"Bombshell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a charge, and it blew all to pieces. I'll know better next time. There are lots more chunks of meat, and we'll soon have a feast. I'll make another bombshell." ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... an astonishing story, will no doubt come as a complete surprise to almost everybody. I can imagine them, indeed, dropping like a bombshell into some circles; but they are founded, not only upon conversations with Mr. Payne, but upon Burton's own letters to Mr. Payne, all of which have been in my hands, and careful study of the two translations. The public, however, cannot possibly be more surprised than ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... further comment on that point. Brent waited a moment and then threw the bombshell. "We are quite sure that these creatures are ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... a word, stamping with his feet as he swept along, and making the room resound as he struck the floor with his spurred heels. Every thing around him seemed to vibrate; the very curtains waved like trees in a storm. At length the pent-up rage found vent, and burst forth like a bombshell which explodes, "Comedian, say you? Ah, ha! I am he that will play you comedies to make you weep like women and children. Comedian, indeed! But you are greatly mistaken if you think you can play off on me, with impunity, your cool-blooded insolence. Comedian! Where is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Had a bombshell burst—but I forbear. That comparison is, I believe, somewhat hackneyed. The reader will therefore be good enough to appropriate the point of it, and understand that the shock of this intelligence was so overpowering, that I ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Iron King's marriage was told by Sylvan. Had a bombshell fallen and exploded among the servants, they could not have been more shocked. There was a simultaneous exclamation of surprise and dismay, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been 'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or three railway statements which had been expected to be much better than they ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... which cancelled the original monetary conditions of service for Officers and non-commissioned Officers, and increased the rates of pay to which their respective ranks entitled them. This order was only less effective than a bombshell in crushing a dignity already injured; and the gusto with which the Colonel and the Civil Commissioner were ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... When Mr. Noble's bombshell fell, in Senator Dilworthy's camp, the statesman was disconcerted for a moment. For a moment; that was all. The next moment he was calmly up and doing. From the centre of our country to its circumference, nothing was talked of but Mr. Noble's terrible ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... him, rather aggressively.] Well, I seem to have accidentally dropped a bombshell among you! Will any lady or gentleman kindly oblige with some particulars——? [To OTTOLINE, who checks him with an imperious gesture—changing his tone.] I ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of Nopolis. Groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. Every one awaited, with heartfelt anxiety, the reply of the dignified Smith. Next morning it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fell like a bombshell into the little group. Margery first found a voice, but it was a most ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... Ford produced others as eminent who testified to the opposite effect. So the battle raged until the wearied judge limited the profitless discussion to one more day, and then Cummins and Ford launched their bombshell. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... was ready for the final conference and the signatures, Austria intervened and announced her opposition. Then suddenly followed the bombshell of the ultimatum to Servia, timed at the precise moment to stop the signing ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... story is told of Mark Supple, an Irish reporter of the old school, who was employed on The Chronicle. One evening, when there was a sudden silence in the midst of a debate, Supple bawled out: 'A song from Mr. Speaker.' The members could not have been more astonished had a bombshell been suddenly discharged into the midst of them; but, after a slight pause, every one—Pitt among the first—went off into such shouts of laughter, that the halls of the House shook again. The sergeant-at-arms ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... who wrote and published this declaration, fancying that they were throwing a bombshell into the gathered crowds of American (male) citizens, are very much in earnest, doubtless, and are entitled—we have platform authority for saying it—to "respectful consideration"; but their movement ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... and skilfully put a little bombshell under the colonnades of the Bourse, and towards four o'clock in the afternoon it exploded.—'Here is something serious; have you heard the news?' asked du Tillet, drawing Werbrust into a corner. 'Here is Nucingen gone off to Brussels, and his wife petitioning for a separation ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... school, all specially arrayed in fancy white pinafores with knots of pink ribbon, burst out of the church like a merry bombshell while the less picturesque final ceremonies were being completed. When Graeme and Margaret came smiling down the aisle, the busy little maids were still vociferously strewing the path outside with green rushes and wild iris, and as they passed, those who had emptied their baskets ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... bombshell burst over my head the effect could have been no greater. Cold perspiration began to ooze out on my forehead. In a flash I saw the significance of the entire situation. That was why Norris had been so insistent that we always return to the ship before dark. He didn't want us to ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... days after the document that made Nathan Matthews supreme boss of Boston Gas was conveyed to him, there came an explosion. Like the premature bursting of a bombshell at a Fourth of July celebration, the transaction "leaked," and the press announced in sable head-lines that Mayor Matthews had sold out, that Addicks was on top, and that Rogers and "Standard Oil" would surely be found beneath the debris. Matthews has always claimed ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... old street; The staircase, floating fancy-free, With steps of Cubic liberty. A perfect lady, nobly built, Constructed like a crazy quilt. Or a volcano on a spree, Or herd of elephants at tea. The staircase, by a bombshell wrecked, With something ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... for three weeks; then a bombshell fell in our midst. Two batteries of the —th Artillery were ordered immediately to El Paso, on the Mexican border, where a raid was apparently threatened. Major Vandyke and Captain March and Lieutenant Dalziel ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately. He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of France's ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... do now would be to try to take one nation and secretly ally himself with it, leaving the other out in the cold. Then began the intrigues which planned the isolation of France, an amazing situation, a bombshell in present day international diplomacy, that I shall discuss ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... could utter another syllable his attention was drawn to the doorway. The view to the outer office was blocked by a bundle of curves. The most alluring female bombshell his eyes had ever beheld put everything ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... burial rite could be more solemn than that hurried evening service performed by torchlight under the dilapidated roof of a sacred asylum, where the soil had been first laid bare by one of the rude engines of war—a bombshell. The grave tones of the priests murmuring the Libera me, Domine were responded to by the sighs and tears of consecrated virgins, henceforth the guardians of the precious deposit, which, but for inevitable fate, would have been reserved to honour some proud mausoleum. With gloomy forebodings ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... now as much as ever during the last hundred years, to go no further back. The end of the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell. In its lurid blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of military and administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless vividness. And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the day that the glorified French Revolution itself, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... A bombshell exploding in the room could not have astonished them as did my answer. I realized to the full the probable result, but my spirit was high, and I felt the utter uselessness of prolonging the interview. Sooner or later ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... The bombshell came at the end of the third week. It came in the form of a message crouched in the flamboyant phraseology beloved of the Communist fraternity. It was conveyed by a small youth some ten years of age, as though its authors were fearful lest a full grown bearer should ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the three largest of the enemy's ships were set on fire by a bombshell. On the night of the 25th two other of the ships were boarded, sword in hand, from boats of the squadron; one being aground, was burnt, the other was towed out of the harbor in triumph. The brave Drucour kept up the defence ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... an instant revulsion of feeling. The attempted swindler looked as if a bombshell had ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... public and domestic. Cooks, shopkeepers, street passengers, told the news from door to door; thence it rose to the upper regions. Soon the words: "Mademoiselle Cormon has returned!" burst like a bombshell into all households. At that moment Jacquelin was descending from his wooden seat (polished by a process unknown to cabinet-makers), on which he perched in front of the carriole. He opened the great green gate, round at the top, and closed in sign of mourning; for during ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... following Devereau's unsatisfactory laconism nothing developed. And then a bombshell exploded. Hughie Gay made a statement. He took oath, solemn oath (and cheap, too, for it cost Dunham but two hundred dollars), that he had sold out. Blair had realized that he was no champion; he had feared even him, Gay. So before the fight ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Mr. Arnot, sententiously, "that sermon was a perfect bombshell; and, mark my words, it will either blow the doctor out of his pulpit, or some of the first-class saints out ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... ship of state go forward!" and his face disappeared behind his huge flagon of coffee in the deepest pledge. Bill thought he had uttered a very profound and elegant sentiment, but his speech fell like a bombshell in the little company. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... we borrowed the boat from him," demurely answered Jack, watching the effect of this bombshell of ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... If a bombshell had suddenly alighted on the table and there exploded, there would have been, no doubt, more feeling of fright, but not more of shocked surprise. Dumb silence followed. Angry eyes were directed towards the speaker from ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... bombshell burst in Europe. Darnborough came to and fro to Bracondale half a dozen times in the course of four or five days. Once he arrived by special train from Paddington in the middle of the night. Many serious conferences did he have with his ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... presence surprises you, madame," he began; "and I must confess that—hum!—it does not surprise me less than it does you. But extraordinary circumstances require exceptional action. On any other occasion, I would not fall upon you like a bombshell. But we had no time to waste in ceremonious formalities. I will, therefore, ask your leave to introduce myself: I am ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... much a bombshell to the Baron as it was to the neighbours in Cheshire, perhaps even more than Therese herself had bargained for. It was a piece of amazing good fortune, but it entailed restrictions which soon grew tedious. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... decidedly ladylike—which the other is not, however pleasant a companion. I should as soon think of falling in love with a handsome bombshell, as with her. No knowing when she might explode. Now if I had met Miss Crawford at Newport two years ago, who knows but affairs might have been different? Heigho!" And so Walter Harding went on ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... would have it, and left the young bird sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and when the old one returned and called, it came out from the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert White saw and describes in his letters was picked up in a field, unable to launch itself ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... Cucumis Dipsaceus (Teasel Gourd), Cucumis Dudaim (Balloon Gourd), Cucumis Erinaceus (Hedgehog Gourd), Cucumis Grossularoides (Gooseberry Gourd), Cucumis Perennis, Cucurbita Argyrosperma, Cucurbita Melopepo, Cyclanthera Explodens (Bombshell Gourd), Cyclanthera Pedata, Eopepon Aurantiacum, Eopepon Vitifolius, Lagenaria Clavata (Club Gourd), Lagenaria Enormis, Lagenaria Leucantha Depressa, Lagenaria Leucantha Longissima, Lagenaria Plate de Corse, Lagenaria Poire a Poudre, Lagenaria Siphon, Luffa Cylindrica, Luffa Solly Qua, Melothria ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... immunity and resistance. The outlook, therefore, is promising for the cultivated varieties of hickory nuts and walnuts that I know you are all working for. Foreign parasites are always dangerous. This chestnut blight fungus comes into any such scheme as that like a bombshell. When it comes to an introduced parasite like that we can not tell what will happen. I thank you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... A bombshell filled with gunpowder, a gunlock, and a small clock, have been suggested as forming the components of this invention. I am satisfied however, that several very dangerous detonating powders were well known to the alchemists; and the condensed pocket size of the machine described, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... should partake. In another hour from their arrival they were on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses and gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake o' nights for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... discharged the rest disappeared as if a bombshell had exploded in their midst; but scarcely a dozed seconds elapsed ere they closed together again, fiercer and more clamorous, if ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... with cultured wit; taught not to a few scholars here and there in musty libraries, but proclaimed in the vernacular to the whole populace with all the energy and enthusiasm of a recent convert and a master of language! Had a bombshell been exploded among the fossilized professors it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... at Brunswick has fortunately found a record in the diary of a British officer posted there when the news of Washington's coming fell like a bombshell in their camp. It ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife, were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... recollect, my thoughts flew back to the Tantallon Castle and the dark words we had heard whispered, so it was not as much of a surprise to me as to the residents at Kimberley; to them it came as a perfect bombshell, so well had the secret been kept. The next day the text of the Manifesto, issued by Mr. Leonard, a lawyer, in the name of the Uitlanders, to protest against their grievances, appeared in all the morning papers, and its eloquent language ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... against the Constantinople cook as limiting their means of amusing themselves; the aesthetic young man recovered now, polished his shoes and put a lavender handkerchief in his breast pocket. The hostages were in a fair way to annex the deserted village, when a bombshell burst in the shape of a despatch from the American ambassador that permission had been obtained for all to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... a cannon, and the horse a bombshell, he could scarcely have sprung from it with greater velocity. One bound landed him on the road; another cleared it; and, in a second more, he stretched out at full speed—his ears flat on his neck, mane and tail flying in the wind, and the bit tight ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... sitting by his side, and David leaning over the rail from the back seat. Had a bombshell dropped in their midst the two others could not have been more startled than by ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... into the same subtleties as if the Bill were just in its first stage; and there was the same dreary and universal emptiness of the House generally. At last, as eleven o'clock approached, the Unionists prepared themselves for a dramatic effort. Mr. Chamberlain prepared an educational bombshell, but Mr. Healy hoisted the engineer ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... year after Josiah had exploded his bombshell by asking Squire Richard for his daughter's hand, the lover ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... in tones that could be heard all over the vessel, "tell him that Lieut. Decatur of the frigate 'Essex' pronounces him a cowardly scoundrel, and when they meet on shore he will cut his ears off." And having thrown this bombshell into the enemy's camp, Decatur ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Philip's ardent pleadings, was yielding to the extent of letting Foxy's family sit with him in relays and cheer him as much as they liked, when Grandmother dropped her bombshell. At least, that was what John called it when they talked it over afterwards. Joy always spoke of it as "the time Grandmother ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... a kind of bombshell friendship into the camp of her prejudices, Miss Phyllis," he said with his mouth twitching with a laugh, as if he didn't know whether we would ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... heard among the hills a loud crashing report like the bursting of a bombshell. What could it mean? We knew there were some shells along with the howitzers. Were our comrades attacked by Indians, and was it one of the cannon they had fired upon them? No; that could not be. There was but one ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... crucified and not risen as his dupes dreamed, lived in heaven, knew him, Saul, and all that he had been doing, was 'apparelled in celestial light,' and yet in heavenly glory was so closely identified with these poor people whom he had been hunting to death that to strike them was to hurt Him! A bombshell had burst, shattering the foundation of his fortifications. A deluge had swept away the ground on which he had stood. His whole life was revolutionised. Its most solid elements were dissolved into vapour, and what he had thought misty nonsense was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... McLagan's bombshell in their midst was only the beginning; a mere herald of what was to follow. Excitement after excitement ran riot, until the public mind was dazed, and the only thing that remained clear to it was that crime and fortune were racing neck and neck for ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought Evan. "You're some actress! What a bombshell I could explode in this room if ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... came those streams of fire, those storms of grape-shot and the yells of savage demons. A bombshell came screaming through the air and fell into one of the shanties, exploding and scattering the loose boards ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... bombshell fallen into the midst of the ladies of the harem, they could not have been ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... If a bombshell had fallen in the room, a greater sensation could not have been produced. Every individual arose from the table, and the Colonel, striding up ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... giggle, for on the whole it answered better not to be dignified with Barbara, whenever he could remember not to be; and Lady Ashbridge, still nursing Petsy, threw a bombshell of the obvious ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... moment of general alarm at Lyons had been chosen by certain ingenious persons (I credit them, perhaps, with too sure a prevision of the rise of the rivers) for practising further upon the appre- hensions of the public. A bombshell filled with dynamite had been thrown into a cafe, and various votaries of the comparatively innocuous petit verre had been wounded (I am not sure whether any one had been killed) by the irruption. Of course there had been arrests and incarcerations, and the "Intransi- ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... more amicable, when the court was suddenly startled by the news of the Deventer and Zutphen treason. The intelligence was accompanied by the famous 4th of February letter, which descended, like a bombshell, in the midst of the, decorous council-chamber. Such language had rarely been addressed to the Earl of Leicester, and; through him; to the imperious sovereign herself, as the homely truths with which Barneveld, speaking with the voice of the States-General, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
