"Prodigious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fallen into with relation to Plays and publick Spectacles. A Lady in particular observes, that there is such a Levity in the Minds of her own Sex, that they seldom attend any thing but Impertinences. It is indeed prodigious to observe how little Notice is taken of the most exalted Parts of the best Tragedies in Shakespear; nay, it is not only visible that Sensuality has devoured all Greatness of Soul, but the Under-Passion (as I may so call it) of a noble Spirit, Pity, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... knew no bounds. He did not much care whether Don Luis's proposal could have any practical results. In his heart he did not believe in it. But what he wanted to know was the lengths to which that demon of audacity was prepared to go, and on what new prodigious adventure he based the pretensions which he was putting forward so ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... of a bat,—the terror of luggermen, the uprooter of anchors? From all these, perhaps, and from other monsters likewise—goblin shapes evolved by Nature as destroyers, as equilibrists, as counterchecks to that prodigious fecundity, which, unhindered, would thicken the deep into one measureless and waveless ferment of being... But when there are many bathers these perils are forgotten,—numbers give courage,—one can abandon one's self, without fear of the invisible, to the long, quivering, electrical ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... commemorated the fact in the names — Ch'iu and Chung-ni. But the cripple, Mang-p'i, had previous been styled Po-ni. There was some reason, previous to Confucius's birth, for using the term ni in the family. As might be expected, the birth of the sage is surrounded with many prodigious occurrences. One account is, that the husband and wife prayed together for a son in a dell of mount Ni. As Chang-tsai went up the hill, the leaves of the trees and plants all erected themselves, and bent downwards ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... [28] "Here duly swarm prodigious wights, And strange variety of sights, As ladies lewd, and foppish knights, Priests, poets, pimps, and parasites; Which now we'll spare, and only mention The hungry bard that writes for pension; Old Squib (who's sometimes here, I'm told), That oft has with his prince made bold, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... being more than a four-fold increase in eleven years. Whether there has been a corresponding increase in the value of domestic cigars consumed, I have no means of determining. From the fact of so prodigious an increase of imported cigars, I am led to fear that the evil of cigar smoking has increased in this country within ten years, far more rapidly than the increase of population. From this treasury document, it appears also, that in 1824, ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... though these pieces had given him a notion that the social usages of Venice differed from those at home, he was unprepared for the surprising appearance and manners of the great people his friend named to him. The gravest Senators of the Republic went in prodigious striped trousers, short cloaks and feathered hats. One nobleman wore a ruff and doctor's gown, another a black velvet tunic slashed with rose-colour; while the President of the dreaded Council of Ten was a terrible strutting fellow with a rapier-like nose, a buff leather ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, 'Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 'and tell me what thou seest.' 'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.' 'The valley that thou seest,' said he, 'is the Vale of Misery, and the Tide of Water that thou seest is part of the great Tide of Eternity,' 'What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... while the chief expanse of the wing is composed of the shoulder and fore-arm. In frogs and lizards, again, we find hands more like our own; but in an extinct species of flying reptile the modification was extreme, the wing having been formed by a prodigious elongation of the fifth finger, and a membrane spread over it and the rest of the hand. (Fig. 5.) Lastly, in serpents the hand and ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... being no business of hers, and that she took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... of the astonishment produced by this seemingly prodigious display of memory, say—'Now, if you like, we will have a hand at Whist, and I undertake to win every trick if ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... works—the Dante, La Fontaine, or "Don Quixote"—and glance at the pictures. The mere hand labor involved in their production is surprising; but when the quality of the work is properly estimated, what he accomplished seems prodigious. No particular mention need be made of him as painter or sculptor, for his reputation rests solely upon his ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... complete success. Out of this trivial incident, an acquaintance arose between him and the young noblemen present. They spoke of his talents as a skater; and their praise, in all their usual haunts, had such an effect, that, in the course of a few days, prodigious crowds of the fashionable world, and of all descriptions of people, assembled to see the American skater. When it was afterwards known to the public that he was an artist, many of the spectators called at his rooms; and he, perhaps, received more encouragement ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... position on the branch was so insecure that I could not have brought my rifle into use without making a prodigious noise. Will shook ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... this winter was prodigious, and the cold intense. The water would freeze in our parlors at a very short distance from the fire, for, although the "fatigue-parties" kept the halls filled with wood, almost up to the ceiling, that did not ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— {140} Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little or be much. Discourse to him of prodigious armaments Assembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds— 'Tis one! Then take it on the other side, Speak of some trifling fact,—he will gaze rapt {150} With stupor at its very littleness (Far as I see), ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls that scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress, has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low brushwood, and browsed over ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... queen of these beautiful forsaken cities was Ypres, with its enormous market-place, bordered by little dwelling-houses with stepped gables, and its prodigious market-buildings, which occupied one whole side of the immense oblong. This market-place haunted for ever the memory of those who had seen it, were it but once, while waiting to change trains; it was so unexpected, so ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... into the house a short time afterward, they found their mother dressing and bandaging Mr. Fry's foot and chokingly inquiring if she was hurting him. Between sentences she applied a wet towel to a prodigious, unrecognizable object that had once been ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... length—for she was still feeling a little weary—she resumed her leisurely journey towards the shore. As she did so she caught the sound of oars grating in rowlocks. She turned her head, saw a boat cutting through the water at a prodigious rate not twenty strokes from her, caught a glimpse of its one rower, and without a second's hesitation flung up an ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Russia, and Italy are each credited with issuing more books annually than either England or the United States, and the total annual book publication of the world is estimated to reach the enormous figure of more than 130,000 volumes. In view of this prodigious literary output, what progress can the reader hope to make in "keeping up with the new books"? De Quincey figured that a man might possibly, in a long lifetime devoted to nothing else, read 20,000 volumes. The estimate is easy. Suppose we start with one book a day—surely a large supposition—and ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... were wonderful. I was never quite unconscious, yet it wasn't a bit bad—only as if I were in the hands of some prodigious force. They showed me the baby, too—just for a minute. I want to see ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... and encamped without the town with his troops and braves and retinue, whilst King Teghmus made ready as presents for the King of Khorasan fifteen hundred loads of silks and precious stones, pearls and rubies and other gems, besides gold and silver; and he also prepared a prodigious quantity of all that goeth to the equipment of a bride; then, loading them upon camels and mules, delivered them to Ayn Zar, with a letter to the following purport. 'After invoking the blessing of Heaven, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... as thou say'st, A splendid fiction and prodigious dream, To reach the real and true I'll make no haste, More than content with ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... his car in a garage off the Bridge Street archway. Thither they proceeded, and waited while the car was got ready for the roads by a shock-headed man who broke the stillness of the night with prodigious yawns, and then stood blinking like an owl as he leaned against the yard gates watching the detective backing the car down the declivity of the passage into Bridge Street. Before they had reached it, he banged the gates behind him with another tremendous yawn, and went back to his interrupted slumber ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... they have Professor Butcher, and I hear he has a prodigious deal of Greek; and they have Professor Chrystal, who is a man filled with the mathematics. And doubtless these are set- offs. But they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, and that Professor Kelland is ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leisure, I should like to show you the drawing of an American locomotive which a friend of mine has sent me from Nuova York. It is very different from ours, very curious. But monstrous in size, you know, prodigious! May I come with it to your ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... he had not better have taken it; for the multitude of diggers turned out such a prodigious number of diamonds at Bulteel's pan, that a sort of panic fell on ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Earth. Nothing in nature is simpler or more orderly. The sovereign states of Germany or Italy, which one can traverse in a half hour, compared to the empires of Turkey, Moscow, or China, are only feeble reflections of the prodigious differences that nature ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... nearly with that of Hewson's apparition that he wondered if a mystical influence from it had not penetrated the whole house. The adventitious facts were of such a nature that he controlled with the greater difficulty the wish to explode upon an audience so aptly prepared for it the prodigious incident which he was keeping in reserve; but he did not yield even when St. John carefully led up to the point through the sensation of his guests, by recounting the evidences of the supposed visit of a burglar, ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... he could no longer describe his autos as a new thing and he was now confronted by the formidable novelty of the hendecasyllabic metre introduced by S['a] de Miranda from Italy. He felt that he had his back against the wall[83]. He made a prodigious effort to vary the themes of his plays and to produce them with increasing frequency. The year 1527 is his annus mirabilis. The Sumario da Historia de Deos and the Dialogo sobre a Ressurrei[c,]am are assigned, if not to this year, to the period 1526-8[84]. ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... contracted within its bosom; they are attached to the reminiscences which it awakens, and they are even pleased by the state of obedience in which they are placed. This patriotism is sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is capable of making the most prodigious efforts. It is in itself a kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and of sentiment. By some nations the monarch has been regarded as a personification of the country; and the fervor of patriotism ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... The sort of conversations which grew from such a commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her lord less, he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the folly of encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his establishment; had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was, the hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... had floated down the beautiful Ohio, through scenes of surpassing loveliness, about one hundred miles, when one night about ten o'clock a prodigious shouting and yelling of Indians was heard some distance farther down the river on the northern shore. Very soon they came in sight of their camp-fires, which were burning very brightly. It was evident that the Indians were having a great carousal rejoicing over some victory. Mr. Rowan immediately ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... than the Germans. It is plain therefore this was a Party Stroke in favour of the Naturalization Act, to shew what Inconveniences it hinders by preventing Foreigners coming among us to debauch our Stile, as may be seen by the prodigious Number of Dutch Words that K. William ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... company in sonorous periods, which, however, did not prevent him from assimilating a prodigious amount of food. Between forkfuls of chicken baked in macaroni, "I rejoice that my ministrations are acceptable to Him," he pronounced; "three souls Wednesday last, two adults ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... well known in the army, where there were parties of all politics, and of plenty of shrewdness and wit; but there existed such a perfect confidence in him, as the first captain of the world, and such a faith and admiration in his prodigious genius and fortune, that the very men whom he notoriously cheated of their pay, the chiefs whom he used and injured—for he used all men, great and small, that came near him, as his instruments ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... kind of platform which lifts the base from the ground, the most peculiar, the most incomprehensible, the most prodigious heaping up of large and little cabins, outside stairways, galleries with arcades and unexpected hiding-places and projections, unsymmetrical porches, chapels in juxtaposition, windows pierced in the walls at haphazard, indescribable ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... our fore-sail and main-top-sail close-reefed: At day-light the next morning, added to them the fore and mizen top-sails. At four o'clock it fell calm; but a prodigious high sea from the N.E., and a complication of the worst of weather, viz. snow, sleet, and rain, continued, together with the calm, till nine o'clock in the evening. Then the weather cleared up, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... is due to the sunbeams which have just grazed the edge of the earth. In doing so they have become bent by the refraction of the atmosphere, and have thus been turned inwards into the shadow. Such beams have passed through a prodigious thickness of the earth's atmosphere, and in this long journey through hundreds of miles of air they have become tinged with a ruddy or copper-like hue. Nor is this property of our atmosphere an unfamiliar one. The sun both at sunrise and at sunset glows with ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... were solemnized with incredible magnificence, and drew together a prodigious concourse of spectators and combatants from all parts, a simple wreath was all the reward of the victors. In the Olympic games, it was composed of wild olive. In the Pythian, of laurel. In the Nemaean, of green parsley;(113) and in the Isthmian, of the same herb dried. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... raptures and allegorizings, scarcely consistent with healthy manhood of mind, and which seems growing, as is testified by the "Angel World"—that there is a great gulf between the powers it indicates, and the task of leading the age—and that, on the whole, it is rather a prodigious comet in the poetical heavens, than either a still, calm luminary, or even the curdling of a future ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Peter sat working over the books in the library, the Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the brown man pursued his ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the utter despicableness to which humanity may be moulded. If he saw them at all, it was through the softening and illusive medium of generalised phrases. Nor was he ever shocked and driven into himself by 'the immoral thoughtlessness' of men. The courses of nature, and the prodigious injustices of man in society, affect him with neither horror nor awe. He will see no monster if he can help it. For the fatal Nemesis or terrible Erinnyes, daughters of Erebus and Night, Emerson substitutes a fair-weather abstraction ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... which he looks back on with so much satisfaction in his writings as on this, that he has "ventured to characterise that hateful and fearful type of Antichrist in terms not wholly inadequate to its prodigious demerits."[113] ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... which I wish especially to commemorate in this paper, are the six great, complete, prodigious, and undeniable victories, achieved by the corps which the editor of the Cornhill Magazine has the honor to command. When I seemed to speak disparagingly but now of generals, it was that chief I had in my I (if you will permit me the expression). I wished ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plan. The floors are of square tiles, the chairs and tables of black-looking wood with thin crooked legs and puppy feet. The mantelpieces are wide and high, and have not only time-pieces and cabbages sculptured over the front, but a real time-piece, which makes a prodigious ticking, on the top in the middle, with a flower-pot containing a cabbage standing on each extremity by way of outrider. Between each cabbage and the time-piece, again, is a little China man having a large stomach with a great ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the stinking kind! Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind! Africa, that brags her foison, Breeds no such prodigious poison! Henbane, nightshade, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the mission period, which was directed more particularly to the Christianizing of the Indians. I will begin with the first structure ever erected in the state, designed for religious purposes. It was a very small beginning for the prodigious results that have followed it. I speak of the little log "Chapel of Saint Paul," built by the Rev. Lucian Galtier, in October, 1841, in what is now the city ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... express so little but suggest so much! What fun we had, in the days of auld lang syne, when we scoured the dewy fields in search of them! And yet how small a proportion of our enjoyment the mushrooms themselves represented! Our flushed cheeks, our prodigious appetites, and our boisterous merriment told of gains immensely greater than any that our baskets could have held. What a contrast, for example, between mushrooms from the moor on the one hand and mushrooms from the market on the other! What memories of the soft ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... a little more reputation, men can keep brooding over a new fact, in the discovery of which they might, possibly, have very little real merit, till they think they can astonish the world with a system as complete as it is new, and give mankind a prodigious idea of their judgment and penetration; they are justly punished for their ingratitude to the fountain of all knowledge, and for their want of a genuine love of science and of mankind, in finding their boasted discoveries anticipated, and the field of honest fame pre-occupied, by men, who, from a ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... during a given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort. Some of the most efficient workers I know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type. One friend, who does a prodigious quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that, if he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits down to work at something else, his best results coming through his mind-wanderings. This is perhaps an epigrammatic exaggeration on his part; but I seriously think that no one of us need be ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... in love with 'the princess'?' Poor Captain George! The prodigious effort ought to have kept the heart throb out of his voice, though it didn't. Moore's quick ear caught it (sympathy has a wonderfully quickening effect on the perceptions sometimes), and he took refuge in a truth that in no way touched the past few months—feeling like a coward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... time Bansemer was engaged in the most daring as well as the most prodigious "deal" of his long career. With luck, it was bound to enrich him to the extent of $50,000. The plans had been so well prepared and the execution had been so faultless that there seemed to be no ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... layman. Meantime the enemy triumphs, wirelessly, far and wide. A few frigid and perfunctory-seeming contradictions are put forward against his resounding claims; a Naval expert or two is heard talking "off"; the rest is silence. Anon, the enemy, after a prodigious amount of explanation which not even the neutrals seem to take any interest in, revises his claims, and, very modestly, enlarges his losses. Still no sign. After weeks there appears a document giving our version of the affair, which is ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... gave no indication of the first considerable work which he published, which was the famous Lettres Persanes. They appeared in 1721, when he was thirty-two years of age. Their success was immediate and prodigious; a certain indication in matters of thought, that they were not destined to durable fame. They fell in with the ideas and passions of the time; they were not before it; thence their early popularity and ultimate oblivion. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... support the soil on the declivities of the mountains; the form of the cisterns in which they collected the rain-water; and traces of the canals by which this water was distributed over the fields. These labours necessarily created a prodigious fertility under an ardent sun, where a little moisture was the only requisite to revive the vegetable world. The accounts given by native writers respecting the productive qualities of Judea are not ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the mothers helpe, and dutie? O thou vnkinde woman, doest thou thincke that nature hath giuen thee two breastes for nothinge els, but to beautifie and adorne thy bodie, and not to giue sucke to thy children? In like sort many prodigious and monstruous women, haue dried vp and extinguished that moste sacred fountaine of the body, the educatour of mankinde: not without peril of their persons: as though the same were a disgracing of their ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... doing most of the complaining are not deliberately striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious sacrifices—that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off. But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in Berlin and Tokyo—and by the sum of all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... afterwards Sold to Ptolomy Philadelphus, and which he had Enrich'd with four Hundred Volumes, of his own making. In those of his Writings which now remain, and are happily a considerable Number, we find a very discerning Spirit, a solid Judgment, a wonderful Method, prodigious Knowledge, and an Eloquence both strong and sweet. He himself found out more, than the most Knowing now, learn with a great deal of Labour and Pains, and as for those things which depended on the Vivacity of the Spirit, no Man ever carried his Knowledge ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... on the following morning, and the friends sat around the camp-fire until a late hour that evening. Walter had many messages to send to his mother and Master McCleary, and if the messenger remembered them all his memory must have been prodigious. ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... Enough! but, by Heracles! what is this? Great gods! I have seen many prodigious things, but I never saw ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... discharge of it, as might defy ridicule, and render neglect impossible. Instead of this, however, he has allowed himself to write rather worse than any Laureate before him, and has betaken himself to the luckless and vulgar expedient of endeavouring to face out the thing by an air of prodigious confidence and assumption:—and has had the usual fortune of such undertakers, by becoming only more conspicuously ridiculous. The badness of his official productions indeed is something really wonderful,—though ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Coxwell's "Mammoth" was larger yet, possessing a content, when fully inflated, of no less than 93,000 cubic feet, and measuring over 55 feet in diameter. This, however, as will be seen, was but a mere pigmy when compared with "The Giant," which, measuring some 74 feet in diameter, possessed the prodigious capacity of ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... his element. He had beyond most men the art of "making a platitude endurable by making it pompous." He excelled in demonstrating the material advantages of a moderate and cautious conservatism, and he could draw at will and with effect upon a prodigious fund of constitutional commonplaces. If we measure the merit of a parliamentary speaker by his practical influence, we must allow ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... so prodigious that instead of embracing the message of grace with its guarantee of the forgiveness of sin for Christ's sake, man finds himself more laws to satisfy his conscience. "If I live," says he, "I will mend my life. I will do this, I will do that." Man, if you don't do the ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... to be in society.[2181] Their luxury, indeed, differs from ours. With the exception of a few princely establishments it is not great in the matter of country furniture; a display of this description is left to the financiers. "But it is prodigious in all things which can minister to the enjoyment of others, in horses, carriages, and in an open table, in accommodations given even to people not belonging to the house, in boxes at the play which are lent to friends, and lastly, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pox, miasma, contagion, particles of matter floating in the air surcharged with disease, or any thing else. It matters not what you call it. It is sufficient to our present purpose to know that it has the ability to put forth a prodigious power in the production of consequences, which the highest skill of man is yet unable ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... pyramid of fire rose to a prodigious height into the air, the glare of flame lit up the whole of Florida; and for a moment day superseded night over a considerable extent of the country. This immense canopy of fire was perceived at a distance of one hundred miles out at sea, and more than one ship's ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... the incline were numberless great pits blasted out of the ground by the prodigious explosions. Into these the attackers dove pell-mell and a halt was called ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... the hog-pen, they encountered a strong smell, and there was a prodigious running and tumbling among the animals. They looked over the shabby fence ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... by the following symphony of sounds—an elderly man's voice roaring, a woman's voice uttering a considerable number of very powerful screams on a rather low but still resounding note, a loud thump, a crash of glass, a prodigious clattering, as of utensils made in some noisy material falling from a height and rolling vigorously in innumerable directions, two or three bangs of doors, and the peculiar patter of rather large and flat feet, unaccustomed to any rapid exercise, moving over boards, oilcloth and carpet. Then the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... when there is no smoke rising and no stir of life, resembles nothing so much as a collection of prodigious wasps' nests. The huts are squat and brown and chimneyless, facing east, and the inhabitants have the faculty of quail for making themselves scarce in the underbrush at the approach of strangers. But they are really not often at home during midday, only the blind and incompetent left ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... as might be expected, makes a mighty rout—a prodigious fuss—all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see the chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes. He is also an advocate of the warming-pan—and for the adoption, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... fingers close to the seams of their breeches (when not breekless), heads up and eyes front. Face and body were motionless, as if cast in ebony: nothing moved but the saucer-like white eyes and the ivory-lined mouths, from whose ample lips and gape issued a prodigious volume of sound. Native assistants, in sable skins and yellowish white chokers, carrying music-scores and armed with canes, sloped through the avenues, occasionally halting to frown down some delinquent, whose body ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... so as to turn in the pursuit,—Claud made, with all the speed of which he was master, for a huge hemlock, luckily standing at no great distance on his right; a course which he thought would divert the monster from pursuit of the maiden, and, at the same time, best insure his own safety. But, so prodigious was the rushing speed of the foiled and now doubly exasperated moose, that the imperilled huntsman had barely time to reach the sheltering tree and dodge behind it, before the hotly pursuing foe was at his heels, rasping and tearing with his spiked antlers the rough bark of the ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... trade. I find they have the greatest inclination to serve us, and at the same time themselves, for no people see their interests clearer, but their fears that we shall be subdued, the confident assertions of the friends of England confirming these apprehensions, the prodigious sums they have in the English funds, with this unlucky business at New York, all conspire to prevent ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world. The brimstone, too, which burns there in such prodigious quantity fills all hell with its intolerable stench; and the bodies of the damned themselves exhale such a pestilential odour that, as saint Bonaventure says, one of them alone would suffice to infect the whole world. The very air of this world, that pure element, becomes foul ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... very wild look, and was much excited. Attempted suicide by throwing himself into a tank. Attacked the keepers for rescuing him, with prodigious strength and violence. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... either of an imposing military force on the Oxus, or of a dominant political influence in Afghanistan, entitles her, in Native estimation, to challenge our Asiatic supremacy, the disquieting effect will be prodigious.' ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... been a woman of some distinction, she was carefully educated by an uncle in all the accomplishments of the age, as well as in the serious studies which were then unusual. According to her friend Conrart she was a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge both useful and ornamental. "She had a prodigious imagination," he writes, "an excellent memory, an exquisite judgment, a lively temper, and a natural disposition to understand everything curious which she saw done, and everything laudable which she heard talked of. She learned the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... to have Connie to himself was not to be gratified. No sooner had Gerald gone, than Hattie arrived, very slim and angular, and carrying a prodigious ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... greatly increased the panic dread with which the news of his approach now inspired the Christino troops. On the heights of Descarga a strong column of the Queen's army had been attacked in the night, and routed with prodigious loss, by the Carlist general Eraso; in the valley of the Baztan General Oraa had been beaten by Sagastibelza, leaving ninety officers and seven hundred men in the hands of the victors; Estella, Vergara, Tolosa, Villafranca, and numerous other ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... gradations. Besides, I have already done so, in part at least, elsewhere. But I wish to recall the curious coincidence that the mathematical achievements of the Elberfeld horses were much more brilliant and much more prodigious than those of the dogs which have up to now been experimented on. And horses in the phylo-genetic line are more ancient than dogs: they are lower in the zoologic scale. Much lower still, i.e. among the Arthropoda, occur many other mathematical wonders. I ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... period has assumed, in spite of the lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions. After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols, Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls are so numerous and the materials ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... this, so much the more positive was their association of the THUNDER-STORM as that which brings both warmth and rain with the renewed vernal life of vegetation. The impressive phenomena which characterize it, the prodigious noise, the awful flash, the portentous gloom, the blast, the rain, have left a profound impression on the myths of every land. Fire from water, warmth and moisture from the destructive breath of the tempest, this was the riddle of riddles to the untutored mind. "Out of ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... this idea; I read it with great eagerness, and found therein that this idea militated against the glory and goodness of God, and must therefore be false,—but further confutation found I none!—This book of Seiffmilts has a prodigious character throughout Germany; and never methinks did a work less deserve it. It is in three huge octavos, and wholly on the general laws that regulate the population of the human species—but is throughout ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... prodigious stamping of snow from his feet and a cheerful wave of his mittened hand to the boy by the window, the Doctor bustled cheerily indoors and with kindly eyes averted from the single tell-tale sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth had bent with sudden color, ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... villains were known as "black Jack" and the "Kid,"—the former as forbidding a specimen of the human race as ever breathed the vital air. He was low and thick set, with a neck like a bull, and a frame of prodigious strength.. His nose was broad and flat, his month large, his ears of immense size, his forehead low and retreating, while the breadth between his ears at the back of ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... ever I knew in all manners of abominable living, and the most infamous to boot, who all dy'd a very regular death, and in all circumstances compos'd even to perfection. There are brave, and fortunate deaths. I have seen death cut the thread of the progress of a prodigious advancement, and in the height and flower of its increase of a certain person, with so glorious an end, that in my opinion his ambitious and generous designs had nothing in them so high and great as their interruption; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... Delgany there appeared the once famous Tract Ninety, last of the series, unless we are to reckon Monckton Milnes's One Tract More. The author of Tract Ninety was Newman, and the ferment it made was prodigious. It was a subtle, ingenious, and plausible attempt to prove that the Articles and other formularies of the English Church might be honestly interpreted in a Catholic sense, as embodying principles which the whole Catholic Church held before the Reformation, and held still. Mr. Cleaver and ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... from all encumbrances. I have had all the documents in my hands. It was he who outbid me everywhere when I was about to make a desirable purchase; and, besides, he has bills on Mr. Thomas John's house to the amount of three millions and a half." "He must have been a prodigious thief!" "How foolishly you talk! he wisely saved where others squandered their property." "A mere livery-servant!" "Nonsense! he has at all events an unexceptionable shadow." "True, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... women—giving a very contrary impression. The French newspapers give a very contrary impression. And the statistics of books and pamphlets published and circulated in France on the Italian question this year are in most prodigious disaccord with such a conclusion. Compare them with the same statistics ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... worse than ignorance, by the enormous evils of this dreadful innovation. The Revolution harpies of France, sprung from Night and Hell, or from that chaotic Anarchy which generates equivocally "all monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adulterously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in the nest of every neighboring state. These obscene harpies, who deck themselves in I know not what divine attributes, but who in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... grow. Calvin, Fox, Cranmer, and other leaders of the Reformation are all represented in their portraits with long flowing beards. John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, wore, as is well known, a beard of prodigious length. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the rigors of search and plunder. The records of the State Department and the rude newspapers of the time are full of the complaints of shipowners, passengers, and shipping merchants. The robbery was prodigious in its amount, the indignity put upon the nation unspeakable. And yet the least complaint came from those who suffered most. The New England seaport towns were filled with idle seamen, their harbors with ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... African War), and of his saying solemnly as we lit cigarettes that he'd had a dream overnight. He dreamed that he walked into the Casino at Monte Carlo, went straight to the first table on the left, put down a five-franc piece on Number 17, and came out a winner of prodigious sums. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in which more energy is now needed than in those of our deans. The whole of our enormous cathedral establishments have been allowed to go to sleep,—nay, they are all but dead and ready for the sepulchre! And yet of what prodigious moment they might be made, if, as we intend, they were so managed as to lead the way and show an example for all ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of sweat stood out on Henry's forehead, and he believed that he could hear his sinews and those of his opponent crack as they put forth prodigious efforts. Both fell to the ground and rolled over and over. Then they were back on their feet again, without ever releasing their hold. Henry tried to reach the knife in his belt, and the Indian sought his, too. Both failed, and then, Henry, crouching a little, suddenly ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... what were my qualifications when I was rashly engaged as a leader-writer (it was my sister who saw the advertisement) on an English provincial paper. At the moment I was as uplifted as the others, for the chance had come at last, with what we all regarded as a prodigious salary, but I was wanted in the beginning of the week, and it suddenly struck me that the leaders were the one thing I had always skipped. Leaders! How were they written? what were they about? My mother was already ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... can assure you it was a busy time of year with the farmers, when they found the summer coming upon them with such a rush. Nor must I forget to say that all the birds in the whole world hopped about upon the newly blossoming trees, and sang together in a prodigious ecstasy ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... attained a more complete mastery over their passions than Jonathan Edwards did. This was partly owing to the ascendency of his intellect; partly, and in a still greater degree, to the elevation of his piety. For the subjugation of his passions he was no doubt very greatly indebted to the prodigious superiority of his reason. Such was the commanding attitude his reason assumed, and such the tremendous power with which it controlled the whole man, that any insurrection among his senses was hopeless; they had their tenure only by doing fealty and homage to his intellect. Those ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... combined Russian and Austrian forces at Austerlitz on the anniversary of the day on which he had been crowned as Emperor. And Fortune, which had crowned him then in Paris, now crowned his genius on the battlefield by the greatest of all his victories. After prodigious slaughter the Russians and Austrians were completely routed, losing thousands of prisoners. The treaty of Pressburg followed, in which the Austrian Emperor, Francis the First, was compelled to give up large slices of territory ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... my eye with the twain!"