"Brobdingnagian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... steps and into the Caveau of the Rue des Innocents ... and here—likewise a jolly party. Inquire of most persons about Le Caveau and you will be apprised that it is a "vile hole," "a place of the lowest order." It is dirty, so much I will grant; and it is of a Brobdingnagian smell. Also, is it frequented almost entirely by murderers, garroters, and thieves. But to say it is a "vile hole" or "a place of the lowest order" is to say what is not true. It is immeasurably superior to the tinselled inn of the Rue Royale. And its habitues constitute an infinitely more ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... hotel there was an augmented respect in the voice of the clerk as he handed him a note with the remark that it had been left by Senator Boompointer's coachman. He had no difficulty in recognizing Susy's peculiarly Brobdingnagian school-girl hand. ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... almost drowned by the fierce hissing, which was now mingled with a deep bass formed by a loud humming, throbbing sound such as might be made by a Brobdingnagian tea-kettle, just upon ready for use. Then came loud cracking and spitting sounds, and the ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Lawrence paints a handsome peeress, he does not contemplate her through a powerful microscope, and transfer to the canvas the pores of the skin, the blood-vessels of the eye, and all the other beauties which Gulliver discovered in the Brobdingnagian maids of honour. If he were to do this, the effect would not merely be unpleasant, but, unless the scale of the picture were proportionably enlarged, would be absolutely FALSE. And, after all, a microscope of greater power ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the naked trunks of enormous primitive trees, lepidodendrons, sigillarias, ferns, and other plants, that have shone out with phosphorescent grandeur amid the inky blackness of the subterranean ether. Around the feet of the spellbound watchers have sprung up rank blades of Brobdingnagian grass and creepers, out of which have crept, with lurid eyes, prodigious millipedes, cockroaches, white ants, myriapods and scorpions, whilst added to the moaning and sighing of the trees has been the humming of stone-flies, dragon-flies, and locusts. Galleries and shafts have echoed ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... francs, and received five per cent, commission." Then he professed to have had gigantic contracts in Chili, Peru and other parts of South America for artillery and guano. Altogether his story was of the Brobdingnagian type. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... broad plans to train all men for all things—to make a universe intelligent, busy, good, creative and beautiful—where in this wide world is such an educational program? To announce it is to invite gasps or Brobdingnagian laughter. It cannot be done. It ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... proportions. capacity, tonnage, tunnage; cordage; caliber, scantling. turgidity &c. (expansion) 194; corpulence, obesity; plumpness &c. adj.; embonpoint, corporation, flesh and blood, lustihood. hugeness &c. adj.; enormity, immensity, monstrosity. giant, Brobdingnagian, Antaeus, Goliath, Gog and Magog, Gargantua, monster, mammoth, Cyclops; cachalot, whale, porpoise, behemoth, leviathan, elephant, hippopotamus; colossus; tun, cord, lump, bulk, block, loaf, mass, swad, clod, nugget, bushel, thumper, whooper, spanker, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sharply rebuked for having helped himself without first seeking the owner's permission. Yet here he was again. The odd thing about it was that this end of the library was dark. The books on these shelves were huge folios, the size of some Brobdingnagian atlas, any one of which required all Mr. Elmendorf's strength to lift from its place. Miss Allison was not over-shrewd. She was frankness, guilelessness itself. She rarely saw through the meanness of man or the duplicity of woman. This, however, was not the first, but the second ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... no great men, no heroic men. Why is it so? When you raise the average of intelligence and power in the community it is very hard to be a great man. That is to say, when the great mass of citizens are only ankle-high, when among the Lilliputians a Brobdingnagian walks, he is a great man. But when the Lilliputians grow until they get up to his shoulder, he is not so great a man as he was by the whole length of his body. So, make the common people grow, and there is nobody tall enough to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the president selected another of the overgrown cigars from a box in the desk drawer, lighted it, and tilted back in the big arm-chair to envelop himself in a cloud of smoke. It was his single expensive habit—the never-empty box of Brobdingnagian cigars in the drawer—and the indulgence helped him to push the Yellow-Dog period into ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... still in perfect order. Nothing more brings home to us the abomination of the whole thing than to see the official draw these Brobdingnagian bolts and turn these gigantic keys. The locksmith's art was but too well understood in those days. By whom and for whom this living tomb was made or brought hither ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... character of his novel. Even as he had described her physically she overpowered the senses; she was coarse-fibred, over-coloured, rank. It became true the moment he formulated his thought; Gulliver had described the Brobdingnagian maids-of-honour thus: and mentally and spiritually she corresponded—was unsensitive, limited, common. The model (he closed his eyes for a moment)—the model stuck out through fifteen vulgar and blatant chapters to such ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... trains on the plain; while in the foreground every window of the house was ablaze, like some factory on a busy night shift. She could hear the click of the telegraph instruments already reporting the details of the action as cheerfully as Brobdingnagian crickets in their peaceful surroundings. Then out ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer |
