"Awe-inspiring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he would espouse only the right. And when the great panic came; when trembling consulars and pallid magistrates rushed to the Temple of Vesta to proffer their last hurried vows, before speeding away to Capua, their refuge; Fabia stood all day beside the altar, stately, gracious, yet awe-inspiring, the fitting personification of the benignant Hearth Goddess, who was above the petty passions of mortals and granted to each ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... such different places. Innately a gentleman, he bore himself with dignity in this new position, with a fine simplicity and self-effacement that was not lost on some of his friends. His respect for them all was unbounded. For the mother, so majestic, so awe-inspiring; for Howard, that handsome boy whose exuberant Americanism was untouched by any feeling of caste; for Melton and Hubert Henry, his brothers, those lordly striplings of a lordly race; for Miss Latimer, who in his heart of hearts he dared not call Christine, and who to him was ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... dangerous sport, in these days, to get out on the ice field and work at a seam with planks and poles, prying loose a great sheet of the still thick ice, and watch it go over the dam. It had a most spectacular and awe-inspiring way of making the plunge. A great block of the ice, several yards square, would drift swiftly down, shoot far over the edge, then break apart of its own weight, the huge chunks falling with a mighty splash and ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... an idea of my feelings. I heard that the human eye had power to subdue the most savage beast that roams the woods; if so, there must be a great power in the organ of vision; but I know of no object so awe-inspiring to look upon, as the naked eye concentrated upon your features. Had we but the same conception of that "all seeing eye," which we are told, continually watches us, we would doubtlessly be wise and good; for if it inspired us ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... to the whirling, shrieking, blood-thirsty band was greeted with thunderous whoops and in the end nearly one hundred and fifty braves were going through all the barbarous awe-inspiring motions of ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... giant kulpa-tree opposite him, chanting as he did so some weird and monotonous refrain, the meaning of which was unintelligible to me. Up to then it had been light—the sky, like all Indian skies at that season, one blaze of moonbeams and stars; but now it gradually grew dark. An unnatural, awe-inspiring shade seemed to swoop down from the far distant mountains and to hush into breathless silence everything it touched. Not a bird sang, not an insect ticked, not a leaf stirred. One might have said all nature ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... snow-clad mountains, whose bases grew black and ever blacker, until they would suddenly be riven by blinding flashes of flickering ribbons of lightning, and the air torn and rent by reverberating booms of awe-inspiring thunder. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... and a shrill whistle ushered in the half-hour's respite. The effect of that raucous shriek was as solemn, as awe-inspiring, for the first moment, as the ringing of the Angelus bell in a Catholic country-side. For one moment everybody stood motionless and mute, the women with arms akimbo on aching hips, the black washers with drooping, relaxed shoulders. Each ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... steep mountain side; And, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,— These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood Of gamesome Deities; or Pan himself, The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God![3] ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... meaning, the woman sought to terminate the lesson by a remark that probably was to her but casual: "I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things." Then, to her profound amazement, Jesus rejoined with the awe-inspiring declaration: "I that speak unto thee am he." The language was unequivocal, the assertion one that required no elucidation. The woman must regard Him thereafter as either an imposter or the Messiah. She left her pitcher at the well, and hastening to the town told of her experience, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the middle of the way are endless trains, stopping, starting, crashing, laden to their ears with freight, doubtless all to eat. Tourists should come from very far to view Hudson Street. Here is a spectacle as fascinating, as awe-inspiring, as extraordinary as any in the world. From dawn until darkness falls, hour after hour, along Hudson Street slowly, steadily moves a mighty procession of great trucks. One would not suppose there were so many trucks on the face of the earth. It is a glorious sight, and any man whose ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... the times of the Lower Oolite as they do now; and the glimpse which they lent of so remote an antiquity, through the medium of an antiquity which, save for the comparison which they furnished the means of instituting, might be well deemed superlatively remote, I have felt singularly awe-inspiring and impressive. Macaulay anticipates a time when the traveller from some distant land shall take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to survey the ruins of St. Paul's. In disinterring from amid the antique remains of ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... furniture that might have come out of a respectable parlour in the East End of London—a horsehair sofa, arm-chairs of the same. I glimpsed grimy antimacassars scattered over that horrid upholstery, which was awe-inspiring, insomuch that one could not guess what mysterious accident, need, or fancy had collected it there. Its owner had taken off his tunic, and in white trousers and a thin, short-sleeved singlet prowled behind the chair-backs nursing his ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... berth of the warrant-officers, and after that down still lower to the engine-room. There the chief engineer came to the front and became responsible for the mighty cranks and gigantic cylinders and awe-inspiring beams, and complicated mazes of machinery, which raised him, in my mind, to little short of a demigod—for you must know that I, like yourself, am full of admiration and ignorance in regard to engineering forces. Next we went to the lowest depths of all, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... on the horizon had grown threateningly dark; but under the awe-inspiring slate-coloured canopy of clouds there opened a broad archway filled with primrose light—the luminous arch, well known to seafarers, through which charge the furious southwestern squalls. The rushing of the storm was already visible in the distance over the grey waters, which ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... their own spotless lives entitled them to be severe in this respect, while their sermons made such an impression upon me that during the whole of my youth I never once forgot their injunctions. These sermons were so awe-inspiring, and many of the remarks which they contained are so engraved upon my memory, that I cannot even now recall them without a sort of tremor. For instance, the preacher once referred to the case of Jonathan, who died for having eaten a little ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... with terrible violence, but though it was as horrible and awe-inspiring it was either farther away or the animal which uttered the cry had turned its head ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Once I contrived to get a seat close by the wicked angel, and paid her attentions which she received graciously: when I asked leave to wait upon her, she referred to her mistress, on whom everything depended. I spoke admiringly of that awe-inspiring Madonna, and remarked that I had known her family in Turkey, and that she resembled her ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... passed away forever; and the exceptions are but curiosities—reality has disappeared. They no longer have life, and are now but the specimens of the museum. The beauties of a brilliant night at sea, whether starlit or moonlit, the solemn, awe-inspiring gloom and silence of a clouded, threatening sky, as the steamer with dull thud moves at midnight over the waste of waters, these I need not describe; many there are that see them in these rambling days. These eternities of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... heavenly awe-inspiring object sailing through the skies, you will have trials of an unexpected nature to beset you, but by bravely combating these foes you will rise above the mediocre in life to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of the Irish imagination, some are humorous, some grotesque, and some awe-inspiring even to sublimity, and chief among the last class is "the weird-wailing Banshee, that sings by night her mournful cry," giving notice to the family she attends that one of its members is soon to be called to the spirit-world. The name of this dreaded attendant is variously pronounced, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... for himself, had decided to try his soft and clumsy hand at burglary. The gardener found the poor wretch in the morning aching with cramp and bailed up in a dampish corner by the dust-bin, by a wolfhound who kept just half an inch of white fang exposed, and responded with a truly awe-inspiring throaty snarl to the slightest hint of movement ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... a minute, I hesitated. I would have been very willing to forego the task—as, indeed, I am inclined to think any man well might—for of all the great, awe-inspiring rooms in this house, the cellars are the hugest and weirdest. Great, gloomy caverns of places, unlit by any ray of daylight. Yet, I would not shirk the work. I felt that to do so would smack of ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... church stood at the extreme end of the street,— dark, dismal, quite awe-inspiring on a night like this. A narrow lane stretched from the hotel to the sanctuary and beyond. There is nothing at hand to show whether it is a Methodist, a Presbyterian, or a Baptist church. As the two young women most vitally concerned in this tale were professedly high church, it ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... something awe-inspiring in my eyes, isn't there? At least I know not a single woman can resist them. Isn't ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... awe-inspiring in the place, for the boat was in the shadow of the Mew Rock, behind which lay the sun, hastening to his rest, his ruddy beams streaming now on either side of what looked like a rugged black tower standing against a blazing sky, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... day with an impassioned sermon from the main stand. During the last-mentioned service especially, the scene presented was truly of a weird and picturesque character. The flickering lights of the camp, the dark forest around, the melodious concert of a thousand voices mingling in sacred song, the awe-inspiring, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the miraculous, simply as the miraculous, neither knows God, nor has he ever sought after Him; for otherwise he would have understood, by looking at that truly great and awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, that these miracles (in God's providential guidance of His people) are but child's play for the Divine Power. But the truly miraculous has become despised through familiarity. The universal, on the contrary, although in itself insignificant, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... looked on from the sidewalks in a spellbound silence. Scarcely one seemed to possess the incentive to breathe a whisper. Only the babies and very small children regarded the awe-inspiring spectacle as something provided by way of entertainment. For the rest of the citizens it was dumbfounding beyond human comprehension. Cavalry, infantry, and artillery rolled on unceasingly to the clatter of horses' hoofs, the tramp ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Skeaton in the summer in Glebeshire or the Lake District. The Constantines and the Maxses were very fine indeed because they went both to Cannes in the winter and Scotland in the summer. It was wonderful, considering how often Mrs. Constantine was away from Skeaton, how solemn and awe-inspiring an impression she made and retained in the Skeaton world. Maggie discovered that unless you had a large house with independent grounds outside the town it was impossible to remain in Skeaton during the summer months. Oh! the trippers! ...Oh! ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... awe-inspiring, and suggested the possibility of a great flood coming down upon them to sweep everything away; but at the hint of such a catastrophe ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... Hal, when he was at last able to make out the objects below. He shut off his engine, and for a few moments both boys gave their attention to the awe-inspiring sight. ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... disgusted with those manifestations of the religious life with which alone he was familiar, he was still an unconscious worshiper. The woods, the hills, the rivers and the stars awoke within him a response to the beautiful, the sublime and awe-inspiring in the natural universe. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... first near view of the Kenai Mountains, and, as I learned to know them better, they seemed to grow more awe-inspiring and beautiful. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... has had the good fortune to see a total eclipse of the sun will, the writer feels sure, agree with the verdict of Sir Norman Lockyer that it is at once one of the "grandest and most awe-inspiring sights" which man can witness. Needless to say, such an occurrence used to cause great consternation in less civilised ages; and that it has not in modern times quite parted with its terrors for some persons, is shown by the fact that in Iowa, in the United States, a ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... lovely, they seemed to float above the earth, as unsubstantial as the clouds from which they rose. They belonged to another world, a fairy world altogether apart from the rugged, tumbled masses, the awe-inspiring precipices and tremendous cliffs, of the nearer mountains. These were majestic, overpowering, but plainly of this earth, unlike the pure, white summits that seemed unreal, ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... animated the language, sublime the conception, and awe-inspiring the sentiment here! Time is annihilated! The end is seen from the beginning, and all eyes are directed to the sovereign Judge of the world, as he comes in majesty to fix the final destiny of all the children of Adam! ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... children in the place congregated there, playing 'Last touch,' 'Hop-Scotch,' and all the rest of the games they loved, to a chorus of shouts, and screams, and laughter. Then there was the sea to look at too, so beautiful and grand, and awe-inspiring in the fading light. Oh, how ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... you say, father?" asked Adelaide, timidly laying her hand on his arm. Though she knew he was simple, she felt the vastness in him that was awe-inspiring—just as a mountain or an ocean, a mere aggregation of simple matter, is in the total majestic and incomprehensible. Beside him, the complex little individualities among her acquaintances seemed like the acrostics of ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... psychologist of the intuitive type. He may thunder and scold if he finds in his audience, whether numbering one or a million, a tendency to yield to authority, and he then poses as that authority, handing out his dicta in an awe-inspiring fashion. He will awaken the latent trend to ridicule and scoffing by pointing out inconsistency in others, or he may awaken admiration for his fairness and justice by lauding his opponent, taking care not ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... something awe-inspiring about the big cadet as he crouched over the torch, its white-hot flame reflected in his grim features. Everyone around him watched in silent fascination, aware that this was a rare exhibition of devotion toward a comrade. They all were certain that Astro would reach ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... before Bernardine even wished to speak. This beautiful whiteness may become monotonous after a time, but there is something very awe-inspiring about it, something which catches the soul and ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... in flames. San Francisco spouted smoke and fire from a score of vast conflagrations that were like so many active volcanoes. Oakland, San Leandro, Haywards—all were burning; and to the northward, clear to Point Richmond, other fires were at work. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle. Civilization, my grandsons, civilization was passing in a sheet of flame and a breath of death. At ten o'clock that night, the great powder magazines at Point Pinole exploded in rapid succession. So terrific were the concussions that the strong ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... but of social intercourse there was none, while on the other hand, Keith's mother kept up a gossiping acquaintance with the housekeeper. As far as Keith himself was concerned, there was nothing more awe-inspiring than a chance meeting on the stairs with the monocle, side-whiskers, precise manners and doled-out civility of Mr. Bureau-Chief Brostroem. The distance was so immense that even aspirations were precluded on the part of the boy. He could imagine being king, but not a ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... the figure of a woman, with her head bowed on her hands, as if she deeply felt—what we have been endeavoring to convey into our feeble description—the benign and awe-inspiring influence which the pontiff's statue exercises upon a sensitive spectator. No matter though it were modelled for a Catholic chief priest, the desolate heart, whatever be its religion, recognizes in that image the likeness ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... spellbound as Garrick unfolded the dreadful, awe-inspiring possibilities of the machine behind the screen. He walked slowly to the ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... the social barriers behind which all sorts and conditions of men sit crying Raca! with mutual anathemas—you, and you alone, will fully comprehend the ferment in Lucien's heart and brain, when his awe-inspiring headmaster told him that the great gates of the Hotel de Bargeton would shortly open and turn upon their hinges at his fame! Lucien and David, walking together of an evening in the Promenade de Beaulieu, had looked up at the house with the ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... sun, with its ever changing spectacle, exhilerating, splendid, awe-inspiring, there among the mountains, raised her spirits as she travelled, and drove gloomy thoughts away as it drove off the brooding mists which clung persistently, tearing themselves to tattered ribbons ere they would loose their hold upon the peaks beyond ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... your gold frame, Between that starched old Bishop and the dame In awe-inspiring ruff. We'll brave their ire And trip a minuet. You will not?—Fie! Those mocking lips half make me wish that I, Her grandson, might have ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... corner to enquire concerning a point that had arisen. There was movement going on in the room, people coming and going, but we were intent on our confabulation and took no notice. Suddenly there was an awe-inspiring silence and then Mr. Asquith was heard to lift up his voice. "Good Lord!" ejaculated my Minister (just like that—they are quite human when taken off their guard), "the Cabinet's sitting!" and until back, safe within the War Office ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... furniture—"to the little old Holland Street house. Lately I have had a great craving upon me to be at home again—alone, save for one or two precious friendships; with leisure to read and to think; and, in as far as my poor mental powers permit, to become a humble student of the awe-inspiring philosophy—reconciling things natural and supernatural—of which the Catholic Church is the exponent, her creeds its textbook, her ceremonies and ritual the divinely appointed symbols of its secret truths." Iglesias' expression ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... There was something awe-inspiring and almost beyond the human in the fury with which they labored. It was in the fireroom that their chief difficulty lay. The fireroom of a large steamer is a veritable furnace, and when to this heat was added that from the hold of the ship, it was truly a miracle ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... and the Apostles in an ideal dress, but the subordinate actors or spectators of the action in the dresses of their own nation and age. Here they were guided by a correct feeling: the mysterious and sacred ought to be kept at an awe-inspiring distance, but the human cannot be rightly understood if seen without its usual accompaniments. In the middle ages all heroical stories of antiquity, from Theseus and Achilles down to Alexander, were metamorphosed into true tales of chivalry. What was related to themselves ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was so present to his mind that he always felt as though he were there under false pretences. And this feeling was so uncomfortable that it nerved him to break through the awe-inspiring aloofness of his captain. He wanted to make a clean breast of it. I imagine that his youth stood in good stead to Mr. Powell. Oh, yes. Youth is a power. Even Captain Anthony had to take some notice of it, as if it refreshed him to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... without any reappearance of the strange shapes which had so upset the tranquility of the little camp, and, viewed in the fresh light of a new and glorious day, somehow the affair did not seem nearly so ominous and awe-inspiring as it had the night before. Breakfast, as you may imagine, was speedily disposed of, and, having seen to the stock, the party started out to ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe-inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at any rate. One of the hunters, a little dark-eyed man whom his mates called "Smoke," was telling stories, liberally intersprinkled with oaths and obscenities; and every minute or so ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... King Amenemhat? The Sun God? Who can rightly tell? Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the one least understood. The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after having meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to sum up in the smile of these closed lips the vanity of the most profound of our human speculations. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... nearing the shore. The autumn lightning shot out from the sky, veering to the north and unmasking the black, raging lake and the distant city. A heavy roll of awe-inspiring thunder followed the flash. The man and woman did not speak until the flat boat topped ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... they had gotten into the shipyard, they saw before them a wide, expansive harbor separated by pile-bridges. In the different harbour basins, lay the warships, which looked bigger, and more awe-inspiring close to, like this, than lately, when the boy had seen them from up above. "Then it wasn't so crazy after all, to imagine that ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... southeast, rising higher and higher as the flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her. Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance. The sight was awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... leave gracefully and went away through the enthralling, glittering unreality of it all leaving a young girl thrilled, excited, and deeply impressed with his ease and bearing amid awe-inspiring scenes in which she, too, desired most ardently ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... ejaculated in his most awe-inspiring tones, as he looked at us searchingly. "No doubt about it. Disgraceful marks, like a pair of rough street boys instead of young gentlemen. So you ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... rattled in the windows, the beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower struck the ill-timed hour with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... canary through moulting; he was a beautiful singer. Yesterday afternoon we went some way up the mountain just above the settlement. We walked for some distance up the Goat Ridge, crossed a ravine to our left, and then got on to what is called the Pinnacle, where we had a view which was awe-inspiring. There lay before us two or three yawning chasms stretching away down the mountain side. I hardly liked to look at them. One was Hottentot Gulch, whose sides, here bare, there dotted with trees ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... thinker crowned with thorns demands no less veneration than a thinker with the laurel wreath upon his brow. The flame issuing from the funeral pile on which martyrs die an heroic death for their ideas is, in its way, as awe-inspiring as the flame from Sinai's height. With equal force, though by different methods, both touch the heart, and arouse the moral sentiment. Biblical Israel the celebrated—medieval Judah the despised—it is ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... sojourn in Atlans, Nelson had never become used to the hideous and awe-inspiring podokos which closely resembled the allosauri but were only eighteen feet long. Like the other monsters, they had tremendously developed hind legs which promised the speed now so vital for escape and safety. Ready in the tooth-studded ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... reactions, momentary returns of the blind, undirected energy that at one time had prompted him to a vast desire to acquit himself of some terrible deed of readjustment, just what, he could not say, some terrifying martyrdom, some awe-inspiring immolation, consummate, incisive, conclusive. He fancied himself to be fired with the purblind, mistaken heroism of the anarchist, hurling his victim to destruction with full knowledge that the catastrophe shall sweep him also ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... can't live here?" exclaimed Sylvia Bailey, remembering the stately, awe-inspiring rooms in which "Pharaoh" received his ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... undervalued sculpture,—partly because of an inadequate sense of the beautiful, and partly from ignorance of its greatest trophies, he expressed unqualified assent to its awe-inspiring influence in "the monumental caves of death," as described by Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that "all arts address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel that the infuriated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... did not finish, for at that moment something awe-inspiring occurred. Amid the stillness of the night, in the depths of the ravine, from the direction in which the corpses lay suddenly resounded a kind of inhuman, frightful laughter in which quivered despair, and joy, and cruelty, and suffering, and pain, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... than is usually the case, for the garden was surrounded by a thick holly hedge, and the beds were planted with holly trees so dark that they appeared to be almost black in hue. To the eyes of the new pupil there was something awe-inspiring in the sight of the grim flowerless beds and the foliage which looked so stern and prickly, almost as bad as the pieces of broken glass which are laid on the top of high walls to prevent escape or intrusion. The ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... reflect—but in the meantime the sounds were travelling away. Automatically he started walking in the same direction. The drum beats had this peculiarity—though odd and mystical, there was nothing awe-inspiring in them, but on the contrary they reminded him of some place and some life with which he was perfectly familiar. Once again they caused all his other ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Emily Bronte lived, and the austere simplicity of her granite-moulded character, made it possible for her to envisage life in larger, simpler, less blurred outlines than most of us are able to do. Thus her art has something of that mysterious and awe-inspiring simplicity that characterises the work of Michelangelo ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... disposed to follow me in my remark, but to my ear that sounds just like the utterance of that instinctive dislike of suspense and of the long hanging over us of the sword by a hair, which we all know so well. Better to suffer than to wait for suffering. The loudest thunder-crash is not so awe-inspiring as the dread silence of nature when the sky is black before the peal rolls through the clouds. Many a martyr has prayed for a swift ending of his troubles. Many a sorrowing heart, that has been sitting cowering under the anticipation of coming evils, has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... above the embarrassing horizon of Lady Constantine's great house, magnificent furniture, and awe-inspiring footman. He became quite natural, all his self-consciousness fled, and his eye spoke into hers no less than his lips to her ears, as he said, 'How such a theory can have lingered on to this day beats conjecture! ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Ranch and home. It was one of those matchless nights that come only in the mountains, when the world is flooded with a soft, silvery light and the great trees stand out transfigured against the sky, amid a silence profound and awe-inspiring. ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... There was something mysterious—awe-inspiring in these movements; and our young hunters observed them, not without feelings of terror. They were both puzzled and awed. They scarcely knew what course to adopt. They talked in whispers, giving their counsels to each other. Should they creep to their ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... girl turned away, despairing of drawing him into sociability. Piang, the playfellow, had vanished, and Piang, the charm boy, was so superior, so awe-inspiring. Out of the corner of his eye Piang watched her. He longed to frolic and play, as of old, but the weight of the tribe was on his young shoulders, and he must put aside childish things. With folded arms he watched the revelers; his heart beat violently, but, to the envy and admiration of all, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Forrest, thoughtfully. "That to me is the saddest of all scenes. When it's over and I leave the stage, it is to carry with me an awe-inspiring thought of the end which is ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... reflected that a jeweler like Simoun was not going to try to gain five pesos more or less as a result of an exclamation more or less indiscreet. All gazed at the gems, but no one showed any desire to handle them, they were so awe-inspiring. Curiosity was blunted by wonder. Cabesang Tales stared out into the field, thinking that with a single diamond, perhaps the very smallest there, he could recover his daughter, keep his house, and perhaps rent another farm. Could it be that those gems were worth more ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... fit description, or convey even feebly a sense of the overwhelming dread of what we saw. Nature has power to paint what human hand may never hope to copy; and though, as I now know well, it was no more than a strange commingling of cloud and moon in atmospheric illusion, still the effect was awe-inspiring to a degree difficult of realization within the environments of peace and safety. To us, it appeared as a dreadful warning,—a mysterious manifestation of supernatural power, chilling our blood with terror ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... more those awe-inspiring eyes, and mine fell before them. Dear, this man is a hopeless enigma. He seemed to ask whether my words meant love; and the mixture of joy, pride, and agonized doubt in his glance went to my heart. It was plain that advances, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... possesses at least one distinct advantage over other states of the Union. Apart from the rugged grandeur of its scenery, its lofty, awe-inspiring peaks and stupendous canons, the climate is perhaps without its equal in the world. Denver, particularly, is richly favored in this respect. Situated near the foothills of the Rockies, on a high, broad plateau, ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... holding open the door. A sense of gloom and chill at once overwhelmed me. From the interior, which I faintly saw stretching before me, there breathed even in that first moment of hurried entrance a cold and haughty grandeur that, however rich and awe-inspiring, was any thing but attractive to a ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... her beringed hand and positively commanded him to obey. There had always been something excessively awe-inspiring in his mother when she came in her black silk dress with many flounces. The big, shining gold brooch, the heavy, rattling gold chain had always frightened him. If she had worn her market-clothes, in a striped head-cloth ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... mermaid before. She floated, as a matter of fact, in a cloud of pink and sea-green laces. The capacious bosom this cloud concealed from view rolled and heaved quite realistically, thus producing the effect of ocean waves, and her enormous arms were awe-inspiring enough to keep away all evening those in the crowd who had not got their sea-legs,—and that meant practically all the younger officers. At all other times her most dutiful slaves, these young men seemed to have conspired to leave the dreaded ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... this seven months after the struggle, in cold blood, to no purpose, as an omission that one repairs, as a duty that one fulfills, is awe-inspiring, it is complete; one has the appearance of acting within one's rights, which perplexes the conscience and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... semi-autobiographical medley which he called "Morton's Hope," which had granted a decent space and a tepid recognition to his "semi-historical" romance, in which he had already given the reading public a taste of his quality as a narrator of real events and a delineator of real personages,—this old and awe-inspiring New England and more than New England representative of the Fates, found room for a long and most laudatory article, in which the son of one of our most distinguished historians did the honors of the ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... school I peeped in at the flap of the tent. He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster. He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me. He smiled and blushed, and came outside. He said he was getting along ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... primitive Christian Church. The dramatic instinct was not condemned, and its imperative needs were appealed to in the church service, which early set forth in symbols all that was too mysterious and awe-inspiring for words. In order further to reach the mind through the senses, scenes from the Scriptures were read in the churches, illustrated with living pictures and music. Gradually the characters personated began to speak and to move. The ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the living garment of God, and how grandly, yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at the idea of a "specific ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... see the effect, he followed it instantly with the second ball. During one brief moment it seemed that neither had taken effect, and with feverish energy Charlie pressed home two fresh shells. That awe-inspiring beast was a hundred and fifty yards away, and each second seemed an hour. But, just as Jack stepped forward and fired again, the great beast rocked ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... uncertainty and misery so abject that it hid itself under an unusually casual manner that had for weeks kept Rose Mary from suspecting to the least degree the condition of his mind. There is a place along the way in the pilgrimage to the altar of Love, when the god takes on an awe-inspiring phase which makes a man hide his eyes in his hands with fear of the most abject. At such times with her lamp of faith a woman goes on ahead and lights the way for both, but while Rose Mary's flame burned strongly, her unconsciousness ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... other. They had heard the sound of the ravishing of that other house in the neighbourhood, without knowledge of the reason. What if now it should be the turn of the Hotel Plougastel! There was no real cause to fear it, save that amid a turmoil imperfectly understood and therefore the more awe-inspiring, the worst ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... charming conception of "The Presentation of the Virgin," which fills all one wall of it. I give a reproduction opposite page 36. The radiant figure of the thick-set little brave girl in blue, marching so steadily away from her parents to the awe-inspiring but kindly priests at the head of the steps, is unforgettable. Notice the baby in the arms of a woman among the crowd. The picture as a whole is disappointing in colour, and I cherish the belief that if Tintoretto's beautiful ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... portal. These monstrous cliffs of bare, gray rock have not changed in form or color or appearance since some force, next to that of the Almighty, lifted them from the under world and placed them to stand eternal sentinels at the entrance to this strange, impressive, awe-inspiring river—for the wind and wear of unnumbered centuries have left them cold and bare, soilless and treeless, save where some stunted shrub, with a single root, has spiked itself into a crevice, and there stands starved and dying, as it lives ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... gorge of the tributary with the intention of taking my luck at a village called St. Bazile. I was soon in the shade of the chestnut forest, where boars were said to be plentiful. As time went on, the scenery became more solemn and awe-inspiring. Pines that looked very gloomy in the late afternoon mingled with the chestnuts, while black rocks, faintly flushed with heather towards the sky, reared their jagged outlines above the sombre foliage. All the while the water in the gorge moaned or roared. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... fanfaronade O'er their most worthless work; and I'm afraid They're not entirely different from the hen. Lo! the drum-major in his coat of gold, His blazing breeches and high-towering cap— Imperiously pompous, grandly bold, Grim, resolute, an awe-inspiring chap! Who'd think this gorgeous creature's only virtue Is that in battle he will never ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... utter a word here would be profanation. The remnant of a race have gathered for shelter within the sacred walls of their council lodge. The ashes of the council pipe have been scattered upon the ground. In silence, deep, profound, awe-inspiring, the old Indian guard—the Last of the Great Chiefs—break not the silence. Who can ask death to retreat? And who put in shackles the decrees of destiny? The world annals contain no heroism and no bravery more lofty and enduring than ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... staring at you. You are so very contradictory, and in so many ways, that I took the liberty of guessing at your real character; whether after all you are unpleasantly perfect, or whether it is merely your luck to possess an awe-inspiring exterior." ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... that awe-inspiring piece of ordnance took me the length of the Congo without the ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... fast and day of public prayer, on which to supplicate God that He turn aside the sword suspended above them. The night following, the beadle in a dream saw an awe-inspiring old man, who addressed him in the following words: "Up, quickly! Hasten to the gate of the court, where lies the money you need. I am your father Abraham. I have beheld the affliction wherewith the Gentiles oppress you, but God has heard your groans." In great terror the beadle ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... spoke. The princes both obeyed, And reverence to each river paid.(160) They reached the southern shore at last, And gaily on their journey passed. A little space beyond there stood A gloomy awe-inspiring wood. The monarch's noble son began To question thus the holy man: "Whose gloomy forest meets mine eye Like some vast cloud that fills the sky? Pathless and dark it seems to be, Where birds in thousands wander free; ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... What an awe-inspiring silence! Softer calm than zephyr breathes Murmurs in the laurel foliage And the amaranthine wreaths: Thus in sacred stillness rested Air and wave—in such repose Slumbered nature, when from ocean ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the many that go to make up the vocabulary of American slang have been in longer use and have a wider range than the word awful. From the loftiest and most awe-inspiring themes to the commonest trifle, this much-abused word has been employed. A correct speaker or writer almost fears to use the word lest he should suggest the idea of slang, and thus detract from the subject to which the word might most ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... the water leaps in delightful cascades and waterfalls. A four-hour climb brings one, after terrific labor, to the mouth of the picturesque pass of Ya-ko-t'ang at 7,500 feet. In the quiet of the mountains I took my midday meal; there was about the place an awe-inspiring stillness. It was grand but lonely, weird rather than peaceful, so that one was glad to descend again suddenly to the river, tracing it through long stretches of plain and barren valley, after which narrow paths lead up again to the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and practically no more looting. During the fire General Funston established his headquarters at Fort Mason on the cliffs of Black Point, and at once it became the busiest and most picturesque spot in San Francisco. There was an awe-inspiring dignity about the place, with its many guards, military ensemble and the businesslike movements of officers and men. Few were allowed to enter within its gates, and the missions of those who did find their way within were disposed ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... hundred and forty strong, is said to have gone through the length and breadth of the North Island putting all they met to flight with the discharge of two old flint-lock guns. The cunning warriors always followed up the awe-inspiring fire with a prompt charge in which spear and tomahawk did the work for which panic had prepared the way. Another Ngapuhi chief, the leader of an attack on the men of Tauranga, managed to arm his men with thirty-five muskets, which they ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... determined to make the situation absolutely safe by advancing eastwards to capture Jericho and the crossings of the Jordan. This was not solely a measure of precaution. It certainly did provide a means for preventing the foe from operating in the stern, forbidding, desolate, and awe-inspiring region which has been known as the Wilderness since Biblical days, and doubtless before. In that rough country it would be extremely difficult to stop small bands of enterprising troops getting through a line and creating diversions which, while of small military ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... is said and done, nothing in those splendid gardens, not the stately avenue of kanari trees whose interlacing branches form a nave as awe-inspiring as that of some great cathedral, not the rare and curious orchids which would arouse the envy of a millionaire, appealed to me so powerfully as a little Grecian temple of white marble, all but hidden by the encircling shrubbery, which marks the sleeping-place of Lady Raffles, wife of that Sir ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... listeners of the necessity of thinking. There was not much of melody in it; little of the dance movement and very little of the lighter and gayer manifestations of life. It has been described as a sort of harmonious discord, typifying mysterious, tragic and awe-inspiring things. The people sat and ate their heavy food and drank their beer, their ears engaged with the strains of the orchestra, their eyes by the movements of the conductor, while their tired brains rested ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... that he had been fooled, disappeared in an awe-inspiring cloud of smoke and sulphur fumes; but the bridge remained, and its name to this day recalls the discomfiture of his evil plans. So, having fooled the devil, Megan was able ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various |
