but I was confined, and could not wait on them. I passed a whole evening with Lady Mary Chabot most agreeably: she charged me over and over with a thousand ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... fallen from the sky, some of them lodging in tree trunks. Dr. Bodding, with orthodox notions of velocity of falling bodies, having missed, I suppose, some of the notes I have upon large hailstones, which, for size, have fallen with astonishingly low velocity, argued that anything falling from the sky would be "smashed to atoms." He accepts that objects of worked stone have been found in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... in an astonishingly short time. Courting was nothing like it had been in his day. The young man muttered an unintelligible sentence that, from its connection, might be interpreted as a good night, and strode back to ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... been such a smatterer. I never have really known anything about anything. Most women are so astonishingly ignorant and indifferent about the essentials ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... It was astonishingly evident that she wasn't at all frightened. The arm that levelled the weapon (a round and shapely arm, bare to the shoulder) was admirably steady; the rich colouring of her distinctly handsome face showed not a trace of pallor; and the fire ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... transported to almost every region and nation of the world; especially to the Turks, Syrians, Arabians, Indians, and to divers regions of Africa, Ethiopia, and Arabia; and more especially vast abundance of silk and cotton, so that by means of this prodigious trade the sultan is astonishingly rich. The sultan of Cambay is almost continually at war with the king of Joga, whose realm is fifteen days journey from Cambay, and extends very far in all directions. This king of Joga[63] and all his people are idolaters. He maintains an army always on foot of 30.000 men, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... who understands and can interpret him, and Shakespeare was of necessity singularly fortunate in his interpreter. Ben Jonson was big enough to see him fairly, and to give excellent-true testimony concerning him. Jonson's view of Shakespeare is astonishingly accurate and trustworthy so far as it goes; even his attitude of superiority to Shakespeare is fraught with meaning. Two hundred years later, the rising tide of international criticism produced two men, Goethe and Coleridge, who also saw Shakespeare, if only by glimpses, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... because the mill was enlarged, then because the leaden windows had been taken out in the family-room and in the bed-chamber, and white glass had taken the place of green, and the window frames had been made larger. When he entered everything seemed astonishingly small, and not at all as he remembered it, but very cheerful. The clock cackled like a fat hen, the carved chairs almost seemed as if they would speak; he knew every dish on the table spread before him, the freshly white-washed hearth smiled welcome; the greens, decorating ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... when I contemplate you. You are a grace. I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown, when the tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me. And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought even but a little! You talk astonishingly good sense. It seems to me at times that you are a dream. Speak, I listen, I admire. Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how charming! I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wearing the same coat armour, called a jack, and the baron being only distinguished by his sleeves of mail, and his head-piece. The borderers, in general, acted as light cavalry; riding horses of a small size, but astonishingly nimble, and trained to move, by short bounds, through the morasses with which Scotland abounds. Their offensive weapons were, a lance of uncommon length; a sword, either two-handed, or of the modern light size; sometimes a species of battle-axe, called ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... we shall leave here if all is well on Monday. I am quite recovered, astonishingly recovered. It must be owned these climates and this voyage have given me more strength than I could have thought possible. And yet the sea is a terrible place, stupefying to the mind and poisonous to the temper, the ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than ever the semblance of a large, crouching animal. Its four horns glittered in the beginning of sunset, as if they were crusted with jewels of different colours. Its dominance over all that surrounded it, all that was smaller and less powerful and impressive than itself, was astonishingly evident from this bird's-eye point of view; but brightly as the jewels gleamed, they had lost their allurement for these two. With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered how she could ever have felt that the Casino was ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... responsibility for the calamities which have befallen her. And yet, if we consider the field for partisan bias which Irish history presents, the amount of ground common to writers of all shades of political opinion is now astonishingly large. The result, I think, is due mainly to the good influence of that eminent historian and Unionist politician, the late Professor Lecky. Indeed, an advocate of Home Rule, nervously suspicious of tainted material, could afford to rely solely on his "History of Ireland in the Eighteenth ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Behind the imposing front it shewed from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, the variety of peoples, with their manners, traditions, special religions, was always there, and in Africa more than elsewhere. The population of Carthage was astonishingly mixed. The hybrid character of this country without unity was illustrated by the streaks found in the Carthaginian crowds. All the specimens of African races elbowed one another in the streets, from the nigger, brought from his native Soudan ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... private life of astonishingly even temper. The only thing that appeared to have the power to ruffle him to the slightest extent was the contemplation of what he described as the bunch of cheeses who pretended to fight nowadays. He would have considered it a privilege, it seemed, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... richly laden. Knowing the vile habits of some of the people who lived on the coast, Sir Herbert, the moment he heard that there was a wreck, went down to see that the property of the sufferers was protected from those depredators, who on such occasions were astonishingly alert. Ormond accompanied him, and by their joint exertions much of the property was placed in safety under a military guard. Some had been seized and carried off before their arrival, but not by any of Sir Herbert's tenants. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Society held its meetings in Crane Court. "Elizabeth," says Mr. Timbs, "kept down the number of Scotsmen in London to the astonishingly small one of fifty-eight; but with James I. came such a host of traders and craftsmen, many of whom failing to obtain employment, gave rise, as early as 1613, to the institution of the 'Scottish Box,' a sort of friendly society's treasury, when there were no banks to take charge ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... efforts. In the great wild West, way out there, where some of the best easterners by leaving their homes and their comforts therein, and enduring all the hardships of pioneering life they succeeded at last to put a solid foundation of a new and permanent civilization astonishingly wonderful not only in the development of this great land of liberty but revolutionizing the whole commercial and social system ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... heavens, there is none more striking than that which declares, not only that the nebulae which Lord Rosse described as spirals, actually do possess the character so indicated, but that there are many others of the same description. He has even brought to light the astonishingly interesting fact that there are invisible objects of this class which have never been seen by human eye, but whose spiral character is visible to the peculiar delicacy of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... John sniffed his disdain, and Billy's friends made no secret of their amused tolerance; but, in an astonishingly short time, half the automobile owners of her acquaintance were calling their own cars "Peggy"; and even the dignified John himself was heard to order "some gasoline for Peggy," quite as ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... it was cold, a real cold, lashing the face and the chest. But now gusts begin to pass astonishingly warm and perfumed with the scent of plants: the southern wind, rising again, bringing back suddenly the illusion of summer. And then, it becomes for them a delicious sensation to go through the air, so brusquely changed, to go quickly under ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... carcass will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm—that is, no virtue. But once they are struck with lightning—that is, by the grace of God,—they are astonishingly fruitful ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... trees. Perhaps this is an inherited result of arboreal ancestry. Even so, very few of us realize what an astonishingly close tie exists between the survival of trees and the well-being of the human race. Probably even fewer realize the very great importance, in the economy of animal life, of trees which bear nuts. Not alone for the sake of their nuts are they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... had been phenomenally successful. He was filling his holds at astonishingly heavy freights. And not only would this bring him credit with his owners, which meant promotion in due course to a larger ship, but in the mean time, as he drew his 2-1/2 per cent, on the profits, it represented a very comfortable matter of solid cash for that much-needing person himself. He ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... only my legs. My head is astonishingly clear. And I do wish you would try, just for once in a way, to follow my meaning. Be reasonable, for a change! I mean to say that a man has talents for all sorts of things. I, for example, have pronounced views ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... very rough, and, to Geoffrey, astonishingly dirty. The food consisted generally of bread and a miscellaneous olio or stew from a great pot constantly simmering over the fire, the flavour, whatever it might be, being entirely overpowered by that of the oil and garlic that were the ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... must be stopped, and stopped instantly. What a mercy of mercies she had discovered it so soon, and that now it might be nipped in the bud. Just at the very outset of his career, too, which had so astonishingly developed of late, and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... give much to possess but one of Stevenson's gifts—namely, that extraordinary vividness of recollection by which he could so astonishingly recall, not only the doings, but the very thoughts and emotions of his youth. For, often as we must have communed together, with all the shameless candour of boys, hardly any remark has stuck to me except the opinion already alluded to, which struck me—his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in an even voice. In this crisis the old man had become astonishingly calm. He seemed the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... figures around which is constituted the life of a special milieu—the world of journalism, of Catholicism seen from two opposite points of view, of artists, of the bourgeoisie, as the case may be. There are in the best work of the Goncourts astonishingly brilliant scenes; there is dialogue vivacious, witty, sparkling, to an extraordinary degree. And this dialogue, as in Charles Demailly, is not only supremely interesting, but intrinsically true to nature. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... continue living unnecessarily near our surface. Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget. Physiologists say that a man is in "nutritive equilibrium" when day after day he neither gains nor loses weight. But the odd thing is that this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food. Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or lessen his rations. In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in the second case to lose it. The change will be greatest on the first day, less on the second, less still on the third; ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... he conceived the astonishingly bold and grand idea of ascertaining the truth of his doctrine by actually drawing down the lightning, by means of sharp pointed iron rods raised into the regions of the clouds. Even in this uncertain state his passion to be useful to mankind displayed itself in a powerful manner. Admitting the identity ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... Barry found her, old and young beyond her twenty years. Her wide-set blue eyes seemed to see horizons, and too often to be blind to foregrounds. She had a slow, deliberating habit of work, and of some things was astonishingly ignorant, with the ignorance of those who, when at school, have worked at what they preferred and quietly disregarded the rest. If he let her compose a letter, its wording would be quaint. Her ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan, which is astonishingly fine. It sets him not only above, but far above all the poets of the day. Every word has the stamp of immortality. This canto is in a style (but totally free from indelicacy, and sustained with incredible ease and power) like the end of the second canto: ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... yards and yards of the fine silk turban. He came to the end of it—whisk! he sank to the deck; the turban, spread open by the resistance of the air, fluttered down to cover him from head to foot. Apparently he fell asleep at once, for he did not again move nor alter his position. He, as well as an astonishingly large proportion of the other Somalis and Abyssinians we saw, carried a queer, well-defined, triangular wound in his head. It had long since healed, was an inch or so across, and looked as though a piece of the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... was a "dry bob," I think), down stream towards the Goldfields. "It's all KITTY'S fault,—LUCY'S come." Of course this was awkward, but, on arrival, KITTY was so hospitable, and LUCY so pretty, that, though our sleeping and dressing apartment was astonishingly small, and I made the odd girl out at dinner, I felt I could not mind much, and I also got over the little contretemps of my dressing-bag being dropped into the ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... congratulations—and yet I do assure you that I write as one still thrilled and almost throbbing with good news. It would take pages to tell you all I feel about it: beginning with my first memory of your mother, when she was astonishingly like you, except that she had yellow plaits of hair down her back. I do not absolutely insist that you should now imitate her in this: but you would not be far wrong if you imitate her in anything. And so on—till we come to the superb rhetorical ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... this, but I've been haunted by the idea from the first that if you know this woman, disaster will come of it. I do not mean any old woman's presentiment, but from what I know of her nature and yours. You do astonishingly few erratic things for a genius, but in certain conditions you are unbridled, and my only hope has been that the lightning in you would strike at random without doing much harm—to you, at all events. But this volcano has a brain in it, and great force ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... contrived to be with Anita the best part of the evening. He was always willing to sing and Anita was always ready to play the violin obligatos for him. Broussard developed wonderful knowledge of song birds and entirely abandoned game chickens, and was astonishingly regular in his attendance at the chapel, which induced Anita to think him a model of Christian piety. If Broussard had been a conceited man he would have seen that Anita's heart was his long before he asked ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell |
