"Awfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... power of God's Word. The frivolous or wanton frolics of the youth began to be exchanged for meetings for religious conference. The pastor was encouraged to renewed tenderness and solemnity in his preaching. His themes were justification by faith, the awfulness of God's justice, the excellency of Christ, the duty of pressing into the kingdom of God. Presently a young woman, a leader in the village gayeties, became "serious, giving evidence," even to the severe judgment of Edwards, "of a heart truly broken and sanctified." A general seriousness began ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... to temper, as it were, the awfulness of the first revelation, we find that the light of God is brought us through a medium; the glory, grace, and truth of God are shown us in the face of ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... written by George Percy who sailed to Virginia with the first settlers in 1606-07, described the distress caused by seasoning and famine during the summer of 1607. The awfulness of that summer is made more dramatic by the manner in which Percy introduced the subject. Having described the voyage over, which was relatively pleasant with the stopover in the beautiful West Indian islands, ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... Montemirto, you shall see also your protegee, of whom you ask for news. It has just missed being disastrous. Poor Dionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to her wits, poor little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it has required all my influence, and all the awfulness of your Excellency's name, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent her expulsion by the Sisters of the Stigmata. It appears that this mad creature very nearly committed a sacrilege: ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the Athenians will say. Four days have been spent by the "initiates" and the "candidates" in symbolic sacrifices and purifications.[*] On one of these days the arch priest, the "Hierophant," has preached a manner of sermon at the Painted Porch in the Agora setting forth the awfulness and spiritual efficacy of these Mysteries, sacred to Demeter the Earth Mother, to her daughter Persephone, and also to the young Iacchus, one of the many incarnations of Dionysus, and who is always associated at Elusis with the divine "Mother and Daughter." The great cry has gone ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... his bitterness was reached when a woman approached and began to speak to him about his soul, and the danger of hell fire. She dilated glibly upon the awfulness of sin, and even offered to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... sheer deliberate awfulness this beat everything. We gazed spellbound: no one knew what moment the great ship might not dive into the depths. The pumps were going hard. We fixed our eyes on marks about the water line to see if the sea was gaining ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... money-makers have taken this occasion to stage a spectacular bull market, grumbling on the fruits of war! And there is the "good-time" side to American life. For a few brief months after the outbreak of the war Americans were staggered by the awfulness of the tragedy and moved under its shadow. Their hearts went out in sympathy, in feeding the dispossessed, and sending aid to the wounded. We spent less on ourselves, partly because of financial fear, partly because ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... receipt of that letter Bridget's reflections had been more disagreeable than any she had yet grappled with. In Nelly's company the awfulness of what she had done did sometimes smite home to her. Well, she had staked everything upon it, and the only possible course was to brazen it out. That George should die, and die quickly—without any return of memory or speech, was what she ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 'German' was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn us from his evil companionship into the restful paths of British piety. The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often been prone to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has certainly ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... Donald stood rooted to the spot by the suddenness and awfulness of the fate that had overtaken his enemy. Then like a flash it came to him that, even while his attention was wholly centred on the tragedy just enacted, he had been aware of another man ascending the pathway who had turned and ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... He desires to be remembered as that is the attribute which most glorifies Him. Let us bear this fact in mind as we study this attribute of the divine nature. It is just this vision of God that we need today when the tendency to deny the reality or the awfulness of sin is so prevalent. Our view of the necessity of the atonement will depend very largely upon our view of the holiness of God. Light views of God and His holiness will produce light views of ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... silent for a long moment while the awfulness of those words burned themselves into her brain. Then with a shudder she said aloud, "That's a mighty big thankful, ain't it?—To think I don't have to limp along with crutches! But, oh dear, two months in bed is such a long time to wait! ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and from that time her power over the minds of the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her yashmak for a moment in order to give me a better idea of the effect which she produced by suddenly revealing the awfulness ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... that could not have come in less than six centuries of venerableness, with a view to which these edifices seem to have been built. A new cathedral would lack the last touch to its beauty and grandeur. It needs to be mellowed and ripened, like some pictures; altho I suppose this awfulness of antiquity was supplied, in the minds of the generation that built cathedrals, by the sanctity ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... tears to Mary whose obedience had restored what Eve's self-will had ruined, and the last threefold sob of endearment to the "kindly, loving, sweet, Virgin Mary." After the high agonisings and aspirations of the day's prayer, the awfulness of the holy Sacrifice, the tramping monotony of the Psalter, the sting of the discipline, the aches and sweats of the manual labour, the intent strain of the illuminating, this song to Mary was a running into Mother's arms and finding ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... little his slack body began to stiffen; little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh of deeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, for Young Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through which he had ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... "He's a stark, raving lunatic!" declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner interview with the outlaw, that evening. "I'd send him to military school, but I don't believe they'd take him. Do you know WHY he says all that awfulness happened?" ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... into the grimmest, largest, most grotesque trees I have ever seen of the kind. I had always been a little afraid of them, even in the daytime, but they did me no hurt, and I stood in the vast hall of the silent night—alone: there lay the awfulness of it. I had never before known what the night was. The real sting of its fear lay in this—that there was nobody else in it. Everybody besides me was asleep all over the world, and had abandoned me to my fate, whatever might come out of the darkness to seize me. When I got round the edge ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... forest ridge we now get a prospect of the little lakes of Longuemer and Retournemer, twin gems of superlative loveliness in the wildest environment. Deep down they lie, the two silvery sheets of water with their verdant holms, making a little world of peace and beauty, a toy dropped amid Titanic awfulness and splendour. The vantage ground is on the edge of a dizzy precipice, but the picture thus sternly framed is too exquisite to be easily abandoned. We gaze and gaze in spite of the vast height from which we contemplate ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The awfulness of their surroundings and the enormity of his responsibility, came upon Harvey with overwhelming force. He was too horrified for speech, and, for a few seconds, ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... at after Jack Curtis. I pitied every girl who was not engaged to him. How could my sisters be happy? Resigned, content, they might be; but to be married and done for, and afterwards to meet Jack—well, imagination failed me to depict the awfulness ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... I sat by mother's pillow, my mind full of the dread that seemed now as if it might any moment be realized,—of the awfulness of being left alone in that living tomb with the marble image of what was and yet was not my mother, the clock struck nine in the morning. Somewhere the sun was shining, I thought. Somewhere there were happy lovers, merry-makings in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... stopped and let the awfulness of these statements bear down upon us? Do we take in, that we are talking about ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... In the center of the room stood a glass case, in which were deposited the two volumes of the little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's own hand; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... dwell on vulgar conditions of wonder or horror, such as they could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with Giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. It is also visibly gradual. "His face was bound about with a napkin." The nearest Apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... the "Batti Batti" through, sang it atrociously—not like a poor professional, but like a pretentious amateur, a reversion to a manner of singing she had once had, but had long since got rid of. She paused at the end, appalled by the silence, by the awfulness ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... a moving picture of the sorrow of the drunkard's family and the awfulness of the drunkard's death, and sat down amid a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... awfulness of the truth dumbed him and an impetuous desire to protect her swept through him. But he was powerless, helpless. A wild idea of sacrificing his loyalty to his paper by warning Gibson of the impending ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... it is to see the letter of the law carried out perform that duty at the expense of personal pain,—a public execution is not vulgar, it becomes positively sublime. It is dreadful, of course; but its dreadfulness melts into pure awfulness. The attention is taken off the criminal, and is lost in a sense of the grandeur of justice; and the spectator who beholds an execution, solely as it appears to the eye, without recognition of the idea which towers behind ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... historical records; but a continuous incarnation of Deity, a permanent real presence of the Infinite in certain selected persons and consecrated objects. The same divine epiphany which began with the person of the Saviour has never since abandoned the world: it exists, in all its awfulness and power, only embodied no longer in a redeeming individual, but in a redeeming church. The word of inspiration, the deed of miracle, the authority to condemn and to forgive, remain as when Christ taught in the temple, walked on the sea, denounced the Pharisee, and accepted the penitent. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... there, on all sides of me, from one end of the valley to the other, lay dozens of bodies,—bodies of men and horses,—Highlanders and English, white-cheeked, lurid eyes, and bloody-browed,—a hotch-potch of livid, gory awfulness. Here was the writhing, wriggling figure of an officer with half his face shot away; and there, a horse with no head; and there—but I cannot dwell on such horrors, the very memory of which makes me feel sick and faint. The air, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... be so if you say so," replied Lightfoot, "but you might tell me what all this awfulness ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?—of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... family, or that he was kind to his family, or was loved by his family, always we are to understand not at all his wife and children, but the train and retinue of his domestic slaves. Now, the relation of the Apostles to their Master, and the awfulness of their dependency upon him, which represented a golden chain suspending the whole race of man to the heavens above, justified, in the first place, that form of expression which should indicate the humility and loyalty that is owned by servants to a lord; whilst, on ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... of providing fitting clothing for the men exposed to all the terrors of a Russian winter; and her daughters, enlisted to aid in this pious work, began that career of beneficence which two of them were to pursue afterwards to such good purpose, amid the ravages of wars whose colossal awfulness dwarfed the Crimean campaign in the memories ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... must have been others"—Mrs. Pendomer's smile grew reminiscent—"any number of others; that she is only an incident in my life. Er—as you have mentioned, Patricia has certain notions—Northern idiocies about the awfulness of a young fellow's sowing his wild oats, which you and I know perfectly well he is going to do, anyhow, if he is worth his salt. But she doesn't know it, poor little girl. So she won't listen to reason, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Moses; if they hesitated in view of the largeness of Christian liberty; if they seemed unwilling to accept the sweetness and light of the good tidings, let us not forget that it was the mistake of men who feared more than they dared to hope, whose estimate of the exceeding awfulness of sin caused them to dwell upon God's vengeance rather than his compassion; and whose dread of evil was so great that, in shutting their hearts against it, they sometimes shut out the good. It is well for us if we have learned to ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... battled through the vanes and chimneys of our schoolhouse. Artemis was Lady of my country. By Apollo's light might I too come to be led. Poseidon of the dark locks girdled my native seas. I had had good reason to know the awfulness of Pan, and guessed that some day I should couch with Kore the pale Queen. I called them by these names, since these names expressed to me their essence: you may call them what you will, and so might I, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... perturbed imaginings led back to Frederic, to the terrible fate that lay in store for him, to the awfulness of war that had put between them an impassable gulf of blood and guilt and treachery that, in spite of their love for each other, kept them at cross purposes and made them enemies. Why, she vaguely wondered, must governments disagree ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to sway and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining, for I saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters who ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... grandeur,—or the outlines of a grief more than human; when they spake of a betrayal for thirty pieces of silver[510], of blows and spitting[511], and of pierced hands and feet[512]; of parted garments and lots cast upon a vesture[513];—they must have felt, they must have felt the awfulness of the message they were commissioned to deliver; and longed, yea yearned unutterably to see and to hear the things which were reserved to be witnessed in the days ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance beside him. He had only to make ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... and thought when I walked. I remember well enough that I was going to preach about the cloud of witnesses, and explain to my people that this did not mean persons looking at, witnessing our behaviour—not so could any addition be made to the awfulness of the fact that the eye of God was upon us—but witnesses to the truth, people who did what God wanted them to do, come of it what might, whether a crown or a rack, scoffs or applause; to behold whose witnessing ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... grandparents, if indeed his tongue had wagged too boldly in speaking of the all-powerful Caesar, and to remember the fable of the lion and the mouse, the scowl he had put on to impress the youth with his awfulness and power vanished from Caesar's brow. The idea that this great artist, whose sharp eye could so surely distinguish the hideous from the beautiful, should regard him as ill-favored, was odious to him. He had listened to him in silence; but suddenly he inquired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deepened, and the voice of the sea began to moan through the back of the cave, the gorse crackled no longer, and the turf burned in a dull red glow. Night with its awfulness had come down, and the boys ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his essence ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... party out in front of us one morning. There must have been hundreds of Germans lying there, with thousands further on. All we could do was just to cover them with earth. It was a horrible sight, and it is impossible for you folks at home to realize anything of the awfulness of this war. This awful pace surely cannot last long. But despite all the discomfort, I would not have liked to miss the chance of doing ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... imaginative temperament, a consciousness of unfitness to wrestle with the rough realities of life, the way lay invitingly open.... It lay through perils, but was made attractive by perpetual wonders. It was awful, but in its awfulness lay its power over the young mind. It learned to trample down that last bond which united the child to common humanity, filial reverence; the fond and mysterious attachment of the child and the mother, the inborn reverence of the son to the father. It ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... Birthmark," "The Bosom Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? The genius of Hawthorne was one which used ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more still, and the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above their thrones paused the course of the archangel; and his wings stretched from east to west, overshadowing with the shadow of light the immensity of space. Then forth, in the shining stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice: and, fulfilling ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the crew or the passengers aboard one of these, I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no obstacles ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Of course I do not mean by calling these fables "paltry," to dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth; but only their want of apprehension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena introduced. So also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of observation, or his power of seizing on the main points of landscape, but I deny the power of landscape over his heart, unless when closely ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... without the possibility of revocation. Because he was so oppressed with dread in regard to the young man who walked and boated with Katy, courted and caressed her, but about the seriousness of whose intentions the mother seemed to have some doubt—because of the very awfulness of his apprehensions, he dared ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... accustomed to the narrowness of human limits, with the lamps of neighboring tenements glimmering across the street. The house probably seemed to her adrift on the great ocean of the night. A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of nature, so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless extent. Once, while the blast was bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia's robe, with precisely the air of one who hears her own name spoken at a distance, but is unutterably reluctant to obey ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... has also its features of solemnity and grandeur, filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... long enough to go anywhere, but before I go away for good if I could tell you what you could tell to others, and make them understand how different it is from what they think, make them know the awfulness—awfulness—" ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... asked him?" Mary, as she made the suggestion, was herself horror-stricken at the awfulness of the occasion. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, and might the next instant burst and ingulf the lagoon, and wipe out the pretty ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... into his harvest." And then he sent the twelve forth. As a matter of fact the Scriptures concerning Judas are not so very full, but there is a good outline, and if one but takes the points presented and allows his imagination to work in the least, there is a story which is thrilling in its awfulness. ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... up as tenderly as he might, there was no mistaking the awfulness of the charge he brought against her. He had as good as taxed her with neglecting Baby. She had recourse to subterfuge; she sheltered herself behind lies, laid on one on the top of the other, little ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... had ceased, the wind blew as hard as ever. Still the water rose until the white foam reached almost close up to the spot on which their tent stood. A few minutes more might decide their fate. Owen felt deeply the awfulness of their situation. Ere long he and his companions might be standing in the presence of ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... strange how soon even the gentlest natures gain a familiarity with suffering and death. The awfulness and solemnity of the unaccustomed sight loses rapidly by daily contact with it; even though the sentiments of sympathy and pity may not grow callous as well. But, as yet, Richmond was new to such scenes; and a shudder went through the whole social fabric at the shattering and tearing of the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of Holgrave's demeanor. He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these edifices were well adapted to accomplish their purpose. The Egyptian beholder and worshiper was not to be attracted and charmed, but overwhelmed. His own nothingness and the terribleness of the power and the will of God was what he was to feel. But, if the awfulness of Deity was thus inculcated, the divine power of the Pharaoh was not less strikingly set forth. He is seen seated amongst them, nourished from their breasts, folded in their arms, admitted to familiar intercourse with them. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... exaltation of mind that always follows a great misfortune, and which may perhaps be compared with the excitement that for awhile covers the shameful sense of defeat in an army, had evaporated, and he began to realize the crushing awfulness of the blow which had fallen on him, and to fear lest it should drive him mad. He looked round his little horizon for some straw of comfort at which to catch, and could find none; nothing but ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... momentary sense of relief. Distress of soul?—that meant some spiritual anxiety, and it had not the awfulness to her which a more tangible trouble, such ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... not here God's awfulness displayed; His kindliness and mercy more appear; For flow'rs, the precious emblems He has made Of graciousness, in plenitude are here. In rich profusion blooming unconfined, They seem to whisper ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... jargon of the heretic) but it can also be masterful and tyrannical and terrible, even cruel, so they say, although I do not go that far myself. And the call of it, the memory of it, the significance of it, the power and majesty and awfulness of it will draw you back. Oh! Have no fear, monsieur! If I may charge myself with your conversion I will stake a great deal, a very great deal indeed, on the chances of your absolute and final surrender, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... good deal. This wore off as the frock wore out, and by the time that Eyebright had ripped out half the gathers of the waist and torn a hole in the sleeve, which was pretty soon, the alpaca lost its awfulness in their eyes, and had become as any common dress. In the course of a week or two, Eyebright found herself studying, playing, and walking at recess with Bessie, quite in the old way. But all the ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... examine the Bible carefully we shall find that, while there are a great many clear proofs of the certainty and awfulness of Hell, the proofs of this theory of Everlasting Torment are not much to be depended on. Practically they can all ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the roll from under his tunic and spread the sheet out. Then they lifted up the body and wrapped it about so that the covering hid the awfulness of it from view. Mr. Narkom mopped ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... dazed by the awfulness of the catastrophe that had so suddenly overwhelmed the "Lavinia," and could form no idea of its nature. Had there been a collision? If so, it must have been with the iceberg, for nothing else had been in sight when he went below. Yet it was incredible ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... themselves, without any external cause; but merely to express their swinish sympathy. I suppose it is the knowledge that these four grunters are doomed to die within two or three weeks that gives them a sort of awfulness in my conception. It makes me contrast their present gross substance of fleshly life with the nothingness speedily to come. Meantime the four newly bought pigs are running about the cow-yard, lean, active, shrewd, investigating everything, as ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wondering admiration at this marvellous woman. Was it possible that a girl could have such nerve, such courage? Or had woman's hope, so persistent where her loved ones are concerned, made Beulah Sands blind to the awfulness of the situation? As I looked at her I could not doubt that she fully realised our position, that she was really suffering more than either of us, that she was only acting to ease Bob's anguish. Bob brought out his memoranda, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... I am depressed by the awfulness of it all. I feel of so little consequence—so small and helpless in the face of all these myriad manifestations of life stripped to the bone of its savagery and brutality. I realize as never before ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide. Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best can,—thinking they will do it better here, in presence of God the Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble made by Him. In one word, St. Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in such manner, has the Spirit of the Time ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness—the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... She saw the two figures no more. But the memory of Green's face went with her, its pallor, and the awfulness of his eyes—the red flame of his fury. Robin's unrestrained wrath was of small account beside it. She felt as if she had never seen anger ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... down just outside his door, but he crouched his head to his knees and shielded it with the arch of his arms. And Jerry, who had never heard shell-fire, much less imagined what it was like, was impressed with the awfulness of it. It was to him a natural catastrophe such as had happened to the Arangi when she was flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind. But, true to his nature, he did not crouch down under ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... friends to whom he might appeal. He would not, he dare not, accept outward help, even outward friendship, however hearty and sincere, at that crisis of his existence. It seemed a desecration of its awfulness to find comfort in anything but the highest and the deepest. And the glimpse of that which he had attained seemed to have passed away from him again,—seemed to be something which, as it had arisen with Argemone, was lost with her also,—one speck of the far blue sky which ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the generic *bad* algorithm). Bogo-sort is equivalent to repeatedly throwing a deck of cards in the air, picking them up at random, and then testing whether they are in order. It serves as a sort of canonical example of awfulness. Looking at a program and seeing a dumb algorithm, one might say "Oh, I see, this program uses bogo-sort." Compare ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... tenderly over him, the smile on his lips took away the awfulness of the sight, and the serenity of the rain-drenched face rested as visible token of an abundant entrance ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of their faith; for I waited to explain nothing. First, I tumbled the bear off the brink. We heard him go crashing down into the abyss, and strike the bottom with a sound full of awfulness to the uninitiated. Then, with my rifle swung on my back, I seized the limb, and threw ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... gulping-down places in which our land abounds. Drinking in public places in France is not so completely separated from all respectability and refinement as it is with us. It involves none of that horrid nomenclature, "slings," "punches," "cocktails," "smashes," which carry with them all the terror and awfulness of oaths. The French have pretty names for drinks, as well as a rather pretty, poetic way of alluding to a man's inebriation. "He is a little gray;" "He has a little corner in his head;" "He is in a condition for beating the wall;" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the solemn awfulness of the place and scene oppressed her. She began to think that ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... not sit down; he stood with hands thrust deep into his breeches' pockets-hands clenched and quivering. The full awfulness of this decision one way or the other knocked at his mind with double knocks as of an angry postman. If he did not take that 'dare' he was disgraced in Holly's eyes, and in the eyes of that young enemy, her brute ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... feeling cold; Granny was dead and cold. Suddenly she understood the awfulness of it all, and hurrying ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... And think... think of the awfulness of it... it was hovering at the gates of life! It wanted to be! And I trembled.. . I suffered; at any moment I might have said the word, and it would have come. But I did not say the word... and it is gone. And now ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... she said, "how the people there fancied they heard the mermaids singing—amidst so much mystery, and with the awfulness of the sea ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... most tremendous roars I ever heard. It was so chose to me that, in the confusion of my sleepy brain, it seemed to be far more terrible than that even of the gorilla. I was mistaken in this, however, and no doubt my semi-somnolent condition tended to increase its awfulness. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... an endless phalanx of fiery specters, and moving, as I remember, always from east to west. The absolute silence with which these mysterious evolutions were performed and the quavering reflections which were thrown upon the ground increased the awfulness of the exhibition. Occasionally enormous curtains of lambent flame rolled and unrolled with a majestic motion, or were shaken to and fro as if by a mighty, noiseless wind. At times, too, a sudden billowing rush would be made toward the zenith, and for a minute the sky overhead would glow so brightly ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... contemplations of escape from her position by immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... words with which to answer. "Impossible!" I burst out, flinging doubt, fear, hesitancy, everything I had hitherto trembled at to the winds. "It was in my nature to take it, worked upon as I was by family affection, the awfulness of our father's approaching death, and a thousand uncanny influences all carefully measured and prepared for this end. But it is not in my nature to keep it after four months of natural living in the companionship of a man thirty years removed ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the Pope looks when he gives his blessing at St. Peter's; and the feeling you have when you stand by Napoleon's tomb—the awfulness of what he did and was—and being here in Switzerland, where I always feel somehow the pressure of all the past of Europe about me. Now,"—and she laughed lightly,—"I have ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... primordial Sea, the awfulness of whose antiquity hath stricken all mythology dumb;—thou most wrinkled diving Sea, the millions of whose years outnumber even the multitude of thy hoary motions;—thou omniform and most mysterious Sea, mother of the monsters and the gods,—whence shine eternal youth? Still ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... got so far he could get no farther, for suddenly it occurred to him that this was a prayer which concerned Glory and himself as well. It was only then that he realized the magnitude and awfulness of the task he had undertaken. He had undertaken to ask God that Paul might not find Glory either, and therefore that he on his part might never hear of her again. When he put it to himself like that, the sweat started from his forehead and he was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... ingredient that formed the soul of this fair charmer, yet now she found she had a mixture of it, from her concern for Octavio; and that generous lover made her so many soft vows, and tender protestations of the respect and awfulness of his passion, that she was wholly convinced he was her slave; nor could she see the constant languisher pouring out his soul and fortune at her feet, without suffering some warmth about her heart, which she had never felt but for Philander; and this day she expressed herself more obligingly ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... chilling uncertainty as to the true significance of the scenic action. In my first complete version I had made Venus, on the occasion of her second attempt to recall her faithless lover, appear in a vision to Tannhauser when he is in a frenzy of madness, and the awfulness of the situation, is merely suggested by a faint roseate glow upon the distant Horselberg. Even the definite announcement of Elizabeth's death was a sudden inspiration on the part of Wolfram. This ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... more sadness than her simple life had ever known before. The agitation of her confessor, the tremulous eagerness of his words, the alternations of severity and tenderness in his manner to her, all struck her only as indications of the very grave danger in which she was placed, and the awfulness of the sin and condemnation which oppressed the soul of one for whom she was conscious of a deep and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... know how it feels to be mortified? The—the awfulness—" Lila stopped and swallowed once or twice as if something stuck in her throat. "She might have told me in a different manner so as not to wound me so ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... Notwithstanding the awfulness of volcanic and earthquake phenomena, there is some silver lining to the dark clouds. They prove that the earth is yet a living planet. Centuries must pass away before it will become like the moon—a dead planet—without water, air or life. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... they can't keep out of the game. The very bigness of the thing lures them on; the bigger the issue, the bigger the fascination. The millions of men and the billions of dollars—that lures them. And the awfulness—the dead, the wounded, the horrors, that lures them like nothing else. There was one ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... happened that immediately on my interview, I acquainted them with the nature of my errand, and solicited their attendance in London. Conceiving that I had no right to ask them such a favour, or terrified at the abruptness and apparent awfulness of my request, some of them gave me an immediate denial, which they would never afterwards retract. I began to perceive in time that it was only by the most delicate management that I could get forward on these ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... the cold perspiration of dread and horror. His soul was moaning; his whole being was aghast with the awfulness of the deed; he could have shrieked aloud in his madness. How he lived through the hour in that theatre he never could have told, nor could he believe that he was sitting there with all those frightful thoughts ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... was now lighted up by their flames. On, on they went, carrying havoc, terror, and confusion wherever they went; their loud explosions, added to the roar of the guns, which opened on them from the whole French squadron, increasing the awfulness of the scene. The enemy soon saw that their firing was in vain: even their boats failed to tow aside the fiery masses borne down on them by the gale. One after the other they cut their cables, and attempted ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... a thing happened to her! To change like that. An awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ached. But it only lasted ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... easily be the most powerful force on the East Side. I met the gentleman who "controlled" all the cinematographs, and was reputed to make a million dollars a year net therefrom. He did not appear to be a bit weighed down, either by the hugeness of his opportunity or by the awfulness of his responsibility. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... mean is,' pursued Georgiana, 'that Ma being so endowed with awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it—I say it very badly—I don't know whether you can understand ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... any rate from his own. He drew a picture of the little ship amid the storm, and of God's hand as it moved in its anger upon the waters, but of the cause of that divine wrath and its direction he said nothing. Then, of the suddenness of death and its awfulness he said much, not insisting, as he did so, on the necessity of repentance for salvation, as far as those two poor sinners were concerned. No, indeed; how could any preacher have done that? But he improved the occasion by ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... he, graspin' holt of my hand in the warmth of his gratitude, for he see what I had kep' him from. "Yes, you wuz in the right on't, Samantha. I see the awfulness of the peril from which you rescued of me. But never," sez he, a lookin' down agin over the railin', onto some more wimmen a passin' beneath, "never did I see what I have seen here to-night. Not," sez he dreemily, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... their parlors with upholstery, and put rose-colored paper on their walls, and call them their houses; and shut the little round awfulness and goodness out! We've all been doing it! And there's no place left for ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... A peculiar pricking sensation which I now felt in my brain, a sensation exactly like that of June, 1900, led me to believe that I might again be thrown out of touch with the world I had so lately regained. Realizing the awfulness of that fate, I redoubled my efforts to effect my rescue. Shortly after midnight I did succeed in gaining the attention of the night watch. Upon entering my room he found me flat on the floor. I had fallen from the bed and perforce remained absolutely helpless ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew further and further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and let them fall into her lap. The awfulness of Cousin Jane's indignation transcended the poor lady's powers of description. Zora dismissed the Vicar and Cousin Jane as persons of no account. The silly pair were legally married, and she would see that there was a proper ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... here and there the sombre parapets streaked with silvery cascades. At intervals the Titanic scene is relieved by glimpses of pastoral grace and loveliness, and such relief is necessary even to those who can gaze without giddiness on such awfulness. Between gorge and gorge lie level spaces, amid dazzlingly-green meadows the river flows calm and crystal clear, the form and hue of every pebble distinct as the pieces of a mosaic. Looking upwards ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Croaking of the Ravens which from time to time are heard from the Tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These Objects naturally raise Seriousness and Attention; and when Night heightens the Awfulness of the Place, and pours out her supernumerary Horrors upon every thing in it, I do not at all wonder that weak Minds fill ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was a stout-hearted man, who'd never known a fear. I could freeze. I could burn up there alone in the horrid place with fever. I could starve. It wasn't death nor awfulness I couldn't face,—not that, not that; but I loved her true, I say,—I loved her true, and I'd spoken my last words to her, my very last; I had left her those to remember, day in and day out, and year upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... me then. Permit me to describe the scene, and to express the thought that rose in my mind, as I gazed upon it. It was in the great cathedral church of the world; and it brings a kind of religious impression over my mind to recall its awfulness and majesty. Above, far above me, rose a dome, gilded and covered with mosaic pictures, and vast as the pantheon of old Rome; the four pillars which supported it, each of them as large as many of our churches; ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... life, although the war itself occasioned a multitude of poems, songs, hymns, and political disquisitions. The hymns of this period, which are filled with a sense of dependence, of the greatness and awfulness of an invisible eternity, and breathe a desire for the peaceful traits of a remote religious life, are at once a confession of the weariness of the best minds at the turmoil and uncertainty of the contest and a permanent contribution of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... impressive and beautiful service. I never saw anything conducted with greater decorum. Not a single fellow spoke except at the responses, which were well and audibly made, and really every fellow seemed to be really impressed with the awfulness of the ceremony, and the great wickedness of not piously receiving it, I do not know whether there will be another Sacrament here before the holidays, or whether I shall receive it with ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... amusement at the expense of the demented ones. Fred and Flossy were perhaps in the wrong in causing such an upheaval in a very model household. But they were young, and the mischief had taken root before they suspected that any such danger was in existence. When the awfulness of the situation dawned upon them they looked at each other one day in the interrogative and agreed that the poisonous weed should be uprooted. But since it had grown to such proportions it was difficult to arrive at a means by which the evil could be strangled. Now Fred and Flossy loved ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... before me the phantom of that form which I had upraised from the ice when it had sunk down in lifelessness, whose white face rested on my shoulder as I bore it away from the grasp of death; and that vision, with all its solemn, tragic awfulness seemed out of keeping with this. Miss O'Halloran? Impossible! But yet it must be so, since she thus confessed it My own memory had been at fault. The face on the ice which haunted me was not the face that I saw before me; ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... with him, when she could not pilfer from him, and had endured patiently all these years what seemed past endurance in expectation of the closing scene. She had married and lived upon the prospect of his death, and it was come at last; and now that it was come, the awfulness of that last struggle overpowered her, and she wept and lamented as copiously as if her husband had been the kindest and most liberal in the world. Still, she was free, with competence, she hoped, in perspective? and this thought, together with the ever all-pervading one of her idol, her treasure, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world;—a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... and Falsehood hear no more 500 The voice that once waked multitudes to war Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond To the death dirge of the melancholy wind: It were a sight of awfulness to see The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 505 So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing! Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall. A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death To-day, the breathing marble glows above To decorate its memory, and tongues 510 Are busy of ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... way of contrast to Wolfe's lines on the latter event, there is little to equal the account in a contemporary paper:—'Sorrow sate upon every face, and even children lisped that their sovereign was no more. The awfulness of the solemnity made the deepest impression on the minds of the distressed inhabitants. The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested from the plough, all nature seemed to sympathise with their loss, and the muffled bells rung a peal ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... September Paris was ready to answer the Duke of Brunswick, was ready for the stroke that was to destroy the anti-revolutionists, that was to strike terror to the hearts of all enemies of the people. But the awfulness of the deed delayed its execution. The day passed in high-wrought excitement; at any moment news might arrive of the fall of Verdun,—that might be the signal for the explosion of the ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... find it is actually some two years since I last saw a noble cumulus cloud under full light. I chanced to be standing under the Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the largest mass of them floated past, that day, from the northwest; and I was more impressed than ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form, and its unaccountableness, in the present state of our knowledge. The Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude: it was like looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of cloud-snow were heaped ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... entertained. It is also believed that she divined their lineage from the lines and features of the face, and could discern any man's birth by sheer shrewdness of vision. When she stood and fixed the scrutiny of her gaze upon Olaf, she was stricken with the strange awfulness of his eyes, and fell almost lifeless. But when her strength came slowly back, and her breath went and came more freely, she again tried to look at the young man, but suddenly slipped and fell forward, as though distraught. A third time also she strove to lift ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned") |