[FN174] Then cried her father Al-Shisban to her, What be this laughing?" So she bespoke him in a tongue none understood but they two and acquainted him with that which Tohfah had said; whereat he laughed a prodigious loud laugh, as it were the roaring thunder. Presently they ate and the tables were removed and they washed their hands; after which Iblis the Accursed came up to Tohfah and said to her, "O my lady, thou gladdenest the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Fournier. By and by it did more—it cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks filled out, the muscles became hard as bundles of steel wire, his strength was prodigious: he ate his food with a relish unknown in Paris, and slept ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... and stammered out somewhat—"That it was excusable in him, if he had said, in jest, that so prodigious and curious a valor had ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... rose tall and prominent above the mud houses of the city. A lyddite shell burst over it—a great flash, a white ball of smoke, and, after a pause, the dull thud of the distant explosion. Another followed. At the third shot, instead of the white smoke, there was a prodigious cloud of red dust, in which the whole tomb disappeared. When this cleared away we saw that, instead of being pointed, it was now flat-topped. Other shells continued to strike it with like effect, some breaking holes in ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the rocks and pools, and following it round a projection of the cliff enter the sacred cave. The light dims as we advance; and the sea- waves, running after us into the gloom, make a stupefying roar, multiplied by the extraordinary echo. Looking back, I see the mouth of the cavern like a prodigious sharply angled rent in blackness, showing a fragment of ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... enjoyable time than those two months of travel. The air was clear, bright, and exhilarating; the long days spent in the saddle, and the excitement of the chase, seemed to quicken his pulse and to fill him with a new feeling of strength and life. His appetite was prodigious, and he enjoyed the roughly cooked meals round the blazing fire of an evening, as he had never enjoyed food before. The country was, it is true, for the most part monotonous, with its long low undulations, and the bare sweeps, unbroken by tree or bush; but there was always something new and interesting ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... placed the scene of the Tempest, were discovered in his time: Sir George Somers and his companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storm,[47] brought back a most fearful account of those unknown islands, which they described as "a land of devils—a most prodigious and enchanted place, subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the idea entertained of the "still-vext Bermoothes" in Shakspeare's age; but later travellers describe them as perfect regions of enchantment in a far different sense; ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... that there unfortunate wessel," said the captain, rising from his chair, and clenching his hand with prodigious energy and exultation, "was a lad, a gallant lad—as I've heard tell—that had loved when he was a boy to read and talk about brave actions in shipwrecks—I've heerd him!—I've heerd him!—and he remembered of 'em in his hour of need; for when the stoutest hearts and oldest ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... times he complained that they had laid a cruel weight upon his face, though it was covered with nothing but a thin cloth, which was afterwards removed and laid more light and hollow; yet he still complained of the prodigious weight upon his face, which might be caused by the blood being forced up thither and pressing the veins so violently as if the force had been externally on his face. When he had remained for half-an-hour under ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... who settled down industriously to his day's task of literature as to bookkeeping, did not grow into an artist in any large sense; and Zola, with the motto "Nulle dies sine linea" ever facing him on his desk, made himself a prodigious author, indeed, but never more than a second-rate writer. On the other hand, Trollope without industry would have been nobody at all, and Zola without pains might as well have been a waiter. Nor is it only the little or the clumsy ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... torrent of a sermon, a wild gush of words, shouted at the topmost stress of a remarkably lusty voice, arresting for a minute or two by reason of the sheer physical energy it represented, and then for a long half hour exquisitely tiresome. But on week-days he maintained a prodigious silence, and this (as, though fierce-looking, he wasn't in the least really fierce) it would often be John's malicious study to tempt him to break. Besides, to-day, John was honestly concerned with ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... her cheeks to a shade. And scattered about it were birds, and butterflies, and snaky, emaciated dragons, with backs like saw-teeth, and prodigious fangs, and claws, and very curly tails, such as they breed in Nankeen plates and used to breed on packages of fire-crackers—all done in gold, the gold of her hair. Moreover, one might catch a glimpse of her neck—which ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... them seemed to know why they were doing it. They looked at her and went away, and came again and looked at her. And the more they thought about it, the more puzzled they became. Some of them asked her questions, but what Tommy really didn't know, added to what she didn't mean to tell, was so prodigious that Curiosity itself ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... their foe, and although numbers of them fell beneath the more formidable missiles sent by the English archers, their numbers were so overwhelming that the little band melted away. The small party of knights, too, were rapidly thinned, although performing prodigious deeds of valor. The Saracens when dismounted or wounded still fought on foot, their object being always to stab or hough the horses, and so dismount the riders. King Richard and his force, though making the most desperate ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... itself was at once accessible through the doorway? Moreover, two of the holes open outwards, and not into the supposed store-chamber. It may be said that these were for hauling up the sacks of corn, but the incline on which they open is so steep, that it would be a prodigious waste of labour to drag the corn up under the cornice in which they are, whereas the other ascent is easy. The precautions taken to provide means of stabbing at an assailant point to this having been a fortress. My interpretation of the puzzle is this: first, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... them. At the beginning of the year 1782 they referred to "the enormous increase of smuggling, the outrages with which it is carried on, the mischiefs it occasions to the country, the discouragement it creates to all fair traders, and the prodigious loss the Revenue sustains by it." The Board went on to state that "diligent and vigorous exertions by the cruising vessels employed in the service of the Customs certainly might very much lessen it." The Commissioners ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... you know as much as I know. There is a general confidence that the Allies will hold the Germans in their forthcoming effort to get to Calais or to Paris. Yet there is an undercurrent of fear. Nobody knows just how to feel about it. Probably another prodigious onslaught will be made before you receive this letter. It seems to me that we can make no intelligent guess until this German effort is finished in France—no guess about the future. If the Germans get the French ports (Calais, for example) ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... not dissuade him from loving. As little rest had Juliet, when she found that the gentleman that she had been talking with was Romeo and a Montague, for she had been suddenly smit with the same hasty and inconsiderate passion for Romeo, which he had conceived for her; and a prodigious birth of love it seemed to her, that she must love her enemy, and that her afflictions should settle there, where family considerations should induce her ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... order to make him express his opinion on the people he had seen, the houses where he had dined, in short, the lightest expression of his mind. As soon as she fancied she detected the influence of some other person, she combated it with prodigious astuteness ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... as enchanted; neither knowing the reason why, nor how to bee ridde of it: unusuall to these Woods, and, I feare, to our gods prodigious. Sylvanus whom I honour, is runne into a Cave: Pan, whom I envye, courting of the Shepheardesse. Envie I thee Pan? No, pitty thee; an eie-sore to chast Nymphes, yet still importunate. Honour thee Sylvanus? No, contemne thee; fearefull ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... last century when it was desired to restore Plain Song to its primitive purity, one met with insurmountable obstacles due to its prodigious prolixity of long series of notes, repeating indefinitely the same musical forms; but in considering this in the light of explanations given by St. Isidore, and in view of the Oriental origin of the Christian ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... battle; afterward, With strength repaired and gathered might breaks camp, And hurls him headlong on the unthinking foe: As in mid ocean when a wave far of Begins to whiten, mustering from the main Its rounded breast, and, onward rolled to land Falls with prodigious roar among the rocks, Huge as a very mountain: but the depths Upseethe in swirling eddies, and disgorge The murky sand-lees from their sunken bed. Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts, And ocean-folk, and flocks, ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... demonstrated by Borelli, an eminent Italian mathematician and philosopher, who lived in a fertile age of discovery, and was thoroughly acquainted with the true principles of mechanics and pneumatics. He showed, by accurate calculation, the prodigious force, which in birds must be exerted and maintained by the pectoral muscles, with which the all-wise Creator has supplied them, and, by applying the same principles to the structure of the human frame, he proved how extremely disproportionate was the strength of the corresponding ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... folded, and who did everything, who was the greatest force ever known, the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of all forces; a singular genius who carried armed civilization in every direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... forward to scold and put her hands in the pockets of her apron, was incredibly natural. Pulcinella, so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he was irresistible. To see him carrying an umbrella over his mistress's head in a storm, talking to a prodigious giant whom he met in the forest, and going to bed with a pony, were things never to be forgotten. And so delicate are the hands of the people who move them, that every puppet was an Italian, and did exactly what an Italian does. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... nobly gifted. Scott once wrote of him: "I think if he had cultivated the sublime and the pathetic instead of the satirical cast of poetry, he must have stood very high (as indeed he does at any rate) on the list of British poets. His Sir Eustace Grey and The Hall of Justice indicate prodigious talent."[306] Scott did not like Crabbe's choice of subjects,[307] but he appreciated the "force and vigour" of a poet whom students of our own day are once more beginning to admire, after a period during which he was ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... distortion of his legs, could move only with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than the proscenium. Beyond that, you have a parlor, with one wall removed for your better view. It is Asmodeus's show improved. I went to a Paris theatre with a friend. The play began with half a dozen milliners chattering and sewing round a table. After a few moments, my friend gave a prodigious yawn, and declared he was going home, "for you might as well sit down and see a parcel of real milliners at work as this play." Tastes differ; and I did not find this an objection. But what a compliment that was to the whole corps,—actors, actresses, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... observ'd he cared not to hold very long. Then he stoode on a small pot, and, bending his body, tooke a glowing iron with his mouthe from betweene his feete, without touching the pot or ground with his hands, with divers other prodigious feats. ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini |
