"Thundercloud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quarters more powerful than either purses of gold or scholastic reveries, there has, since the days of Kant and Cowper, begun to gather a menacing thundercloud against war. The nations, or at least the great leading nations, are beginning to set their faces against it. War, it is felt, comes under the denunciation of Christianity, by the havoc which it causes amongst those who bear God's image; of political ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... tone of loudness, a touch of what he called to himself vulgarity,—which made him very angry. So he turned away from her, and looked as black as a thundercloud. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... acknowledge his or her 'besetting sin'—it would be unnatural—and therefore you will not be surprised to hear me deny the one imputed to me for mine. I deny it quite and directly. And if my denial goes for nothing, which is but reasonable, I might call in a great cloud of witnesses, ... a thundercloud, ... (talking of storms!) and even seek no further than this table for a first witness; this letter, I had yesterday, which calls me ... let me see how many hard names ... 'unbending,' ... 'disdainful,' ... 'cold hearted,' ... 'arrogant,' ... yes, 'arrogant, as women ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... obstacle? He will go mad. This not quite balanced brain might coldly enough commit even some kinds of murder, but fright can unhinge it. Is he not mad, to flee so wildly? He runs—he runs—he gropes, under his black thundercloud and load of fright and agony, towards the glimmer that he must fly to those he has wronged. To her first—to Josephte, his cruelly-treated daughter—the hour tells him where she is! Flying, stumbling, pained, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... hot afternoon had begun to ripple in cool little waves against our faces. All the glory of the midsummer day was ending in the grandeur of a crimson sunset shaded northward by that threatening thundercloud. With our ponies lined up for one more race we were just on the point of starting, when a whoop, a savage yell, and Jean Pahusca rose above the edge of the draw behind us and dashed toward us headlong. We knew he was drunk, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... that's all. He was careless about women." His face went black as a thundercloud. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... back—I take—" was there going to be no chance to begin it? Was he grief blind? or was he scorn blind? No matter! what she had sown she would reap if she had to do it under the very thundercloud of his frown. All or any, the blame of estrangement should be his, not hers! Oh, Connie, Connie! Mandeville had clutched Constance and was kissing her on lips and head and cheeks. He wheeled, caught a hand from the nearest car, and sprang in. Kincaid stood alone. The conductor ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... transformation. I was never so astonished in my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room, and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would get the sunshine into that room. And so she did—with no more potent a charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... the landing at Remate de Males, however, he narrated events more fully, giving complete details of Schwandorf's activities, Francisco's offense, and the final attack by the crew. While he talked the coronel's frown deepened. Also, Jose gradually assumed the expression of a thundercloud. And when the tale ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... When a tall tough thundercloud bends across the sky I watch for the first flash, and listen for the first roar, and in my heart stillness seems impossible and at ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... of Warwick defied the press of numbers that swept round him tide upon tide. Through the mist, his black armour, black plume, black steed, gloomed forth like one thundercloud in the midst of a dismal heaven. The noble charger bore along that mighty rider, animating, guiding all, with as much ease and lightness as the racer bears its puny weight; the steed itself was scarce less terrible to encounter than the sweep of the rider's axe. Protected ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vote for Venus; but then he was afraid of a scandal. And so with all the gods—not one was bold enough to decide on such a terrible question as the beauty of three rival goddesses who were ready to tear out each other's eyes. For Juno was looking like a thundercloud, and Minerva like lightning, and Venus like ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... savages were evidently startled, and paused for an instant from their labours and yellings. They were upon the point of recommencing, when suddenly a mass of smoke puffed up from the decks, resembling a black and heavy thundercloud—then, as if from its bowels, arose a tall stream of vivid fire to the height, apparently, of a quarter of a mile—then there came a sudden circular expansion of the flame—then the whole atmosphere was magically ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... level of the brutes that perish; it appealed to the consciousness of his hearers in red-hot logic that burned its way to the inmost depths of the coldest and hardest hearts; it scintillated now and then sparkles of wit like the illuminated edges of an advancing thundercloud; borne, on the wings of his imagination, whose mighty sweep took him beyond the bounds of earth, through whirling worlds and burning suns, he found the culmination of human destiny, in the bosom of eternity, infinity, and God. The peroration was ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... in the state of trance is a sacrilege in the eyes of the Hindus; but evidently the Takur was well aware that, under certain circumstances, there may be exceptions to every Brahmanical rule. He had another aside with the chief Brahman, who followed us, darker than a thundercloud; the consultation did not last long, and after it was over Gulab-Sing declared to us that none of us was allowed to touch the fakirs, but that he personally had obtained this permission, and so was going to show us ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... with portentous disapproval. He adored her, and she knew it, but because it was impossible for his features to wear any expression lightly, the natural gravity of his look deepened to a thundercloud. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the under side of a cloud, a grey-black, forbidding thundercloud. And the fourteen pillars, seven on either side, were prodigious waterspouts, monster spirals of the hue of storm, with flaring sweeps at top and bottom that welded roof and floor into one terrific whole. Sheer from side to side stretched that portentous level cloud; it was a span of an epoch; ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... looming over the table like a thundercloud, regarded Archie with more than his customary hostility. Life was no pleasant thing for the proprietor of the Cosmopolis just now. Once a man starts building hotels, the thing becomes like dram-drinking. Any hitch, any sudden cutting-off ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... At last the thundercloud broke and the bolt fell. Mr. Oldeschole was informed that the Lords of the Treasury had resolved on breaking up the establishment and providing for the duties in another way. As the word duties passed Sir Gregory's lips a slight smile was ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... more. My conscience, sometimes perhaps too easily stifled, but still (for my time of life and the public manners of the age) fairly well alive, forces me to perpetual and almost endless transcriptions. On the back of all this, any correspondence hangs like a thundercloud, and just when I think I am getting through my troubles, crack, down goes my health, I have a long, costly sickness, and begin the world again. It is fortunate for me I have a father, or I should long ago have died; but the opportunity of the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... to do when the longing for liberty grew uncontrollable. Moved by a sudden impulse, Mrs Jo caught up her work-basket and went to join her neighbours, feeling that a non-conductor might be needed; for Dan looked like a thundercloud ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... time that our labours had come to an end, and we were once more free to sit down and await the issue of events, the pall of thundercloud had overspread the entire visible heavens, from horizon to horizon, enshrouding the scene in a kind of murky twilight, under which the ocean, undulating sluggishly in long, low, irregular folds, like the breathings of a sleeping giant, gleamed pallid and lustreless as a sea of molten ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... drive and dinner, callers came thronging in, and all Witchie's witcheries were called into play to charm them into blindness and to cover Nita's fitful and nervous moods, now almost painfully apparent. Frost's face was at times a thundercloud, and army circles within the outer circle of Manila saw plainly that all was not harmony betwixt that veteran Benedict and that fragile, fluttering, baby wife. The bloom of Nita's beauty was gone. She looked wan, white, even haggard. She had ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... to threaten and rumble on the horizon, like a rising thundercloud, it was the more needful, in Peter's time, that Christians parted by seas, by race, language, and customs, should draw together. And for us, fidelity to our testimony and loyalty to our Master, to say nothing of common sense and the instinct ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... speak of is of another mood, and is soft as tears. To appreciate it thoroughly, one must think of the burly, resolute, humourous, and withal tender-hearted man, and of the work he accomplished. He it was, the Franklin's kite, led by the highest hand, that went up into the papal thundercloud hanging black over Europe; and the angry fire that broke upon it burned it not, and in roars of boltless thunder the apparition collapsed, and the sun of truth broke through the inky fragments on the nations once again. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... so cruel and so hard, sat silent in black gloom. The stern and sullen mood, from which had dropped but one fierce flash of anger, still hung above the heat of his mind, like a dark rack of thundercloud. It would have burst anew into a fury of rebuke, had he but known his daughter was listening at the door, while the colloquy went on. It might have flamed violently, had his tenant made any further attempt ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... or other! and she is now living on the scraps and leavings of former affection. I am never deceived, Chevalier!" continued she, glancing down at him, a wild light playing under her long eyelashes like the illumined under-edge of a thundercloud. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... with them, she'd interfere for us, and say, "Tim, aleagh, don't touch them this time; sure 'tis only arch they are: they'll get more sense in time." And then, after he was gone out, she'd advise us for our good so pleasantly, that a thundercloud itself couldn't look black at her. She did wonders, too, about the house and garden. They were both dirty and neglected enough when she first came over them; for I was too young and foolish, and my father too busy with his out-door work, and the old woman that lived ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... and Borkins had over their master's likes and dislikes. But invariably Collins won out. While every other servant in the place liked him and trusted him, the sight of his honest, red face and his ginger eyebrows was enough to make Borkins look like a thundercloud. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... and the other poor fellow is dead?" Spencer's face darkened into a thundercloud. "You were right to call me. This is a situation that ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... two or three inches above the surface. As he finished his work there was another faint flash of light, and by-and-by another smothered rumble of thunder, and Tom as he looked out towards the westward, saw the silver rim of the round and sharply outlined thundercloud rising slowly up into the sky and pushing the other and broken drifting ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... with a curiosity as lively as it was full of distrust. At this stage in the proceeding, something like a connected and intelligible conversation commenced between the chief who spoke English, and who was known in most of the north- western garrisons of the Americans by the name of Thundercloud, or Cloud, by way of abbreviation, on account of his sinister looks, though the man actually sustained a tolerably fair reputation for one of those who, having been wronged, was so certain to be calumniated. No man ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... burst over the heads of the little party like a thundercloud; and now it had cleared, and ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of something which she believed ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... at his side, toward the garden on open ground below the trees, where the bean vines were already turning yellow for lack of water. He chuckled as he went, for the disappearance of Charlie Menocal's patronizing air and the sudden thundercloud hanging on his visage attested that the ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... with anticipation. They saw a big, dark body like a thundercloud hovering above their heads. It had a line of brilliant eyes. From one end issued a column of white smoke. It settled slowly downwards, moving softly yet with a great air of bustle and importance. Was this the arrival of a dragon, or Mother coming after them? The blood ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... think anyone would care to try it, if you looked as much like a thundercloud as you do now. Why were ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... thundercloud over the city of Seville in those early days of the year 1481. It had been growing since the previous October, when the Cardinal of Spain and Frey Tomas de Torquemada, acting jointly on behalf of the Sovereigns—Ferdinand and Isabella—had appointed the first inquisitors for Castile, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... a table spread with papers, and as Tom entered or rather was pushed into his presence he compressed his beetling black brows and turned upon the prisoner with the face of a thundercloud. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded with the robe of the lightnings: You will find him the God who splits the earth in twain with the earthquake's riving blow, loosens the bands of the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours out the lava streams from ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... wood had fallen away. (This was for herself.) Then there was a tooth-glass for Frank, and a teacup—without a handle, but with a gold flower in the middle of it, to make up—for herself. In the center of the pocket-handkerchief stood a crockery jug, with a mauve design of York Minster, with a thundercloud behind it and a lady and gentleman with a child bowling a hoop in front of it. This was the landlady's property, and was half full of beer. Besides all this, there were two plates, one of a cold blue color, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... exclaimed. "Here has been Prince Caramitzo waiting for the last quarter of an hour to lead you out to dance, and you were nowhere to be found—I will not have it." And he looked a black thundercloud at Fleetwood. "Come, Signior Principe, there is ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... end was indeed at hand. On the 23d of May, 1783, only a few months before the Briton left our shores never to return but by the courtesy of the Republic, a thundercloud, such as the season brings in New England, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... dark and ominous as a thundercloud, we have revealed in the last century of Mesopotamian glory the splendour of Assyria and the beauty of Babylon. The ancient civilizations ripened quickly before the end came. Kings still revelled in pomp and luxury. ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... sang alto; her mother, who knew nothing of notation, and sang by ear, sang treble; Barty had a supple and pleasing tenor, and the Doctor possessed a solemn bass, deep and dark as a thundercloud, yet mellow as the hum of a hive of honey-bees on a summer morning; a rare voice and a beautiful one, that had its counterpart in the contralto that already, at sixteen and a half, had given Tishy power and distinction ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with the latch-key, but he listened in vain. He was only partly reassured, for he feared that matters were not going on well at St. Sylvester's. Indeed, he knew they were not, for Bertie had strolled into his room one day with a face like a thundercloud. The young fellow was out of temper, and perhaps a little off his guard in consequence. When Gordon amused himself by baiting him, Lisle was forced to keep silence; but in this case it was possible, if not quite prudent, to allow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... circumstanced, and with such habits, there has suddenly descended—for we did not anticipate it, nor prepared the way for it—the thundercloud of war—war which, as we now know well, if we add to our own direct expenditure the financing of other countries, will cost us in round figures about a thousand millions in the year. Now how are we, who normally have only three hundred or four hundred millions to spare ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... from the fingers of the old man on to the white stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood still a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come still lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... however, was the long sweep of countryside, mellowed by the golden light of the setting sun, with a score of village steeples and manor-houses peeping out from amongst the woods, that it was hard to think that the thundercloud of war was really lowering over that fair valley, and that at any instant the lightning ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Shad Wells, in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe in the portico, and looking like a thundercloud. In response to Peter's query, he moved his right shoulder half an inch in the direction of the door, and then spat in the geranium bed. So Peter knocked at the door, softly at first, then loudly, when Beth ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs |
