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More "Astonishing" Quotes from Famous Books



... astonishing changes for a long time, our young man descended from the height and retraced his steps homeward. Kitty gladly preceded him, and some time after the sun had set, they regained the Reef. About a mile short of home, Mark passed ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... poet appears who is also more or less of an artist. The number of Spanish and Portuguese national epics, from the Lusiad downwards, during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, is astonishing; and it was impossible that English authorship, rapidly acquiring a perception of literary form under classical and foreign influences, should not be powerfully affected by the example ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton

... teaching recruits to ride. 'The noble Lord,' replied Mr. Haldane, 'is doubtless alluding to certain dummy horses on rockers which have been tested with very satisfactory results.'... The mechanical steed is a wooden horse with an astonishing tail. It is painted brown and mounted on swinging rails. The recruit leaps into the saddle and pulls at the reins while the riding-instructor rocks the animal to and fro with his foot. The rocking-horses are being made at ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... assurance, and profound confidence in his own resources. He was fond of schemes, stratagems, and plots—they amused and excited him—his power of sarcasm, and of argument, too, was great, and he usually obtained an astonishing influence over those with whom he was brought in contact. His high spirits and a most happy frankness of bearing carried off and disguised his leading vices of character, which were callousness ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... d'Estrees, turning to the gentlemen with her, and Angelique, who did not resist, was at once thrust out of the door and into a carriage that was waiting. In an instant the carriage was covered with novices as with a swarm of flies. The wheels, the rumble, the coach-box, all were full of them; it was astonishing how they got there in their heavy, cumbrous clothes. Madame d'Estrees called to the coachman to whip up the horses, but he, perhaps enjoying the scene, replied that if he moved he was certain to crush somebody. Then Angelique left the coach, and the novices ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... gratitude to the indefatigable sage, I took my leave. "Can the astonishing fertility of his genius ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... such men strength, and that against such as were more in number, and were armed also, out of regard to their great courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound for the battle; and by thus falling upon the enemies when they did not expect it, and thereby astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those that resisted him, and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara, and the plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about three thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous of the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... cheered as he proceeded to the Royal Hospital, and repeatedly returned the cordial salutations of the large crowds who were assembled at different points. The appearance of the feted warriors was the signal for an astonishing ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... and beautiful flowers brought by him from his Barbadian home; while shading it and the courtyard was a fine specimen of that superb thing of beauty—a flamboyant tree—glorious with its delicate-green acacia-like leaves and vermilion and yellow flowers, and astonishing with its vast beans. A flight of stone stairs leads from the courtyard to the upper part of the castle where the living rooms are, over the extensive series of cool tunnel-like slave barracoons, now used as store chambers. The upper rooms are high and large, and full of a ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... anything so abnormal or so astonishing as the course he took when he spoke. Nothing in his bearing had prepared them for it; nor anything in his conduct which, so far, had been that of a man of the world not too much at a loss even in the unfavourable circumstances in which he was placed—circumstances which ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... the paucity of data on which they had to work with the wealth of knowledge now available, must be ranked as high as the intellectual ability of our foremost thinkers of to-day. In mechanical proficiency the world has indeed advanced to an astonishing extent, but the perfection of our modern machinery means only a gradual and very recent advance upon earlier methods and does not denote a corresponding development in the mind itself. The Greeks ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our future conduct which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still more untractable form. For, what astonishing and incredible things have we not seen already! What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention! Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... countries that his works have ever reached, even deified by the greatest names of antiquity, and in some places actually worshipped. And to say truth, were it possible that mere man could entitle himself by pre-eminence of any kind to divine honors, Homer's astonishing powers seem to have given him ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... the danger lest the Christianity of its readers should be unduly Judaic in feeling and practice, suits well the experiences of a writer living in Alexandria, where Judaism was immensely strong. Further, he shows an "astonishing familiarity with the Jewish rites," in the opinion of a modern Jew (Kohler in the Jewish Encycl.); so much so, that the latter agrees with another Jewish scholar in saying that "the writer seems to have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... quite empty. Something lay there, and this something, while commonplace in itself, was enough out of keeping with the place and hour to rouse my interest and awaken my conjectures. It was a lady's wrap so rich in quality and of such a festive appearance that it was astonishing to find it lying in a neglected state in this crumbling old house. Though I know little of the cost of women's garments, I do know the value of lace, and this garment was covered ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... and other successes did not ultimately avail them: Scipio who had been chosen consul, arrived in Africa, and Carthage was immediately strictly blocked up by sea and land. His exertions were indeed astonishing; as the new port of Carthage was effectually shut up by the Roman fleet, so that no assistance or provisions could enter by it; and as lines of circumvallation were formed on land, the consul's great object was to block up the old port. The Romans were masters of the western ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... It is astonishing what an amount of interest may be got up in this way! If one goes at it with a sort of philanthropico-philosophical spirit, a full hour of genuine satisfaction may be thus obtained—not to speak of the joy imparted to the poultry, and the profound ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... property. That such an offer should have been made by the chief minister to the king, and that for such a purpose, reveals a depth of corruption which would be incredible if similar horrors were not recorded of other Eastern despots. But with Turkey still astonishing the world, no one can call Haman's offer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... way I saw Celeste, and renewed, with some levity, a certain subject. It excited an agitation perfectly astonishing. The emotion was so great as to produce universal tremour, which attracted the notice of the company (there was a room full); I was exceedingly alarmed and perplexed, having imagined the denouement of last summer to have been conclusive, in good faith. Undoubtedly there is ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... inside the urns what is there?—Ashes. Their work lacks feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos—in a word, soul and moral life. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a way of understanding poetry. The talent shown is astonishing, but stuff and matter are wanting. It is an effort of the imagination to stand alone—substitute for everything else. We find metaphors, rhymes, music, color, but not man, not humanity. Poetry of this factitious kind ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... he cried, "I assure you it's a most astonishing, most curious coincidence! See this man?" He flung out his arm at the bluejacket. "He's my wireless chief. He was wireless operator on the transport that took you to Manila. When you came in here this afternoon he recognized you. Half an hour later ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... of Vorsteher, except incidentally in Section 7, which is the more astonishing, as the annual settlement of accounts, in the same book, in the handwriting of Muehlenberg, both before and after the adoption of this constitution, mention the settlement as made by the pastor, elders and Vorsteher. There are also entries in 1760 and 1761, of the ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker

... not dismayed. He was prepared for the difficulty, and the means by which he essayed to surmount it exhibited the same astonishing simplicity as ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... heretics. This was a weapon in Las Casas's hands which circumstances might make formidable; it was no trifling thing to be arraigned before the tribunal of the Inquisition on a charge of holding heretical doctrines, for neither rank nor calling availed to protect the offender, and it is somewhat astonishing that no reference to use of this "opinion" being made by Las Casas in any given case is found in the records of his struggle for the liberty of ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Substance exists. It does and must. We ask, why? and we are answered, because there is nothing capable of producing it, and therefore it is self-caused—i.e. by the first definition the essence of it implies existence as part of the idea. It is astonishing that Spinoza should not have seen that he assumes the fact that substance does exist in order to prove that it must. If it cannot be produced and exists, then, of course, it exists in virtue of its own nature. But supposing it does not exist, supposing it is all a delusion, the proof falls to ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... contemplate. The Chateau de Senanges was indeed his own lawful property; his without prejudice to the former owners, dispossessed by no act of his. But the ci-devant Marquis—confiding in him to an extent which was quite astonishing, except on the pis-aller theory, which is so unflattering as to be seldom accepted—announced to him the existence of a certain packet, hidden in the chateau, acknowledging its value, and urging the need of its safe transmission. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... a mere pretence to cover artful designs; his real object being to spread heretical doctrines in Ireland, and thus sow dissension among Friends. In his journal of this visit to a foreign land, Friend Hopper says: "It is astonishing what strange ideas some of them have concerning me. They have been informed that I can find stolen goods, and am often applied to on such occasions. I think it would be no hard matter to make them believe me a wizard." This was probably a serious version of his pleasantry with the Dutchman ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... the dissolution of the palace and gardens by the waving of Armida's wand is astonishing; it appears completely to be the work of inchantment, from the rapidity of execution which follows the potentissime parole. The French recitative however does not please me. The serious opera is an exotic and does not seem to ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... son will have to learn to keep a watchful eye over his inheritance. It is really astonishing to me to see what in these days can be accomplished by the energy of a single man. It is all the more creditable, too, when he, like the father of our dear baroness here, springs from the people. I think I heard that, but I may ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... was plainly to be inferred from the evidence, that the slaves were not protected by law. Colonial statutes had indeed been passed; but they were a dead letter; since, however ill they were treated, they were not considered as having a right to redress. An instance of astonishing cruelty by a Jew had been mentioned by Mr. Ross. It was but justice to say, that the man was held in detestation for it; but yet no one had ever thought of calling him to a legal account. Mr. Ross conceived a master had a right to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... generation, the warriors of Stamfordbridge and Senlac, of York and Ely, are fast growing into maturity. Harold Hadrada is already pursuing his wild career of night-errantry in distant lands, and is astonishing the world by his exploits in Russia and Sicily, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... fully as picturesque as is the nearby Tudor House, which is large and square. Both are excellent examples of Elizabethan houses, and are very quaint and pretty. The lower floor of the Tudor House is a most fascinating shop, in which one may find a really astonishing number of post-cards, books, pictures, and little ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... fare from Euston." "Euston," I repeated vaguely, for the phrase at that moment sounded to me like China or Arabia. "What on earth has Euston got to do with it?" "You hailed me just outside Euston Station," began the man with astonishing precision, "and then you said——" "What in the name of Tartarus are you talking about?" I said with Christian forbearance; "I took you at the south-west corner of Leicester-square." "Leicester-square," he exclaimed, loosening a kind of cataract of scorn, "why we ain't been ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward, (for, indeed, they loved him,) as if to avenge his death. The astonishing attack which followed—pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live for ever in the memories of soldiers—was carried to the first line of German trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... fellow in the patrol whose soul seemed to crave excitement, and the element of danger, it was the Jones' boy. When everything else failed he was in the habit of climbing a tree, and ascending to a dizzy height, perform some of his astonishing gymnastics there. No wonder they called ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality. I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness; sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone; sometimes a cluster of smaller globes, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... me!' Nevertheless, one's first glance would be arrested neither by Mrs Bruce's black-and-gold sign, nor by the enticements of her stock-in-trade, because one's attention is rapped squarely between the eyes by an astonishing shape that arises from the patch of lawn in front of the cottage, and completely dominates the scene. Imagine yourself face to face with the last thing you would expect to see in a modest front dooryard,—the figurehead of a ship, heroic in size, gorgeous ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... complexion, with handsome features, exceedingly respectful and modest, and possessed all the characteristics of a well-bred young lady. For one so little acquainted with books as she was, the correctness of her speech was perfectly astonishing. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... that Desire gasped. Then she laughed. She had never had anything taken from her by force since her childhood and it was an astonishing experience. Also, she had not dreamed that Benis was so strong. It hadn't been at all difficult. And this in spite of the fact that she had clung to the substituted photo-graph ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... the foot of the hill, an expanse of snow stretched across the line of descent. This being loose and soft, we entered upon it without fear; but on reaching the middle of it, we came to a surface of solid ice, perhaps a hundred yards across, over which we launched with astonishing velocity, but happily escaped without injury. The men whom we left below, viewed this latter ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... Meadows, "O melancholy! the sink of all vice and depravity. Streets without light! Houses without air! Neighbourhood without society! Talkers without listeners!—'Tis astonishing any rational being can endure to be ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... parishes, a half million population. Its growth was slow until after the American Revolution, and it began the present century with about eight hundred thousand people. The past seventy years have witnessed giant strides, and it has made astonishing progress in the elegance of its parks and new streets and the growth of adornments and improvements of all kinds. London has become, in fact, a ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... quite unjust. Stanton, in order to keep politicians and officers in their places, was accustomed to bite off the noses of all comers. Lincoln, on the contrary, would talk to all sorts of people with a readiness which was sometimes astonishing, but there was a good deal of method in this—he learnt something from these people all the time—and he certainly had a very great power of keeping his own counsel when he chose. In any case, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... "Astonishing as the statement may appear," says the Denver News, "it is nevertheless a fact that there are here, within the borders of Colorado, the wealth in coal of two or even three States like Pennsylvania. For the vast trans-Missouri country, eastward, even to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... a thousand with it, I reckon!" was the astonishing declaration of the finder, which remark caused every one to immediately ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... fine, effectually preventing falling or turning grey, and for restoring its natural colour without the use of dye. The rich glossy appearance it imparts is the admiration of every person. Thousands have experienced its astonishing efficacy. Bottles 2s. 6d.; double size, 4s. 6d.; 7s. 6d. equal to 4 small; 11s. to 6 small; 21s. to 13 small. The most perfect beautifier ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... to account for the strange and shockingly rude language of Ashby, which must be as astonishing to the reader as it was to Harry, it will be necessary to go ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille

... shearing is over on the big stations. Tom—steady-going old Tom—clearing or fencing or dam-sinking up-country, hides his tools in the scrub and gets his horse and rides home. Aunt Emma (to everyone's joy) has arrived from Sydney with presents (astonishing bargains in frocks, etc.) and marvellous descriptions ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... invent it?" she exclaimed bitterly "And what is there astonishing in it? What right have you to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... I tasted at Mostar, appeared to be sound, and gave promise of becoming drinkable after some months' keeping. The vine disease, which showed itself some years back, has now disappeared; and the crops, which during six or seven seasons deteriorated to an astonishing degree, have now reassumed ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... doubt seem astonishing that there can be the least accord in the association, and that men bound together by no physical tie and who live at great distances from each other can communicate their ideas to each other, make plans of conduct, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... the United States Court downwards, and a bar which has already furnished one or two members to the United States Senate. Of course this has happened in the very far West but the change which has come over New York in the same length of time is no less astonishing if less picturesque. It is as unjust to compare the morals or manners of the American people of to-day with those of even three decades ago as it would be to compare the state of twentieth-century society in New Zealand with the old convict days. In one generation Japan has stepped from the days ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... mountain retreats are almost inaccessible to white men, while the Indians, apparently, play about in them like rabbits. The amount of physical endurance and the length of the journeys these red men can make, appear very astonishing to one not accustomed to them. The Apaches, as an Indian race, are not wanting in bravery, the best evidence of which statement is, that nearly all their warriors die in battle. Their country is the healthiest in America. Besides waging ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... Catalans, and seemed to vie with each other in producing disagreeable sounds. A burly merchant, however, with a red face, peaked chin, sharp eyes, and hooked nose, clearly bore off the palm; he conversed with astonishing eagerness on seemingly the most indifferent subjects, or rather on no subject at all; his voice would have sounded exactly like a coffee-mill but for a vile nasal twang: he poured forth his Catalan incessantly ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... our terms of art could not be applied to describe its architecture. It possesses no magnificence, and seems to have been inferior to the palaces of Lalita Patan and Bhatgang. All the three, however, are works of astonishing magnitude, considering the small extent of country subject to the princes by whom they were built. The great families of Gorkha have occupied the best houses of the Newars, or have built others in the same style, some of which are mansions that in appearance are befitting men ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton

... from Dresden, they had spent a part of nearly every day in each other's company. Louise had borne him no malice for what he had said to her; indeed, with the generous forgetfulness of offence, which was one of the most astonishing traits in her character, she met him, the day after, as though nothing had passed between them. By common consent, they never referred to the matter again; Maurice did not know to this day, whether or how she had answered the letter. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... charming season, expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucky with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip

... these subjects were admirably dealt with by disciples. In some cases Darwin's views led to the rapid growth of a new science, such as that of comparative embryology, and it would not have been possible for him to cope with and interpret the multitude of new and astonishing facts discovered, which changed the face of organic nature as viewed by biologists. By doing each day the work which seemed most necessary, and which he could best do, Darwin managed, in spite of his infirmity of constitution, to complete a larger body of original work, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... is affecting to us to think with what astonishing rapidity slavery is extending itself upon the Continent of North America, and how from year to year the slave population is increasing among you. Our spirits are oppressed with a sense of the magnitude of the evil; we tremble at the awful consequence which, in the justice and wisdom of Almighty ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... in kitchens and servants' halls, and all about the grounds as well, a multitude of work-people swarmed like an invading army of ants. Astonishing feats of preparation were consummated as if by legerdemain. And though the routine of the household proceeded marvellously without apparent hitch or friction, luncheon and dinner degenerated into affairs of emptiest formality. At the latter, indeed, Mrs. Gosnold presided over an oddly ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... said Austin. "I've been conscious of it for months, and lately I've had the proof. Indeed, I've had more than one. There are people all round us, only it isn't given to everybody to see them. And it isn't really very astonishing that it should be so, when one comes to think ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... study, he and Robert, and smoked their fill. The study was an astonishing medley. Books, natural history specimens, a half-written sermon, fishing-rods, cricket-bats, a huge medicine cupboard—all the main elements of Elsmere's new existence were represented there. In the drawing-room with his wife and his sister-in-law ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "Thank you!" came out, grudgingly. How astonishing that she should thank Paul Van Vreck, the monster of wickedness and secrecy she had pictured, for "sparing" her husband—her husband whom he called loyal, true, and honest; whom she had called in ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... property. The other type of donkey generally indulged in what were known as Furfys or Beachograms. Furfy originated in Broadmeadows, Victoria; the second title was born in the Peninsula. The least breath of rumour ran from mouth to mouth in the most astonishing way. Talk about a Bush Telegraph! It is a tortoise in its movements compared with a Beachogram. The number of times that Achi Baba fell cannot be accurately stated but it was twice a day at the least. A man came in to be dressed on ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... imagine ruinous cathedrals and castles; these we had in every position, and of every form. (I myself often thought of Windsor Castle, and the many hoary-headed old castles of England.) It will not be astonishing that an ignorant and superstitious people should associate these with something supernatural. That is the fact; some particular demon inhabits each. The cause of the appearance is the geological structure. In the distance there is a hill more picturesque ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... that blow, and they had sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were all men MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He did not argue. He accepted their word. It was an astonishing experience for the trolling fleet. They had never found a buyer willing to make good a loss of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... short way to a string course some way below the windows, leaving a great expanse of cliff-like wall. At the bottom are the confessional doors, so small that they add greatly to the scale, and above them tall narrow niches and their canopies. But the nave piers are the most astonishing part of the whole building. Not more than three feet thick, they rise up to a height of nearly seventy feet to support a great stone vault. Four only of the six stand clear from floor to roof, for the two western are embedded ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... his grandson, it was more than apparent that he expected the young man to be enriched liberally by his enemy. It was to preclude any possible chance of the mingling of his fortune with the smallest portion of Edwin P. Brewster's that James Sedgwick, on his deathbed, put his hand to this astonishing instrument. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... audacity of the soldiers. He it is who planted the seeds of evils which sprang up afterward: he it is who has proved the common bane not only of us, but also of practically the whole world, as, indeed, Heaven rather plainly indicated. When, that is to say, he proposed those astonishing laws, the whole air was filled with thunder and lightning. Yet this accursed wretch paid no attention to them, though he claims to be a soothsayer, but filled not only the city but the whole world with the evils and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... curious how the smallest incident, the most unimportant circumstance, will recall old friends and old associations. An old gentleman, who is noted far and near for his prodigious memory of dates and events, once told me that his memory, so astonishing to his friends and acquaintances, consisted not so much in remembering names and dates and facts, as in associating each of these with some special group of facts and events; so that he always had at command a series of associations ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... preachers into artists. They forgot to talk about moral lessons. All congratulated the good Aesculapius on his choice of the medical profession as a career and his luck in beholding a spectacle such as this; especially when he added, with glowing eloquence, that it was astonishing how so small an insect, a mere mosquito, should be able to produce an eruption of this magnitude and in colours, moreover, which would have made Titian or Peter Paul Rubens ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... hours more. In eight days, under a pursuance of this treatment, she entirely recovered from her fits, and with them ceased her extraordinary powers. But, during these eight days, her powers manifested a still greater extension; she foretold what was going to happen to her; she discussed, with astonishing subtlety, questions of mental philosophy and physiology; she caught what those around her meant to say, before they expressed their wishes, and either did what they desired, or begged that they would not ask her to do what was beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... trade and communication with the interior, from this position, are at the king's pleasure, and he opens and shuts them by his mandate. The Foolahs are tall, well-limbed, robust and courageous, grave in their deportment, are well acquainted with commerce, and travel over an astonishing space of the country. Their religion is a mixture of Mahomedanism, idolatry, and fetishism. One of their tenets, which inculcates the destruction of those they term infidels, is peculiarly friendly to slavery, and as the greater ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... the coast run are astonishing," said one of Heideck's staff. "They cross the Channel in their fishing-boats and slip by the warships. The man who brought the last English papers told me that he passed close by them to give the impression that there was nothing wrong. It needed considerable ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... permits of their being grown and successfully flowered without the least aid from artificial heat. Small beds and borders may be made brilliant with these flowers, and the number of bulbs that can be planted in a very limited space is somewhat astonishing to a novice. Unlike many other subjects, bulbs may be rather crowded without injury to ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... know about this region?" he returned. "I'll show you where I'm staying, some day." John thought of his fragrant couch of hay in the barn. "Isn't it astonishing what a gay old boy that mill has turned into? Look at it sidle around on those posts. It seems to say, 'Come in. The water's fine.' Why don't we accept the invitation? ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... an astonishing reserve of strength. Undoubtedly it was that marvelously merciful power which enables a person, for the love of others, to bear up under a cross, or even to fight death himself. As Young had his bright-eyed Indian boys and girls, who had learned Christianity from him, and whose future ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... ivory and ebony, for fragments of eighteen were found, and two others are known, making in all twenty tablets from this one tomb. The inscriptions on stone vases are, however, not more frequent than in previous reigns. This tomb appears to have been one of the most costly and sumptuous. The astonishing feature of this chamber is the granite pavement, such considerable use of granite being quite unknown until the step pyramid of Saqqara early in the third dynasty. At the south-west corner is a strange annex. A stairway leads down from the west and then turns ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... which was awarded to the Messrs. Stephenson and Booth accordingly. And further, to show that the engine had been working quite within its powers, Mr. Stephenson ordered it to be brought upon the ground and detached from all incumbrances, when, in making two trips, it was found to travel at the astonishing rate ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... of them seem to prefer living on the water rather than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy borders of the Danube are not very healthy, and it is not astonishing that men do not care to make their homes on these low lands. There are several aquatic towns between Pesth and the point at which the Drava (or Drau), a noble river, empties its waters into the Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of huts which appear to spring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... literature. The piece was to have made part of a book which, however, has never been published, and which was to have been entitled: "My Examinations." It was given to me by the Registrar himself, some time after the astonishing denouement to this case, and is unique ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... house of Messer Antonio the priest to the house of Messer Francesco Guinigi the soldier, and it was astonishing to find that in a very short time he manifested all that virtue and bearing which we are accustomed to associate with a true gentleman. In the first place he became an accomplished horseman, and could manage with ease the most fiery charger, and in all jousts and tournaments, although ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... success in holding on to a personal identity, through the entire change of matter that has been constantly taking place for so many years. I know very well there is here no part of the Herbert whose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it is an astonishing reproduction of him,—a material likeness; and now for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... method precise, firm, and safe." Raphael lacks the grandeur and the many-sided capacity of the great master by whom he was much influenced. Raphael "had a nature which converted every thing to beauty." He produced in a short life an astonishing number of works of unequal merit; but to all of them he imparted a peculiar charm, derived from "an instinct for beauty, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... my dear, if it isn't you! And, now I think of it, you were to come home to-day. Well, how oddly things fall out, to be sure, me getting into your carriage like that. And you'll never guess, Ruth, though for that matter there's nothing so very astonishing about it, as I told Mrs. Thursby, you'll never guess where I've ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... are recognizable. In the one, the individual sets himself up above the level of the rest of the world, and, marking out for himself a line of conduct, adheres to it with an astonishing degree of tenacity. For him the opinions of mankind in general are of no consequence. He is a law unto himself; what he says and does is said and done, not for the purpose of attracting attention or for obtaining notoriety, but because ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... among the Seminary lads. His zeal, like that of every other convert, was much greater than his knowledge, and left to his own devices he would certainly have gone far astray; but with the able assistance of Speug, with whom he took intimate counsel, it was astonishing what a variety could be infused into the sports. When every ordinary competition had been held, and champions had been declared (and this had never been done before in the history of the school) for the hundred yards, the quarter, and the mile (the ten miles down the Carse ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... ever heard of. Warren told me that they sat out there under the apple-tree and poured out their hearts till dawn. Talk about schoolgirls babbling all night. My comment on Warren's folly was a dose of quinine. It's astonishing how these savants, these intellectual giants, need taking care of like babies. Woman's mission will never cease as long as there are learned men in the world. They will sit in a draught and discuss some obscure law concerning the moons of Jupiter; but when the law ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... on the premises, and Joe did astonishing things. After being rescued he walked calmly back, through sheets of fire, to fetch the cash-box from the parlour. "Never afraid of anythin'—fire, water, gunpowder, sword, arrows—nothin'! No fear. Always brave. Ho! ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... unable, or perhaps not altogether anxious, to suppress their merriment at the tatterdemalion figure of the secretary. He passed them with as good an air of dignity as he could assume, and made directly for the boudoir. When he opened the door an astonishing and even menacing spectacle presented itself to his eyes; for he beheld the General and his wife and, of all people, Charlie Pendragon, closeted together and speaking with earnestness and gravity on some important ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... extraordinary relative who was travelling in foreign countries; she vaguely remembered him as a shadow crossing her love dream when he had spent a few days in the Cathedral before establishing himself in Barcelona, astonishing them all by the accounts of his travels and his foreign customs. Now she returned to find him aged, as sickly as herself, but influencing all who surrounded him by the mysterious power of his words, that were like heavenly music to those poor ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... It was astonishing how quickly the scene of enjoyment turned to one of alarm. Those of the girls who were active and eager to assist in making things safe, did not suffer so much from fright as did they who took time to watch the clouds. The first severe storm ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... once been in the workpeople's barracks. There, she was told, it was damp; there were bugs, debauchery, anarchy. It was an astonishing thing: a thousand roubles were spent annually on keeping the barracks in good order, yet, if she were to believe the anonymous letters, the condition of the workpeople was growing worse and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... great consolation in Charley's rapid progress towards health. He was gaining with astonishing rapidity and bid fair to be completely ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... landing, we believed this other island to be uninhabited, as we saw no people on its coast at our arrival; but on walking along the beach, we noticed the prints of human feet of such uncommon magnitude, that if the rest of the body were of similar proportions, the natives must be of astonishing size. We at length noticed a path which led into the country, which nine of us determined to pursue, that we might explore the island, as we imagined it was of small size, and could not consequently have many inhabitants. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... attempt at the mechanical repetition of a former triumph. It is by no means improbable, at any rate, that the dead ass of Nampont owes its presence in the Sentimental Journey to the reception met with by the live ass of Lyons in the seventh volume of Tristram Shandy. And yet what an astonishing ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... entirely ejected while we were there. Occasionally an explosion was heard like the bursting of heavy guns behind an embankment, and causing the earth to tremble for a mile around. The distance to which this mud had been thrown is truly astonishing. The ground and falling trees near by were splashed at a horizontal distance of 200 feet. The trees below were either broken down or their branches festooned with dry mud, which appeared in the tops of the trees growing on the side hill from ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... returned from Bodega Central with a half ounce of quinine. He had made the trip with astonishing celerity, and had arrived at the riverine town just as a large steamer was docking. The purser supplied him with the drug, and he immediately started ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... scud, as sailors call it.' The Milky Way is like sand, not strewed evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark intervals, and all consisting of stars of the fourteenth, sixteenth, twentieth magnitudes down to nebulosity, in a most astonishing manner. After an interval of comparative poverty, the same phenomenon, and even more remarkable, I cannot say it is nebulous, it is all resolved, but the stars are inconceivably numerous and minute; ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... its visible spiritual Head and Sovereign, has no real power. It imagines it has; but let it make any decided step to ensnare the liberties of the people at large, and the result would be somewhat astonishing! Personally—" and he smiled gravely—"I have often thought that my own country would be very much benefited by a couple of years existence under an autocrat—an autocrat like Cromwell, for example. A man strong and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... pillars, they came to a great bay called the Western Horn, in which was an island where they could find or see nothing by day-light but woods, and yet in the night they observed many fires, and heard an incredible and astonishing noise of drums and trumpets; whence they concluded that a ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... transferred the liquid so prepared to the 6 litre flask arranged over the mercury. By evening a tolerably active fermentation had begun to manifest itself. On the 24th this fermentation was proceeding with astonishing rapidity, which continued during the 25th and 26th. During the evening of the 26th it slackened, and on the 27th all signs of fermentation had ceased. This was not, as might be supposed, a sudden stoppage ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... "It is certainly very astonishing that he does not come home," continued the young wife, excusing to Zilah the absence of her Paul. "He often breakfasts, however, in the city, at Brebant's. It seems that it is necessary for him to do so. You see, at the restaurant he talks and hears news. He couldn't learn ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... startling news that the "Poop" had eaten too much alfalfa and was all "swellit oop," and, moreover, he had "stealit it." I don't know which is the more astonishing, that the Pope has stolen alfalfa, or that he ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... beginning of the discussions the senatorial party and even Pompeius himself had declared that they would be satisfied, and showed himself ready to remain in a private position from his election to the consulate down to his entering on office. Whether Caesar was in earnest with these astonishing concessions and had confidence that he should be able to carry through his game against Pompeius even after granting so much, or whether he reckoned that those on the other side had already gone too far to find ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... already attained gigantic proportions and mature development. Its triumphs are on every sea, and on many waters never before traversed by the agency of steam. The vessels already afloat are numerically a trifle compared with those in contemplation; and perhaps the most astonishing feature of all, is the almost infinite number of new channels of trade they have opened, and are opening up. Ten years ago, one-half the vessels plying on the Clyde were built of timber, and all the larger ones, with a few solitary exceptions: at the present hour, one could ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... France, sure of dying in the embrace. And now, what means have you of guarding against this coming evil, upon which the future happiness or misery of every Englishman depends? Have you a single ally in the whole world? Is there a vulnerable point in the French empire where the astonishing resources of that people can be attracted and employed? Have you a ministry wise enough to comprehend the danger, manly enough to believe unpleasant intelligence, honest enough to state their apprehensions at the ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... the astonishing discovery made by Columbus in 1591, soon spread throughout Europe; and only four years afterwards, or in 1595, a patent was granted by Henry VII. to John Cabot, or Giovani Cabota, a Venetian citizen, then resident in England, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... "These English frauleins are so often consumptive," commented a third. "It is astonishing to remark how many come to ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... happens to come near their nests during the time of incubation, it vociferates most strenuously against the intrusion, while its feathers expand, its eyes sparkle with rage, and it darts from branch to branch with the most astonishing rapidity. It is frequently to be seen near our houses in the winter, and in the most severe and inclement weather they will tend, by their chirping and gambols, to amuse and enliven our minds, while at the same time they afford us ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... scarcely extinguished when he rose to a stooping position, and applied the pole with all the vigor at his command. It was astonishing to see the speed he was able to force out of the unwieldy structure. The foam actually curled away from the bow, and in a few seconds it ran plump against the ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... mansion at Kensington, of which I have spoken, furnished with books, pictures, and rare things. Here he could, Maecenas-like, entertain his literary friends of all degrees, with a vast number of other friends and acquaintances, notable in their walks of life. It is astonishing what a circle he had gathered round him, and how intimate he was with all: political men such as Brougham, Guizot, Gladstone, Forster, Cornwall Lewis (Disraeli he abhorred as much as his friend of Chelsea did, who once asked me, "What is there new about our Jew Premier?"): ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... ways put his instrument, he expects he shall be able with sufficient certainty, through all the greatest variety of seasons and the most irregular motions of the sea, to keep time constantly, without the variation of so much as three seconds in a week,—a degree of exactness that is astonishing and even stupendous, considering the immense number of difficulties, and those of very different sorts, which the author of these inventions must have had to encounter and ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... grand sight. My father and I had left the baggage, which remained by the sea, and had ridden up on to a sand hill, from which we had a view of the whole of the battleground. It was astonishing to see the line of English infantry advancing, under that tremendous fire, against the rising ground occupied by the dense ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... again. Now, in proof of this great, and to you important truth, let me show you a thing. Do you see this torch," (taking it down), "and that straw?" (lifting up a handful), "Well, you have no idea what an astonishing result will follow the application of the former ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... from the printing office of the paper. In the third number there is in the news department an article on the marvellous news from Europe, in which the editors speak of the scientific progress of the Europeans, and the astonishing discoveries which daily occur among them. In this connection they mention a singular experiment tried by a geologist of Stockholm. This savant having found a frog living after having been six or seven years in the ground, without air or food, concluded that men might live in that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... colonizing society. Cockneys are to be found at every turn, flaunting their banners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the world with protuberant pride that they are the veritable backwoodsmen,—rather doing it, rather astonishing the natives, they think. And so they are. One squad of such neophytes might be entertaining; but when every square mile echoes with their hails, lost, poor babes, within a furlong of their camps, and when the woods become dim and the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the subtle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... adopted the language which properly belongs to a different Evangelist. That to a very limited extent this may have occasionally taken place, I am not concerned to deny: but it would argue incredible inattention to what he was professing to copy, on the one hand,—astonishing familiarity with what he was not professing to copy, on the other,—that a scribe should have been capable of offending largely in this way. But in fact a moderate acquaintance with the subject is enough to convince any thoughtful person that the corruptions in MSS. which have resulted from ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... 'This is astonishing! Peak, you're a terrible fellow! Heaven forbid that I should ever be at your mercy! Yes, you are quite right,' he continued, despondently. 'But that was no real unfaithfulness. I don't quite know how to explain ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... she wore. She sang "Casta Diva," a duo with Belletti, from Rossini's "Il Turco in Italia," and the Trio Concertante, with two flutes, from Meyerbeer's "Feldlager in Schliesen," of which Moscheles had said that "it was, perhaps, the most astonishing piece of bravura singing which could possibly be heard." These pieces, with two Swedish national songs, were received with the loudest salvos of applause. The proceeds of this first concert were twenty-six thousand dollars, of which Jenny Lind gave her share to the charitable institutions of New ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris

... knew that the resulting number of miles is something so immense as to be altogether beyond human conception. I knew also that the number of stars, besides those few thousands which I saw, had to be numbered in hundreds of millions. All this was astonishing, and the knowledge of it filled me with wonder at the immensity of the Starry Universe. But it was not the mere magnitude of this world that impressed me. What stirred me was the Presence, subtly felt, of some mighty all-pervading ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... the place for skaters, after all. Where else can nearly every boy and girl perform feats on the ice that would attract a crowd if seen on Central Park? Look at Ben! I did not see him before. He is really astonishing the natives; no easy thing to do in the Netherlands. Save your strength, Ben, you will need it soon. Now other boys are trying! Ben is surpassed already. Such jumping, such poising, such spinning, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... begun his great labor of love, an astonishing thing happened to him. He had a choice of two places offered him as general utility boy in a grocery. Once he would have told Mr. Lightenhome, and asked his advice as to which offer he should take, but he was now carrying his own burdens. He considered carefully, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... the Ork. "I have flown pretty much all over the world, trying to find my home, and it is astonishing how many little countries there are, hidden away in the cracks and corners of this big globe of Earth. If one travels, he may find some new country at every turn, and a good many of them have never yet been put upon ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... herself to make further objection, and the keys were brought. It was astonishing what a number of keys Mrs. Mumpson possessed, and she was not long in finding those which would open the ordinary locks thought by Holcroft ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... may enable us to understand the much discussed question of programme music. It may also help us to recognize the astonishing advance we have made in the art; an advance, which, strange to say, consists in successively throwing off all the trammels and conventionalities of what is generally considered artificial, and the striking development of an art which, with all its astounding wealth of exterior ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... brief interview with her brother over, reflection assured her, knowing all she did, that Stanley's wooing would prosper, and so this cause of quarrel had really nothing in it; no, nothing but a display of his temper and morals—not very astonishing, after all—and, like an ugly picture or a dreadful dream, in no way to affect her after-life, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... rode along at a foot-pace, with Piet respectfully walking in my rear, the whole way was lined on either side by thousands of men, women, and children, who had turned out for the express purpose of beholding such an astonishing spectacle, this, it appeared, being rendered all the more extraordinary by the fact that horses were unknown to the Mashonas, and not one of them, save the half-dozen or so elders above-mentioned, had ever so much as ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and decisive evidence of his accomplice. Houseman declared that on the day of the murder Clarke, Aram, and himself were in company, and were occupied in disposing of the property which they had obtained; that Aram proposed ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... delegates of the interested Governments. This may sound rather rash on the part of the Magyars, since a plebiscite, no matter how it was arranged and controlled, would presumably detach a good many jewels from the crown of St. Stephen, and it was not astonishing that Count Apponyi and his friends proposed that the Magyars should be safeguarded by further Commissions which, if requisite, would override the results of the voting. These results would indeed, as between the Magyars and the Yugoslavs, have given our Allies a larger dominion ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... plays with her doll. The naturalness of the composition, the loveliness of the complete effect, the light, free' security of the execution, the sense it gives us as of assimilated secrets and of instinct and knowledge playing together—all this makes the picture as astonishing a work on the part of a young man of twenty-six as the portrait of 1881 was astonishing on the part of a ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... not in the habit of making up her mind to things she don't like. Do you know," she added, looking around with a half smile, as if she took pleasure in astonishing him, "that Aunt Keswick is going to try ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... Julie, unaffected—so astonishing was the news—by her father's unusual sternness. "Oh, Mother! Oh, Mark! Oh, you lucky thing! When is ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... her gaze away from the astonishing sight on which it had been fixed, and following Alexia's glance, took a keen look over at the young Whitneys. "Oh! oh! I must go to them," she cried remorsefully. "Tell Mr. Alstyne, please, when he comes back, where I am," and without another word she dashed back of some gaily dressed ladies ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... is astonishing to compare your appearance and manners with your tastes. You look such a gentleman, as dear Lady Cumnor ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... liberty and the dread of losing it again efface from the memory all the obligations in the world. And to prove the truth of what he said, he told us briefly what had happened to a certain Christian gentleman almost at that very time, the strangest case that had ever occurred even there, where astonishing and marvellous things are happening every instant. In short, he ended by saying that what could and ought to be done was to give the money intended for the ransom of one of us Christians to him, so that he might with it buy a vessel there in Algiers under the pretence of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism; whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion! She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence—her accusation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... loss with fortitude Its humility, seemed sufficiently ironical Not upon words but upon actions Perfection of insolence Was it astonishing that murder was more common ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... having a glorious time at Miss Cartan's supper," mused Mrs. Dennison. "How she shines, doesn't she, George? And when you think of her beginnings there on that Wisconsin farm, isn't it astonishing?" ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... "Well, it's astonishing how many things people can live without," said Fleda, rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... no longer your host. We meet here on equal terms. I have an offer to make to you which I think you will find astonishing. The fact is, her Highness is anxious to run no risk of any resurrection of a certain scandal. She has commissioned me to beg your acceptance—you and your friend—of these," he laid down two separate pieces of paper upon the table. "She wishes to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of these things, nor anything else remarkable, happened in the real story, which, as it is literally true, though told with certain necessary disguises, I prefer to keep to as closely as I can. Such astonishing bits of "luck" do not happen in real life, or happen so rarely that one inclines, at least, to believe very little in either good or ill fortune, as a matter of chance. There is always something at the back of it which ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... escaped punishment for his activity on behalf of Holcroft and the twelve reformers, because his activity was successful. He escaped prosecution for Political Justice because it was a learned book, addressed to educated readers, and issued at the astonishing price of three guineas. The propriety of prosecuting him was considered by the Privy Council; and Pitt is said to have dismissed the suggestion with the remark that "a three guinea book could never do much harm among those who had not three shillings ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... fire in the cut wheat. He stood with flames licking at his boots. It was astonishing how tenacious the fire appeared, how it crept along, eating up the mowed wheat. All the men that could be spared there were unable to check it and keep it out of the standing grain. When it reached this line it lifted a blaze, flamed and roared, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... into slightly better things. It is possible enough that the creed of the future may, after all, be a compromise, admitting some elements of higher truth, but attracting the popular mind by concessions to superstition and ignorance. We can hardly hope to get rid of the rooted errors which have so astonishing a vitality. But we should desire, and, so far as in us lies, endeavour to secure the presence of the largest possible element of genuine and reasoned conviction in the faith of our own and the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... extensive alterations and decorations, had still a sufficient number of apartments in thorough repair and handsomely enough furnished, to satisfy the taste of a more fastidious person than our ex-Light Dragoon. It was really astonishing the number of visitors he had to receive, and cards and notes of invitation were showered upon him from people whose very existence he had previously never heard of, connections by marriage of the past generation crowded upon him, mothers with marriageable daughters invited him ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... with surprise; "and yet (with another look at the boy), it is astonishing how long family likenesses last. I was a great favourite with all the Duc's children. Do you know, I must trouble you for some more veal, it is so very good, and I am ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of Tonga are clearly far superior to those of Otaheite. The French travellers could not sufficiently admire the astonishing order in which the plantations of yams and bananas were kept, the excessive neatness of their dwellings, and the beauty of the garden-plots. They even knew something of the art of fortification, as D'Urville ascertained by an inspection of the fortified village of Hifo, defended with stout palisades, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... into sight-seeing is a visit to the temple of Luxor, which faces the river just five minutes' walk along the street from the hotel. This is the very first Egyptian temple we have examined and it is astonishing how much we can learn from it. That mighty row of columns, larger and higher than any cathedral pillars you have ever seen, makes us feel like midgets. Standing close together the columns spring right into the clear sky, as there is no roof ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in higher occasions of life, where truth cannot for a moment be trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the duties which are owing to the great mass of individuals, which we call our country; ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... friend, Dr. D. J. Stansbury, a graduate of the Eclectic Medical College of New York, is giving astonishing demonstrations on the Pacific coast. When a pair of closed slates is brought, he barely touches them, and the spirit writing begins. Sometimes the slates are held on the head or shoulders of the visitor. At one of his seances at Oakland, it is said that he held the slates for thirty-five ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c. (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c. 870. unlimited &c. (infinite) 105; unapproachable, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, unspeakable, inexpressible, beyond expression, fabulous. undiminished, unabated, unreduced[obs3], unrestricted. absolute, positive, stark, decided, unequivocal, essential, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... sometimes marching or dancing in circles, sometimes quite freely "expressing" whatever feeling the music calls forth in them. The stress is laid on listening; if you see a picture you reproduce it, if the music makes you think of trees or wind, thunder or goblins, you become what you think of. It is astonishing to see how little children learn in this way to care for music by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvorak, Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven. The music is of course selected with skill, and care is taken that the "expression" shall not make the children foolishly self-conscious. Emphasis is always placed ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... local force was at his desk, engaged in his customary morning duties. Fred lost no time in getting down to facts, and from what the other boys, listening close by, heard him say, his astonishing communication must have created quite a ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... absolutely perfect; and if some of them be abhorrent to our idea of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such vast numbers for one single act, and with the great majority slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars; and at other such cases. The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... highest state of improvement. Even the sides of the most barren mountains have been rendered fertile, by being divided into terraces, like steps rising one above another, upon which soil has been accumulated with astonishing labour. A sight of this territory can alone convey any adequate idea of its surprising produce; it is truly the Eden of the East, rejoicing in the abundance of its wealth. The effect of this upon the people was strikingly portrayed in their countenances. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... interest of the unbroken line of its valorous and lovable princes, and in the precious and enchanting race mixture of its brave, laughter-loving people, its supreme historical interest lies in its little recorded and astonishing political significance among the ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven

... and two other similar stanzas with astonishing glibness to the amazement of his hearers. His first public appearance with the ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... should be made to the phenomena of radioactivity, whether excited by the electric discharge in vacuum tubes, foreshadowed in part by Sir Wm. Crookes and G. G. Stokes, and later by A. Schuster and others, but first fully developed with astonishing results including the experimental discovery of the free electron by J. J. Thomson, or the correlated phenomena occurring spontaneously in radio-active bodies as discovered by H. Becquerel and by M. and Mme Curie, and investigated ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... sounded, as he spoke them, lame enough and trivial in the face of Michel's passionate lament. But they had an astonishing effect upon the guide. The flow of words stopped at once, he looked at his young patron almost whimsically and a little ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... he took out was a tin trumpet; just such a one as Peter had himself seen in a shop-window the day before. This he put into the stocking, giving a chuckle and trying it to see if it were good; it sounded splendidly. Then came a sled. It was astonishing how it ever came out of Santa Klaus' pocket and still more astonishing how it could get into the stocking. Yet surely Peter saw it enter, and that very easily. After the sled came a monkey-jack. Before he put it in Santa ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... FROST-WEED (H. majus), whose showy flowers appear in clusters at the hoary stein's summit, in June and July, also bears them. Often this ice formation assumes exquisite feathery, whimsical forms, bursting the bark asunder where an astonishing quantity of sap gushes forth and freezes. Indeed, so much sap sometimes goes to the making of this crystal flower, that it would seem as if an extra reservoir in the soil must pump some up to supply it ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Cabinet; but having lately held higher situations and having acquired more confidence, and the great men having been removed from the House of Commons by death or promotion, he has launched forth, and with astonishing success. Lord Granville told me he had always thought Palmerston was capable of more than he did, and had told Canning so, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... ancient Babylonia from other quarters. For its information about that ancient land the world was formerly dependent on the scanty notices of Greek and Latin writers, but within the last half-century astonishing new sources of information have been opened up. Explorations carried on by scholars of many lands have made us acquainted with Babylonian and Assyrian temples and palaces, and with many a great royal inscription. Great libraries, made of brick tablets, have been discovered ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... and historical investigations are of great value for all those peoples whose ancient state has differed widely from their present condition, and who have the good or evil fortune to possess a history. But on taking a broad survey of the world, it is astonishing how few nations present either condition. Respecting five-sixths of the persistent modifications of mankind, history and archaeology are absolutely silent. For half the rest, they might as well be silent for ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... most astonishing creature, to adore people and then not want to see them again. What ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... God. In one of his psalms, he says, "When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that thou visitest him!" It was astonishing to David, that God, who was so infinitely superior to man, and who had given such proofs of his power and greatness in the creation of the heavens, should condescend to notice him, to provide for his minutest wants, and to protect him from danger. I suppose ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... still wider view of the literary career of Disraeli, we are bound to perceive that the real source of the interest which his brilliant books continue to possess is the evidence their pages reveal of the astonishing personal genius of the man. Do what we will, we find ourselves looking beyond Contarini Fleming and Sidonia and Vivian Grey to the adventurous Jew who, by dint of infinite resolution and an energy which never slept, conquered all the prejudices of convention, and trod English society beneath his ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... ugly cut from the carving-knife in an affair with a goose of iron constitution in which I came off second best. I at once adjourned with Dr. Benjamin to his small office, and put myself in his hands. It was astonishing to see what a little experience of miscellaneous practice had done for him. He did not ask me anymore questions about my hereditary predispositions on the paternal and maternal sides. He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the laryngoscope. He only strapped up my cut, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... capital story the other evening under the most astonishing circumstances. It was at a public meeting connected with a religious conference. A certain minister rose to address us. We knew from past experience that we should have a most suggestive and stimulating ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... of the emigrants to Canada in these enlightened days; so it is with the emigrants from old England, and from troubled Ireland, to the free and astonishing Union of the States of America and Texas, that conjoint luminary of the new ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... the Democratic National Convention, in July, 1868, the number of strangers present in the city was estimated at two hundred thousand. The amount of money brought into the city by these strangers is astonishing. Millions are spent by them annually during ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... scale so low that they had practically no music of their own. They have therefore readily taken to western music. And it is astonishing to hear how well they sing our western tunes, and even render solos and quartettes at public European functions in a way that calls forth hearty encores. It is verily the birth of a nation in a day. So that in this land of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... figures. The work is curious, and I am inclined to see in it a surviving imitation of the ancient feather-work for which the ancient Tarascans were famous. From Parracho our road led through Aranza to Cheran. Just beyond Aranza we passed over the astonishing wash from some summer torrent. During the wet season a single rain may fill the gorges, sheet the mountain slopes with water, tear great trees from their hold, break off mighty rock fragments and carry them onward, like wooden blocks, with hundreds of tons of finer gravel. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... faith, who fancy always that besides sowing and reaping honestly, you must covet, and cheat, and lie, and break God's laws instead of obeying them; or else, forsooth, you cannot earn your living? To see that the signs of God's Kingdom are not astonishing convulsions, terrible catastrophes and disorders: but order, and peace, and usefulness, in creatures which are happy, because they live according to the law which God has given them, and do their duty—that duty, of which the great poet of ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... were now in the hands of a young man of twenty-six years of age; and it was not astonishing that he should be, at first, frightened at the ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... at once the delight and the despair of other nations and future times. All this, too, came to pass in Shakespeare! and, which is more, the process ended with him! It is indeed a singular phenomenon, and altogether the most astonishing that the human ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... the heathen temples and the Christian churches" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," fourth century, p. 105). Says Dulaure: "These two Fathers [Justin and Tertullian] are in no fashion embarrassed by this astonishing resemblance; they both say that the devil, knowing beforehand of the establishment of Christianity, and of the ceremonies of this religion, inspired the Pagans to do the same, so as to rival God and injure Christian worship" ("Histoire Abregee de Differens ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... be sure. I have told you the name. At all events, you'd have found it out some day or other. In fact, it's an astonishing thing that, since the time—But you women are so vain! The idea that a man can deceive you is the last idea to come into your head. Well, yes, Sidonie's the one who has got it all out of him—with her husband's consent, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... and a bar which has already furnished one or two members to the United States Senate. Of course this has happened in the very far West but the change which has come over New York in the same length of time is no less astonishing if less picturesque. It is as unjust to compare the morals or manners of the American people of to-day with those of even three decades ago as it would be to compare the state of twentieth-century society in New Zealand with the old convict days. In one generation Japan ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... control, the whole people were forced into a common outward form, and to a remarkable extent, into the same ways of thinking. The affinities within were really aided by the repulsions without, and when finally freed from slavery, for an ignorant and inexperienced people, they presented an astonishing spectacle of unity. Socially, politically and religiously, their power to work together showed itself little less than marvellous. The Afro-American, developing from this slave base, now directs great ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... Doubtless there was a guest missing whom she did not mention. It was a case of waiting. But a minute or two later the company noticed in their midst a tall gentleman with a fine face and a beautiful white beard. The most astonishing thing about it was that nobody had seen him come in; indeed, he must have slipped into the little drawing room through the bedroom door, which had remained ajar. Silence reigned, broken only by a sound of whispering. The Count de Vandeuvres ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all. Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time he is said to have performed a long ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Light which passed before their eyes. To the profoundest darkness, accompanied with illusions and horrid phantoms, succeeded the most brilliant light, whose splendor blazed round the statue of the Goddess. The candidate, says Dion Chrysostomus, passed into a mysterious temple, of astonishing magnitude and beauty, where were exhibited to him many mystic scenes; where his ears were stunned with many voices; and where Darkness and Light successively passed before him. And Themistius in like manner describes the Initiate, when about to enter ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... pad fell from Mr. Ransom's hands. He stared at the girl who had made this astonishing statement, and his ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... contemporary, Albert Cuyp, were sold for thirty florins! and no higher price was paid for his works before the middle of the eighteenth century. A few years ago his picture, called "Morning Light," was sold at a public sale in London for twenty-five thousand dollars. How astonishing that a celebrated artist like Honthorst, who painted in Utrecht when Cuyp painted in Dort, should have valued a portrait by Anna Maria Schurmann at the price of thirty-three works by Cuyp! Such facts as these suggest a question regarding ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... search of the fresh grass which immediately succeeds to the burning: on their way they are often insulated on a large cake or mass of ice, which floats down the river: the Indians now select the most favourable points for attack, and as the buffaloe approaches dart with astonishing agility across the trembling ice, sometimes pressing lightly a cake of not more than two feet square: the animal is of course unsteady, and his footsteps insecure on this new element, so that he can make but little resistance, ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... had taken the war trail was astonishing news. For one hundred years they had held the hand of the white man. Their proudest boast said: "The Nez Perces have never shed ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... darted hither and thither about the stage to catch them. Then he was back at the table again amidst a storm of crockeryware, cutlery, and provisions, and each article as it descended was caught with an astonishing dexterity and set in its proper place with a swift exactness which looked like magic. The artist had a perfect aplomb, and he put off the catching of each article till the last fraction of the inevitable second, so that he seemed secure in perfect triumph ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... Something lay there, and this something, while commonplace in itself, was enough out of keeping with the place and hour to rouse my interest and awaken my conjectures. It was a lady's wrap so rich in quality and of such a festive appearance that it was astonishing to find it lying in a neglected state in this crumbling old house. Though I know little of the cost of women's garments, I do know the value of lace, and this garment was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... old-fashioned green shutters. That had been before Ruyler's day, but he knew the history of the neighborhood, and this man's interest in it. He was not surprised to hear Bisbee laugh aloud as Madame Delano, who stepped off the car with astonishing agility, waddled down the now respectable street. But she held her head majestically ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... fire on the premises, and Joe did astonishing things. After being rescued he walked calmly back, through sheets of fire, to fetch the cash-box from the parlour. "Never afraid of anythin'—fire, water, gunpowder, sword, arrows—nothin'! No fear. Always brave. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... are often invited into gay and fashionable circles, whom they amuse, if, by the information possessed by the parties, they are not cunning enough to deceive. They are well paid, and are thus encouraged in their iniquity by those who ought to know, and teach them better. But it is astonishing how many respectable people are led away with the artful flattery of such visitors. They forget that the Gipsy fortune-teller has often made herself acquainted with their connexions, business, and future prospects, and consider not that God commits not his secrets to the wicked ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb

... memory is that quality which is most easily developed, especially in young persons. It is also its most showy quality, and the temptation to give it an inordinate development is strong. The habit of getting things by rote, is easily acquired by practice. It is astonishing what masses of Scripture texts young children will get by heart, when under some special stimulus of reward or display. I have often refused to publish marvellous feats of this kind, not because I thought ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... of nature counteracting the historic abstraction. As a wonderful specimen of the way in which Shakspeare lives up to the very end of this play, read the last part of the concluding scene. And if you would feel the judgment as well as the genius of Shakspeare in your heart's core, compare this astonishing drama ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... failing, Renouard, basing his advice on the shortcomings of his bachelor establishment, had urged on the ladies the advisability of not going ashore in the middle of the night. Now he approached them in a constrained manner (it was astonishing the constraint that had reigned between him and his guests all through the passage) and renewed his arguments. No one ashore would dream of his bringing any visitors with him. Nobody would even think of coming off. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... and one end of them so fastened in the snow that they are firmly held. They are so slanted toward the fire, with the wind in the rear, that when roofed over with the big deerskin and a couple dropped each side it is astonishing how comfortably sheltered a few persons thus can be. The active Indians shook the dry snow off from some robes, and placing them as a floor Mr Ross and the boys were soon under a storm- tight roof and gazing into ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... understood, too, when they heard it. Indeed they asserted that they could but did not will to be able to do so, for then they could not will what they did will, namely, evil from enjoyment in the lust of it. I have often heard such astonishing things in the spiritual world. I am fully persuaded therefore that every man has liberty and rationality, and that every man can attain true liberty and rationality if he shuns evils as sins. But the adult ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... is more astonishing, than that it should be asserted in this assembly that we have no ill success to complain of. Might we not hope for success, if we have calculated the events of war, and made a suitable preparation? And how is this to be done, but by comparing our ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... more than that, sir. I regard him, indeed, as a most astonishing young man. The very manner in which he has pursued his studies while engaged in the harassing labors of a large wholesale business house of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... newspapers, but I also knew that valor feeds on action. Not that I had given orders to fire on the world in general. So, I confess, I was somewhat surprised, soon after the shout of approval which greeted my command, to hear the air rent by the astonishing reverberation of our Long Tom, which rolled like thunder all along the river-front, breaking into a thousand echoes ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... of eccentricity are recognizable. In the one, the individual sets himself up above the level of the rest of the world, and, marking out for himself a line of conduct, adheres to it with an astonishing degree of tenacity. For him the opinions of mankind in general are of no consequence. He is a law unto himself; what he says and does is said and done, not for the purpose of attracting attention or for obtaining ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... power in dreams seems to have a range and an intensity which does not exist when one is awake. I have not the slightest power, in waking life, of conceiving and visualising the astonishing landscapes which I see in dreams. I can recall actual scenes with great distinctness, but the glowing colour and the prodigious forms of my landscape visions are wholly beyond ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... beside her and looked. The photographs were indeed impressive. The sombre landscape, the pallid sky, and, winding as if for ever over hill and valley, the astonishing structure, like an infinite lonely consciousness. "I should like to ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... me what splendid place this is?" asked Effie, as soon as she could collect her wits after the first look at all these astonishing things. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... evidently mistook him) during the stirring combat so vividly described in the twenty-second chapter. Could he but have foreseen the future, what a different ending that engagement should have had! But again it was too late, and the author sprang behind the big easy chair with astonishing agility, and from that vantage ground endeavored ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... government itself, making it not only horrible, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of all mankind. In this humiliation and abjectness of guilt, he comes here not as a criminal on his defence, but as a vast fertile genius who has made astonishing discoveries in the art of government,—"Dicam insigne, recens, alio indictum ore"—who, by his flaming zeal and the prolific ardor and energy of his mind, has boldly dashed out of the common path, and served his country by new and untrodden ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... we came out of the Library, he made an astonishing rejoinder, and one which I cannot in the least account for: "South ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... attention to the subject of the terraces. He protests it is unfair to call the sinking of the sea his theory, for that he with care always speaks of mere change of level, and this is quite true; but the one section in which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink is so astonishing, that I believe it will with others, as with me, more than counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that you may think better of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... at the Centennial Exposition, I saw a marble bust—life size—which was a portrait of a lady of ancient Rome. There was only the head and neck, the hair was dressed very plainly, and it was astonishing how well that bust would have answered for the portrait of a lady of Thirty-fourth street, New York, or the wife of a gentleman in Springfield, Ohio. The head and face were just such a head and face as I had often seen, and the countenance even ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... when you were taken, I never expected to see either of you alive this morning, and yet here you are recovering, and I verily believe beyond further danger. Let me see your tongues. Well, well, well, this is really astonishing. You are both doing splendidly. Just be a little careful, and you are perfectly out of peril. Miss Arnold, you are worth all our nurses; and really I'm afraid all us ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw

... caught his breath, his eyes dilated, his fingers began to play against his palms. He had decided. And in that same instant, a change came over him—complete, satisfactory, astonishing. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... education equal to that of any man at the college, and she had to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to school, and it was noised that she had studied the languages. It was such an astonishing thing for girls at that time to have the advantages of education that I had absolutely to go to cotillon parties to let people see that I had ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... his chains. He next burst the iron band, and after a long time severed his leg fetters, but in such a way that he could put them on again and no one be any the wiser. Nothing is more common in the history of prisoners than this exploit, and nothing is more astonishing, yet we meet with the fact again and again in their memoirs and biographies. Trenck at any rate appears to have accomplished the feat without much difficulty, though he found it very hard, to get his hand back into his handcuffs. After he had disposed ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours. I squared and cubed long series of numbers, and by concentration and will carried on most astonishing geometric progressions. I even dallied with the squaring of the circle . . . until I found myself beginning to believe that that possibility could be accomplished. Whereupon, realizing that there, too, lay madness, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... appearance of Garrick at the theatre of Drury Lane, to which he, by his astonishing powers, brought all the world, while Mr. Rich was playing his pantomimes at Covent Garden to empty benches, he and Mr. Garrick happened to meet one morning at the Bedford coffee-house. Having fallen into conversation, Garrick asked ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... and its glorification consist? What kind of body shall the glorified body be? The soul and spirit of CHRIST, what are they? and are they the same as ours? What and where is Paradise?' Through a hundred and fourteen large quarto pages Behmen's astonishing answers to the forty questions run; after which he adds this: 'Thus, my beloved friend, we have set down, according to our gifts, a round answer to your questions, and we exhort you as a brother not to despise us. For we are not born ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... During his absence on this matter the assembly debated "Whether the Lutherans who desired it, might be admitted into communion with the Reformed Churches of France at the Lord's Table.'' It was decided in the affirmative previous to his return; but he approved with astonishing eloquence, and thereafter was ever in the front rank in maintaining intercommunication between all churches holding the main doctrines of the Reformation. P. Bayle recounts the title-pages of no fewer than thirty-two books of which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... lady of the house; and then, turning in wrath on the young man, "From what rank in life are you sprung?" she demanded. "You have the exterior of a gentleman; but from the astonishing evidences before me, I should say you can only be a green-grocer's man. Pray, gather up your vegetables, and let me see no more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... village of Shanklin is as romantic as any of the lovers of nature can desire. The salubrity of the atmosphere and the proximity of the village to the sea may account for the extraordinary growth of the myrtle-tree, which attains here an astonishing height. Virgil tells us this plant is best cultivated on the sea side; but every maritime situation is not congenial, unless a protection is afforded ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various

... desserts—dulcia—confections in which the ancients were experts. Bakery, too, even the plainest kind, is conspicuously absent in the Apician books. The latter two trades being particularly well developed, were departmentalized to an astonishing degree in ancient Greece and Rome. These indispensable books are simply wanting in our book if it be but a collection of Greek monographs. Roman culture and refinement of living, commencing about 200-250 years before our era was under the complete rule of Hellas. Greek influence included ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... doctor came and she gave her husband a draught, she took a spoonful herself. Poulain himself, the only person who might have thrown light on the matter, inclined to believe that this was one of the unaccountable freaks of disease, one of the astonishing exceptions which make medicine so perilous a profession. And in truth, the little tailor's unwholesome life and unsanitary surroundings had unfortunately brought him to such a pass that the trace of copper-poisoning was like the last straw. Gossips and neighbors took it ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... than they had been in first youth; Watson's critical eye took note of it. The hair, touched lightly with grey, had receded slightly on the temples, and the more ample brow, heavily lined, gave a nobler shelter than of old to the still astonishing vivacity of the eyes. The carriage of the head, too, was prouder and more assured. Fenwick, indeed, as far as years went, was, as Watson knew, in the very prime of life. Nevertheless, there was in his aspect, as he sat there, a prophetic note of discouragement, of ebbing vitality ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... expected from her Indian origin—if she was often reminiscent in her manner, metre, form and expression, it only proves her a minor poet and not a Tennyson or a Browning. That she should have done what she did do, devotedly, with an astonishing charm and the delight of inspired labour, makes her life memorable, as it certainly made both life and work beautiful. The pain and suffering which attended the latter part of her life never found its way into her work save ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... leave this place without expressing his acknowledgements to the Matrons and Young Ladies who received him in so novel and grateful a manner at the Triumphal Arch in Trenton, for the exquisite sensations he experienced in that affecting scene. The astonishing contrast between his former and actual situation at the same spot, the elegant taste with which it was adorned for the present occasion, and the innocent appearance of the white-robed choir, who met him with the gratulatory song, have made such an impression on his remembrance ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... as the doctrine of divine right most undoubtedly is, it is still more astonishing, that when so many human hereditary rights had centered in this king, his son and heir king Charles the first should be told by those infamous judges, who pronounced his unparalleled sentence, that he was an elective ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... one may come," urged this most astonishing young woman. "Don't you see that—that I'm trusting you to help me? Won't ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... of your prosperity, you will regret the happy and peaceful life you led in the colony. At the moment you shall quit it, (but not forever,) a prodigy will appear in the air;—this will be the first harbinger of your astonishing destiny." ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... to us small enough, but it is of course no real index to the amount of capital which a wealthy eques might possess. Nothing is more astonishing in the history of the last century of the republic than the vast sums of money in the hands of individuals, and the enormous sums lent and borrowed in private by the men whose names are familiar to us as statesmen. It is told of Caesar that as a very young man he owed a sum equivalent to ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... to this point between Hector and Valerie, it is not astonishing that Valerie should have heard from Hector the secret of the intended marriage between the great sculptor Steinbock and Hortense Hulot. Between a lover on his promotion and a lady who hesitates long before becoming his mistress, there are contests, uttered or unexpressed, in which ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... preliminary maneuvers marched down High Street. Old Cush Woodberry and the other loafers at Horton's would come out on the platform in front of the store and review the troops. The interest those lazy fellows took in us was astonishing. Old Cush even volunteered one day to give us some instructions in tactics, but our gallant captain courteously declined. There were others, though, who did not admire us so much. The green-eyed monster reigned supreme over on ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... article for Restoring the Hair in Baldness, strengthening when weak and fine, effectually preventing falling or turning grey, and for restoring its natural colour without the use of dye. The rich glossy appearance it imparts is the admiration of every person. Thousands have experienced its astonishing efficacy. Bottles 2s. 6d.; double size, 4s. 6d.; 7s. 6d. equal to 4 small; 11s. to 6 small; 21s. to 13 small. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... that the Northman on meeting his eyes put on an elaborately surprised expression. At least, it seemed elaborated. Nothing could be trusted. And the Englishman felt himself with astonishing conviction faced by an enormous lie, solid like a wall, with no way round to get at the truth, whose ugly murderous face he seemed to see peeping over at ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad

... hundred years before our era, constructed that great wall which was not able to save them from the invasion of the Tartars. The Egyptians, three thousand years before, had overloaded the earth with their astonishing pyramids, which had a base of about ninety thousand square feet. Nobody doubts that, if one wished to undertake to-day these useless works, one could easily succeed by a lavish expenditure of money. The great ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... such a study. No woman of tact, charm, refinement and feeling need ever let her husband, unless she has married a clod, become indifferent or commonplace in his treatment of her. Man reflects to an astonishing degree woman's sentiments ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... bickering like a couple of counter jumpers," he said, and a shrewder man than Robert might have been warned by the slow, incisive utterance. "You make an astonishing announcement on an occasion when it might least be expected, yet resent any doubt being thrown on its accuracy. Did or did not Sylvia ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... morning of the astonishing Trespass, I was late, being discouraged by a light rain. As she approached her bench, she found it occupied by an individual who appeared to be playing a contributory part in the general lamentation of nature. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... persuasions of his corrupt ministers had been to promote the interests of the Emperor, even at the expense of his own sacred obligations, and but very little tact had hitherto kept him inactive. All this but renders more astonishing the infatuation of the Emperor or his ministers in abandoning, at so critical a moment, the policy they had hitherto adopted, and by extreme measures, incensing a prince so easily led. Was this the very object which Tilly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... an apology for a dhoti,—that of the women is more copious, and at any rate quite decent: they are very fond of ornaments, especially beads, the quantities of which they wear is very often quite astonishing. They appear to me certainly superior to the Abors, of whom, however, I have seen but few. Both sexes drink liquor, but they did not seem to me to be so addicted to it as is generally the case with hill tribes:—their usual drink is a fermented liquor made from rice ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... as an instance, for the word soul they have no more spiritual equivalent than breath. Even the conversation between parents and children is of incredible frankness, and the Wazir of Egypt talks to his daughter "the Lady of Beauty," in a fashion astonishing to the West. But the Arabs are a great mixture. They are keenly alive to beauty, and every youth and every damsel is described in glowing, rapturous terms. We have heard in our own country, so far north as chilly Scotland, of a whole audience ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... mathematician, Leslie Ellis, was kind to my brother, who had an introduction to him probably from Spedding. Ellis was already suffering from the illness which confined him to his room at Trumpington, and prevented him from ever giving full proofs of intellectual powers, rated by all who knew him as astonishing. I may quote what Fitzjames says of one other contemporary, the senior classic of his own year: 'Lightfoot's reputation for accuracy and industry was unrivalled; but it was not generally known what ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... of course, but seemed to me she regarded it a trifle doubtfully when it came in. Still, the price had not been great, and it was astonishing to see how much better it looked when I was through with it, and it was in a dim corner, with its more unfortunate portions next the wall. Indeed, it had about it quite an air of genuine respectability, and made the rest of our things seem poor and trifling. ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... unknown, and every record of him lost; we should then, as in the case of Homer, have judged exclusively from the internal evidence of the works themselves, and formed a brilliant ideal picture of what the astonishing author must have been in his daily walk, correspondence, and conversation. But, unfortunately, enthusiasm worked up to its pitch, sweeping the clouds for a bird's-eye view of the high pinnacle of human greatness commensurate with the 'local habitation and the name' of such a genius, is at once ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... they did. When the people came in the evening and learned that everything was sold out but the lanterns, they declared they would buy them for souvenirs. So the merry guests walked about the grounds, carrying the lighted lanterns they had bought (at astonishing prices), and it lent a fantastic effect to the scene to see the lanterns bobbing about among the trees and ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... were more observing than I. Such a thought never entered my mind till I had been about ten days in London, when it occurred to me that, considering the size of the town and the fact that he and I were strangers, we met with astonishing frequency. I have since learned that he was a detective sent over to London on an important case, and being an intimate friend of Merrick's, the latter, who, I am informed, was shadowing me pretty closely at the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... she looked at Manley's back. "What I should like," she said distinctly, "is a great, big pile of wood, all cut and ready for the stove, and water pails that never would go empty. It's astonishing how one's desires eventually narrow down to bare essentials, isn't it? But as we near the place, I find those two things more desirable than a piano!" Then she bit her lip angrily because she had permitted herself to give ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... mark my words," said Catherine, "before you have grown many years older you will hear astonishing tales of Perdita Osgood. Peter's influence will not always keep her in check. Polly told me that yesterday she tried to vaccinate the cat, with a mixture of ground chalk and vinegar! Peter came ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... himself and looked up. "Nothing very important—but mighty astonishing at that. We've just walked in a two-hundred-yard circle, up the creek to where we climbed the hill, back along the hill in this direction, and then down. And we haven't crossed that grizzly's ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... indiscreet revelation to you—and your invitation—he accepted it instantly. He will be honored to be your guest, he said, provided of course he may depend upon us to preserve his incognito. That is very important. Do you know it is astonishing how I find myself keyed up to the most amazing pitch of interest in him—he's so mysterious ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... in Charley's rapid progress towards health. He was gaining with astonishing rapidity and bid fair to be completely recovered in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... go on in our own way. If your Lordships think that it was not a positive order, which Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him of the breach of it. But it is a most singular thing, among all the astonishing circumstances of this case, that this man, who has heard from the beginning to the end of his trial breaches of the Company's orders constantly charged upon him,—(nay, I will venture to say, that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... jump out, and never mind the luggage. George will see to that." With astonishing activity the old man ran up the gangway, followed by the boys, and found May waiting for them. Their greetings were of the simplest, and May calling the chief steward told him to shew the gentlemen their cabins, while Goody handed ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... brought to light changes from one post to another in several Basilicas, and unceasing industry in composition. The vast number of works published by Palestrina in his lifetime, or left in MS. at his death, or known to have been written and now lost, would be truly astonishing were it not a fact that very eminent creative genius is always copious, and in no province of the arts more fertile than in that of music. Palestrina lived and died a poor man. In his dedications he occasionally remarks with sober pathos on the difficulty of pursuing ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... that. 'We won't go home till morning, till daylight does appear.' Why should we? Why shouldn't my boy have innocent pleasure? I was allowed none when I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me. I must go and speak with that young man—the most astonishing thing I ever heard in my life. What's his name? Mr. Nadab? Mr. Nadab; sir, you have delighted me. May I make so free as to ask you to come and dine with me to-morrow at six. I am always proud to make the acquaintance of men ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... my uncles' patent steel, and as I stood at the door and watched him I counted the blows he gave, and it was astonishing how regular he was, every implement taking nearly the same number of blows ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... study seems to be to make themselves as useless to the world as possible. Think too of the shocking indelicacy of many of them, who make it a point of religion to abjure linen, and wear their habits till they drop off. How astonishing that any mind should suppose the Deity an enemy to cleanliness! the Jewish religion ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... effective advocacy. His general attainments were very considerable. The writer of this history once took part in a conversation where O'Connell displayed a knowledge of Biblical criticism, and a capacity to apply what knowledge of that description which he possessed, which was very astonishing. On the same occasion he brought forth stores of ecclesiastical history, which proved that, although his studies had been confined to a particular school on that subject, his reading within the limits of that school were very extensive, and his memory altogether extraordinary. He had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... turn over the astonishing record of George Warrington Steevens's thirty years, we are divided between the balance of loss and gain. The loss to his own intimates must be intolerable. From that, indeed, we somewhat hastily avert our eyes. Remains the loss to the great reading public, which we believe that Steevens ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... returns of the puisa or great annual fast, and forgot their old rules. The consequence of this was obvious, for the lunar year of the hejrah being eleven days short of the sidereal or solar year the order of the seasons was soon inverted; and it is only astonishing that its inaptness to the purposes of agriculture should ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... referred to, it is not always remembered that when he came to this country he was not his own master. It seems that he rambled away from his home in the South of France, when about fifteen years old; that he spent about two years in wandering about France and Germany, and astonishing people by pretending to be, at first a converted, and afterwards an unconverted, Formosan; that when performing this second, pagan, character, he arrived at Sluys, where a Scotch regiment in the Dutch service, under Brigadier Lauder, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various

... mountain stream as it speeded toward the valley, when a flash of color on the farther side of the brook attracted him. He stopped, then hastily sprang across the water, climbed a few yards, and, after skirting a heavy clump of bushes, looked at Linda sitting beside them—a most astonishing Linda, appearing small and humble, very much tucked away, unrestrained tears rolling down her cheeks, a wet handkerchief wadded in one hand, a packet of letters in her lap. A long instant ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... regarded by the multitude as a miracle. Also we may be quite sure that no one who had attained this knowledge in the legitimate order would ever perform a "miracle" for his own personal aggrandizement or for the purpose of merely astonishing the beholders—to do so would be contrary to the first principle of the higher teaching which is that of profound reverence for the Unity of the All-originating Principle. The conception, therefore, of such ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward

... beg that you will give me your attention while I relate the adventures of my second voyage, which you will find even more astonishing than the first." ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... neither man spoke—nor moved. Stafford's face wore the smile of a man who has just communicated some unexpected and astonishing news and was watching its effect with suppressed enjoyment. He knew that Leviatt felt bitter toward the stray-man and that the news that the latter might succeed in doing the thing that he had set out to do would not be received ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... was Vautrin, and Vautrin appears as the name of the most astonishing and most original character which Balzac has created and introduced in the five or six greatest novels of the Comedy. So transcendent, super-human and satanic is Vautrin, Herrera, or Jacques Collin, as he is indifferently called, ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden

... to give you admiration and honor, it is merely necessary to be admirable and honorable. The more you put in, the more will be paid out to you. It is too trite to put on paper! But it is astonishing, isn't it, how many people who are depositing nothing whatever, expect to be paid in admiration ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... impenetrable shrubs, and the rear also being secured by the springs and deep hollow ways, the enemy renewed the action. Every exertion was made to dislodge them. Lieutenant-Colonel Washington made most astonishing efforts to get through the thicket to charge the enemy in the rear, but found it impracticable, had his horse shot under him, and was wounded and taken prisoner. Four six-pounders were ordered up before the house—two ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... something operatic; a kind of rosepink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it is universal, among the French since his time. Madame de Stael has something of it; St. Pierre; and down onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary 'Literature of Desperation,' it is everywhere abundant. That same rosepink is not the right hue. Look at a Shakspeare, at a Goethe, even at a Walter Scott! He who has once seen into this, has seen the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... allow that Jesus Christ was an honest man how is it possible for you to deny his being divinely inspired? He certainly pretended to foretell events; he most surely pretended to perform most astonishing miracles. Of these facts we have as much evidence as we have that there was such a man. Now, sir, if he were honest, he was divinely inspired and endued, or he was an enthusiast even to insanity. And yet in every instance, where the ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou

... Mice may be civil for a while, and compliment each other; but when they come to speak their minds freely, each likes his own life best." She said nothing more at the moment, and the three sat down to their small dinner-table. It was astonishing to Alice that he should be able to talk in this way, to hint at such things, to allude to their former hopes and present condition, without a quiver in his voice, or, as far as she could perceive, without any feeling ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... Saint-Euverte in the country, but I don't believe anyone knows them, really. They must be 'country cousins'! By the way, I don't know whether you're particularly 'well-up' in the brilliant society which we see before us, because I've no idea who all these astonishing people can be. What do you suppose they do with themselves when they're not at Mme. de Saint-Euverte's parties? She must have ordered them in with the musicians and the chairs and the food. 'Universal providers,' you know. You must admit, they're rather splendid, General. But ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... escape them; by Hatteras's order all sails were furled; but, notwithstanding all precautions, the brig was much knocked about; the waves dashed over her, and her smoke fled towards the east with astonishing rapidity; her course was not certain amongst the moving ice; the barometer fell; it was difficult to stop on deck, and most of the men stayed below ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... letter from the Isle of Man states that the writer, who rightly wishes to remain anonymous, possesses a copy of a novel of astonishing genius, in which a German bullet is embedded. This book, it seems, was the inseparable companion of a soldier in the 3rd Manx Highlanders, who carried it always next his heart, and in its position in that intimate and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... More astonishing to the men of that time than it is to us was the fact that American foreign trade fell under British commercial control again. Whether it was that British merchants were accustomed to American ways of doing things and knew American business conditions; whether other countries found the commerce ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... brother found this but natural, and he liked to lie still, and be fanned, or have the flies brushed away from him, and to have some one read fairy stories, which he loved, aloud to him until he dozed off to sleep. It was astonishing how long and how soundly he could sleep. The courtiers said that he was laying up a store of strength, to meet the demands that would be made upon him when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... were to dine with Count Sickingen some day soon; adding, "The Count and I were conversing together, and I said to him, 'A propos, has your Excellency heard our Mozart?' 'No; but I should like very much both to see and to hear him, for they write me most astonishing things about him from Mannheim.' 'When your Excellency does hear him, you will see that what has been written to you is rather too little than too much.' 'Is it possible?' 'Beyond all doubt, your Excellency.'" Now, this ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... scrambled out until he reached the grass-grown sand bank which Furley had indicated. Obeying orders, he lay down and listened intently for any fainter sounds mingled with the tumult of nature. After a few minutes, it was astonishing how his eyes found themselves able to penetrate the darkness which at first had seemed like a black wall. Some distance to the right he could make out the outline of a deserted barn, once used as a coast-guard station and now only a depository ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... his taste. Are you afraid that he will form it wrong? I am not. We are assuming that the library where he browses is a good one; here is no chance of evil, only a choice between different kinds of good. And even if the evil be there, it is astonishing how the healthy mind will let it slip and fasten eagerly on the good. Would you prefer a taste fixed by someone who tells the browser what he ought to like? Then that is not the reader's own taste at all, but that of his informant. We have too much of this sort of thing—too many readers without ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... procuring the neroli, when well freed from the oil, is imported into this country under the name of eau de fleur d'orange, and may be used, like elder-flower and rose-water, for the skin, and as an eye lotion. It is remarkable for its fine fragrance, and it is astonishing that it is not more used, being moderate in price. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... The improvements have been astonishing. Beautiful trees skirt the principal streets, and form an arch above. Everywhere you behold ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher," and, feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about to hug. He caught no one. Christian and Greta whisked under his arms and left him grasping at the air. Mrs. Decie slipped past with astonishing agility. Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded in a corner, jeered: "Bravo, Paul! The active beggar! Can't ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... recovery with an equally indifferent composure. Their conduct to each other was the same as to the world; they bore and forbore; and there was sometimes, as will be seen, much necessity for forbearing; but their love among themselves rarely reached above this. It is astonishing how much each of the family was able to do, and how much each did, to prevent the well-being of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... "O melancholy! the sink of all vice and depravity. Streets without light! Houses without air! Neighbourhood without society! Talkers without listeners!—'Tis astonishing any rational being can endure ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... after Elnathan had begun his great labor of love, an astonishing thing happened to him. He had a choice of two places offered him as general utility boy in a grocery. Once he would have told Mr. Lightenhome, and asked his advice as to which offer he should take, but he was now carrying his ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... is actually the case, while the main body is under the cover offered by a friendly wood and is safe from detection. The rapidity with which thousands of men are able to disappear when the word "Airman" is passed round is astonishing. They vanish as completely and suddenly as if swallowed by the earth or dissolved into thin air. They conceal themselves under bushes, in ditches, lie prone under hedgerows, dart into houses and outbuildings—in short, take every cover which is available, no matter how slender it may seem, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor, drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had been toasting before ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... 1820," he said, "in the month of August, I fell in love." Here the girls glanced at each other. The idea of Uncle Cornie in love, and in the very same century in which they were now listening to the confession, was too astonishing to pass without ocular remark; but, if he observed it, he took no notice of it; he did not even pause. "In the month of September, I was refused. Consequently, in the month of October, I was ready to ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... you tell us a tale." Tot warmly seconded the motion, and Mammy, who was never more delighted than when astonishing the children with her wonderful stories, at once assumed a meditative air. "Lem me see," said the old woman, scratching her head; "I reckon I'll tell yer 'bout de wushin'-stone, ain't neber told yer dat yit. I know yer've maybe ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... "What is there astonishing about it?" asked the girl. "I have been out boating with Mr. Locker, and it did not amaze you. You need not be afraid; Mr. Hemphill says he has had a good deal of practise in rowing, and if he does not understand the management of a boat I am ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... the week passed harmlessly and without any special event to mark it, and, thanks to Nan's skilful management and Phillis's pride, there were no further contretemps to shock Mrs. Challoner's sense of propriety. The work progressed with astonishing rapidity: in the mornings the young dressmakers were sufficiently brisk and full of zeal, and in the afternoons, when their energies flagged and their fingers grew weary, Dulce would sing over her task, or Mrs. Challoner would read to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... story,' said the genie, 'and I remit to thee a third part of his blood and his crime.' Then came forward the third old man, he of the mule, and said, 'O genie, I will tell thee a story still more astonishing than the two thou hast heard, and do thou remit to me the remainder of his blood and crime.' The genie replied, 'It is well.' So the third old man said, 'Know, O Sultan and ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... and tendering to Leah a daughter's welcome. Mrs. Le Grande, although disappointed and chagrined that Belle Upton was not the choice of her son's love, soon quieted down, and accepted the alternative with astonishing and commendable resignation. So, despite Leah's bitter disappointment, she was happy; for, aside from Emile's love, she soon drew hope and happiness from the life of the dark-eyed little daughter that had come to bless her home. Emile had yielded to Leah's wishes, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... and interesting, with which he had felt altogether strong enough to contend for an evening or he would not have come. That it should thrill along all his senses with this unreasoning rapture was most astonishing. He had never been a fellow to "fall" for every girl he met, and now he felt himself gradually yielding to the beautiful spell about him ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... questions—questions which were not new, but which came to him to-night with a new and deeper significance. He believed that Father Roland would have gasped in amazement and that he would have held up his hands in incredulity had he known the truth of this astonishing adventure of his. An astonishing adventure—nothing less. To find a girl. A girl he had never seen, who might be in another part of the world, when he had got to the end of his journey—or married. And if he found ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... the reader's time in any discussion upon the causes of that astonishing political fever. It must suffice to say that for a moment it hypnotized the whole world. It would have been incomprehensible to the Middle Ages. It was incomprehensible to the nineteenth century. It wholly occupied the sixteenth. If we understand it, we largely understand ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc

... times he cut across ledge and spur and gave her a grinning how-dye. The third time she was ready for him and she let fly. The first stone whistled past his head with astonishing speed. The second he dodged and the third caught him between the shoulders as he leaped for a tree with an oath and a yell. And there she left him, swearing horribly and frankly ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... And accordingly the attack was abandoned. The Americans embarked again, and were taken to Salmon River. The boats and batteaux were immediately scuttled; the troops were made comfortable in long log huts or barracks, with astonishing celerity, and the camp, at French Mills, was as speedily as possible entrenched. Thus ended a campaign for which the Americans had made extraordinary preparations, and of the success of which high expectations had consequently been formed. The failures of Hampton and Wilkinson were indeed so disgraceful ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... from coming. They're not at all law-abiding. I don't think they've been very well brought up. And then, of course, they're not accustomed to seeing any one in charge here." She looked around, and smoothed her apron with the most astonishing little air of resource and command. "I saw a bill with the names at the bottom that way, and per So-and-So below, so I copied it," she ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... been thrown irrevocably into the background had I not been born to the good fortune of an eldest son. This was far more than sufficient to atone for the comparative plainness of my person; and when it was discovered that I was also Sir William's favourite, it is quite astonishing what a beauty I became! Aubrey was declared too effeminate; Gerald too tall. And the Duchess of Lackland one day, when she had placed a lean, sallow ghost of a daughter on either side of me, whispered my uncle in a voice, like the aside of a player, intended for ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton









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