"Terrifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arranged beforehand. Here they drank "fire water," rejoicing savagely over their victory. Then drunk with brandy and with blood they staggered forth again to continue their horrible labours. For three days the slaughter lasted, for three days the forests rang with terrifying war cries, and village after village was laid in ashes. Then too weary and too drunk for further effort, the Indians ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... some chance of success, even in feeble hands. But the old man was ambitious. His object was to "pot" something, as he expressed it, with a single ball. Of course it was not all pointing. He did fire occasionally, with no other result than awaking the echoes and terrifying the rabbits. But the memory of his former success with the same weapon was strong upon him, and perseverance, as we have said, was rampant. On the whole, the fusillade that he kept up was considerable, much to the amusement of Barret (before meeting Mrs Moss!), who rightly guessed ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... mass of sound which they rolled up as high as to the moon was partly comical and partly terrifying to the fugitive whom they were hunting. In itself, it was impotent, for he made sure no seaman in the port could run him down. But the mere volume of noise, in so far as it must awake all the sleepers in Shoreby, and bring all the skulking ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hang them. Outside the Palace on the Place d'Armes the numbers were increased by horde after horde of men marching from the slums of Paris, armed with pikes, muskets, and hatchets, and full of drink. After dark many had filled the streets, knocking at the houses demanding food and money, and terrifying the town. The sentinels, the Bodyguards, and the Flemish regiment had with difficulty rescued the women of the deputation, kept the gates and held the mob at bay. They were jeered at and even fired on, whereat one or two of the Bodyguards had fired back. The filthy furies, drunken and degraded to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... crime of possessing territory intervening between the eastern and western extremes of the Austrian district. Bonaparte affected to believe that the Venetians had permitted Beaulieu to occupy Peschiera before he seized upon Brescia himself. He uttered terrifying threats to the envoys who came from Venice to excuse an imaginary crime. He was determined to extort money from the Venetian Republic; he also needed a pretext for occupying Verona, and for any future wrongs. "I have ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... ears. It was a long drawn out cry, weird and blood-curdling. That it was the warwhoop of the Yaquis both boys were beginning to believe, in spite of knowing that these Mexicans seldom if ever used such romantic if terrible means of terrifying their enemies. ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... asked, moving a little nearer to the huge log fire. "What company is more terrifying than the company of our dead thoughts and dead ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... many reasons for having communication with him,—not that I expected that at first he would acknowledge anything: I knew that his heart was hardened, and that he had no idea of his danger; but I had his secret,—he was indeed in my power, and I hoped by terrifying him to obtain the information ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Sissy cried for food and then for water, and there was none of either to give her; and then she lay back still, and he thought she was dying. The crowds swarmed and surged about him, crying, groaning, praying, cursing, yelling orders; and above all that fearful din arose the terrifying roar of the fire. The city was burning up! O, where was mother? And where was a safe place for Sissy? And why did his arm hurt so? What was the matter with him? His head was whirling round and round. Was he going to die and ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... extraordinary success, one of those human beings from whom all men shrink instinctively, and before whom they easily lose their fluency of speech and confidence of thought. Unnaturally still eyes, of an uncertain colour, gazed with a terrifying fixedness upon a human world, and were oddly set in the large and perfectly colourless face that was like an exaggerated waxen mask. The pale lips did not meet evenly, the lower one protruding, forced, outward ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... had come this delay. Such was her nature that personal danger ever appalled her. Death and disaster in the abstract were nothing to her, but their shadows brushing her own person was something more than terrifying. And as she thought of the immensity of the world about her, the gloom, the awful hush, the spirit of the hills got hold of her and left her ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... interval, then letters, the reassuring but so tantalizingly unsatisfactory letters we American families were, just at that time, beginning to receive. Reading the newspapers now had a personal interest, a terrifying, dreadful interest. Then the packing and sending of holiday boxes, over the contents of which Olive and Rachel spent much careful planning and anxious preparation. Then another interval of more letters, letters which hinted vaguely at big ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the centre of the road, and would not give an inch to Staff cars, hooting their guts out behind them. The Italian drivers, on the other hand, accustomed to the mountains, dashed round sharp corners at full speed, avoiding innumerable collisions by a fraction of an inch, terrifying and infuriating their more cautious Allies. But I only once saw a serious collision here in the ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... ridge, overtook the fugitives, and paid the penalty of their rashness by losing two of their number. The other couple fled in wild haste down the slope, and one of them never paused until he rejoined his comrades, to whom he told his terrifying tale. The fourth stopped when he had run a short distance, and, after a brief rest, began making his way back to the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... opportunities I have, even by what power and passion and talents I have, and filled you with a hunger for me—when really you do not realize at all what I am, or what I must be, and when what I have to do will terrify you. I write in the thought of terrifying you now, and making you give up this red-hot iron that you are trying to hold on to; or else to show you my life so plainly that never afterwards can you blame me, or shrink back except by your ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... moistened the dry blue lips, then put a few drops between them. Oh, it was a tedious, terrifying business—too long to describe; and nothing scared Eustace more than the choking and gasping with which Bob came to himself at last. But it was the turning-point and ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... predominates in these long tirades of poor verses is an intense feeling of horror and dismay; the quiet Gower, and the whole community to which he belonged, have suddenly been brought face to face with something unusual and terrifying even for that period. The earth shook, and a gulf opened; hundreds of victims, an archbishop of Canterbury among them, disappeared, and the abyss still yawns; the consternation is general, and no one knows what remedy to expect. Happily the two edges of the chasm have at last united; ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... hypothesis for the edification of his patrons, and the fierce female hung on the outskirts of the audience, and examined the exhibits suspiciously. When Thunder came to that scale of creation represented by the Missing Link, Nickie exhibited great ferocity, growling and gnashing his teeth in a most terrifying manner, but keeping sedulously to the shadows at the back of the cage. Madame Marve stirred him up with the long stick kept for the purpose, and the Professor dwelt with feeling on the worst features of the animal's character. Mrs. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... to come frequent reports shook the island, and balls kept crashing through the woods. I moved from hiding-place to hiding-place, always pursued, or so it seemed to me, by these terrifying missiles. But towards the end of the bombardment, though still I durst not venture in the direction of the stockade, where the balls fell oftenest, I had begun, in a manner, to pluck up my heart again, and after a long detour to the east, crept down ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... penance like the old monks? Do you know, Rosamund"—here Irene linked her thin, almost steel-like little hand inside Rosamund's arm—"that I am a most voracious reader? Father was a great collector of books, and when I am tired of frightening the servants, and terrifying Frosty, and annoying mother, I spend days at a time in his library swallowing down the contents of his books. There is no other word for it. So I know odds and ends of all ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... became the end itself, the last and supreme end of all philosophy—the reason of philosophy; and, as was observed by Nietzsche, the Circe of philosophers, who enchants them, who dictates to them beforehand, or who modifies their systems in advance by terrifying them as to what their systems may contain irreverent towards itself or dangerous in relation to it. From Socrates to Kant and thence onward, morality has been the Circe of philosophers, and morality is, as it were, the spiritual daughter of Socrates. On the other hand, his influence was terrible ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... had she fallen in love with Alessandro Stradella than she found herself telling the most glaring untruths every day, with a readiness and self-possession that were nothing short of terrifying. For instance, her uncle often asked her to tell him exactly what she had been studying with the music-master, and he inquired especially whether the latter ever sang any of his own music to her. To these questions she answered that she was too anxious to profit by the lessons she was receiving, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... rage—and simultaneously a strange, a phenomenal thing occurred. An unseen hand appeared to strike down both Mallow and his accomplice where they stood, and it smote them, moreover, with appalling force and terrifying effect. One moment they were in complete mastery of the situation, the next they were groveling in the road, coughing, sneezing, barking, retching, blaspheming poisonously. Baffled fury followed their first surprise. Mallow tore the mask from his face and groped blindly for the weapon ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... If you are four years old, however, this unchanged position soon becomes one of torture. Unknown and dreadful things go on in your legs, strange prickings and tinglings and dartings up and down, a sudden terrifying numbness, when you think they must have dropped off but are afraid to look, then renewed and fiercer prickings, shootings, and burnings. I thought I must be very ill, for I had never known my legs like that before. My father sitting beside me was engrossed in the singing ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... sufficiently keen and agonizing to inspire such dreadful apprehensions in her dreams. The temperament which is sanguine, and which, in a lively mood, inspires hope, is, at the same time, the source of those dark images of thought and feeling, which appal it with the most terrifying forms of fear; and when Saturday and Saturday night came and passed, and Alfred Stevens did not appear, a lurking dread that would not be chidden or kept down, continued to rise within her soul, which, without assuming any real form or decisive speech, was ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... officers landing on our defenceless shores, on the transparently flimsy pretext of making themselves acquainted with our military establishments, at the rate (excluding Sundays) of 240 a week, or in this present September, of 1,080 a month, or, amazing and terrifying total, of 12,520 a year! We commend this startling announcement to the attention of the Cabinet (Parliament, unfortunately, is not sitting), the Commander-in-Chief, the War Office, the Commanders of all Volunteer Corps, the Author of 'The Battle of Dorking,' Sergeant Blower, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... them, and now Dexter not only looked every inch a horse but very painfully to his rider felt like one, for the spurs were goring him to a most seditious behavior. The mere pace was slackened only that he might alarmingly kick and shake himself in a manner as terrifying to the rider as it was unseemly in one ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... presented himself at the Herrick house on Pacific Avenue much too early upon the afternoon of Miss Herrick's tea. As he made, his way up the canvased stairs he was aware of a terrifying array of millinery and a disquieting staccato chatter of feminine voices in the parlors and reception-rooms on either side of the hallway. A single high hat in the room that had been set apart for the men's use confirmed him in ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... in turn and ravaged both that land and the territory of adjacent tribes which had taken part in the uprising. Immediately he reduced all of them to subjugation, gaining control of some with their consent, terrifying others into reluctant submission, and engaging in pitched battles with others. Later, when some of them rebelled, he again enslaved them. And for this thanksgivings and triumphal honors were ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... surge of his investive, or below the deepest deep of his despair. In Arabia, Death rides a camel, instead of a white horse, as our occidental myth has it, and the camel's bell is the music to which all life is attuned. Burton reverts from time to time to this terrifying tintinnabulation, but he blends it with the suggested glamour of evening, until the terror merges into tenderness. The recurrence of this minor chord, in the savage sweep of Burton's protest against the irony of existence, is a fascination that the "Kasidah" has in common ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... rather vexed; not a word have I been able to say to her lately, but tears have been the answer; and I asked what had come to her that she should cry for every trifle as if she were heart-broken. With that, she fell into a burst of sobs, terrifying to see, and ran from the room. I was thunderstruck. I asked John what could be the matter with her, and he said he could only think she was ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... from childhood, which stood at a distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South's dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind that it would descend and kill him. Thus he would sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, he returned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with the meat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slender body doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sight greeted him in the little ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... he slipped through a door into the darkness of the Singapore night. In his ciphered message was the key to an adventure that would plunge his American friends into both darkness and danger in the fabled, terrifying Caves of Korse Lenken, a story to be related ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... said a lot of things very quickly—"foreign language" as Judy called it; kicked something over, and shouted "Esther!" in a terrifying tone. But Esther was down in one of the paddocks with the General, so ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... this way and that until her heart ached beyond endurance, that she was not sure of her love for either, but felt that she loved both, nor could tell whom she loved the most, if either at all. In this agony of confusion, terrifying for a maid, she had fled beyond her mother's arms, to her grandmother's cottage at Grace Harbor, there to deliberate and decide, as she said; and she had promised to speed her conclusion with all the determination she could command, and to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... Jose sometimes picked up fragments of scoria, which spake to his imagination of direful volcanoes and impending earthquakes. To the less scientific mind of the muleteer Ignacio they had even a more terrifying significance; and he once or twice snuffed the air suspiciously, and declared that it smelt of sulphur. So the first day of their journey wore away, and at night they encamped without having met ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the diseases they are supposed to produce! Whatever the scientific people may say, imagination without microscopes was kindly and often courageous, because it worked on things of which it had some real knowledge. But imagination with microscopes, working on a terrifying spectacle of millions of grotesque creatures of whose nature it had no knowledge, became a cruel, terror-stricken, persecuting delirium. Are you aware, madam, that a general massacre of men of science ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... these under the name Charun (the Charon of the Greeks), an old man of hideous form, bears a heavy mallet to strike his victims. The souls of the dead (the Manes) issue from the lower world three days in the year, wandering about the earth, terrifying the living and doing them evil. Human victims are offered to appease their lust for blood. The famous gladiatorial combats which the Romans adopted had their origin in bloody sacrifices in ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... flight inevitably ended in ignominious recapture and a sudden awakening in bed. At these moments the familiar and hated palms, the peaks, and the block-house were more hideous in their reality than the most terrifying ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... distinctly threatened to do it as a means of terrifying me into compliance with his and your wishes. It was not until then that I decided to leave your house and seek some place of refuge until time and the law should set me completely free from your family and ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... to Dot a very terrifying thing happened; for she soon heard other cries mingle with hers. From the desolate morass, and from the gully in darkness below, came the sound of a bellowing. She stopped crying and listened, and could hear those awesome voices all around, and the ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... imprisoned three estimable old ladies in the elevator, and before they were released had frightened them into hysterics; of how he at first took the milkman to be a brother Indian, and regularly for a time answered his morning howl with a terrifying war-whoop; of how he kept the house in turmoil by ringing an electric bell wherever he could find one, in doing which he took a childish delight—there is no need to speak here. Happily for Miss Slopham, it so came about that Ogla-Moga was rescued from all his scrapes without the responsibility ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... though terrifying, proved valuable as an education to young Winslow who a few days later was ordered to a test of ascension of two thousand ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... to his feet with an inarticulate and hysteric exclamation. Yet the apparition that now stood in the doorway was far from being terrifying or discomposing. It was evidently the stranger,—a slender, elegantly-knit figure, whose upper lip was faintly shadowed by a soft, dark mustache indicating early manhood, and whose unstudied ease in his well-fitting garments bespoke the dweller of cities. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... my way to camp, I realized that I was not a heroine. Here was a mystery—it was the business of a heroine to solve it. Now that I was safely away from the cave, I began to feel the itch of a torturing curiosity. How, without going into the terrifying place alone, should I find out what was there? Should I pretend to have accidentally discovered the grave, lead the party to it, and then—again accidentally—discover the tunnel? This plan had its merits—but I discarded it, for fear that ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... had rushed across the next street on his bare feet into the Crookit Wynd, terrifying poor old Kirstan Peerie, the divisions betwixt the compartments of whose memory had broken down, into the exclamation to her next neighbour, Tam Rhin, with whom she was trying ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... An amusement practised by postboys and stage-coachmen, which consists in following a one-horse chaise, anddriving it before them, passing close to it, so as to brush the wheel, and by other means terrifying any woman or person that may be in it. A man whose turn comes for him to drink, before he has emptied his former glass, is said to ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... with confidence, and, therefore, when he has made an anxious and fearful step in the right direction, he should be patted and spoken to in an encouraging tone, so that his mind may not be wholly occupied with the terrifying object in front of him. It is a good plan to incline his head away from it as much as possible. I have ridden young horses who have shied at almost everything, but have never worried them to go up to and smell the object of their aversion, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... he was terrifying, a bodiless head, a gaping mouth, a dragon eager to swallow the moon of the youth of the world. But now we are no longer afraid. The flowers go, the leaves go, the waves in the river go, and we shall also follow them. Ah, blind Minstrel, strike your lute ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... that surpassed Loveday's, already failing her through dismay at her own action, even as the thunder, to children, surpasses in terrifying quality the lightning.... And, had they but known it, Primrose's sounding tantrums held as much possibility of danger, compared with Loveday's rage, as holds the crash compared with the flash. But ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... at your notes, Mr. Playmore, you will see that I have already succeeded in terrifying him—though I am only a woman and though I didn't ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... souls. Sometimes by dreams, visions (as God to Moses by familiar conference), the devil in several shapes talks with them: in the [6369]Indies it is common, and in China nothing so familiar as apparitions, inspirations, oracles, by terrifying them with false prodigies, counterfeit miracles, sending storms, tempests, diseases, plagues (as of old in Athens there was Apollo, Alexicacus, Apollo [Greek: loimios], pestifer et malorum depulsor), raising wars, seditions by spectrums, troubling their consciences, driving them to despair, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... supplement the want of power of his organs by the efforts of his intellect. As long as that intellect still remained in its elementary stage, this intercourse with invisible spirits assumed forms which were commonplace though terrifying. Thence sprang the popular belief in the supernatural, the legends of wandering spirits, of fairies, of gnomes, ghosts, I might even say the legend of God, for our conceptions of the workman-creator, from whatever ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... exact and faithful representation of a man's spirit in poetry or prose. The precise value of that spirit does not matter for the moment. James Boswell, Dr. Johnson and Porteous, Bishop of Chester, investigated the matter with some acumen and some fruitfulness in one of their terrifying conversations: ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... straggling thread of white visible in the now. It thinned out to nothingness, but its nearest part flared out and flared out and flared out. It grew larger, came closer with a terrifying speed. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... the accusation of being a dreadful creature, and said, that however terrifying his name might be to his enemies among the men, that no woman had ever yet had cause to be afraid of him, or ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... upon the dead and dying. The air is filled with moaning men, whinnying horses, the hurried movement of stretchers, the solemn solicitude of the hospital corps. The line of foremost battle is less terrifying, less trying than this inner way of Golgotha, and the four are well-nigh unnerved when they reach a group where the commanding officer ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... closed, I turned upon my unoffending associate rather angrily, I 'm ashamed to say; but Stodger's good-nature was imperturbable. He could tell me absolutely nothing that threw light upon whatever terrifying experience ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Elders of the village that the monster's form and proportions appeased to them human enough except for his head and his tail, which were, in truth, terrifying. ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... sagacity of a veteran warrior, assembled an army of thirty thousand men, defeated the rebels, and plunged their leaders, seventy in number, each into a caldron of boiling water. Elated by such brilliant success, the young prince renounced allegiance to the Tartar sovereign and assumed independence. Terrifying his enemies by severity, rewarding his friends with rich gifts, and overawing the populace by claims of supernatural powers, this extraordinary young man commenced a career of conquest which the world ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... up just as quickly. In his mind's eye he could see his father helpless at the bottom of the cliffs, with a broken leg or a fractured rib, or suffering for the want of food and warmth. Such thoughts were terrifying, and caused him to shudder from head ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... important, and far the most terrifying, indication of something amiss, was the sight Juana had one day while in the canyon near her home. She had taken Pepito with her, and wandered up the canyon to the place where the stream came down the mountainside in a series of little falls, rushing and tumbling among the boulders ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... sense of security that would not be disturbed replaced them. Then, just as she was reaching out for the chief prizes of her ambition, she came face to face with a man, whose visage she never had forgotten—Elias Droom! And Frances Cable looked again into the old and terrifying shadows! ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of terrifying South Carolina into submission, animated that state to greater exertions. Mr. John Rutledge, a gentleman of great talents and decision, was elected governor; and the legislature passed an act empowering him and the council to do every thing that appeared to him ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... distrust, which is natural to him, was at first strengthened by his govern—or before my marriage. M. de Vauguyon had alarmed him about the authority which his wife would desire to assume over him, and the duke's black disposition delighted in terrifying his pupil with all the phantom stories invented against the house of Austria. M. de Maurepas, though less obstinate and less malicious, still thought it advantageous to his own credit to keep up the same notions ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... moment, let us take the same thought to teach us to moderate our fears. Don't be afraid that anything whatever may come that will destroy the substantial likeness between the past and the future; and so leave all those jarring and terrifying thoughts that mingle with all our anticipations of the time to come, leave them very quietly on one side and say, 'Thou hast been my Help leave me not, neither forsake me, O ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... This time the whisper was a little louder, but there was no answer to the appeal. Then a most terrifying thing occurred. A low, deep growl sounded right at the head of Tommy's cot. With a wild cry the terrified little girl landed in the middle ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... towards the window. Her father and Conyngham had taken their places, one on each side, as if she were the Queen indeed. She stood for a moment on the threshold, and then passed out into the moonlight, alone. Immediately there arose the most terrifying of all earthly sounds—the dull, antagonistic roar of a thousand angry throats. Estella walked to the front of the balcony and stood, with an intrepidity which was worthy of the royal woman whose part she played, looking ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... round numbers, an hundred," Anderson began when they had been seated in the cypress walk. The moon was not yet half way to the zenith and lay a dull copper color in the eastern sky, partially eclipsed by the chimney of the great house. A solemn silence, terrifying and rife with mysterious sensations, seemed to pervade the place. It was a setting well fitted to shroud deep and dark designs. No one would dare ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Joe felt that his words lived after him, like mold upon the walls, or a chilling damp between the stones. The recollection of them could not be denied his abnormally sharpened senses, nor the undoubted truth of their terrifying picture shut out of his imagination by any door of reasoning that he had the strength to close. Condemnation to prison would mean the suspension of all his young hopes and healthy desires; it would bring him to the end of his activities in the world as suddenly as death. Considering ambition, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... very terrifying in the quietude of the court—a quietude which to others might have spelt peace, but which, to Robert Cairn, spelled menace. That Ferrara's device was aimed at his freedom, that his design was intended to lead to the detention of his enemy whilst he directed ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... dead—mommie's dead!" Billy Louise broke down unexpectedly and completely. She went down on her knees beside the bed and cried as she had not cried since she looked the last time at mommie's still face, held in that terrifying calm. She cried until Ward's excited mutterings warned her that she must pull herself together. She did, somehow, in spite of her sorrow and her worry and that day's succession of emotional shocks. She did it because Ward was sick—very sick, ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... he had fought unceasingly to thrust the lady out of his mind: latterly his efforts had met with a halting success. Now, not only was all this labour utterly lost, but he was faced with a peril more terrifying than death. The prospect of being haled once more unto Pisgah, the hell of viewing once again that exquisite land of promise unfulfilled, loomed big with torment. He simply could not suffer it all again. The path, no doubt, would be made more specious than ever. Oh, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Genevieve convulsed them by a dramatic representation of a stormy scene between herself and Madame Philippe; then Miss Evans's new evening frock, Miss Marlowe's incomprehensible taste in preferring Jane Austen to Dickens, Miss Langton's terrifying sarcasm, Miss Ashwell's sweet new sweater coat, all were discussed with an enormous amount of ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... now, when reinforced by food again and comfortable beneath his fur cloak he let his mind do what it would, not checking it, but allowing it its natural internal activity, he found that a mood transcending any he had known yet was his. So far from these experiences being terrifying, so far from their being strange and unreal, they suddenly became intensely real and shone with a splendour that he had never suspected. Originally he had been pitchforked by his father into the army, and had left it to seek ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... heavy oppressive still darkness breathed over the earth. Then through the silence came a faraway soft drumming sound, barely to be heard. As we bent our ears to catch this it grew louder and louder, approaching at breakneck speed like a troop of horses. It became a roar fairly terrifying in its mercilessly continued crescendo. At last the deluge of rain burst ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Hugh," continued Julius, "but what about the terrifying cry that sometimes wells up ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... causing about 300 deaths, it rapidly increased in virulence until in 1907 it caused 1,200,000 deaths. The ports of the Pacific coast became much alarmed, and when cases of the disease were actually found in San Francisco in 1906, the matter was so terrifying that the United States Marine Hospital Service was at once instructed to stamp out the disease if possible. This procedure was directed almost entirely against rats. Deposits of garbage on which rats might feed were removed, rat runs and burrows were destroyed and filled in, and stables, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... justice that she who had begun by terrifying me, in order to get me to bed, and out of her way, should end by being forced to suffer some restraint to cure me of my terrors: but Fowler did not understand or relish poetical justice, or any kind of justice: besides, she had heard that Lady de Brantefield was in want of a nursery-maid ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... much, for they could not understand him. Other men they could put to shame, or laugh out of their ideas and plans, or frighten into submission—at least into conformity. Not so Angut. He was immovable, like an ancient iceberg; proof against threats, wheedling, cajoling, terrifying, sarcasm—proof against everything but kindness. He could not stand before that. He went down before it as bergs go ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... beliefs of diplomats are what soldiers die of," he said. "I said as much to Hartenstein, but he wouldn't tell me anything more. He seemed to regret having said even that much. He looked like a man who's seen a particularly terrifying ghost." The old man puffed hard at his famous pipe for a while, blowing smoke through his mustache. "Rudi, Hartenstein has pulled a hot potato out of the ashes, this time, and he wants to toss it to your uncle, before he burns his fingers. I think that's one reason ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... to a large and blackly hollow O, Leon, between terrifying spells of breath-holding, continued ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... only by an occasional shuddering sigh from Katie; not a tear in her eyes, and her cheeks as scarlet as they had been white a few moments before. The look on her face was terrifying. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... I am quite sure the first Adam was as big as you, and Eve was frightened and ran away, but she wouldn't for the world have had him an inch smaller. And every true Eve since has gloried in the man who towered above her, and was a little terrifying in his strenght. Don't let them spoil you," she added with a note of wistfulness, "all the Eves who must needs follow ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... trying to get her small ear close enough to the receiver to catch a bit of the obviously terrifying message. ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... anywhere. Then Sahwah remembered that Oh-Pshaw had a favorite nook out in the woods where she went when she wanted to be alone, a wide-spreading, low-boughed chestnut tree in a dense, shady grove, away from the singing brook with its terrifying gurgle; into the branches she climbed and sat as in a great wide armchair, secure from interruption. She had taken Sahwah with her once. Of course that was where ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the chief and the six remaining Indians seemed to be slowly quitting the quarter-deck. When the detached Indians had taken possession of the gangways, Orellana placed his hands hollow to his mouth and bellowed out the war-cry used by those savages, which is said to be the harshest and most terrifying sound known in nature. This hideous yell was the signal for beginning the massacre, for on this the Indians all drew their knives and brandished their prepared double-headed shot, and the six, with their chief, who ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... A lot of terrifying experiences connected with these first schooldays grew out of crimes committed by the keeper of a low lodging-house in Edinburgh, who allowed poor homeless wretches to sleep on benches or the floor for a penny or so a night, and, when kind Death came to their relief, sold the ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... bewildered by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... came into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Juan towered an assemblage of pinnacles which looked like statues; but these statues were a thousand feet above the stream, and the smallest of them was at least four hundred feet high. To a lost wanderer, and especially to a dispirited woman, such magnitude was not sublime, but terrifying. It seemed as if these shapes were gods who had no mercy, or demons who were full of malevolence. Still higher, on a jutting crag which overhung the black river, was a castle a hundred fold huger than man ever built, with ramparts that were dizzy precipices and towers such as no daring could ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... hand, he stood as one paralyzed, opposite the bed; and he who was afraid of nothing in the world had not the courage to throw the light on Hippolyte Fauville's face. A terrifying silence rose ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... events you will find in the few pages enclosed here. You must admit that it is romantic beyond the wildest dreams of his boyhood, and yet there is to my mind a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall perish by the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... The Quartermaster-Sergeant had some terrifying tales for the Company Mess about disasters on less fortunate parts of the line; but there was no time to go into the matter, for the Battalion was ordered to parade immediately. This was the last straw! The men had been looking forward ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Fortress Monroe, who promptly detached a part of his force to take the field under Lieutenant Colonel Worth.[10] The revolt was subdued, however, before these troops could be placed in action and about all they accomplished thereafter was the terrifying of Negroes who had taken no part in the insurrection and the immolation of others who ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Swedes into the Ukraine. It would be far better, so they thought, to join the latter against the former. One of these Cossacks, Voinarovski, who had been sent by the hetman to Menshikoff, had returned with most terrifying news. He had overheard the German officers on the favorite's staff, speaking of Mazeppa and his followers, say: "God pity those poor wretches; to-morrow they will all be in chains!" Mazeppa, when he heard this report, "raged like a whirlwind," hurried to Batourin to give the alarm, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... it was because she had a hard nut to crack within herself: she possessed a jealous, passionate, youthful temperament, a formidable standard of right and wrong, a distinguished and rather stern accueil, a low, slow utterance and terrifying sincerity. She was the kind of person I had dreamt of meeting and never knew that God had made. She once told me that I was the best friend man, woman or child could ever have. After this wonderful compliment, we formed a deep attachment, which lasted until her death. She ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... soon as Lautrec arrived. Lautrec had now arrived; he had marched down through Italy; he had captured Melfi; the Spanish commander, Moncada, had been killed; Naples was thought to be on the eve of surrender.[602] The Spanish dominion in Italy was waning, the Emperor's thunderbolts were less terrifying, and the justice of the cause ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... laugh of genuine amusement. She could never altogether put aside her sense of humour, let Fate come with what terrifying face ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... from La Grenonillere, "There is Lesbos," and there became all at once a furious clamor; a terrifying scramble took place; the glasses were knocked down; people clambered on to the tables; all in a frenzy of noise bawled: "Lesbos! Lesbos! Lesbos!" The shout rolled along, became indistinct, was no longer ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... intended that Peter should fill his stomach at once. He had gone but a little way when from just ahead of him the silence of the early evening was broken by a terrifying sound—"Whooo-hoo-hoo, whooo-hoo!" It was so sudden and there was in it such a note of fierceness that Peter had all he could do to keep from jumping and running for dear life. But he knew that voice and he knew, too, that safety lay in keeping perfectly still. ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... spirals it lost itself near to the yellow ceiling. As a sick man will study the veriest trifle I studied that wisp of smoke, pencilled grayly against the silken draperies, the carven tables, against the almost terrifying persistency of the yellow ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... he answered. "Somehow or other those big places are rather terrifying. I had no friends there, and I wandered about as though I were in ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was so great, and the coaches, horses, wagons, and carts were so many, driving and dragging the people away, that it looked as if all the city was running away; and had any regulations been published that had been terrifying at that time, especially such as would pretend to dispose of the people otherwise than they would dispose of themselves, it would have put both the city and suburbs ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... eccentric, temperamental, the apotheosis of brilliancy—genius. The sudden dart up, the terrifying drop down seemed her main accomplishment. The wonder of it was that the men could never tell where she would land. Did it seem that she was aiming near, a sudden swoop would bring her to rest on a far-away spot. Was it certain that she was making for a distant tree-top, an unexpected drop ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... sometimes, in the midst of the careless gaiety of the modern city, the old, ever-burning spirit of rebellion and savage strife that underlies it all, and that can spring to the surface now on certain memorable days, with a vehemence that is terrifying. Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man's ambition; and when that is spent, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... order of the sentence in verse 16: 'John whom I beheaded, he is,' etc. The terrified king blurts out the name of his dread first, then tremblingly takes the guilt of the deed to himself, and last speaks the terrifying thought that he is risen. A man who has a sin in his memory can never be sure that its ghost will not suddenly start up. Trivial incidents will rouse the sleeping conscience. Some nothing, a chance word, a scent, a sound, the look on a face, the glow of an evening sky, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... It was in the direction of Antwerp, and at first we thought that the vandals had fired the town; but though the sky was lit by many blazing houses, that tall pillar came from the great oil-tanks, set on fire by the Belgians lest they should fall into German hands. A more awful and terrifying spectacle it is hard to conceive. The sky was lit up as if by the sunrise of the day of doom, and thirty miles away our road was lighted by the lurid glare. Our way led through woods, and amongst the trees we could hear the crack ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... When this had happened a dozen times or more, and still without disaster, he took heart and began to turn it all into a game, choosing this or that breaker and making imaginary wagers upon it; but yet the spectacle fascinated him, and still at the back of his small brain lay wonder that all this terrifying fury and uproar should always be coming to nothing. God must be out yonder (he thought) and engaged in some mysterious form of play. He had heard a good deal about God from Miss Quiney, his governess; but this playfulness, as an attribute of the Almighty, was new to him ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... terrifying, and he awoke in the morning unrefreshed. The mutiny and defection of the ship's company, he ascribed entirely to the machinations of Smallbones, whom he now hated with a feeling so intense, that he felt he could have ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... sex. This diet, just after recovering from her confinement, her health being but partially restored and greatly in need of stimulants, exhausted the young woman's strength, reduced her flesh and undermined her constitution. She had a terrifying aspect. Her complexion changed to that dead white that looks green in the daylight. Her swollen eyes were surrounded with a great, bluish shadow. Her discolored lips assumed the hue of faded violets. Her breath failed her at the slightest ascent, and the incessant vibrating sound ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... A terrifying, an incredible suspicion that had overwhelmed me directly I stepped out of the car now came surging through my brain. That vast, black edifice, that slender tower at the corner—did ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... imposed on them. They left us the rest of the day at a gentleman's house, who was our friend, from whence the next day they fetched us to transport us to the island, where they put us into a kind of prison, with a view of terrifying us into a confession of the place where we had hid our gold, in which, ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... him under the most unusual and terrifying circumstances of his entire life. The story of the project that led to Rick's greatest adventure will be told in the next ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... no free thought, and where there is no free thought there is no intellectual life. The priests take their ideas from Rome cut and dried like tobacco and the people take their ideas from the priests cut and dried like tobacco. Ireland is a terrifying example of what becomes of a country when it accepts prejudices and conventions and ceases ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... cloths to the spine to soothe the irritated nerves and brain. Two may gently and kindly hold the patient, while a third presses on the cooling cloths. In about half-an-hour the fit should be overcome. A difficulty in treating such cases is the terrifying effect of the violent movements, or unconsciousness; but these should not create fear. As a rule, a little patience and treatment as above remove all distress. Where there is a hysterical tendency, give abundance of good ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... sympathy with her sorrow; she remembered how he had conspired with her on that fatal night at Innspruck. Then she remembered her husband's scorn, his withering insults, and her loss of consciousness. She thought how she had been found on the floor, and awakened by the terrifying intelligence of the emperor's sudden death. Her tears, her despair, she remembered all; and her wail of sorrow at the loss of her kindest friend. [Wraxall, vol. ii., page 411.] Memory whispered her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... plagued to death with cunning questions as to my life and habits. I have been watched in the streets and watched in my harmless amusements. My simple life has been peered into from every perspective and direction. In short, I am suspect. Mr. Ledsam's terrifying statement a few minutes ago was directed towards me ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hoarse and high-pitched, like the voice of a man half mad with delirium. Those that answered him spoke in terms not less measured. Had a pack of wild hounds been slipped suddenly to its prey, no howls more terrifying could have been heard than those which echoed in that house of mystery. And then, upon the top of the clamour, as though to mark the meaning of it, came silence, a silence so awesome that ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Maitre Ranulph visit her after the funeral of the Sieur de Mauprat. The horror of the thing had struck him dumb, and his mind was one confused mass of conflicting thoughts. There—there were the terrifying facts before him; yet, with an obstinacy peculiar to him, he still went on believing in her goodness and in her truth. Of the man who had injured her he had no doubt, and his course was clear, in the hour when he and Philip d'Avranche should ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... however, deaf to the warnings of the family, shook his moth-eaten mane with pride, thinking of his ancestors; then he tried on the terrifying mask, a cardboard arrangement that imitated, with a faint resemblance, the countenance ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... slightest streak of clearing, as though the sun had departed from the earth forever. Not a glimmer of white existed in this tempestuous outline; always gray,—the sky, the foam, the seagulls, the snows.... From time to time the leaden veils of the tempest were torn asunder, leaving visible a terrifying apparition. Once it was black mountains with glacial winding sheets from the Straits of Beagle. And the boat tacked, fleeing away from this narrow aquatic passageway full of perilous ledges. Another time the peaks of Diego Ramirez, the most extreme point of the cape, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... passion. The soul swept madly between earth and heaven, fell, rose; and there was a dreadful halt. Then a loud blast, a distortion of the magic, an upward rush, another and a louder blast, and a thunderous fall, followed by two massive and terrifying chords.... ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... they sank into sleep, to crouch close to the earth as if warding off a blow. Only the ugly dome of the City Hall, the church steeples, and the old shot tower held up their heads, and they had an almost terrifying sharpness of outline, of alertness, as if ready ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... paper and bleaching dish-cloths. This hideous circle never widened; Nature always appeared to roll back the intruding debris; no bird nor beast carried it away; no animal ever forced the uncleanly barrier; civilization remained grimly trenched in its own exuvia. The old terrifying girdle of fire around the hunter's camp was not more deterring to curious night prowlers than ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... cautiously and looked down at the nest. It was now my turn to give vent to a cry of consternation, for what I saw was this: A large blacksnake coiled about the nest, the fold of his neck wabbling to and fro in a terrifying way, while with his mouth he was trying to seize one of the bantlings. Fortunately I had a good-sized stick, almost a club, in my hand, and I wasted no time in bringing it down with all the force I could command upon the serpent, taking care to deliver the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser |
