"Overpowering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very well that the formation of the volunteers in respective States and by the Governors of such States raises a great difficulty in organizing and preparing reserves. But talent and genius reveal themselves by overpowering difficulties considered to be insurmountable. And Halleck is a man both of ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... of this hour passed from its first overpowering brightness to the calm, thoughtful aspect of daily life; and Weigand, now restored to health, laid aside the mantle with dead men's bones, saying: "I had chosen for my penance to carry these fearful remains about ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... struck with full force upon the heart of Barlow. Kassim's story of Kumari revivified itself with startling remembrance. Was this the priest that, to save Kumari's sacrifice, had wafted her by occult or drug method from one embodied form into another, from Kumari to Bootea? It was so confusing, so overpowering in its clutch that he did not ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... odd is that I myself was waked out of my sleep that night by the most oppressive sense of misery and hopelessness I have ever experienced," Mr. Johnson said seriously. "It was so overpowering that it made me think of Saint Theresa's description of her torment in that oven in the wall of hell which had by kindly forethought on the part of the devil been arranged for her permanent tenancy. Of course, it was just a nightmare," he added, doubtfully; "or ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... battle, Murat dashed forward in one of his overpowering cavalry charges. Leopold, in the midst of the horrors of the fight, gazed with wonder and admiration at the plumed and jewelled officer, on his magnificent white horse, with its trappings of gold and azure. It was like a beautiful vision in that awful place, and a wild huzza ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... tranquillity, the serene and sensible resignation, with which at length my parents faced the awful hour. Language cannot utter what they suffered, but there was no rebellion, no repining; in their case even an atheist might admit that the overpowering miracle ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... doctrines with all his heart so that he would have gone to death for them. In the belief that they eventually would succeed and regenerate France and all mankind, he was ready to work with unwearied patience. The paucity of his followers in the National Assembly and the overpowering personality of Mirabeau prevented him from exercising much influence in framing the new constitution, and he gradually turned for support to the people of Paris. He was already a member of the Jacobin Club, which, by ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... swift, unerring, dealt by the mercilessly honest hand of youth. Esther's eyes were quite dry now. Her nervousness was passing. Regret and pity were merged in one overpowering, instinctive desire: the desire to show him beyond all manner of doubt that she repudiated that possessive touch upon her hand. "I could not ever possibly marry you," she said, as calmly as if she had been accustomed to dismissing suitors ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... was enough to satisfy me of the seriousness of her condition. She seemed to be in almost a stupor from which she roused herself only with difficulty. It was as if some overpowering toxin were gradually undermining her ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the light of overpowering love together with the intangible pride so marked on the representations of profane deities. But the most manifest emotions were the great yearning and entreaty. They were marked in the attitude of the head thrown back, in the outstretched arms and in the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the intelligence was almost too overpowering for Mrs. Campbell. Mary and Emma hastened to her, and supported her. In another minute Alfred returned with Percival, and the mother embraced and wept over her long lost child,—and then gave him to ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... a sudden. She could not sit still and watch it coming, step by step; she could not even sit still and think about it. If she could have persuaded Mr. Falkirk, Hazel would have gone straight to Europe, and stayed there tillshe did not know when. She had an overpowering dread of going home, and seeing Mr. Rollo, and having herself and her secret brought out into the open day. So she rushed about from one gay place to another, and hid herself in the biggest crowds she could find; and all the while went to his 'penny readings' (in imagination), ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... going to have a good solid crust now to keep the balance. Do you know Lottie Bird?... Fourteen stone, if she's an ounce, and a tongue like a sixty-horse-power motor. There are times when she's so damned practical and overpowering she does me good. This is one of them. Good-bye. Don't kill the giant with a glance; and don't be silly ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... very quiet in presence, but though she scarcely speaks twenty lines, her face remains with us like a beautiful face seen once and never to be forgotten. There is something already, in her tentative delineation, of that "piercing and overpowering tenderness which glorifies the poet of Pompilia." Festus, Michal's husband, the friend and adviser of Paracelsus, is a man of simple nature and thoughtful mind, cautious yet not cold, clear-sighted rather than far-seeing, yet not without ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... lightning flashes, of a blue and red color, more frequent and vivid; and the rain, first with a few heavy drops, commenced to pour as if the floodgates of heaven were open. In a moment it darkened, as if night had come; a strong, nearly overpowering smell of sulphur announced itself; and people who happened to be out in the streets felt the rain-drops falling on their heads, backs, and shoulders like showers of hailstones. The cause of this was to be noted by looking at the spouts, from ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... crumbles beneath it, his whole force comes with ceaseless percussion on that one mind till it has yielded, and accepts the conviction on which the pleader's purpose is fixed. Men say afterward, 'He surpassed himself.' It was only because the singleness of his aim gave unity, intensity, and overpowering energy to the mind." ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... would not dissolve on their tongues. Many were delirious, and all had drawn fresh blood from their horses. Despite repeated vomiting, some drank their own urine. They were nearly all suffering from overpowering dyspnea, two were dead, and two were missing. The suffering was increased by the acrid atmosphere of the dry plains; the slightest exercise in this climate provoked a thirst. MacLoughlin, the surgeon in charge of the S.S. City ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... stay me, for I have the courage of my convictions. I only beg of you to prepare the way for me in the direction you urge me to take, and choose a subject for me, so that, when I am at length ready to take pen in hand, no other overpowering reason may crop up to make me hesitate and delay ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Christianity,—and on this side—moving. You will also understand why that one word comprises, to my thinking, all the discomforts short of absolute physical torture that can be condensed into the human lot. Condensed, did I say? If it were a condensed agony, I could endure it. One great, stunning, overpowering blow is undoubtedly terrible, but you rally all your fortitude to meet and resist it, and when it is over it is over and the recuperative forces go to work; but a trouble that worries and baffles and pricks and rasps you, that penetrates into all the ramifications of your life, that fills ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had been written by Lena, torn to atoms by a mischievous little dog, withholding her hand from rescuing it, her voice from warning the dog off from it simply for the indulgence of that same blind, overpowering jealousy. The destruction was hardly wrought, when repentance and remorse too late had followed—repentance and remorse, intensified a thousandfold by after events on ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... strange, however, what influence that pretence has, in overpowering all natural feelings, not in ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... means of helping him to his goal, can only be denied by those who refuse to acknowledge life as apart from matter. Their mental position is so absolutely arbitrary that it is useless to encounter or combat it. Through all time the unseen has been pressing on the seen, the immaterial overpowering the material; through all time the signs and tokens of that which is beyond matter have been waiting for the men of matter to test and weigh them. Those who will not do so have chosen the place of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done but let ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... complete and tragic a fate as had ever overtaken the unfortunate in the cruel past. She sat down upon the grimy wooden bench, which was the only provision made for rest or comfort, and the thought of spending a lonely night in such a place was overpowering. Not that she could hope for sleep, even if there were downy pillows instead of this unredeemed couch of plank on which some beastly inebriate may have slept off his stupor the night before, but she felt weak and faint, and her overtaxed physical ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... a vesture of odd and whimsical constructions, at once hides the offensive and discovers the comical features of his conduct; the same towering impudence and effrontery which so lift him aloft in his more congenial exploits; and the overpowering eloquence of exaggeration with which he delights to set off and heighten whatever is most ludicrous in his own person or situation;—all these qualities, though not in their full bloom and vigour, are here seen ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... some derangement of this system which is sometimes sufficiently severe to lead to insanity and suicide. Debility underlies all affections of the sympathetic nervous system, in the same way as nervous irritability underlies all cerebral diseases. Sometimes there is an overpowering sense of exhaustion pervading the ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... life. In the "Commemoration Ode"—the greatest poem which Lowell has ever written—he celebrates the death of these young heroes in fitting verse, and gives their names to immortality. The effect of the poem at the time was simply overpowering, so many other hearts were bleeding with his own; and it at once took its place as one of the noblest poems in the language. The poet William W. Story came over from Rome purposely to hear Lowell deliver this ode, and felt abundantly paid ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... tell, for the height of its precipitous walls barred the vision. The frowning facade turned toward us was, I estimated, five miles in length. Its colossal scarp struck the eyes like a blow; its shadow, falling upon us, checked the heart. It was overpowering—dreadful as that midnight city of Dis that Dante saw rising up ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... radiant spirits, and the hazel eyes shone entrancingly, and the slight flush under the dark warmth of the satin skin, caused by the unaffected pleasure inspired by his arrival, rendered even his strong head a trifle unsteady, as though with a rich, sweet, overpowering intoxication. ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the heat in the carriage was hardly more overpowering than the smell of crape, broadcloth, and camphor. The youth who had wedged himself next to me carried a large packet of "fairing," which he had bought at one of the sweet-stalls. He began to insert it into his side pocket, and in his ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The overpowering stench arising from stale arrack, &c., was well-nigh sickening, while, to complete the unsavoury coup a'oeil, a bunch of human heads, their mouths stuffed with rice, grinned at us from the end post of the ruai, whence their owners had not yet sufficiently recovered ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... responsive to the enthusiasms that enchant his thought; to be faithful to the vision that beckons him on. It is well to drop the old that one may seize the new. Progress lies in a successive series of new conditions. Let one give all and ask for nothing,—let him yield himself wholly to the overpowering enthusiasm; let him not look backward from his vision of the Morning Star and the Promised Land, and thus shall the New Year fulfil itself in ever widening glory and that enchanting loveliness which invests the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... restraints on the freedom of learning and teaching which every Church exercises, when it is strong enough; to the conscientious soul, by the introspective hunting after sins of the mint and cummin type, the fear of theological error, and the overpowering terror of possible damnation, which have accompanied the Churches like their shadow, I need not now consider; but they are assuredly not small. If agnostics lose heavily on the one side, they gain a good deal on the other. People who talk about the comforts of ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... grace * Those trooping damsels slender- fair: Virgins of graceful swimming gait * Ready with eye and lip to ensnare; And like the tendril'd vine they loose * The rich profusion of their hair: Shooting their shafts and arrows from * Beautiful eyes beyond compare; Overpowering and transpiercing * Every ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... insanitary and the floor space overcrowded to its utmost capacity. On the ground floor I saw 250 men lying on sacks of straw packed closely together, covered only by their ragged uniform under a blanket. Gangrenous limbs and septic compound fractures were common, the stench being overpowering; yet every window was closely shut." He tells how seven out of the members of the British staff went down with typhus. At U[vz]ice he found over 700 patients crammed into rooms containing about 500 beds; many were lying on the bare floor; others were on sacks of straw; others ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... patriotic remembrance which has vanished with the land and the sympathy that supported it; hence, and upon other similar arguments, the Athenian has long since melted into the mass with which he was intermixed; he was a unit attached to a vast overpowering number from another source, and into that number he has long since been absorbed; he was a drop in a vast ocean, and long ago he has been confounded with the waters that did not differ, except numerically, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and looked not with a covetous eye upon the lands of other nations. He would do battle in a foreign land, but the Highlands of Scotland was his abiding place. If he left his native glen in order to become a resident elsewhere, there must have been a special or overpowering reason. He never emigrated through choice. Unfortunately the simplicity of his nature, his confiding trust, and love of chief and country, were doomed to receive such a jolt as would shake the very fibres of his being, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... free with a tremendous effort, but they were upon him again. They forced him slowly backwards, backwards even across the bed where that dead woman lay with her eyes as yet unclosed. The great heat, as much as their numbers, was overpowering him. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was a choking in his throat. Again the long knife was lifted; other hands held him motionless, ready for the blow. He was too weak to struggle now. He saw the blue steel quivering in the air. Then he closed ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... company. The angry multitudes are suddenly arrested. Their mocking cries die away. The objects of their murderous rage are forgotten. With fearful forebodings they gaze upon the symbol of God's covenant, and long to be shielded from its overpowering brightness. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... petrol, which only seemed to increase the trouble in the carburetor. It was at this time that an uncontrollable drowsiness fell upon Renwick. He struggled against it but at last realized that in spite of himself sleep was slowly overpowering him. As in a haze he saw the huge figure of Linke beside him lean over, smiling, while a deep voice which seemed to come from a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... impulse, calling rather than coercing men to aspire to its own supreme serenity; all our ideas of what was pure and beautiful and true, then, were the same vast centripetal force, moving silently inward; all our sorrows, our mistakes, our sufferings, were but the checking of that overpowering influence; and any rest was impossible till we had drawn nearer to the central peace. This seemed to Hugh to be not a theory but an intensely inspiring and practical thought. How light-hearted, how brave a secret! Instead of desiring ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... where Adolphus Frederick, duke of Cambridge, had, in the name of his brother, William IV., king of England, established a new constitution, which had received many ameliorations notwithstanding the inefficiency of the liberals, Christiani, Luntzel, etc., to counteract the overpowering influence of the monarchical and aristocratic party. William IV., king of England and Hanover, expired in 1837, and was succeeded on the throne of Great Britain by Victoria Alexandrina, the daughter of his younger and deceased brother, Edward, duke of Kent, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... each other and then drew apart. They went into the house and Hugh climbed down from his place on the beam and lay in the hay. His body shook as with a chill and he was half ill of jealousy, anger, and an overpowering sense of defeat. It did not seem to him at the moment that it was worth while for him to go further east or to try to find a place where he would be able to mingle freely with men and women, or where such a wonderful thing as had happened to ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... the terrible strain had known no relaxation, and the sudden release from the horrible incubus of Peleg Peterson was overpowering. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... people were thus employed in their worship and dance, although it was the hottest month of summer, and the day was one of singular and overpowering heat, they were surprised and terrified by a sudden darkness, accompanied by a great fall of snow and hail. All at once, to their unspeakable consternation and confusion, there stood, in the centre of the space around which the dance was danced, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... was massive, and he had noticed as he had entered that it was fastened outside by two heavy iron bolts. "There is not much to be done that way," he said. "Now I must wait to see how my meals are brought in. The only possible way that I can think of is that of overpowering the warder and getting out in his clothes. I don't suppose that there is much order or discipline in a Spanish prison, and if I could once get down into the yard after dark, I might walk quietly out if there is a gate open, or climb ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There is the grateful 'nod, nod, nodding,' with the sudden jerk of an awakening; until the nodding becomes more overpowering, and one settles into a deep and profound sleep. Ugh! how chilly it gets! And the machinery—or is it the ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... what actually happened. The three men found the weight so overpowering, that once or twice they were compelled to relax their efforts for a few seconds, and at those times the rope had to carry the whole weight of the ladder; and the part of the rope that had to bear the greatest strain was the part that chanced to be at the angle of the brickwork ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the overpowering vitality which evil things seem always to possess, and the woman felt helpless against it; so utterly, so completely helpless that it was useless to protest by any word or gesture. She could have gotten up and explained ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Frederic walked up the ladder with a bucket of water to pour into the troughs for the thirsty poultry, who were stretching their necks through the bars and opening their bills, longing for the refreshing draught: the heat was overpowering, and the poor things were closely packed in their ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... in addition to this, the snow we struggled over was so soft and deep that we sank into it up to our waists. Occasionally the snow alternated with patches of loose debris and rotten rock, on which we were no better off; in fact, the fatigue of progressing over them was simply overpowering. Having climbed up half-a-dozen steps among the loose cutting stones, we felt ourselves sliding back to almost our original point of departure, followed by a small avalanche of shifting material that only stopped when it got to the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... steady heat of Honolulu, the languid airs of Hilo, the balmy breezes of Onomea, the cool bluster of Waimea, or the odorous stillness of Kona, it is always the same. The grim gloom of our anomalous winters, the harsh malignant winds of our springs, and the dismal rains and overpowering heats of our summers, have no counterpart in the endless ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... curious envy of the novelist. He would think of him frequently when alone, "The fellow's content to write. I'm not. He's found his way of saying what's in him, getting rid of his energies and love. I haven't. He feels toward the world as I do toward Rachel. An overpowering reality and mystery are always before him; but it gives him a mental perspective. What does Rachel give me? Desires, ambitions—a sort of laughing madness that I can't translate into anything but kisses. I'm cleverer than I ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... sensitive, but less well-developed. The negro loves as he eats and drinks.... And just as little as a black epicure have I ever been able to discover a negro who could rise to the imaginative phases of amorous dalliance. A negro ... may buy dozens upon dozens of wives without ever being drawn by an overpowering feeling to any one of them. Love is, among the blacks, as much a matter of money as the palm oil or ivory trade. The black man buys his wife when she is still a child; when she reaches the age at which our maidens go to their first ball, her ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... but Brahma forewarns him, that the unbroken descent of Ganga from heaven would be so overpowering, that the earth would be unable to sustain it, and Siva must be propitiated, in order that he may receive on his head the precipitous cataract. Under this wild and unwieldy allegory appears to lurk an obscure allusion to the course of the Ganges ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... to Wordsworth in his overpowering consciousness of the life in nature. This consciousness is the strongest force in him, so that at times he is almost submerged by it, and he loses the sense of outward things. In this condition of trance the sense of time vanishes, there is, he asserts, no such thing, no ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... the United States who boasts of democracy and Jeffersonian simplicity could share my dissatisfaction in seeing our ambassadors at Court balls and diplomatic receptions in deacons' suits of modest black, without even a medal or decoration of any kind, except perhaps that gorgeous and overpowering insignia known as the Loyal Legion button, while every little twopenny kingdom of a mile square sends a representative in a uniform as brilliant as a peony and stiff with ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... was due to Miss Frances Power Cobbe. The long struggle which is not yet terminated against the infamous Contagious Diseases acts belongs to this division of work. The acts were passed in 1866, '69, and for many years were supported by an overpowering majority of the House of Commons. Mr. Stansfeld, who has always been the supporter of every movement advancing the influence of women, has been the leader of this agitation. Mrs. Josephine Butler, Mrs. Stewart of Ougar, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... same moment the whole band of native warriors, grasping their arms, was to rush upon the Spaniards in overpowering numbers of ten to one. In this way it was supposed that every man could speedily be put to death or captured. Those who were taken prisoners were to be exposed to the ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... mind today is the fierceness and the savage onslaught of my dog. Never did I suspect that the amiable, gentle pet of our fireside could turn into such an overpowering, indomitable killer. His assault was absolutely bloodthirsty. I've often thought how grateful I should be that such an animal was my friend and companion in the hunt and not my pursuer. How quickly the dog adjusts himself to the bow! At first he is afraid ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... likewise, affirms that the cry of the Siamang may be heard for miles—making the woods ring again. So Mr. Martin [15] describes the cry of the agile Gibbon as "overpowering and deafening" in a room, and "from its strength, well calculated for resounding through the vast forests." Mr. Waterhouse, an accomplished musician as well as zoologist, says, "The Gibbon's voice is certainly much more powerful than that of any singer I have ever heard." And ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... way along the Graded road in the centre of the position. On the first sound of firing the inlying picket of the 24th Punjaub Infantry doubled out to reinforce the pickets on the road, and in the water-gorge. They only arrived in time to find these being driven in by overpowering numbers of the enemy. Hundreds of fierce swordsmen swarmed unto the bazaar and into the serai, a small enclosure which adjoined. Sharpshooters scrambled up the surrounding hills, and particularly from one ragged, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... that for action continuous and situations overpowering The Lyons Mail isn't a marker to an evening ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... cried, making a superhuman effort to rise; but the narcotic was slowly but surely overpowering him. Finally, he lost all idea of his surroundings and sank back on ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... did not think it owing to her laborious application. Jane urged her to go to bed; but she would not consent to lose so many hours of Charles's society, and she persisted in sitting up to tea. She was however unable to eat, and her headache became so violent, and was accompanied with so overpowering a sickness, that she could hold up no longer, and was conveyed to her bed. Jane was very uneasy, but Isabella and Hannah both thought it might be a common sick headache, and persuaded Jane not to send for Mr Everett ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... his public career, no one, I believe, who ever came in contact with him failed to recognise his singular charm in private life. His conversation differed from that of some of the more illustrious of his contemporaries. It was not a copious and brilliant stream of words, dazzling, astonishing, or overpowering. It had no tendency to monologue, and it was not remarkable for any striking originalities either of language, metaphor, or thought. Few men steered more clear of paradox, and the charm of his talk lay mainly in his admirable terseness ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... bottomless hell-pit. Sometimes, I have an inexplicable desire to go down to the great cellar, open the trap, and gaze into the impenetrable, spray-damp darkness. At times, the desire becomes almost overpowering, in its intensity. It is not mere curiosity, that prompts me; but more as though some unexplained influence were at work. Still, I never go; and intend to fight down the strange longing, and crush it; even as I would the unholy thought ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... in being, yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect I should have either time or inclination to search for it? Let it suffice to say, that the riot and disorder it occasioned in the Strasburgers fantasies was so general—such an overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of the Strasburgers minds—so many strange things, with equal confidence on all sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to concerning it, that turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder towards ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... maintaining the wrong side of an argument, and in a splendid perversion of the truth. If you could contrive to have his fair opinion on a subject, and without any bias from personal prejudice, or from a wish to be victorious in argument, it was wisdom itself, not only convincing, but overpowering.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... heard news which made him change his mind, no matter what the cost to his feelings. The east and the west had both fallen into British hands. Louisbourg and the Ohio were taken. Only Canada itself remained; and, even now, Pitt was planning to send against it overpowering forces both by sea and land. Montcalm would not, could not, leave the ruined colony he had fought for so long against such fearful odds. In the desperate hope of saving it from impending doom, he decided to ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... steadfastly. "Such ingenuousness," he said, presently, "is overpowering. Mr. Clyde, how do you do? Do you think it is going to be a ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... in jest, half in earnest, with truth and falsehood, sense and nonsense, prettily blended together, Lady Cecilia prevailed in overpowering Helen's better judgment, and obtained a hasty submission. In economy, as in morals, false principles are far more dangerous than any one single error. One false principle as to laying out money is worse than any bad bargain that can be made, because ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... that merely to be married and breed casual children and die is a sort of suspended energy which has no conceivable place in this over-complex and unwieldy world. He had no clear nor ringing message, but he did have, just then, an overpowering conviction that Ruth and he—not every one, but Ruth and he, at least—had a vocation in keeping clear of vocations, and that they must ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what was the force or the weakness that prevented him from saying good-night and walking away. It was as though he had been too tired to make the effort. How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances. Or was it that overpowering sense of idleness alone that made him stand there and listen to these stories. Nothing very real had ever troubled Ned Eliott; and gradually he seemed to detect deep in, as if wrapped up in the gross wheezy rumble, something of the clear hearty ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... circles. It was not yet too late. Jack could tear the smaller, weaker fellow away with one strong hand, and take the only chance for escape. The shattered mill was dashing through the smoother waters now; the great beech-tree was hanging over their heads; an inexplicable, overpowering impulse mastered in ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... out into Palace Yard. An eye-witness thus reported the scene in the Press: "The strong, broad, heavy, powerful frame of Mr. Bradlaugh was hard to move, with its every nerve and muscle strained to resist the coercion. Bending and straining against the overpowering numbers, he held every inch with surprising tenacity, and only surrendered it after almost superhuman exertions to retain it. The sight—little of it as was seen from the outside—soon became sickening. The overborne man appeared ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Canary Islands, Countess of Barcelona, Sovereign Lady of Biscay and Molina, Duchess of Athens and Neopatria, Countess of Roussillon, Cerdagne, Marchioness of Ovistan and Goziano! After assuming the heavy burden implied by this somewhat overpowering list of titles, the young queen's first serious annoyance came from her husband, strange as the case may seem. Fernando of Aragon was the nearest living male representative of King Henry, and he somewhat selfishly began to take steps to supplant Isabella in her succession. Little ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... probably flying away from your families under the enchantment of the Stealer of Hearts. {FN11-5} I am of devotional temperament myself. I will make it my positive duty to see that you receive food, and shelter from this overpowering heat." ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... My ideas of Gluck had attained gigantic proportions from my reading of Hoffmann's well-known Phantasies; my anticipation of this work therefore, which I had not studied yet, had led me to expect a treatment full of overpowering dramatic force. It is possible that Schroder-Devrient's acting in Fidelio had taught me to judge everything ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and his brother had to drag him to the further end of the barn so that he might not get the full benefit of the overpowering scent. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... highly elated. For three successive nights they repeated their raid upon the fowl-house, each night smelling the pungent, choking scent more strongly, but never catching a glimpse of the rival marauder. On the fourth night, as they crossed the hillocky stump-lot behind the barns, the scent became overpowering, and they found the body of the skunk, where fate had overtaken him, lying beside the path. They stopped, considered, and turned back to their wildwood foraging; and through all that spring they went no more ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... earliest stages of religion it is at all events clear that its earliest form is in the nature of a hypothesis, even though only of the semi-conscious kind that exists when man is brought into touch with some new and overpowering experience. Religious ideas are put forth in explanation of something. But all explanation whether by savage or civilised man, must be in terms of existing knowledge. No other method is possible. We must explain the unknown in terms of the known, and our explanation ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... through lakes and lagoons at a comparatively short distance. On one of these lakes, Lake Borgne, a flotilla of light gunboats was placed for defence, under the command of Lieutenant Jones, but on December 14th an overpowering force of small British vessels dispersed the American squadron, and on the twenty-second about fifteen hundred regulars, the picked men of the British army, fresh from European victories under Wellington, contrived to find their way ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... mean time she was not positively suffering from either shock or sorrow. From her personal point of view the loss of money was not of itself an overpowering calamity. It might entail the disruption of lifelong habits, but she was young enough not to be afraid of that. In spite of a way of living that might be said to have given her the best of everything, she had always known that her father's income was a small one for his ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... trying. He had done work that called for tenseness and mental concentration every moment. He had outlasted divers and many periods when catastrophe might have overwhelmed them, and now that the blackness which had shrouded a thousand unseen risks and perils had been swept aside, an almost overpowering reaction claimed him. This natural lassitude became the more marked after he had scanned the horizon in vain for ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... go out, one unties the cord securing the door, and crawls or wriggles out, at the same time exclaiming 'Thank goodness I'm in the open air!' This should suffice to describe the atmosphere inside the hut, only pleasant when charged with the overpowering yet appetizing ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... her better after this. At first her beauty and her handsome dress had seemed a little overpowering to me; I had felt as if she were a being of another order, a bright happy creature not subject to the common woes of life. But now that she had spoken of her own sorrows, I felt that we were upon a level; and I stole my hand timidly ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... something "lion-like" in his face; his gray eyes, clear and soft in his peaceful moments, shone like fire when he was moved, and few men were brave enough to confront him when his face was lighted up by rising wrath, and when his eyes rolled and became bloodshot in a paroxysm of passion. His overpowering energy found an outlet in violent physical exertion. "With an immoderate love of hunting he led unquiet days," following the chase over waste and wood and mountain; and when he came home at night he was never seen to ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... are partly of the tourist orders, and its shopkeepers will sell you "American form" shoes and "best English" hats. It is really too bad, for the overpowering splendours of the chateau, the quaint old Renaissance house-fronts, the streets of stairs, and the exceedingly picturesque and lively congregation of countryside peasants on a market-day would make it a delightful artists' sketching-ground were one not crowded out by "bounders" ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... shock of the unexpected and the unaccustomed. There was her husband's reproach looking at her from the external things around her which he had provided for her external existence. There was Robert's reproach making itself felt by a quicker, fiercer, more overpowering love, which had awakened within her toward him. Above all, there was understanding. She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to took upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... sooner said than the fish was placed on the fire-shovel, and we then took turns to move the shovel backwards and forwards over the lamp. Regardless of that woman's loud inquiries about the smell, which was in truth, sir, very overpowering, we pursued our joint labours until two in the morning, and then the brute was only half raw. One penknife was our sole cutlery; but we managed to cut through the skin, and we devoured the oily stuff like famished hounds, sir. We were ashamed; but, as the poet truly observes, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... clear up his thoughts and to consider of his future motions, Bertram suddenly remembered that immediately before the attack on the revenue officers, a note had been put into his hand—which he had at that time neglected to read under the overpowering interest of the scene which followed. This note he now drew from his pocket: it was written in pencil, and contained the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... volume reveals an overpowering imagination which has not yet reached its proper outlet. It is painful, in reading these early poems, to feel how ruthless and horrible that strong imagination often was, as yet directed on no purposed line. Sometimes, indeed, sweet fancies came to Emily, but often they were ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... mystery of the "cruelty of things." Schopenhauer, Miss Cobbe's model pessimist, who at the humblest distance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found the vision of man's unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent, "heartless, cowardly, and arrogant." Confucius, the "Throneless king, more powerful than all kings," denied a personal deity. The Epicurean idea rules the China of the present day. "God is great, but he lives too far off," say the Turanian ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... He was sent into space with the precision he expected. The experience was exhilarating and, although he had anticipated each event in advance, he could not possibly have foreseen the overpowering feeling that came over him. Weightlessness he had experienced for brief periods during training, but nothing could match the heady impression of continuous ...
— Egocentric Orbit • John Cory
... thoughtful consideration—as will we in the executive branch—to the views of labor, and of management, and of the general public. In this process, it is only human that each of us should bring forward the arguments of self-interest. But if all conduct their arguments in the overpowering light of national interest—which is enlightened self-interest—we shall get the right answers. I profoundly hope that every citizen of our country will follow with understanding your progress in this work. The welfare of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the history of invention. Gladly would I have shrunk from this public demonstration were it not that my absence to-night, under the circumstances, might be construed into an apathy which I do not feel, and which your overpowering kindness ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... great Apostle of the Gentiles, born at Tarsus, in Cilicia, by birth a Jew and a Roman citizen; trained to severity by Gamaliel at Jerusalem in the Jewish faith, and for a time the bitter persecutor of the Christians, till, on his way to Damascus, in the prosecution of his hostile purposes, the overpowering conviction flashed upon him that he was fighting against the cause that, as a Jew, he should have embraced, and which he was at once smitten with zeal to further, as the one cause on which hinged the salvation, not of the Jews only, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... all its plenitude, ... when that mighty sentiment for which language has no other name than Love is diffused in him, like some powerful all-dissolving vapor; when he, shivering with sweet terror, sinks into the dusky, enticing bosom of Nature; when the meager personality loses itself in the overpowering waves of passion, and nothing remains but the focal point of the incommensurable generative Force, an ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... awhile, and a bull-like roar—a magnificent bass thunder— tells that he has reached the top of the Minar. They must hear the cry to the banks of the shrunken Ravee itself! Even across the courtyard it is almost overpowering. The cloud drifts by and shows him outlined in black against the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad chest heaving with the play of his lungs—'Allah ho Akbar'; then a pause while another Muezzin somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple takes up the call—'Allah ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover deep down in all things the silent overpowering victory of that you ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that Maurice had been called upon to watch beside a bed of sickness, and his was one of those vivacious temperaments to which sleep is so indispensable that an overpowering somnolence will fling its charms about the senses, and bear the spirit away captive, even in the soul's most unwilling moments. Five o'clock had struck when Madeleine perceived that her companion's eyes had ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... wild war-whoops resounded from the bateaux. The Indians had captured the convoy and were forcing their captives to row. In the foremost boat were four soldiers and three savages. Nearing the fortress one of the soldiers conceived the daring plan of overpowering the Indian guard and escaping to the Beaver, which lay anchored in front of the fort. Seizing the nearest savage he attempted to throw him into the river; but the Indian succeeded in stabbing him, and both fell ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... national disintegration which sprang like itself from the struggle with the northman. The tendency towards personal dependence and towards a social organization based on personal dependence received an overpowering impulse from the strife. The long insecurity of a century of warfare drove the ceorl, the free tiller of the soil, to seek protection more and more from the thegn beside him. The freeman "commended" himself to a lord who promised ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... of a dull, enervating, overpowering agony that seemed to be weighing my heart down and filling my throat with pent-up sobs. I was writhing inwardly, praying for Matilda's mercy. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I remember ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... did to me throughout that long afternoon. I was powerless to protest or answer; all my energies being devoted to a struggle against the inexplicable terror that threatened to overwhelm me again and again. I can compare the feeling to nothing except the struggles of a man against the overpowering nausea of the Channel passage—only my agony was of the spirit and infinitely ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Mirth he suppresses by his awful frown, And humble spirits, by disdain, keeps down; Blamed by the mild, approved by the severe, The prudent fly him, and the valiant fear. For overbearing is his proud discourse, And overwhelming of his voice the force; And overpowering is he when he shows What floats upon a mind that always overflows. This ready man at every meeting rose, Something to hint, determine, or propose; And grew so fond of teaching, that he taught Those who instruction needed not or sought: ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... of our being are turned into artificial channels, by night our thoughts follow the bent that is most natural to them; and as man is both an immortal and a sinful being, the consequences both of his immortality and his sinfulness will sometimes be made to stand out in overpowering light, when the busy pursuits of day are not able to turn the soul from wandering towards eternity-(Cheever). Bunyan profited much by dreams and visions. "Even in my childhood the Lord did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... journey back from Killarney I remember nothing, but my being discomfited by Lady Jocunda's practical jests and overpowering gaiety. When she addressed herself to me, my answers were as constrained and as concise as possible; and, as I was afterwards told, I seemed, at the close of my reply to each interrogative of her ladyship's, to answer with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... officer said, claimed to have news that meant life or death, and he carried on his person a letter from President Lincoln, empowering him to go where he pleased. He had shown that letter, and his manner indicated the most intense and overpowering anxiety. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist. Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... which even in times of apparent repose had secretly disturbed the souls of Northern people, broke forth in an utterance louder than ever. The bonds of accustomed party allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was not ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... exhilaration derived from the harmony of vast numbers with one voice attuned to praise. It is a sensation which is so nearly a foretaste of eternity, that participation alone can give the most distant perception thereof. To the entirely unprepared and highly sensitive Geraldine it was most overpowering, all the more because she was entirely out of sight, and without power of taking part by either gesture or posture— she was passive and had no vent ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this with such a grateful smile, and looked withal so sweet and womanly that I was seized with an overpowering impulse to take her in my arms. Instead of this I said with conscious feebleness: "I am more than thankful to have been able to give you any encouragement—which you must remember comes from me second-hand, after all. It is to Dr. Thorndyke that we ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Darkness! Darkness! In the name of the Father—Darkness, and of the Son—Darkness; and of the Holy Ghost—Darkness!" for however much the mind may strive to penetrate this mystery, it can never attain to its solution. Just as the eye, looking at the sun, sees the Overpowering light as a dark ball, being dazzled by its excessive glory, so the eye of the mind perceives only darkness, when looking into the infinite splendour of God in ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... up at the houses in the distance, then back again to the skull; the empty sockets shone more brightly than before. I felt that I must have some natural explanation for this appearance or I would go mad. I took up the head again—and never in my life have I had so overpowering an impression of the might of death and decay than in this moment. Myriads of disgusting clammy insects poured out of every opening of the skull, and a couple of shining, wormlike centipedes—Geophiles, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... another million into slavery. But he did not enjoy human suffering. These were simply necessary incidents in the execution of his plans. It is hard to see how European civilization could have proceeded without the conquest of Gaul, and it is surely better to make a conquest complete, rapid, overpowering, that the work may have to be done ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various |
