"Overwhelming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took place. Mark and Jack, though they felt that the giants must overcome them in a test of strength, struggled with all their might against being captured. They fought, as a cornered rat will fight, though it knows the odds to be overwhelming. But in ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... and again in this drama Shakespeare's personal vindictiveness serves an artistic purpose. The story of "Troilus and Cressida" is in itself low and vile, and when loaded with Shakespeare's bitterness outrages probability; but the love of Antony and Cleopatra is so overwhelming that it goes to ruin and suicide and beyond, and when intensified by Shakespeare's personal feeling becomes a ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... against the overwhelming weight of authority, and against the reasons for deeper drainage, which, to us, seem so satisfactory, conclude, that even three feet is, in general, deep enough for under-drains. Three-foot drains will produce striking results on almost any wet lands, but four-foot drains will be more secure ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... was an overwhelming incubus. I was like a miserable snail, forever lugging my house round on my back—unable to shake it off. A change in our mode of life would not necessarily in itself bring my children any nearer to me; it would, on the contrary, probably antagonize them. I had ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... overpowering sleep, to wallow, by day, in that midnight darkness, had come to mean to her a truce, deliverance from an existence that she had not the courage to continue or to end. An overwhelming longing for oblivion was all she felt when she awoke. The hours of her life that she passed in possession of her faculties, contemplating herself, examining her conscience, looking on at her own shame, seemed to her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Then an immense overwhelming homesickness for Paris came over him, and he felt he must go and study art there, and succeed ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... of nineteen—the object of many high prophecies and hopes on the part of his school and schoolfellows, who had unanimously determined that he was to be great and do them honor. The first thing he did, however, was alas! too common an incident: he got into debt, though not, it would appear, for an overwhelming sum, or in any discreditable way. So long as his friend of Christ's Hospital, Middleton, remained in Cambridge, Coleridge pursued his studies with a great deal of regularity and in his first year won the prize for a Greek ode. But ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Indo-European family,—has had a share, an appreciable share, in producing this changed state of feeling. No doubt, the release from alarm and struggle, the sense of firm possession, solid security, and overwhelming power; no doubt these, allowing and encouraging humane feelings to spring up in us, have done much; no doubt a state of fear and danger, Ireland in hostile conflict with us, our union violently disturbed, might, while it drove back ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... the faith that inspire our work. The campaign of protest and of "active resistance" has started vigorously, and it must never slacken till victory is won. Day by day the pressure of public opinion must increase, till the impression made on Parliament by resolutions and petitions shall be overwhelming. The struggle against the 'Trade' and its Government backers is hard, but we must fight straight on, for the issue is of vital importance and we should be ready to make a determined and triumphant resistance to the Prime Minister's sinister and unashamed attempt to sell our ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... figure of the queen drawn to execution through the roaring mob inspired Carlyle with what is surely his most overwhelming product. ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... grim lonely life an intangible something that seemed to emanate from her gracious serenity compelled his homage. Then as she smiled at him and held out her hand, he was for a moment sensible of an almost overwhelming confusion. It passed as suddenly, for this was a man of quick perceptions, and remembering that Courthorne had now and then displayed some of the grace of by-gone days he yielded to a curious impulse, and, stooping, kissed the little ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... in countless numbers, and in the evenings the men hunted deer in canoes by torchlight along the shores of the lake. But alas! life is made up of good times and bad times, and it is when we are perfectly happy that we should expect some overwhelming misfortune. ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... John, who has been called to the Jordan, and get baptism from him. But John is not baptizing these days, the river being in flood, Joseph cried after him. That flood will pass away, Banu answered, before the great and overwhelming flood arises. Will the world be destroyed by water? At this question Banu turned towards the hillside, like one that deemed his last exhortation to be enough, and who desired an undisturbed possession of the solitude. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... subdue the whole soul, taking captive all our feelings, corporeal and mental, and moulding them to its will—a power of this nature seems to equal in dignity the highest faculties of genius in any of its forms, as it undoubtedly surpasses all the others in the overwhelming and instantaneous efficacy of its agency while thus working its wonders. Tame is the triumph of the artist in the exhibition-room, dim and distant the echo which the poet receives of the public praise, compared with the unequivocal and irrepressible bursts of admiration which entrance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... felt that?" Gordon asked, as he leaned back in his chair and locked his powerful hands behind his head. "This presentiment of overwhelming change haunts me day and night and makes many things seem ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... no calamity could be overwhelming so long as he had Mr. Grant, accompanied him gladly, more than content to live with him till he went to college, whither the earl wished to send him. Donal hindered rather than sped the day. When it came, the earl would have had him go ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... rigidity of priesthood. He dearly loved her, this child, from the day when she had come to sob at his feet, so innocent, and showing so plainly the pure freshness of her youth. Since then, in his nights of distress, he had contended chiefly against her, to defend himself from the overwhelming tenderness with which she inspired him. At this moment she was worthy of pity, with this pallor of death, with an ethereal beauty which showed, however, so deep a suffering that he could not look at her without his heart being secretly ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... East Timor. An unsuccessful campaign of pacification followed over the next two decades, during which an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 individuals lost their lives. On 30 August 1999, in a UN-supervised popular referendum, an overwhelming majority of the people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia. Between the referendum and the arrival of a multinational peacekeeping force in late September 1999, anti-independence Timorese militias ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... we were forming. As I have said we failed to surprise the Federal force in its camp—and the only advantage which our sudden appearance gave us, was the partial demoralization which is apt to assail all troops, when unexpectedly and promptly attacked. The enemy naturally thought that we were in overwhelming force, or that we would ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... have such an honest and amusing frankness about you," he said, "that I vow to God you are overwhelming. I am a downright admirer of your noble calling, and something skilled in its terms. What spectacle, for instance, can be finer than a noble ship 'stemming the waves with her taffrail,' and chasing her wake, like a racer on ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the future in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two houses in the first scene of Romeo and Juliet; or in the degrading passion for shows and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in Julius Caesar;—or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the explanation in the following ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... selection of species: the active and the adventurous, the malcontent and the malefactor, readily expatriate themselves, while the pauvre diable remains at home. The potato-famine in Ireland (1848) gave an overwhelming impetus to the exode of a race which had never known a racial baptism; and, lastly, the Germans flying from the conscription, the blood tax of the Fatherland, carried with them over the ocean a transcendentalism which has engendered the wildest theories ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to happen, but all in one dreadful moment. A great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to duty—duty in London—great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial, unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... in the poet's almost inexpressible grief, and because we are convinced, we sympathize. And we feel too that the poet's sorrow is so overwhelming and has so filled his soul that it has entirely changed his views of life and of nature, or has at least contributed materially to such a change,—that it has assumed larger proportions and may rightly be called Weltschmerz. Compare with this the first ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... scientific standpoint. Most of the work of the Greek scientist was done in relation to man. Nature interested him mainly in relation to himself. The Greek scientific and philosophic world was an anthropocentric world, and this comes out in the overwhelming mass of medical as distinct from biological writings that have come down to us. Such, too, is the sentiment expressed by the poets in their ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... do nothing," said Scott reflecting. "Let us wait a while before we do anything like that," he added, coupling himself with the despatcher in the latter's overwhelming anxiety. "The first news of the collision will come from Bitter Creek. It will be time enough then to call Stanley. Give your orders for a wrecking crew, get a train ready, and get word to Doctor ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... life with the overwhelming expression of physical fatigue, almost exhaustion, that Fraser gives to his Indian in "The End of the Trail." It is embodied in rider and horse. Man and beast seem both to have reached the end of their resources and both are ready to ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... like these, and others similar to them, it will not be difficult for any teacher to obtain so far an ascendency over the minds of his pupils as to secure an overwhelming majority in favor of good order and co-operation with him in his plans for elevating the character of the school. But let it be distinctly understood that this, and this only, has been the object ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... his glad inspirations, his thrilling hopes, must come to an obscure end. It was a miserable way to die, nothing to come out of it, no ennobling sacrifice demanding it to lift a man's name beyond his day. In the history of this violent place, this death-struggle against overwhelming numbers would be only an incident. Men would say, in speaking of it, that his ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... anyway?" she inquired of herself. She was searching for the doorbell, and she fell back on her own rustic lingo in order to ward off the incipient panic caused by this overwhelming splendor. "Oh, here it is! There!" She gave a push. "And now I'm in for it." She had decided to take the richest and best-known and most fashionable woman on her list so start with; the worst over at the beginning, she thought, the rest would follow ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... whole of life. The naked eye might as well try to see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and space really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted; at any rate the thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us as to lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms of the human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite time, or an existence out of time, which are the only possible explanations of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let us ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... clerk, grown infirm in the service, takes the stand and the government attorney proves through him that there is a White House; that it has a side-walk in front of it, and a pavement, and a hundred other overwhelming facts. The pathetic clerk shakes his dusty frame and slinks off the stand. The prosecuting attorney now elaborately proves that we walked, that we carried banners, that we were arrested by the aforesaid officers ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... England. Large numbers of settlers were brought over to Ulster, many of them English, but the majority Scotch. We Ulster Unionists who inhabit the province to-day, or at least the greater number of us, are descendants of these settlers. The overwhelming majority are passionately loyal to the British Throne and to the maintenance of the integrity of the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... Twenty-mile Creek when word was received that the rebels, four thousand strong, were preparing to cross the river at Cross Lanes, which the Seventh had so recently left. A counter-march was ordered. About six miles from Cross Lanes the regiment was attacked by an overwhelming force, and after a desperate fight was broken, and compelled to retreat in two different directions, with a loss of a hundred and twenty men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Creighton ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... his high ground. And on that he felt himself equal to any man. It was no doubt true that Eames had thrashed a man, and that he had not; it was true also that Eames had risen to very high place in the social world, having become a private secretary; but for a dangerous, mysterious, overwhelming, life-enveloping intrigue—was not he the acknowledged hero of such an affair? He had paid very dearly, both in pocket and in comfort, for the blessing of Mrs Lupex's society; but he hardly considered ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... finds its outlet down the narrow gorge through which the road runs is enormous. Even so, under ordinary climatic conditions its maintenance does not offer very exceptional difficulties, as much of it is blasted out of rock; but during extraordinarily heavy storms the danger of destruction by overwhelming floods ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... enemy's plan stood out in all its formidable strength and strategy. He had opened a gap in the Italian front; through this gap he was pouring overwhelming forces. Already the rest of the Italian Second Army and the Third Army on the Carso to the south of it were outflanked. If the whole of that great force was not to have its line of communications cut and be surrounded, it must be immediately and rapidly ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... arose, then stood beside him. A cool hand was laid gently upon his forehead; another drew up the bed-clothes to his chin, as they were before. With anxious eyes he studied her face, and when he found therein neither contempt nor aversion he experienced an overwhelming joy. And she, detecting in the invalid's eyes an unwonted look, bent over and regarded him more intently. As his eyes looked into hers he smiled, faintly, experimentally, in humble adoration. The face above him lit up with pleasure. In a very low ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... settled the question against himself. Not professing to have any particular competence in biology, natural history, or the scientific study of evidence in any shape whatever, and, indeed, rather glorying in his freedom from any such superfluities, he undertakes to assure the overwhelming majority of men of science, and the educated public who have followed their lead, that, while they have done well to be converted to the doctrine of the evolution and transmutation of species, they have been converted on ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... built and named for the last, which was captured only by overwhelming force. Cruise of, ii. 253-258; action with, and capture of, "Reindeer," 254; action with, and sinking of, "Avon," ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... him at this time were insistent and overwhelming; this necessarily happens at a certain stage of a successful writer's career. He was just successful enough to invite others and not successful enough to reject them . . . there was almost too much work for his imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his housekeeping. . . ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... modest inquiries he had discerned that Hugh was going ashore at Natchez to—they understood. All right, he would go, too, and ordinarily he would be enough. But the present need was not a fair fight but peace. Hence the propriety of overwhelming numbers. Wouldn't they like to ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... writer's reverence for him. Another work by Mr. Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elaborate refutation, from the original and authentic records, of the most damning charges brought by Lord Macaulay against Bacon's good fame. It is a complete and overwhelming exposure of false coloring, of rhetorical artifices, and of the abuse of evidence, in the famous essay. As one of the most entertaining and instructive pieces of controversy in our literature, it deserves to be widely read. The unbiased reader cannot accept the special pleading ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... was called "Two-Hand Billy" and how he had earned his right to the nickname. His fame was that of a man who was absolutely fearless, and who carried the law where other men could not or would not carry it. To him had come the dangers, the sharp fights against odds that had seemed overwhelming, and always he had shot his way out with a gun in each ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... to Duvall's brain a rush of sensations, among which the knowledge that he was once more in the lumber-room beneath the laboratory stood forth with overwhelming prominence. He glanced at Hartmann with reddened eyes. "Let me up, damn you!" ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... travels by land and sea, the glory of doing work and feeling that it was good, and suggested all that might have happened had the eyes only been faithful to their duty. When thinking ceased through sheer weariness, there poured into Dick's soul tide on tide of overwhelming, purposeless fear—dread of starvation always, terror lest the unseen ceiling should crush down upon him, fear of fire in the chambers and a louse's death in red flame, and agonies of fiercer horror that had nothing to do with any fear of death. Then Dick bowed ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... little light in front of the nucleus and a good deal more behind it, which ere long, however, fades away into the darkness; it is of a kind that, though a little wise before the event, is apt to be much wiser after it, and to profit even by mischance so long as the disaster is not an overwhelming one; nevertheless, though it is so interwoven with luck, there is no doubt about its being design; why, then, should the design which must have attended organic development be other than this? If the thing that has been is the thing that also shall be, must not the thing which is ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... disappeared, and he seems alone with himself and the black shades that surround him, feels his existence a blank and nothingness, except so far as memory recalls to him the glories and splendors of light. Everything is dead to him, and he, as it were, to Nature. How crushing and overwhelming the thought, the fear, the dread, that perhaps that darkness may be eternal, and that day may possibly never return; if it ever occurs to his mind, while the solid gloom closes up against him like a wall! What ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... carried overwhelming conviction to the brain of the deluded girl, and she sank fainting into the arms of the man whom she had so misunderstood and who was still far from comprehending the cause ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... large number of concessions for new rail-ways and canals,) to obtain from the same Chamber a ministerial majority, which toward the close of the session amounted to nearly eighty members. Under such auspices the new elections were ushered in, and the result was an overwhelming majority for the administration. The government was not to be shaken in the Chambers, but its popular ascendancy had sunk to zero. The opposition from being parliamentary had become organic. The opposition, seeing all hopes of success ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... she welcomes him in the hall of Bowling Green House, after his last journey to his home on Putney Heath.[761] The words probably fell from him on some occasion. But at the risk of incurring the charge of pedantry, I must point out that the news of Austerlitz did not come on him as one overwhelming shock: it filtered through by degrees. As we have seen, he wrote to Harrowby on 21st December, stating that reports from Berlin and other quarters represented the sequel to the battle as a great success for the Russians. It appears that Thornton, our envoy at Hamburg, wrote as follows on 13th December ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... certain attraction in these far-away glimpses of starry swarms, for they give us some perception of the awful profundity of space. When the mind is rightly attuned for these revelations of the telescope, there are no words that can express its impressions of the overwhelming ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... constitution remained, however, for the time, intact. Difficulties, indeed, were thickening around it; but their discussion was perhaps felt to be premature, and they were permitted to accumulate without debate, until fortified by fresh testimony into unexpected and overwhelming preponderance. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... happiest idea in the tour. The popularity of these "open to all the town" meetings was astonishing. "The Everyday People" whom the Prince had expressed so eager a desire to see and meet came to these receptions in such overwhelming numbers that in large cities such as Toronto, Ottawa and the like it was manifestly impossible for him to meet even a ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... I be able to bear it!—shall I? Jane?" said he, his enthusiastic temperament kindling as he spoke—"Oh what, my dearest, my own dearest, if this should not last, will it not consume me? Will it not destroy me? this overwhelming ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... nervous, I must accus- tom myself by degrees to the startling nature of my duties. Thank you. I was about to say that although, as Public Exploder, I am next in succession to the throne, I neverthe- less do my best to fall in with the royal decree. But when I am overmastered by an indignant sense of overwhelming wrong, as I am now, I slip into my native tongue without knowing it. I am told that in the language of that great and pure nation, strong expressions do not exist, conse- quently when I want to let off steam I have no alternative but to say, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses. I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into the little ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... encountered in a long and many-sided life. He was admirably equipped for success in finance, having the steely eye and square jaw without which it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business. He possessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself, and the ability to switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without wiggling his ears, which, as you know, is the stamp of the true Monarch of the Money Market. He was the nearest approach ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... frontiers of France. Some fifteen hundred of these emigrants were at Coblentz, organizing themselves into a military band, seeking assistance from the Austrian monarchy, and threatening, with an overwhelming force of invasion, to recover their homes and their confiscated estates, and to rescue the royal family. The populace in Paris were continually agitated with the rumors of this gathering army at ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action, but for the legislature and executive also in their spheres, would make the judiciary a despotic branch. Nor does the opinion of the unconstitutionality, and consequent nullity of that law, remove all restraint from the overwhelming torrent of slander, which is confounding all vice and virtue, all truth and falsehood, in the United States. The power to do that is fully possessed by the several State legislatures. It was reserved to them, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I felt. "O that I could have died with him!" I thought. My brave horse, however, still exerted himself to save his own life and mine, when I had ceased to care what became of me, by continuing to lift his feet above the overwhelming sand-drifts. My only wish was to find my father; but so completely was I bewildered that I knew not whether to turn to the right hand or to the left. His horse might have sunk down, I thought, and then in ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Clemente, and the other national leaders, were not wanting in this crisis of the fate of Corsica, and the people rose en masse against the overwhelming force that threatened to crush them. The war, though necessarily short, was marked by obstinate bravery on the part of the Corsicans. The French troops having met with many repulses, received a signal ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... more than a test to determine the endurance of the contending armies. While, however, this period wants many of the features that make war grand, it is yet instructive if not interesting in its results. The struggle at the beginning was against overwhelming odds. The patriots had neither ammunition nor resources, and their leader was without prestige. On the other hand the Danes were well supplied with men and arms, and were led by one of the powerful monarchs ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... unwitnessed conference at a ford of the little river Lagan, at which the enemies of the viceroy did not scruple afterwards to assert that treason had been concocted. What, at any rate, is certain is that Essex agreed to an armistice, which, with so overwhelming a force at his own disposal, naturally awakened no little anger and astonishment. Tyrone's personal courtesy evidently produced a strong effect upon the other earl. They were old acquaintances, and Tyrone was no doubt able to place his case ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... work of electing a president proceeded without interruption or disturbance, and the result was the election of Prince Louis Napoleon by an overwhelming majority. The following, by an eye-witness, is a condensed account of the transactions in the assembly upon the occasion of formally announcing this result. The letter was dated November 20th, and referred to the previous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... at the lawless liberty I enjoyed, not only with regard to my actions, but to my conscience; revelling in a deficiency of forethought and blindness of consequences, as truly delightful for the present, as overwhelming and deplorable for ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... thoughts were not with these. A little frown shaded her eyes, and her mouth was curved by a smile more sad than sweet. The happiest woman in the world! Yet, as she stood there, she felt an utter disenchantment with life seize upon her; she felt an overwhelming weariness in the battle that was not yet over. For Julia knew now that life to her must be a battle; whatever the years to come might hold for her, they could not hold more than an occasional heavenly interval of peace. Peace for Jim, peace for her mother, peace ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... said of numerous other villages, where meetings were occasionally held. Divine truth seemed to reach and affect the mass of the people. Geog Tapa was specially favored. The people were affected, not as in former years with the overwhelming convictions of the law, but with a deep and intelligent persuasion of the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... right, Mr. Philip; but my father has but one sister, and she does not happen to have any children. Therefore I cannot possibly have any such cousin as you mention," said she, smiling at what she deemed her overwhelming argument; and perhaps she thought I was getting up a conspiracy ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... that the dream appeared to portend some great calamity which was to originate in her. He thought it perhaps indicated that after her marriage she should have a son who would rebel against him and seize the supreme power, thus overwhelming his kingdom as the inundation had done which he ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... minor accesses of scarlet fever, diphtheria, and typhoid follow the lines of a specific milk route, there would be a tremendous and universal impetus to the needed work of milk inspection. In this respect the country is the enemy of the city: the country, which, with its own overwhelming natural advantages, distributes and radiates what disease it does foster among its urban neighbors, by sheer ignorance or sheer obstinate resistance to the "new-fangled notions of science." Such men as the late Colonel Waring of New York, Dr. Fulton of Baltimore, and Dr. Wende of Buffalo have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... of problems is nothing more than democracy beating itself helplessly against the color bar,—purling, seeping, seething, foaming to burst through, ever and again overwhelming the emerging masses of white men in its rolling backwaters and held back by those who dream of future kingdoms of greed built on black ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Carleton Falls, where no mortal vessel or steamer can follow. And the farmers and fishermen of Chester Bay still see the weird, unearthly beacon which marks the spot where the privateer Teaser, chased by an overwhelming English fleet, was hurled heavenward by the desperate act of one of her officers, who had broken his parole. As for the Gulf, the myth exists in a half dozen diverse forms, and all equally well authenticated by hundreds of eye-witnesses, if you ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... of his Country!' resounded to the summits of the surrounding Apennines. The mountain-tops tossed it to and fro—the caves thundered it—the very heavens bore it aloft to distant hemispheres! Our great soldier, overcome by such overwhelming marks of affection, expressed in every look and gesture how deeply he was moved. Before leaving the piazza, Castruccio was joined by his relative, young Paolo Guinigi!—after his decease to become dictator, and Lord of Lucca. Amid ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... however, it chanced that a detachment of Chasseurs, of which Cecil was one, was cut to pieces by such an overwhelming mass of Arabs that scarce a dozen of them could force their way through the Bedouins with life; he was among those few, and a flight at full speed was the sole chance of regaining their encampment. Just as he had shaken ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... under the circumstances were not overwhelming. The real obstacle to our chance of success was the difficulty of delivering a crushing assault against Wambe's strong place. This was, it appeared, fortified all round with schanses or stone walls, and contained numerous caves and koppies in the hill-side and at the foot of the mountain which no ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... alarm that had roused the invincible might of the people passed away, something of the spirit of over-confidence, of excited hope, of satisfied vanity mingled with and corrupted the earlier and purer emotion. The war was to be a short one. Our enemies would speedily yield before the overwhelming force arrayed against them; they would run from Northern troops; we were sure of easy victory. There was little sober foreboding, as our army set out from Washington on its great advance. The troops moved forward with exultation, as if going ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... falling upon the rear and dealing slaughter among the retiring hosts. This fact Ganelon pointed out to the Saracen king, and he undertook to have Roland placed in the rear-guard of the Franks. He suggested that the Moslem hosts be massed together in overwhelming numbers, ready to make a sudden descent upon the rear-guard when Karl should be too far in front to ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... is often the case at critical moments, doubting which enemy we ought, or even could resist, and being pressed on all sides by an overwhelming mass, we dispersed in every direction, each fleeing where he could. And while every one was trying to extricate himself from the danger, we were brought, without any order, face to face with ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... across the sea. Now to begin with, such critics have no notion of what they are saying when they talk about the majority of Americans. To anybody who has happened to look in, let us say, on the city of Omaha, Nebraska, the remark will have something enormous and overwhelming about it. It is like saying that the majority of the inhabitants of China would agree with the Chinese Ambassador in a preference for dining at the Savoy rather than the Ritz. There are millions and millions of people living in those ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... sheer fifteen hundred feet with huge granite boulders, twice the size of the humpy itself, standing straight out from the side of the Range, giving one the idea that they were merely stuck there in some mysterious manner, and were ready at a moment's notice to come tumbling down, overwhelming every one and everything in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was a pale-faced man, plainly a prey to the most overwhelming depression. The ends of his little black moustache straggled uncared for about the corners of his mouth, his hat was pressed right down over his eyes. You could see at a glance that his mind and his body were wandering miles ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... reckoning the plinth and abacus. They are covered with paintings and sculptures, the colors of which are wonderfully fresh and vivid. If, as seems probable, the great design of Egyptian architecture was to impress man with a feeling of his own littleness, to inspire a sense of overwhelming awe in the presence of the Deity, and at the same time to show that the monarch was a being of superhuman greatness, these edifices were well adapted to accomplish their purpose. The Egyptian beholder and worshiper was not to be attracted ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... arrest, while in the midst of my arrangements for a long night journey to Scotland, flushed with success beyond my most sanguine anticipations, and impatient to accomplish my freedom from a burden which had long oppressed me, and which had latterly threatened to utterly bear me down, gave an overwhelming force and severity to the shock. Indeed, the sudden and undreamt of change in my destination, the sharp and complete extinction of all my hopes and plans, stunned me for the time, and I felt it must be a hideous dream. I refused to credit the ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... mist rose in a wreath backward and upward, and I was looking through clear immensity, not at any ridge, but over an awful gulf at great white fields of death. The Alps were right upon me and before me, overwhelming and commanding empty downward distances of air. Between them and me was a narrow dreadful space of nothingness and silence, and a sheer mile below us both, a floor to that prodigious hollow, lay the ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of another shock put an end to further hesitation. It would be long before the terror inspired by this phenomenon would cease to be overwhelming. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Hartigan's evolution from an unhallowed stable-boy to a muscular Christian continually suggests reality. It is not a stylish method, but it gets home, and in a tale of this kind that is the main, if not the only, matter of importance. Jim's besetting weaknesses were drink and an overwhelming love for horses. The former he conquered fairly soon, but the latter tripped him up more than once, and if he had not been guided by the wisest woman who ever came from the West his end would have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... arrest him, but as deterred from taking active steps through fear of the people. We are led to the same conclusion by his driving the money-changers out of the Temple; an act upon which he could hardly have ventured, had not the popular enthusiasm in his favour been for the moment overwhelming. But the enthusiasm of a mob is short-lived, and needs to be fed upon the excitement of brilliant and dramatically arranged events. The calm preacher of righteousness, or even the fiery denouncer of the scribes and Pharisees, could not hope to retain undiminished ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... expected the question, but nevertheless it startled her. A Latin tag entered her mind immediately. "O," she began—and her strange shyness overwhelming her anew, ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... four years, the DUC put forward a number of key reforms to modernize the economy and to democratize the political system. The former Communists were a strong opposition that stalled additional restructuring and made implementation difficult. In 2000, the MPRP won an overwhelming victory in the legislature - with 72 of the 76 seats - and completely reshuffled the government. While it continues many of the reform policies, the MPRP has focused on social welfare ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... conviction that he had left her to the care of others, that for the first time he had deserted her couch of pain, lighted up as by an electric flash the marvellous links of memory, and the whole of that morning's anguish, every word spoken, every feeling endured, rushed back upon her with such overwhelming force as for the moment to deprive her of the little strength she had regained. Why could she not die? was the despairing thought that followed. What had she to live for, when it was her ill fate to wreck the happiness of all who loved her? and yet in that ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... occurring. He is the explorer and discoverer. He deals with the facts of the life after bodily death in a different way than the physical scientist does but it is soon found by the student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming evidence to support the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness we have at this moment will never cease to be; that our individuality, with all its present memories, will eternally persist; ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... he and Henry had come together. But the nature and power of the two men being somewhat similar, they had singled out the same point of danger, and had made their attack with the same overwhelming vehemence. The muscles of both seemed to be made of iron; for, as increasing numbers pressed upon them, they appeared to deliver their terrible blows with increasing rapidity and vigor, and the savages, despite their numbers, began ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the road, one week at home. That was his routine. The wholesale grocery trade liked Platt, and he had for his customers the fondness that a traveling salesman has who is successful in his territory. Before his marriage to Terry Sheehan his little red address book had been overwhelming proof against the theory that nobody loves a ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... no longer a smiling, cynical dandy. There emanated from him an impression of vivid, terrible force. His voice had deepened. It thrilled with a consciousness of irresistible power; it was overwhelming, paralyzing. ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... throw the comic light upon counterfeit enthusiasm"—for this might almost be taken as the "philosophy" of his books of foreign travel. And yet Mr. Sherman's dictum, in its entirety, quite clearly provokes the question whether, as he intimates, the "overwhelming majority" of his fellow-citizens also were not mightily pleased with Mark Twain's point of view, and whether they did not enjoy themselves hugely in laughing, not ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... a very uncomfortable sensation around Kit's crown of glory, for her enemy had heaped coals of fire on her head, and returned good for evil in such an overwhelming measure, she never could repay him. Surely twenty-four hours had made an enormous difference in Kit's outlook on life, for she considered these things instead of the pink negligee on ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... overwhelming to the young man to hear the melodious tumult of praise, and to remember that in less than a week he would be standing there among the novices and adding his voice. It seemed to him as if he had already ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... they stood opposite each other in silence. The royal maiden pressed her hand to her heart, and, like one who is thirsty, drank in the pure air of the mountain valley with deeply drawn breath; she felt as if released from some overwhelming burden, as if delivered from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that flashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor of all the rays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. Her mien told the story of her days. Bright eyes, light feet—she trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... profession, Drew," Gaston saw that he had gained his point, "you do not want to condone sin, but you want to understand the sinner as well as possible; and, Drew, you may take my word for it—I'm not in an overwhelming minority." ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... grinding an groaning of the storm-tost trees, and the dread sounds of the falling giants, and the shock of the trembling earth which sends their hearts with fitful leaps to their throats, and the roaring and a rushing as of a mad overwhelming sea— oh, then the horror is intensified! When the march has begun once again, and the files are slowly moving through the woods, they renew their morbid broodings, and ask themselves: How long is this to last? Is the joy of life to end ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth |
