"Dreadful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Habakkuk's description of a Babylonian army belongs to about this date, and is probably drawn from the life—"Lo, I raise up the Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; from them shall proceed judgment and captivity; their horses are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... added to help it down and make it taste good, which it never did. The next standby was calomel; the next, rhubarb; and the next, jalap. Then they bled the patient, and put mustard-plasters on him. It was a dreadful system, and yet the death-rate was not heavy. The calomel was nearly sure to salivate the patient and cost him some of his teeth. There were no dentists. When teeth became touched with decay or were otherwise ailing, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... to consider that small dark kernel of doubt. It was of course dreadful to find that his people were so wholly corrupt, but that at least was understandable. What he did not understand was the reason they could be so easily weaned from their wickedness. It left him feeling a little off-balance, like a man who has hurled himself ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... nothing but her beauty, his eyes were fixed on the mental vision of the charms which her enamoured husband had described to him. How he pitied this beautiful woman. What a misfortune to be chained to such a man. She wanted to run away, to take her own life? Oh, how dreadful for such a beautiful creature to be sick of life. That overbearing fellow, that scoundrel! Psia krew, why couldn't he die? ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... manner in which poor people lived. A bare enough room, certainly, not even a bit of carpet laid before the bed, but it was a clean room. Floor and window and cupboard-door were as clean as water could make them; and the bed, while it looked hopelessly hard and dreadful to Mrs. Roberts, was really a pattern of neatness and purity to every dweller in that attic. There was a straw tick, covered with a dark calico spread, which did duty as a sheet, and the boy who lay on it was covered by a patched quilt that had ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... with uneasy eye. The sight of a newspaper was dreadful to her: yet she always eagerly scanned those that came under her notice. Lying now on the dry turf, she was able to read one page whilst Dyce occupied himself with another. Of a sudden she began to shake; then a half-stifled ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... engine and a sick fireman!" he muttered, to himself. "I see it coming—something dreadful! Never mind, old Jockey! You are on your through trip to-night, but stand to your post ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... of place in a drawing-room, but is on intimate terms with every young poacher in the district; squirrels come and sit on her shoulder, which is pretty, and she carries ferrets in her pockets, which is dreadful; she never reads a book, and has not got a single accomplishment, but she is fascinating and fearless, and wiser, in her own way, than any pedant or bookworm. This poor little English Dryad falls passionately ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... should make a bi-annual pilgrimage to the dentist, who seeks out beginning cavities, early treatment of which will prevent these dreadful aches and ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... understand that if Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt "Don Giovanni." It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin's Fantasie ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... facts essential, facts to be known accurately; the simple, solid, raw facts, which, should they happen to come on the examination paper, no skill could evade nor any imagination supply. But this study was no longer dry and dreadful to them: they had turned it to a sporting event. "What about Heracleitos?" Billy as catechist would put at Bertie. "Eternal flux," Bertie would correctly snap back at Billy. Or, if he got it mixed up, and replied, "Everything ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... come back. It made one sick to think how long it might be before the engine arrived; and meantime the fire was steadily spreading on the ground floor. When father bent forward to shout to the men, the light on his face was dreadful to see. I had a horrible longing to scream, and I think I should have done it if I hadn't been so occupied with Annie, the kitchen-maid, who was literally almost mad with fright. It seemed to soothe her to hold my arm, poor little soul. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... has left his recollections of this dreadful prison. His description of the food upon which the unhappy prisoners were forced to ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and called without any introduction upon William Lloyd Garrison, from whom I received the most kind attentions. He accompanied me to the celebrated Bunker's Hill, a scene of dreadful encounter between those who ought never to have been foes. A column of 200 feet high now stands upon the spot. It is unfortunate that the Americans have so many mementos, both natural and artificial, of their struggles with us. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... taken to the place where the monster had his den. It was a court surrounded by a high wall. Rinaldo was shut in with the beast, and a terrible combat ensued. Rinaldo was unable to make any impression on the scales of the monster, while he, on the contrary, with his dreadful claws, tore away plate and mail from the paladin. Rinaldo began to think his last hour was come, and cast his eyes around and above to see if there was any means of escape. He perceived a beam projecting from the wall at the height of some ten feet, and, taking ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... so dreadful to her ears was the choking of his voice upon the last words. At the same time she was hot with anguish of shame. He stood before her a wretched culprit, hiding his guilt with lie upon lie; he, her father, whom she had reverenced so, had compassionated so, whom she loved despairingly. She ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Church of England discountenancing in her Liturgy, "marriage with your great-grandmother; neither shalt thou marry thy great-grandfather's widow." She, poor thing! at that time was thinking little of marriage; for even then, though known only to herself and her femme de chambre, that dreadful organic malady (cancer) was raising its adder's crest, under which finally she died. But, in spite of languor interchanging continually with disfiguring anguish, she still impressed one as a regal beauty. Her ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I venture, it may be asked, to print this dreadful sketch of a man who may see it and recognise it? He will not see it, and for the best of sad reasons. But on reflection I do not know that the reason is a sad one. Gregory died rather suddenly in his lodgings a few months later, and so the curtain came down upon rather a dismal ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Mosk, how very dreadful!' cried Miss Whichello, quite in the style of Daisy Norsham. 'Why is ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Hamilton, was killed in a duel. He had but recently been graduated from Columbia College and lost his life in 1801 on the same spot where, about three years later, his father was killed by Aaron Burr. This dreadful event affected her so deeply that her mind became unbalanced, and she was finally placed in an asylum, where she died at a very advanced age. Mrs. Hamilton lived in Washington, D.C., in one of the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... heard by Robert and Mary the preceding night. The children were right, perhaps, in the affirmation. The sound of a voice might have reached them, but this voice— was it their father's? No, alas, most assuredly no. And as they thought of the dreadful disappointment that awaited them, they trembled lest this new trial should crush them completely. But who could stop them from going on shore? Lord Glenarvan had not ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... gathered around us on every side, and dreadful detonations, which reverberated in the cavity of the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... that in my secret heart I'm afraid of dogs,—a dreadful admission, isn't it? I think it was our old nurse. I can always remember her driving a dog out of the nursery. 'Nasty thing!' she used to say. 'You shall not come near my baby.' I suppose I got the idea quite in babyhood that a dog was something ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Feeling there is no bar he cannot break, Knowing there is no bound he cannot pass; Might he not then despise the written page, A petty music, and a puny scene? Conceive a spectacle not witnessed yet, When he, an artist in omnipotence, Uses for colour this red blood of ours, Composes music out of dreadful cries, His orchestra our human agonies, His rhythms lamentations of the ruined, His poet's fire not circumscribed by words, But now translated into burning cities, His scenes the lives of men, their deaths a drama, His dream the desolation ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... steep round the base, but having surmounted this I made my way upward easily. When I had come to the summit it seemed that I was like to pass beyond the dictates of my own will. Steep naked rocks appeared on every side, and I narrowly escaped falling down from a great height into a gloomy chasm. So dreadful is all this that now, what though forty years have rolled away, the memory thereof still saddens and terrifies me. Then, having turned towards the right where I could see naught but a plain covered with heath, I took that path out of fear, and, as I wended thither ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... was up and running along Skeleton Cove, filled with a dreadful apprehension, and coming out upon Deliverance Beach, stood quaking like one smitten with a palsy; for there, lapped about in writhing flame and crackling sparks, was all that remained of my boat, and crouched ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... admonishment; "what is that other sound? Something is happening—something dreadful. What is it? It does not seem to be near here yet, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... of sense that the past is gone utterly. 'Thou carriest them away, as with a flood.' We speak of it as irrevocable, unalterable, that dreadful past. It is solemnly true that 'ye shall no more return ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... clinging hard to the breast of Pierre, as her natural protector. She trembled and shook as the angry reverberations rolled away in the distant forests. "Oh, Pierre!" exclaimed she, "what is that? It is as if a dreadful voice came between us, forbidding our union! But nothing shall ever do that now, shall it? ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... steadily. "It is true. It is true, Torwood. I was married to poor Faith, when I was a young man, in Canada. They sent me proofs that all had perished when the Indians attacked the village; but—" and then he put his hands over his face. It must have been dreadful to see; but Hester Lea was too much bent on her rights to feel a moment's pity; and she spoke on in a hard tone, with her eyes fixed on ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moment he added, his dark eyes fixed angrily on the violin, "I hate violins; they are dreadful things. M. Chalumeau had one. I ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... here I am, who scarce could gain this place, Through stony mountains and a dreary waste; Through cliffs, whose sharpen'd stones tremendous hung, Where dreadful darkness spread itself around: ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the boy's tenants to extort an extra penny for him, and "succeeded in saving all but four thousand pounds sterling" of his imperial allowance, the population of Ireland was reduced two millions by the most dreadful famine ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... sighed. This dreadful age, which has produced communists, petroleuses, and liberal thinkers, had communicated its vague restlessness even to her; although she belonged to that higher region where nobody ever thinks at all, and everybody is ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... years 1797 and 1798, at which periods there prevailed dreadful mortality at Philadelphia, St. Lucia, and St. Domingo, the yellow fever has continued its ravages at La Guayra. It has proved fatal not only to the troops newly arrived from Spain, but also to those levied ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... vibrate. Formerly the German female singers sang with all their voice, without any vibration in the sound and without any reference to the situation; one would say they were clarinets. Now, one must vibrate all the time. I heard the Meistersingers' quintette sung in Paris. It was dreadful and the composition incomprehensible. Not all singers, fortunately, have this defect, but it has taken possession of violinists and 'cello players. That was not the way Franchomme, the 'cello player and collaborator of Chopin, played, nor was ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... of trenches I saw none save a few yards here and there half filled with indescribable debris. It was, indeed, a place of horror—a frightful desolation beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful death—they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach the ground was pitted with great shell holes, so close that they broke into one another and formed horrid pools full of shapeless things ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... sixty years it's rather hard if one can't pick up something from one's master. Bubares was interpreter between us, and the shameful fellow told him to say that he was very much disturbed about a dreadful disease in his eyes. I asked what it was, and received for answer that he could not tell one thing from another in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... feared that some calamity had happened at the front the apparent confusion, broken wagons, crippled horses, men lying about dead and maimed, parties hastening to and fro in seeming disorder, and a general apprehension of something dreadful about to ensue; all these signs, however, lessened as I neared the front, and there the contrast was complete—perfect order, men and horses—full of confidence, and it was not unusual for general hilarity, laughing, and cheering. Although cannon ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to come back, Fred! They've simply got to!" returned Jack. But his face, too, showed his worry. The Rover boys did not care to admit it to each other, yet each day every one of them worried over their parents. It was dreadful to think that one's father, or one's beloved uncle, might be killed by the Germans, or ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... all right too. But it's rather ridiculous to think that those idiotic Indians believed the only way they could show Mr. Hurlstone that they meant us no harm was to drag us all up to THEIR Mission, as they call that half heathen cross of theirs—for safety against—who do you think, dear?—the dreadful AMERICANS! And imagine all the while the Padre and I were just behind you, bringing up the rear of the procession—only they wouldn't let us join you because they wanted to show you special honor ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... the ferryman. When the party arrived at the borders of the wilderness which the wolf frequented, Gushtasp left his companions behind, and advanced alone into the interior, where he soon found the dreadful monster, in size larger than an elephant, and howling terribly, ready to spring upon him. But the hand and eye of Gushtasp were too active to allow of his being surprised, and in an instant he shot two arrows at once into the foaming beast, which, irritated ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... it bad?" asked Phebe, nearly dropping a pail of hot water in her dismay, for she knew nothing of sickness, and Dolly's suggestion had a peculiarly dreadful sound to her. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... all of the men were put to death, and only the women were left, and these no one would kill. At this Freydis exclaimed: "Hand me an axe!" This was done, and she fell upon the five women, and left them dead. They returned home, after this dreadful deed, and it was very evident that Freydis was well content with her work. She addressed her companions, saying: "If it be ordained for us, to come again to Greenland, I shall contrive the death of any man who shall speak of these events. We must give it out, that we left them living here, when ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... you can hold your own," remarked Mr. Hooper. He had led a rough-and-tumble life himself and did not look on a fight as a dreadful matter. "You had ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... of ours and the neighbouring villages. This frontier warfare, in its general results, was of no great utility to either of the powers at war, yet to those who inhabited the seat of it, its consequences were dreadful. We were continually harassed either by the fears of the invading enemy, or by the exactions and molestations of the troops of our own government. Our harvests were destroyed, our cattle dispersed, and ourselves in constant ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... denunciation in describing the immorality and selfish licentiousness which our marriage system covers with the cloak of legality and sanctity. "There is an unsoundness in our marriage relations," Hinton wrote. "Not only practically are they dreadful, but they do not answer to feelings and convictions far too widespread to be wisely ignored. Take the case of women of marked eminence consenting to be a married man's mistress; of pure and simple girls saying they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fully realized that their liberties were in danger. They sent their wives and children into places of safety, and, thirty thousand strong, waited the advance of the enemy. The two armies came together at Mons Grampius. The field presented a dreadful spectacle of carnage and destruction; for ten thousand of the tribesmen fell in the engagement. The Roman army elated by its success passed the night in exultation. The victory was barren of results, for, after three ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... incapable of thought—yet I could not, I would not believe him guilty of so foul a crime. It was not possible, nor should he be accused through any testimony from my lips. He could explain, he must explain to me his part in this dreadful affair, but, unless he confessed himself, I would never believe him guilty. There was but one thing for me to do—return silently to my room, and wait. Perhaps he had already descended to camp to alarm the men; if not the body would be early discovered in the morning, and a few hours delay ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Doane, was ignorant enough to remain all his life Dr. Dunn. But the fact is, that rhymes are no safe guides, for they were not so perfect as Mr. White would have us believe. Shakspeare rhymed broken with open, sentinel with kill, and downs with hounds,—to go no farther. Did he, (dreadful thought!) in that imperfect rhyme of leap and swept, (Merry Wives,) call the former lape and the latter (Yankice) swep'? This would jump with Mr. White's often-recurring suggestion of the Elizabethanism of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... drown in enormousness, coldness, and total silence—though he knew that this vacuum burned and roared with man-destroying energies, roiled like currents of gas and dust more massive than planets and travailed with the birth of new suns—and he said to himself the most dreadful of names, I am that I am, and sweat formed chilly little ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... come singly. My sister is dead. She precedes me there below," he said, pointing to the floor with a dreadful gesture. ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... forms are skeletons, Whose bony hands with mortal fingers play, Where grinning skulls are heaping on the way, And airy specters meet the timid ones; Death drops his arrows from your sullen skies, Destruction dances in your noisome shades, And in the dreadful darkness of your ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... us if Susie gets home; it has been so miserable. I knew Dash wasn't asleep because of his breathing. It has been dreadful for you and for Susie, but it ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... to the neighboring provinces, which had been harassed by the same person with the same oppressions. The English Chief in that province had been the silent witness, most probably the abettor and accomplice, of all these horrors. He called in first irregular, and then regular troops, who by dreadful and universal military execution got the better of the impotent resistance of unarmed and undisciplined despair. I am tired with the detail of the cruelties of peace. I spare you those of a cruel and inhuman war, and of the executions ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mr. Cunningham, (whom I sincerely cherished as a good young man) the sawyer, and one of the best of the convicts; a seaman belonging to the Supply was also drowned, and another convict narrowly escaped the same sate. Immediately after this dreadful misfortune the Supply's jolly-boat landed with three casks of flour, and as the large boat was coming near the shore, I ordered some musquets to be fired, on which she returned on board: the Supply bore up, and ran to leeward of the island. At one o'clock, there being scarcely any surf, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... rusty black; no devotion, no gravity, no quiet anywhere, among these creatures munching chocolates and adjusting opera-glasses. M.P.'s voice at my ear, now about Longus and Bonghi's paganism, now about the odiousness of her neighbour who won't let her climb on her seat, the dreadful grief of not seeing the Cardinal's tails, the wonderfulness of Christianity having come out of people like the Apostles (I having turned out Gethsemane in St. Matthew in the Gospel which she brought, together with a large supply of chocolate and the Fioretti di S. Francesco), ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Blacks to persons whom they had no reason to suspect of unfriendliness, or whose white face they may in the white man's country have greeted with a civility perhaps only prudential, we fail to discover the necessity of the dreadful agency we have adverted to, for securing the results on manners which are so warmly commended. African explorers, from Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley, have all borne sufficient testimony to the world regarding the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... had escaped to the ice from the dreadful machines—a score of us. For a while it seemed that we had fled in vain. We were not fit to cope with the raw essentials of life: it was uncounted centuries since man fought nature bare handed. So we huddled together for warmth, and starved. Even Keston's keen brain was helpless ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... of the primitive world-history are suffused in the Jehovist with a peculiar sombre earnestness, a kind of antique philosophy of history, almost bordering on pessimism: as if mankind were groaning under some dreadful weight, the pressure not so much of sin as of creaturehood (vi. 1-4). We notice a shy, timid spirit, which belongs more to heathenism. The rattling of the chains at intervals only aggravates the feeling of ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... themselves with their shields, but before they got out of the woods he lost many people, and many were wounded; but at last, late in the evening, he got to the ships. The Finlanders conjured up in the night, by their witchcraft, a dreadful storm and bad weather on the sea; but the king ordered the anchors to be weighed and sail hoisted, and beat off all night to the outside of the land. The king's luck prevailed more than the Finlanders' witchcraft; for he had the luck to beat round the Balagard's side in the night, and so ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... lost. That certain noble youths, the chief of whom was Lucius Caecilius Metellus, turned their attention to the sea and ships, in order that, abandoning Italy, they might escape to some king." When this calamity, which was not only dreadful in itself, but new, and in addition to the numerous disasters they had sustained, had struck them motionless with astonishment and stupor; and while those who were present gave it as their opinion that a council should be called to deliberate upon it, young Scipio, the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... I sent Mr. Matthews a check, after which I impulsively threw those dreadful bills into the office grate. I had no right to do it, for the vouchers really belonged to Mr. Matthews, and might be wanted some day; but they had haunted me like so many ghosts until I destroyed them. I fell asleep that night trying to recollect whether the items ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... troop, the flashing blade, The bugle's stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are passed. Nor war's wild note, nor glory's peal, Shall thrill with fierce delight Those breasts that nevermore shall feel ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... face. But, of course, that does not happen very often, because, you know, as we grow older, our faces do not change their expressions as easily as they do when we are young. And would it not be dreadful, if when you grew up, you always had a frown on your face and were not nice looking at all? You know the frown wrinkles try to stay, and every time we let them come out ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... to save. When to-day, the world celebrates the century of his existence, he has become the ideal of both North and South, of a common country, composed not only of the factions that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and absolutism. To them, Lincoln, his life, his history, his character, his entire personality, with all ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... languished three years beneath repeated paralytic strokes, which had greatly enfeebled his limbs, and impaired his understanding. Contrary to all expectation he survived three more years, subject, through their progress, to the same frequent and dreadful attacks, though in their intervals he was serene and apparently ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... as they believe essential. Indeed, this state of wretchedness is almost deemed a necessary stage in the Christian life, like the Slough of Despond in the Pilgrim's Progress; and with such a temperament as David Brainerd's, the horrors of the struggle for hope were dreadful and lasted for months, before an almost physical perception of light, glory, and grace shone out upon him, although, even to the end of his life, hope and fear, spiritual joy and depression alternated, no doubt, greatly in consequence of his ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... looked terrified. 'Oh, Brownie, how dreadful!' she exclaimed. Her face was deadly white. Mine burned ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... when anything was thrown overboard, a white flash was seen rising out of the deep, and a large pair of jaws, armed with sharp teeth, opening, gulped it down, and directly afterwards the creature went swimming on, watching for any other dainty morsel which might come in its way. "How dreadful it would be to fall overboard," I thought. "Calm as the sea is, a person, with those creatures around, would have very little ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... charge. Jack at last cuts the throat of a villain who had cheated him of all he had in the world, and who, I am told, was in many points the counterpart of this screw and white feather, is taken up, tried, and executed; and certainly taking away a man's life is a dreadful thing; but is there nothing as bad? Whitefeather will cut no person's throat—I will not say who has cheated him, for, being a cheat himself, he will take good care that nobody cheats him, but he'll do something ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... subject to rather severe attacks of cold, or a species of influenza. This they unfortunately communicated to the Esquimaux, who seemed to be peculiarly susceptible of the disease. Being very fat and full-blooded, it had the most dreadful effect on the poor creatures, and at a certain stage almost choked them. At last one night it was reported that ten of their number had died from absolute suffocation. All of these had been strong and robust, and they died ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... joyfully adjourned to the dining-room to eat Mrs. Chapin's ice and examine the actors at close range. All these speedily appeared, except Helen, who had crept up-stairs quite unnoticed the moment her part was finished, and Eleanor, who, hunting up Betty, explained that she had a dreadful headache and begged Betty to look after her guests and not for anything to let them come up-stairs to find her. Betty, who was busily washing off her "fierce frown" at the time, sputtered a promise through the mixture of soap, water and vaseline she was using, delivered ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... sigh she obeyed, her clasp tightening on mine, and a dreadful expectation in her eyes. Then all at once it was gone, her pale cheeks grew suddenly scarlet, and she slipped from my arms; and thereafter I noticed how very ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... many proofs of the extent to which the British nation had been socialized. When one thought of that little band of regulars sent to France in 1914, who became immortal at Mons, who shared the glory of the Marne, and in that first dreadful winter held back the German hosts from the Channel ports, the presence on the battle line of millions of disciplined and determined men seemed astonishing indeed. And this had been accomplished by a nation facing the gravest crisis in its history, under the necessity of sustaining and financing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without a collar, whined at his feet as he pushed on, and licked his hand and followed him like his own. Huge, dim forms rushed alongside the embankment, making unearthly sounds. Dragons could not have seemed more dreadful; but they were only cows. Huge pine-trees bent to the earth with rapid, vibratory motion as if a giant's hand clutched and shook ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... three negroes arrived from Harrisonburg, and they described the fight as still going on. They said they were "dreadful skeered;" and one of them told me he would "rather be a slave to his master all his life, than a white man and ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... that dreadful hour the seaman's faith in his physical invincibility, and in the terrible power of his fists, did not altogether fail. Although he wore a cutlass, and had used it that day with tremendous effect, he did not now draw it. He preferred to engage supernatural enemies with the weapons ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... upon the table, he vaulted with incredible agility clean across it and upon our hero, who, entirely unprepared for such an extraordinary attack, was flung back against the wall, with an arm as strong as steel clutching his throat and a knife flashing in his very eyes with dreadful portent ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... their chattering lips her shoulder chill, And her cold back their colder bosoms thrill; All blind she wilders o'er the lightless heath, Led by Fear's cold wet hand, and dogg'd by Death; Death, as she turns her neck the kiss to seek, Breaks off the dreadful kiss with angry shriek. Snatch'd from her shoulder with despairing moan, She clasps them at that dim-seen roofless stone.— "Now ruthless Tempest launch thy deadliest dart! Fall fires—but let us perish heart ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... she persisted, hollowly, determined now to know all. It might be dreadful to lose one's money—it was dreadful; but to have this man drag her down into his ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... at home in his deplorably filthy surroundings; he looks at you, up to the knees in ooze, out of his little eyes, as if he would live in a more cleanly way, if he were permitted. Pigs always remind me of the mariners of Homer, who were transformed by Circe; there is a dreadful humanity about them, as if they were trying to endure their base conditions philosophically, waiting for ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that I can behold from this station," said Rebecca; "but doubtless the other side of the castle is also assailed. They appear even now preparing to advance—God of Zion protect us! What a dreadful sight! Those who advance first bear huge shields and defences made of plank; the others follow, bending their bows as they come on. They raise their bows! God of Moses, forgive the creatures Thou ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... outstretched to us, in whose happy home we found our sweetest rest, by whose radiant face and golden speech we were most lovingly detained evening after evening and far into the night? A few days ago when we read that dreadful message, "Starr King is dead," the lightning that carried it seemed to end in our hearts. We withered under it; California had lost its soul for us; at noon or in dreams that balmy land would nevermore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... only under extraordinary circumstances by people in situations of exceptional advantage for doing so. Now it is a bond under conditions, and in the event of the adultery of the wife, or of the adultery plus cruelty or plus desertion of the husband, and of one or two other rarer and more dreadful offences, it can be broken at the instance of the aggrieved party. A change in the divorce law is a change in the dissolution clauses, so to speak, of the contract for the marriage partnership. It is a ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... to violence of any kind; and it seemed to him that M. de Valorsay was twisting and turning his cane in a most ominous manner. "I must confess, Monsieur le Marquis," he at last replied, "that I had not the courage to tell you of the dreadful ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... is it difficult to understand why she should refuse to allow you to be publicly associated with her? To run the risk of dragging your honourable name into the sordid transactions of the police-court or the Old Bailey? To invest it, perhaps, with a dreadful notoriety?" ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Caesar's.' It was for the law to declare who were and who were not man and wife, and in this matter the law had declared. After this how could she doubt? Or how could she hesitate as to tearing herself away from the belongings of the man who certainly was not her husband? And there were dreadful words in these letters which added much to the agony of her who received them,—words which were used in order that their strength might prevail. But they had no strength to convert, though they had strength to afflict. Then Mrs. Bolton, who in her ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... be, which had been so much talked of in the world. He readily told me that it was his opinion that the plague is occasioned by an invisible insect. This insect floating in the air, is taken with the breath into the lungs, and there it either poisons or propagates its kind, so as to produce that dreadful disease. This, he was confirmed, was likely to be the truth from the experiments frequently made at Gibraltar. For there, said he, they of the garrison, when they fear the plague, have a way to elevate a piece of fresh meat pretty high in ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... window which looked down upon the city spread at the foot of the Capitol hill lying shimmering in the young spring mists that drifted across its housetops. I laid down the papers, took a pencil from a tray close beside my hand and then faced the most dreadful of any situation that I had ever brought down upon my own head. I also faced at the same time the smiling countenance of my Buzz, who looked into the door from the room of my Uncle, the General Robert, slipped through that door and closed it ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... recognized the object as a human face, and passing his hand along he felt the body and limbs. Great heavens! who was this? Had another murder been done? Would there ever be an end to the horrors and mysteries of this dreadful night? The body was that of a man. Esperance arose to his knees and drawing a match-safe from his pocket struck a light. As the flame flashed upon the countenance of the unconscious man, the features of Giovanni Massetti appeared! Esperance was stunned. How was this? The Viscount there, ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... utter just before they die? Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways, There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard, Her ancient beauty marr'd, And, in her cold and aimless roving sight, Horror of light; Sole vigour left in her last lethargy, Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath, The rising death Rolls up with force; And then the furiously gibbering corse Shakes, panglessly convuls'd, and sightless stares, Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines, One anodynes, And one declares That nothing ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... candour united to hypocrisy; of virtue to wickedness; of legitimate desires linked to disgraceful passions; of purity mixed with corruption. The thought of these contrasts is revolting, and one pities such a dreadful fate. But we must not decide hastily. Madame Denies has not been convicted of any active part in her husband's later crimes, but her history, combined with his, shows no trace of suffering, nor of any revolt against a terrible complicity. In her case the evidence is doubtful, and public ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... persuaded yourself that you had a right to take this money; perhaps you did have; I don't say you didn't. When I see anything I want, I reach out and take it, if I can—and I guess most people would, if they dared. But you are different; you are good. Some day all these dreadful things that have come tagging along after the fact will rise up and gnash their teeth at you and tell you that it was a sin, a crime. And then—oh, boy, dear! ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... happened at last to be in it once too often—namely, when that dreadful tempest blew, November 27, 1703. This tempest began on the Wednesday before, and blew with such violence, and shook the lighthouse so much, that, as they told me there, Mr. Winstanley would fain have been on shore, and made signals for help; but no ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... so ideal that no living daughter of Eve can compete with them. And now tell me, what will you gain,—you, a young girl, brought up to be the virtuous mother of a family,—if you learn to comprehend the terrible agitations of a poet's life in this dreadful capital, which may be defined by one sentence,—the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... he said, "you are not yet very reassuring. You sent me this wire only half an hour ago: 'Come at once, if possible, with another doctor. Man—Innocent Smith—gone mad on premises, and doing dreadful things. Do you know anything of him?' I went round at once to a distinguished colleague of mine, a doctor who is also a private detective and an authority on criminal lunacy; he has come round with ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... I tell you what they call that? Trying it on a dog!" she shrieked, and Hilary had to laugh, too. "It's dreadful," she went on. "Then, if it doesn't kill the dog, Godolphin will bring it to New York, and put it on for a run—a week or a month—as long as his money holds out. If he believes in it, he'll fight it." Her father looked at her for explanation, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Israel has never had time for romance. Your youth has fortunately been spared the dreadful persecutions which have from time to time been visited upon our people; but, if you can picture the constant dread of outrage and the incessant fear of persecution, which have been our portion; if you can conceive the miserable existence ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... way to the court, through dense Unbroken forest, with a single path Trodden between the trees; he had no horse, No strength, and little time before the deed— The dreadful deed—be done. Not since his hurt Had he walked fast, or far, without great pain; Now it will follow every step he takes— But what is that, he goes to save ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... exhaustion compelled him to sleep, and every time some fresh, fantastic dream in which Ella and the huge motor-car and the dreadful burden she had with her always figured, awoke him ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... necessity for a sympathetic spurt. She had been taking it too easily, evidently. She was equal to the occasion, responding with effusion that it was "so dreadful that she could think of nothing else!" Which wasn't true, for the moment before she had been collating the Hon. Percival's remarks and analysing the last one. Not that she was an unfeeling person—only more like everyone else than everyone else may ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... himself the horror that must assail her blood at the sight. Yes, he was glad to have saved any woman from so dreadful a fate. Did it happen often? and did nobody interfere? Muckluck was coming down from the direction of the Kachime. The Boy went to meet her, throwing over his shoulder, "You'd better stick to me, Anna, as long as I'm here. I don't know, I'm sure, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... thing and that, as if he had never seen it before. The place seemed to cast a spell over him, so that he could not leave it. He seated himself on the ancient brocaded couch, and sat staring, with a sense, which by degrees grew dreadful, that he was where he would not be, and that if he did not get up and go, something would happen. But he could not rise—not that he felt any physical impediment, but that he could not make a resolve strong enough—like one in irksome ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... when he had held a "thingcourt" at Gainsborough, where he had repeated all these threats amongst his warriors, he, alone of the crowd, saw St. Edmund approaching him with a dreadful aspect. ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of that dreadful evening. Isabel thought that it would never end. But she kept up splendidly. Once she unexpectedly found Louis her vis a vis—then came the master-piece of the evening. She looked superb, as with graceful dignity she glided through the quadrille. She avoided touching his ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... board sidewalks for the first nights and erected tar-paper shanties on vacant lots the next day. In these they housed the first winter. Though we Winnipeggers did not realize it, it must have been a dreadful winter to them. Their clothing was of the scantest. Many were without underwear. They lived ten and twenty to a house. The men sawed wood at a dollar and a half a day. The women worked out at one dollar a day. In a few weeks each family had bought a cow and rudiments of winter clothes. By spring ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... Stephen had together sworn, took up arms in her cause, and invaded England, forcing the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance. His troops were a fearfully wild, untamed race, undisciplined and cruel, and it was a dreadful thing to let loose such a host of savage marauders without any possibility of restraining them. The Galwegians, Picts by race, were the worst; but the Highlanders and Borderers were also dreadfully cruel: and the English armed to protect themselves against the inroad ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ourselves! It was done up about fourteen years ago, she said, when it was one of the first houses as high up on Fifth Avenue, and was the time of the most appalling taste in decoration. Every sort of gilding and dreadful Louis XV., and gorged cupids sitting on cannon ball clouds, with here and there a good picture and bit of china, and crimson brocade ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... I cannot say—I scarcely know myself. I dare not think of such a thing; it is too dreadful. You must not, you cannot go. Do not speak of ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... recollect these unhappy transactions, let our memory be complete and equitable, let us recollect the whole of them together. If the Dissenters, as an honorable gentleman has described them, have formerly risen from a "whining, canting, snivelling generation," to be a body dreadful and ruinous to all our establishments, let him call to mind the follies, the violences, the outrages, and persecutions, that conjured up, very blamably, but very naturally, that same spirit of retaliation. Let him recollect, along with the injuries, the services which Dissenters ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and lead it he does. Under the forts are seventeen galleys; the channel is 'scoured' with cannon: but on holds Raleigh's 'Warspite,' far ahead of the rest, through the thickest of the fire, answering forts and galleys 'with a blur of the trumpet to each piece, disdaining to shoot at those esteemed dreadful monsters.' For there is a nobler enemy ahead. Right in front lie the galleons; and among them the 'Philip' and the 'Andrew,' two of those who boarded the 'Revenge.' This day there shall be a reckoning for the blood of his old friend; he is 'resolved ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... looking up from his drawing. "Pray, what's the matter now? Has a bee stung your finger? or have you lost your nosegay over a rock? or what dreadful affliction has come upon you?—hey, my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... hours, his little maid in his arms, with no thought beside. The darkness came, and he waited wide-eyed, praying for the dawn. When the new day broke and the east was pale with light he carried the child out that he might see her, for a dreadful fear possessed him. And it came to pass that when the light kissed her little white face she opened her eyes and smiled at Hilarius, and so ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... replied Thad promptly. "Some people laughed at what he said, especially when Christmas came and went, and so far we'd had precious little of cold. But it's come along at last, and from all reports some of the most dreadful weather ever known is happening away out in the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... conviction arose at first, I cannot tell you; I do not think she knows herself. But you remember how weak and fanciful she is, and since that dreadful night she is always having what she calls 'dreams'—meaning that she dreams of the murder. In all these dreams Bethel is prominent; and she says she feels an absolute certainty that he was, in some way or other, mixed up ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood |
