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More "Astounding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could recover his breath, Max tried to explain. He had to repeat it twice, however, before Bandy-legs could grasp the astounding fact that some one had actually been carrying on a telegraphic conversation with their prisoner, tapping on the wall of the cabin to spell ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... of grace 1888, the Atlanta Constitution publishes the astounding fact, and calls the world to heed it, in conspicuous ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... drink;—all praise be due to them for their noble and self-denying exertions! Had it not been for the successful labors of these moral giants in the great cause of temperance, presenting to the world in their own personal experiences many new and astounding physiological facts, men of science would, probably, never have had their attention ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... conflicting medical evidence as to whether the death could have been due to a pistol-shot, and certain astounding disclosures of police corruption and prison tyranny. A judge of the Military Tribunal had given startling proof of the Prime Minister's complicity in an infamous case, ending with the suicide of the prisoner's man-servant in open court, and an old Garibaldian ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... Flying and flinging, Writhing and wringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting Around and around With endless rebound: Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... What a miracle! What a transformation in my whole destiny! I had already begun to look upon myself as a vassal of Proserpine, a bondsman of Hades, and now I could only gasp in impotent amazement at the suddenness of the change; words fail me to express fittingly the astounding metamorphosis. For the bodies of my butchered victims were nothing more nor less than three inflated bladders, whose sides still bore the scars of numerous punctures, which, as I recalled my battle of the previous night, were situated at the very points where I had inflicted ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that stage when the guests were more or less accessible to emotion, and more or less touched by the astounding fact that every one was enjoying himself. This phenomenon, which is apt to burst into song or dance among other races, is constrained to voice itself in an Anglo-Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... report of Dr. Opodeldoc, which was thirty-six feet in length, we can of course give but a few extracts. He commenced by informing the Invincibles that his cures the year past had been more astounding than ever, and that his fame would continue to grow brighter and brighter, until eclipsed by the advent of some younger Dr. Esculapius Liverwort Tar Cant-ye-get-your-leg-away Opodeldoc, who in after years would shoot up ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Barraclough I must have come out of it the butt of all shafts. As it was, I was sensitive in regard to my position, and more than once was tempted to see myself as I must have appeared to others. But after all they had not gone through the scene with Holgate, and were not witnesses to his astounding perfidy. I was angry with every one, with myself, with the captain, and, above all, with little Pye. In the universal surprise that came of the discovery of Mr. Morland's identity, my shame, so to speak, was covered, but I felt myself the mark of ridicule, from Holgate's cynical smile ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... question, senor, unless you furnish me with the names of the men you refer to?" demanded the priest, with a valiant attempt to brazen the matter out, but there was a quaver in his voice which betrayed that he was beginning to feel anxious, if not actually apprehensive, concerning the outcome of this astounding business. ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... more than any city in the world, unless it be Paris, loves to be amused, thrilled and surprised all at the same time; and will accept with outstretched hand any one who can perform this astounding feat. Do not underestimate the ability that can achieve it: a scintillating wit, an arresting originality, a talent for entertaining that amounts to genius, and gold poured literally like rain, are the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... life would have simply been beyond the power of John and Joan Penelles to imagine. Its riot of dress and emotions and its sinful extravagance in every direction would have been to them an astounding revelation of the possibilities of life. As it was, their anxiety took mainly one direction: the uncertainty attending the marriage of their daughter. Denas had indeed said she was Roland's wife, but the St. Penfer News implied a very different relationship; ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... it that the water was nearly at boiling heat—a not very uncommon circumstance in that region. While I looked, big bubbles began to rise to the surface, chase one another about, and burst; and suddenly, without any other preliminary movement, there occurred the most awful and astounding event that (with a single exception) it has ever been my lot to witness! I stood rooted to the spot with horror, and when it was all over, and again the lake lay smiling placidly before me, I silently thanked Heaven I had been standing at some distance from the deceitful pool. In ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... loud, noisy, and overbearing, should have been the thief was surprising indeed. Had it been some quiet little boy, the sort of boy others are given to regard as a sneak, there would have been less surprise, but that Mather should do such a thing was astounding. These were probably the first reflections which occurred to every boy as he sat ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... yesterday, (February 1st), the word came that Germany was to turn "mad dog" again, and sink all ships going within her war zone. This was the question, of course, taken up at the meeting of the Cabinet on February 2nd. The President opened by saying that this notice was an "astounding surprise." He had received no intimation of such a reversal of policy. Indeed, Zimmermann, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, had within ten days told Gerard that such a thing was an "impossibility." At this point Lansing said that he had good reason to believe ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... is coming. Astounding as it may be, Mr. Wright contends that Defoe himself was the original of the story: that Defoe, provoked by his wife's irritating tongue, made a kind of vow to live a life of silence—and kept it for more ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... simple," came the astounding answer in plain English; "in times like this spies may be arrested, tried, and executed all inside of an hour. And you three boys are accused of having been known to send information ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... side by fourteen hours of concentrated fire, which I watched from our battery positions. In spite of the difficulties of getting up supplies through the "crumped" trenches, the men held on and consolidated their positions. One of the most astounding feats was done by the sappers, who put up barbed wire beyond the line under a ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... The astounding negative result as indicated by the press, was described as "The Sensation of the day," for the fact was revealed that Not one, of the hundred who underwent these drastic and determined tests, developed any ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... silence, and Dangerfield applied himself in earnest to catch some trout, and when he had accomplished half-a-dozen, he tired altogether of the sport, and followed by Irons, he sauntered homewards, where astounding news awaited him. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... short story she deserves the honors due to one of the pioneers, and her keen affectionate observation, her humor, and her humanity, would have given her a literary reputation quite independent of her masterpiece. But she is likely to pay the penalty of that astounding success, and to go down to posterity as the author of a single book. She ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... aided and will further aid, the Cause for which they were intended. To now abandon them, would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith." And, toward the close ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... MARS Forty-three million miles from the earth—a succession of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American, finds himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on horses ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... in imagination. About the year 1756 the young Duke of Bridgewater employed an engineering genius named James Brindley to make a canal from his coal-mines near Manchester to the town of Runcorn. With astounding skill, James Brindley carried out the work, finding his greatest difficulty at the point of which we are speaking. The river Irwell flowed directly across the course of his canal and at a considerably lower level. Friends advised him to lead his canal down to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... "presents to me to-day the most interesting aspect it has assumed since history began. True, the age is one of great mental confusion. Quite as true, startling discoveries and astounding inventions have so upset our staid old mediaeval views that the world is hurriedly crowding them out, together with its God. Doctrines for which our fathers bled and burned are to-day lightly tossed upon the ash heap. The searchlight is turned never so mercilessly upon the founder ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Fraide had waited came indeed, but it came with a force he had little anticipated. With a thrill of awe and consternation men heard and repeated the astounding news that—while personally exercising his authority on behalf of British traders—Sir William Brice-Field, Consul-General at Meshed, had been fired at by a Russian ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the time, I mean. If, later on, we recover the faculty with some such exclamation: 'Well! Well! I'll be hanged if I ever...' it is probably because this very thing that there should be a past to look back upon, other people's, is very astounding in itself when one has the time, a fleeting and immense instant to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... compare notes, my dear," said mamma, looking up from a rose-colored sheet embellished with decidedly scrawly writing. "I have just received one that is quite astounding." ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... been standing motionless as a model all this latter time, flung her hands to her face, and wildly attempted to ponder on the exhibition which had just passed away. Such astounding wells of fevered feeling in a still man like Mr. Boldwood were incomprehensible, dreadful. Instead of being a man trained to repression he was—what she ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the drawing-room was Tom Newcome's affair, not his son's, who was heartily ashamed of the figure he cut in that astounding costume, which English private gentlemen are made to sport when they bend the knee before ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... VICTORIA, not content with showering all sorts of favours and rewards upon the literary and artistic spirits of her own country and age, lavishes, with prodigal hand, most delicate honours upon an American TOM THUMB, whose astounding genius it is, to measure, in his boots, five-and-twenty inches! To this, how small is VICTOR HUGO at the Tuileries; to this, how mean and petty Gothe at the ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... something almost divine that which was but a physical power, or weakness, beyond their own limited comprehension. Though a whole school of wise and thoughtful men had already produced remarkable results and elicited astounding facts by sifting the truth through a fine web of closely logical experiment, it did not follow that either Unorna, or any other self-convinced, self-taught operator could do more than grope blindly towards ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce. We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free States ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... such pressure brought to bear on the trained youth to sell his brains, to coin his ability into dollars, to prostitute his education, as to-day. The commercial prizes held up to him are so dazzling, so astounding, that it takes a strong, vigorous character to resist their temptation, even when the call in one to do something which bears little relation to money-making ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... astounding facts established by the enquiry was the wide-spread demoralisation which had developed itself in certain districts. Home had lost its sanctity. The ties that bind parents and children were loosened, and natural affection gave place to intense ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... rich as the bass of a mighty organ—a sound enormous, extraordinary, yet beautiful—rolls over the hills and away. Then swiftly follows another and lesser and sweeter billowing of tone; then another; then an eddying of waves of echoes. Only once was it struck, the astounding bell; yet it continues to sob and moan for at least ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... once a Minister of State who presented to his native land the astonishing spectacle of a Cabinet Minister dying whilst in office. This action was so astounding to the nation at large that a statue has since been ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... universal distress into which the landed, commercial, and all the great productive interests of the country are at this moment plunged, to take care that your majesty shall not be the only person in your dominions ignorant of such an astounding fact, as well as of the consequent impending danger to the throne and other great national institutions, established by the wisdom of our ancestors for the protection and benefit of the people over whom your majesty has been called to preside,"—"That ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... beautiful in itself, yet abnormal, fantastic, suggestive of weird imaginings. Austin, absorbed in contemplation, moved slowly through the shrubbery until he reached the lawn; then came to a dead stop. An astounding vision appeared before him. Standing by the old stone fountain, scarcely ten yards away, he saw the figure of a youth. The slender form was partly draped in a loose tunic of some dim, pale, reddish hue, descending halfway to his knees; on his feet were sandals of the old classic type; ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... on the Continent. The confusion between John Cabot and his son Sebastian adds to the uncertainty. Those who impute to Sebastian Cabot a cuckoo-like appropriation of his father's glory are able to support their opinion with weighty evidence. The most astounding feature of all is that the main incidents of a voyage which attracted as much attention as the first voyage of John Cabot should so ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... "This is perfectly astounding. Still, what is all this to me? It is nothing. It does not concern me. The speech is made, and there an end. I did break down for a moment, and in a rather uncomfortable place, since I had led up to those statistics with some grandeur; ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... demonstrated all over Europe the extreme wastefulness of current methods of using fuel. To a certain extent his ideas were adopted everywhere, yet on the whole the public proved singularly apathetic; and, especially in America, an astounding wastefulness in the use of fuel is the general custom now as it was a century ago. A French cook will prepare an entire dinner with a splinter of wood, a handful of charcoal, and a half-shovelful of coke, while the same fuel would ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... living together in great numbers and perfect amity, apparently." Among the Americans of the city Sir Robert found much to interest him, and he went to visit their "sugar-estates," took down in black and white the astounding number of oranges that one tree is capable of producing, held conversations with many gentlemen about the emancipated slaves, and with many emancipated slaves about their late masters and present condition. And then was there not cotton, the machinery ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... interwoven with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... war will doubtless be astounding to most persons who have never given the subject any very particular attention. Deluded by the false doctrines of peace societies, they doubtless regard war as an evil, at once inhuman and unnecessary. Altogether ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... venturing on a pleasantry, whereat Moses opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, but, observing the professor's goggles levelled at him, he transformed the laugh into an astounding sneeze, and immediately gazed with pouting innocence and ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... and forcing his mouth open at the same moment. The world looked red as he saw it; his limbs were not bearing him stiffly. Thomasin had her eye upon him, for she was quite prepared to throw over her previous statements and support her husband against an attack so astounding and unexpected. And the more so that he had not himself hurled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... first of which they had actually succeeded in penetrating to the North Pole; while, on the second, they had visited a hitherto unexplored region of the great African continent, discovering the site and ruins of ancient Ophir; and, of course, in both cases meeting with many astounding adventures. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... who was pretty well advanced in years, but still looked strong and robust; he was unmarried and well-to-do, and lived happily. But before telling you the story, I must not forget to say that this man had a most astounding voice when he spoke; he terrified people when he spoke! Well! to make my tale as short as possible, you must know that he had a dog called Bellot, a very handsome large dog, white with black spots. Well! this shepherd was going along with his sheep, for he had a flock of eleven ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a troupe of pale-faced ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... held to exhibit a limited power of imagination in comparison with the ingenuity and inventiveness of Tom Sawyer. At times the German critics confessed their inability to discover the dividing line between astounding actuality and fantastic exaggeration. The descriptions of the barbaric state of Western America possessed an indescribable fascination for the sedate Europeans. At times Mark Twain's bloody jests froze the laughter on their lips; and his "revolver-humour" made their hair stand on end. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... get me my quota of pagazis, and then I could tell the "Wasungu" what a good "young man" he was, and consequently the benefit he would receive would be an increase of business. He closed his reply with the astounding remark that he had ten pagazis at his house already, and if I would be good enough to have four bales of cloth, two bags of beads, and twenty coils of wire carried to his house, the pagazis could leave Bagamoyo the next day, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... may judge of my surprise when, one sultry day, I had been busily engaged for several hours cutting down a field of wheat, Mrs Reichardt came running to me with the astounding news that there was a ship off the island, and a boat full of people had just left her and were rowing towards the rocks. I hastily took the glass she had brought with her, and as soon as I could get to a convenient position, threw myself on the ground on the rock, and reconnoitred through the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... water in a given time; regard being had, as respects extreme distances, to the nature of the soil, and a due capacity of the pipe. The deeper the drain, even in the strongest soils, the quicker the water escapes. This is an astounding but certain fact. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... you regard as everything that is noble and upright, Chief?" I asked, curious as to his ideas. I shall not forget the reply: it was but two words—astounding, amazing ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... Boston, offered to grant me the use of his church any time I wanted to offer the mass as high priest according to the ritual of the Greek Orthodox Church, if I would only "break off all relations with Protestant bodies here in America." I have a letter from this clergyman which is the most astounding fact of his inconsistency, because he himself is an active member of the Bible Club, a purely Protestant organization: he invited me to one of their meetings, but he would not purchase my book to help me to my bread and butter. Another clergyman, a member of the executive ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... negative blessing that this exceptional people enjoyed, was that they had no politics, no vote. The imagination of the average "party man" sinks to conceive a thing like to this; yet, if an astounding fact to others, no more gracious one can be conceived for them selves. In the unbroken peace in which they lived politics would be but throwing the apple of discord in their midst, an innoculation of disease that they might in the delirium that marked its progress vehemently ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... unreasoning, immeasurable happiness rushed over him, and, in that sudden, astounding instant of self-revelation, self-amazement ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... The most astounding feature of this vindication of the divine goodness still remains to be noticed. We are told that the constitution in question is good, because it was so likely to have had a "happy issue." And when this constitution was established ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... dealt with the Company's business; and there were the 'news-letters'—the old-fashioned predecessors of the modern newspaper, which were written by paid correspondents, whose duty it was to give their clients news of London and of England and of Europe. The news was often astounding, and was sometimes extraordinarily behind-time. For example, the Company's employees in India were still professing loyalty to the Most High and Mighty King James II nearly a twelvemonth after that monarch had fled to France and had been succeeded by William ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... than that he might abuse England at great length and talk of his own valor, accomplishments, and "paddygree" (as he very properly called the record that established his connection with Brian Boroo and Irish kings generally), and a lady who seemed to take the most astounding, unquenchable interest in the English nobility, as more than one lady had seemed to him to do, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... of executive genius also earned a meed of my neighbor's disparagement. He was a worthless, trifling "boy," an idling dreamer, an irresponsible, inconsequent visionary, in whose baseless fancies it was astounding that a woman of her ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... some way mixed up with the knowledge I had already obtained. The scene on the Pont Neuf I did not understand. The Black Mantle who had stirred up the people on behalf of Conde could be no friend to Mazarin, yet the Cardinal had sent me to him with a most astounding message. Then again, every one knew that La Rochefoucauld was Conde's righthand man, but he was supposed to be far away ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... viewing this astounding scene in eager interest. Never before, in his short life, had he seen two humans fight. And, even now, he was not at all certain that it was a fight and not some intensely thrilling game. Thus had he watched two boys wrestle and box, in his own puppyhood. And, for venturing ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... is to my mind a sort of profound and terrifying logic in it, as if it were our imagination alone that could set loose upon us the might of an overwhelming destiny. The imprudence of our thoughts recoils upon our heads; who toys with the sword shall perish by the sword. This astounding adventure, of which the most astounding part is that it is true, comes on as an unavoidable consequence. Something of the sort had to happen. You repeat this to yourself while you marvel that such a thing could happen ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... etext was produced from Astounding Stories, March 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... of it, comes from the rubber industry—motor tires and so forth. And he's mad after big game. That's his pleasure—killing. He's a killer. That is the best description of the man. The lust of blood is in him, and the astounding thing, to my mind, is that he is not a murderer. He has killed two men in duels, and they say that it is a sight to see him fighting. Mind you, when I say 'murderer,' I do not mean to imply that ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... boat-house as usual, and great was his dismay when he discovered that the boat was not in its berth. Calling Uncle Ben from the stable, he announced to him the astounding intelligence that the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... most vivid impression. So susceptible was he, indeed, of such impulses, and so much under the control of the imaginative department of his intellect, that, whatever might have been the accidental mood of his mind, at the moment when this astounding event first burst upon him, it would most probably have acted as a sort of mental catalepsy, and fixed his reason in the very attitude in which it found it. He had, however, been prepared for the part which he now took by much more deep and grounded causes. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... tell her grievances; Carol was sulky every time she thought of "The Girl from Kankakee"; it was Erik who made suggestions. He had read with astounding breadth, and astounding lack of judgment. His voice was sensitive to liquids, but he overused the word "glorious." He mispronounced a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew it. He was insistent, but he ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... not resist Andy, whose face was perfectly radiant as he led her to the floor, and bumped his head against hers in bowing to her. Eunice was in the same set—her partner the terrible Tim—who cracked jokes and threw his feet about in the most astounding fashion. And Ethelyn bore it all, feeling that by being there with such people she had fallen from the pedestal on which Ethelyn Grant once stood. Her lavender dress was stepped upon, and her point applique caught and torn by the big pin Andy had upon his coat cuff. Taken as a whole, that party ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... this astounding world that I didn't yet know? In what order did these articulates belong, these creatures for which the rocks provided a second carapace? Where had nature learned the secret of their vegetating existence, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... the office she had been startled by an astounding young man who had come flying past her desk, with his coat off, his figured waistcoat half open, his red four-in-hand tie askew under a rolling soft collar. He had dashed up to the office-manager and demanded, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... approach of the astounding coach, which looked like a drunken centipede, the farmers stopped their plows or came to the thresholds, shading their eyes; while the cattle in the fields put up their tails and bolted, flinging out their heels, amid triumphant cheers ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... average reader obtain than the suggestion that the cruelties of Spallanzani, of Magendie, of Mantegazza, of Brown-Se'quard, of Brachet, and a host of others, existed only in the imagination, AND HAD NO BASIS OF FACT? For this astounding suggestion, what explanation is possible? That there was a deliberate purpose to mislead the public by an affirmation that cruel and unjustifiable experiments were a myth, the creation of imagination, is an hypothesis we must reject. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... matre"; though Anthony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, together, have run her pretty hard. The former remarks, with that terrible complacency in an awful fact which is one of his most noticeable and astounding traits, that the three of them "wrote more books than were probably ever before produced by a single family." The existence of a few more such families could be consistent only with a generous enlargement ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... exclamations, of questions interrupted and unanswered, the Princess understood. For a moment she looked on in wonder, fascinated by this astounding miracle. But she soon recovered. With a lump in her throat she began backing away, to escape unobserved. Elinor, through her tears, happened to see the movement and came forward, leading the savage by the hand. With a new light in her eyes, and her ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... head there formed strange, delightful visions. Lily eloping with Willy Cameron, assisted by herself. Lily in the little Cameron house, astounding the neighborhood with her clothes and her charm, and being sponsored by Ellen. The excitement of the village, and the visits to Ellen to learn what to wear for a first call, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mr. Barnes's displeasure, the girl tossed her saucy head, shrugged her fair shoulders, and passed on with a scornful laugh. In a word, Miss Ethel conducted herself as a most reckless and intrepid young flirt, using her eyes with the most consummate effect, chattering with astounding gaiety, prodigal of smiles, gracious thanks and killing glances. What wicked spirit moved her? Perhaps had she known the mischief she was doing, she ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my dear," said Mrs. Tresslyn, wiping a fine moisture from her upper lip, where it had appeared with Anne's astounding observation. "You will not have to wait much ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... eyes grew wide with wonder and unbelief. They raced through the pages, wonder giving way to joy and exultation as he neared the end of the astounding message from ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching debut as an entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally, of a girl whom ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... in the fewest words, that it was their little friend he came to see; and what he had to announce to their little friend. At which astounding intelligence, Flora clasped her hands, fell into a tremble, and shed tears of sympathy and pleasure, like the good-natured creature ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... not endure, but which is almost as intense in our generation as it was in that of our fathers. The emotion produced by great height and by the something unique and inspiring which distinguishes a mountain from a hill has bitten deeply into the modern mind. Yet there are some of the most astounding visions of this sort in Europe which are, and will probably remain, unemphasised ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... a little jump under the sheet at the astounding news, while I leaped clean out of bed, and danced around the room in my night-gown, clapping my hands and uttering small ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... notes for forty-nine millions more. Nor were the provinces behindhand. Mainly in the seven years from 1908, the five westernmost provinces pledged their credit on behalf of the same system to the astounding amount of over one hundred and thirty millions, British Columbia leading; Nova Scotia made a loan of another five millions. Thus endorsed, usually as to both principal and interest, the bonds of the Canadian Northern were floated with little ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... whole figure is meant, the production of a figure which to the spectator appears as a new human being, so to speak, occasionally exhibiting signs of independent organic life. Such a phenomenon would be the most astounding that can well be imagined. I am not in a position to offer any scientific evidence in its support. By far the majority of the accounts which have been published of full form "materialisations" are destitute of any evidential value, and in many cases the circumstantial evidence for fraud is ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... Karlsefin in astonishment as well—and no wonder, for the figure that stood before him was a passing strange one. To behold Tyrker thus dishevelled and besmeared was surprising enough, but to see him with grapes and vine-leaves stuffed all about him and twined all round him was absolutely astounding. His behaviour was little less so, for, clapping his hands to his sides, he shut his eyes, opened his big mouth, and burst into ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Astounding!" said Gwynne Ellis, "I will not believe it. It is a moral impossibility that that loving nature and candid mind, could ever so change in their characteristics, as to refuse to listen to reason, and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... went into the courtyard where Susil sat talking with some other boys about the astounding piece of good fortune which awaited him. That he, the son of a humble clerk, should espouse the daughter of a Zemindar was more than his wildest dreams had anticipated. He joyfully accompanied Sham Babu to a room, where he was clad in silken attire, and thence to the hall, where he was solemnly ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... the commonplace could be made to look. She kept Heriot at the Grange, against the squire's remonstrance and her mother's. 'It 's to keep him out of harm's way: the women he knows are not of the best kind for him,' she said, with astounding fatuity. He submitted, and seemed to like it. She must be teaching Temple to skate figures in the frost, with a great display of good-humoured patience, and her voice at musical pitches. But her principal affectation was to talk on matters of business with Mr. Burgin and Mr. Trewint, the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... could speak, as he proves in this and some other passages he could write, his astounding influence on the contemporaries of Milton and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his "Thus saith the Lord," "This is the work of the Lord," steeped in supernaturalism and glorying ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Saratoga, the Wyllyses and Hazlehursts found startling intelligence awaiting them. Letters had just arrived for Harry, for Mrs. Stanley, and for Mr. Wyllys, all of a similar nature, and all of a character that was astounding to those who received them. They could scarcely credit their senses as they read the fact, that the executors of the late John William Stanley, Esquire, were called upon to account for all past proceedings, to William Stanley, his son and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... This was an astounding bit of information, and Winn was about to let his rapidly rising indignation break forth, when Billy Brackett restrained him, and asked, mildly, if the Marshal had any objections to their looking at the raft in question simply to ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... awoke to the real idea of Andreae, the reaction was tremendous. Perhaps no satire, not even the Laus Stultitiae of Erasmus, created such a fury of excitement as this; seldom has one been followed with more astounding and beneficial results. We say beneficial from purpose; for Andreae succeeded in attracting the popular mind from its old habits of controversy. This was his great service. As a man he was of unexceptionable life and ardent ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... first rule, and the fear of monotony the second; all depth of feeling and any excess thereof were regarded as "unethical." Once, however, the art of the ethos had repeatedly been made to ring all the changes on the moods and situations which convention had decreed as suitable, despite the most astounding resourcefulness on the part of its masters, its powers were exhausted. Beethoven was the first to make music speak a new language—till then forbidden—the language of passion; but as his art was based upon the laws and conventions of the ETHOS, and had to attempt to justify itself in regard to ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was the most charitable construction Mr. Wynn could put upon Zack's astounding proposition. His dignity was cruelly outraged. 'Baiting the trap with his hateful knavish gains!' cried Linda's father. 'This is the result of the democracy of bush-life; the indiscriminate association with all classes of people that's forced on one. Any low fellow that pleases ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... through increased nerve force but also by the increased supply of blood that will result from the hot water- drinking regimen referred to, then indeed will we have a combination of stimulating forces which will bring about vital changes, in very many cases, little short of astounding in character. ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... ghastly curios of these haunted rooms of life and death, of mental torture and bodily suffering, of forced suicide and the mocking of the crazed victim of his own despair and desperation. It was a remarkable sight for women, an astounding treat to ladies, and such an example to children, boys and girls! But comment ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... as inexorable in their operation as they are positive in the results they bring about. The place won in the struggle by an industrial people can only be held by unrelaxed endeavor and constant advance in achievement. The present extraordinary impetus in every line of American exportation and the astounding increase in the volume and value of our share in the world's markets may not be attributed to ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... the unexpectedly astounding reply; for no one had ever heard Robert Sinclair use language like this before. "As soon as thae shots are off an' if they blaw as well as the others we'll turn out the coal an' then you can gang up the pit, every yin o' you. I'll soon blow through ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... of a beaver-dam is astounding. As soon as completed, it becomes a highway for the folk of the wild. It is used day and night. Mice and porcupines, bears and rabbits, lions and wolves, make a bridge of it. From it, in the evening, the graceful deer cast their reflections in the quiet pond. Over it dash pursuer and pursued; ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... gentle, soothing way of the sister and nurses. "Must you tell me now? You are tired and upset." "I must tell you this very minute or I shall burst," said Mr. Wordley. "My dear child, prepare yourself for the most astounding, the most wonderful news. I don't want to startle you, but I don't feel as though I could keep it for another half hour. Do you think I could have a glass ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... possible, as if nieces abounded at Rivenoak. Dyce managed to talk, but he heard not a word from his own lips, and his eyes, fixed on Lady Ogram's features, noted the indubitable fact that her complexion was artificial. This astounding old woman, at the age of four score, had begun to paint? So confused was Dyce's state of mind, that, on perceiving the truth of the matter, he all but uttered an exclamation. Perhaps only Miss Tomalin's ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... every leaf almost becomes instinct with life. You might almost fancy yourself beset by Gideon's army, when all the lamps in the pitchers rattled and broke, and every man blew his trumpet into your ear. It is an astounding noise certainly, and difficult to believe that so many pipes and rattles, whirring machines and trumpets, belong to good-sized beetles or flies, singing their evening song to the setting sun. As the light dies away all becomes still again, unless any marshy ground shelters ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... crack of its opening Queex turned with one of those bursts of astounding speed and clawed for admittance, its protest against the men forgotten. And it squeezed through a space Dane would have thought too narrow to accommodate its bloated body. Both men slipped around the door behind it and ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... his country be America, he ought to try to feel a vivid respect for the future, and a cold contempt for the past. Also, if he be selected by his country as a specimen of the best moral, physical, and intellectual type that she can produce for the astounding of the effete foreigner, and incidentally for the purpose of raising that foreigner's tone, he must—mustn't he?—do his best to astound, to exalt. But then comes in this difficulty. Young men don't like to astound ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... was the astounding answer. "You know perfectly no Time Freight on this road takes a passenger of any kind, and it would be more'n my job's ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... marked on the table (page 92) as before the Cambrian correspond to about thirty-two miles of thickness of strata; and all the subsequent eras with fossil-bearing rocks to a thickness of about twenty-one miles—in itself an astounding fact. Perhaps thirty million years must be allotted to the Pre-Cambrian eras, eighteen to the Palaeozoic, nine to the Mesozoic, three to the Cenozoic, making a grand total ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... thoughts as he lay in the starlight, on the house- top, that night, and gazed into the astounding future that had opened before him. Had there been any true religion in him, it would have been a wakeful night of prayer. But, more likely, as the event proves, the ambition and arrogance which were deep in his nature, though hitherto undeveloped, were his counsellors, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... little or no application to Christians at present. Yet how can Arminians pray our Church prayers collectively on any day? Answer. See a 'boa constrictor' with an ox or deer. What they do swallow, proves so astounding a dilatability of gullet, that it would be unconscionable strictness to complain of the horns, antlers, or other indigestible non-essentials being suffered to rot off at the confines, [Greek: herkos hodonton]. But to write seriously ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... arrival at the foot-hills of Kilima-Njaro they expressly sent to the captain's deputy in Mombasa with instructions that the latter should transmit them to the fathers. The first one, edited carefully, for fear that it should create too astounding a sensation, and forwarded to Port Said, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... went to the Island House, and Ethan Wormbury was utterly dismayed when he had listened to it. Though it was almost dinner-time, he left the few guests in his house to wait upon themselves, and hastened over to his father's house, where he found that the astounding news had preceded him. Squire Moses was as much disconcerted and cast down as his ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... such an astounding bargain that Reedy's pink face grew a little pale, and he moistened his lips as he figured. He was trying to reassure himself that it would be dead easy to borrow the other $18,000. He did not have it. In truth, he had only two hundred left in the bank. He thought ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... would take her. As for him—David's sinewy fingers closed as talons might close into the living flesh of a man's neck. He knew the lust of murder, and he exulted in it. Yet even as he exulted, the baseness of what Blair had done was so astounding, that, sitting there in the dreary room, his hands clenched in his pockets, his legs stretched out in front of him, David Richie actually felt a sort of impersonal amazement that had nothing to do with anger. For one instant the unbelievableness of Blair's dishonor ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the literary world in my time—all Gandercleuch rings with it—they positively speak of nothing else, from Miss Buskbody's youngest apprentice to the minister himself, and ask each other in amazement, whether the tidings are true or false—to be sure they are of an astounding complexion, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... lost girls, jobs, friends and opportunities with breath-taking rapidity. Time after time I have sworn to rid myself of the thing and speak nothing but the undiluted truth, and the first time I open my mouth I find myself unconsciously telling the most astounding falsehoods about myself with an ease that nauseates me!" He tore himself loose from the Kid and kicked a innocent tomato can down the canyon. "I know I'm nothing but a big four-flusher," he winds up, ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... bewildered. "Does Jamaica hold such beauties?" He awkwardly brought forward a deck-chair, while Pearse stood by in speechless amazement. Venner, as better became the host, ordered a steward to bring a wrap for the astounding visitor, but the girl laughed provokingly and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... none causes greater admiration than the Fine Arts Palace. It presents the astounding spectacle of a building which violates the architectural conventions on more than one occasion, and in spite of it, or possibly for that very reason, it has a note of originality that is most conspicuous. Everybody admits that it is most beautiful, and very ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... time the party arrived at the outskirts of the wood, and an individual was seen bounding along in the direction of the mountains—the two dogs in full pursuit of him. The noise, the animation, and the tumult of the pursuit were now astounding, and rang long and loud over the surface of the excited and awakened neighborhood, whilst the wild echoes of their inhuman enjoyment were giving back their terrible responses from the hills and valleys around them. The shouting, the urging on of the dogs by ferocious cries ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a time-eaten old gun, mounted on a worm-eaten old carriage, and trailed in harness of rope by two stalwart Flemish horses. Here also was gunpowder enough to wreck the village, and the Janennois, who for a moral people have a most astounding love of noise, were out at earliest dawn of light on Sunday morning to see the gun fired. The first firing was supposed to be an experiment, and everybody was warned to a safe distance when the gun was loaded, whilst Monsieur Dorn arranged a train of powder, ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... it was, to be sure, but I speedily took the situation in hand by formally presenting the two men, covering the palpable embarrassment of the host by explaining to his lordship the astounding ingenuity of the American luggage system. By the time I had deprived him of his check and convinced him that his box would be admirably recovered by a person delegated to that service, Belknap-Jackson, again in form, was apologizing to him for the squalid character ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. From her bed room window she could see the whole length of the Ober-Engadin, till the view was abruptly shut off by the giant shoulders of Lagrev and Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape's most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber clumps of pines that gathered thick wherever ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... her own excitement, found genuine pleasure in the bewildered enthusiasm with which the Bishop received her astounding news. She found him alone in the great, gloomy house which he usually inhabited when in London, at work in a dreary library to which she was admitted after a few minutes' delay. Naturally, he received her tidings at first almost ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lips of Cuckoo, crude and garbled, yet true gospel. The doctor was completely puzzled. All he gathered from this announcement was that Valentine seemed in some way to have been confiding in this girl of the streets. Such a fact was sufficiently astounding. That they should ever have been associated together in any way was almost incredible to any one who knew Valentine. Yet it was quite obvious that they did know each other, and in ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... laugh. "Nothing, but that Downing Street has turned into Parnassus. The astounding fact is, that Grenville has teemed, and, as the fruits of the long vacation, has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... section—a path practicable only for mules, and about sixty miles long. From Dir the road is a triumph of engineering. In many places it is carried on wooden galleries perched on the faces of steep and tremendous cliffs, and at others it works round spurs by astounding zig-zags, or is scarped from the mountain side. At the end of the road is Fort Chitral with a garrison of two battalions, one company of sappers, and two ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... woman—but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the beginning of the world wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Cumming believe the purport of these sentences? If so, this passage is worth handing down as his theory of the Greek myth—as a specimen of the astounding ignorance which was possible in a metropolitan preacher, A.D. 1854. And if he does not believe them . . . The inference must then be, that he thinks delicate veracity about the ancient Greeks is not a Christian virtue, but only a "splendid sin" of the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... other people. She was capable of drawing the most astounding inferences and of coming to the most soul-irritating conclusions, even on subjects which could not be otherwise than ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... were profoundly honest, and as convinced as of their own existence, that they had seen Christ 'alive after His passion, by many infallible proofs'? If Paul and Peter and John were conspirators in a trick, then their lives and their words were the most astounding anomaly. Who, either, that had the faintest perception of the forces that sway opinion and frame systems, could believe that the fair fabric of Christian morality was built on the sand of a lie, and cemented by the slime of deceit bubbling up from the very pit of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Oder to regain What on the Danube shamefully was lost. We looked for deeds of all-astounding grandeur Upon a theatre of war, on which A Friedland led in person to the field, And the famed rival of the great Gustavus Had but a Thurn and Arnheim to oppose him! Yet the encounter of their mighty hosts Served ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... when she so suddenly awakened, had astounded the world. But at the time she was only forty millions strong. China's awakening, with her four hundred millions and the scientific advance of the world, was frightfully astounding. She was the colossus of the nations, and swiftly her voice was heard in no uncertain tones in the affairs and councils of the nations. Japan egged her on, and the proud Western peoples listened ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... to offer the mass as high priest according to the ritual of the Greek Orthodox Church, if I would only "break off all relations with Protestant bodies here in America." I have a letter from this clergyman which is the most astounding fact of his inconsistency, because he himself is an active member of the Bible Club, a purely Protestant organization: he invited me to one of their meetings, but he would not purchase my book to help me to my bread and butter. Another clergyman, a member of the executive committee ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... Year later, L'Etoile has left on record a still more astounding and degrading fact. "In this month" (March), he says, "several academies of play have been established, where citizens of all ages risk considerable sums, a circumstance which proves not only an abundance of means, but also the corruption ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... fell back, so sudden and so astounding was the change that had come to the woman opposite him. She was leaning forward in her chair, her lips trembling, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... they had no time to admire the works of God. But you see that I am an eccentric queen, and I would go in all humility to adore Him through one of His glorious works. And as, luckily for me, etiquette has never legislated on the subject, you have no grounds for objection, and I shall commit the astounding indiscretion of going out to see the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... death Rice Corner was thrown into a commotion by the astounding fact that Captain Howard was going out West, and had sold his farm to a gentleman from the city, whose wife "kept six servants, wore silk all the time, never went inside of the kitchen, never saw a churn, breakfasted at ten, dined at three, and had ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... of excitement, and the moment his friend left he made a dash for the door of his home, bursting in upon his mother and aunt with the astounding news just ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... proscription infinitely beyond the example of the democratic party. This course, with an army of office-seekers besieging the departments, was unquestionably difficult to avoid, and perhaps, on the whole, not desirable to be avoided. But it was rendered astounding by the sturdy effrontery with which the gentlemen in power denied that their present practice had falsified any of their past professions. A few of the closing paragraphs of Senator Pierce's highly effective speech, being more easily separable ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the earth—a succession of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. John Carter, American, finds himself on the planet Mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the Green Men of Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... with the use he would make of those documents, we think it best to track this Scotch slanderer throughout his slimy course, and expose his astounding mixture of ignorance, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... "a year from now I shall appear before the jury.'' The expression of this rock-bound conviction that the defendants were guilty, on the part of a man who, because of his great talent, had tremendous influence on juries, caused an astounding impression. The instant he said it one could see in most of the jurymen clearest signs of absolute resolution and the defendants were condemned ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... borders of Elis and Arcadia. From thence Alaric escaped with difficulty, and not without some suspicion of connivance on the part of Stilicho. He crossed the Corinthian Gulf and marched with the plunder of Greece northwards to Epirus. Next came an astounding transformation. For some mysterious reason, probably connected with the increasing estrangement between the two sections of the empire, the ministers of Arcadius conferred upon Alaric the government of some part—it can hardly have been the whole—of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... me that a higher court than those of New York has passed judgment on this astounding criminal. The aneurism ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... is yet problematical. But supposing them to have the use of their reason, we have fair grounds of hope, that although the astounding character of the revolution, and of the progress of the same principles in the neighboring kingdoms may make them pause for a while, their own common sense will at length conduct them all to the conclusion, that there is no other course left for them but to recognize the existing government of ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... belt of blue was broadening on the horizon, this awakening of memory came with an astounding effect on Helene. Had she lived through a year of madness, then? To-day, as she pictured the woman who had lived for nearly three years in that room in the Rue Vineuse, she imagined that she was passing judgment ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... accurately analyse Mr. Arabin's feelings on receipt of such astounding tidings. It will suffice to say that he was surprised, vexed, sorrowful, and ill at ease. He had not perhaps thought very much about Eleanor, but he had appreciated her influence, and had felt that close ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... idle and useless brain, emergencies often call out powers and virtues before unknown and unsuspected. How often we see a young man develop astounding ability and energy after the death of a parent or the loss of a fortune, or after some other calamity has knocked the props and crutches from under him. The prison has roused the slumbering fire in many a noble mind. "Robinson Crusoe" was written in prison. The "Pilgrim's ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... the war would be tedious. What Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, and a sum of money. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... out of the fire; and upon such a scene passed the pageantry of our astounding history. The armies marching perpetually, the guns and ring of bronze; I heard the chant of our prayers; and, though so great a host went by from the Baltic to the passes of the Pyrenees, the myriads were contained in one figure ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... the animal as we now find it is reached. Among the invertebrates this same progressive increase in size has been noted, a small shell in the Devonian becoming enormous in the Triassic. Certain species of sharks of medium size in the lower Eocene continue to increase till they attain the astounding dimensions in the Miocene and Pliocene of over one hundred feet long. A certain fish appearing in the Devonian as a small fish of seven centimetres in length, becomes in the Carboniferous era a creature twenty-seven centimetres in length. Among the mammals of Tertiary times ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... Her advance was so astounding that every one was talking about the girl; and the moment soon arrived when her master saw the pupil passing him in skill of hand and reputation as a painter; gazing dumbfounded at the stream of the greatest celebrities and personages ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... as though some one had struck him an astounding blow between the eyes. The walls of the cabin reeled and tilted up. He put out his hand to steady himself and rested it on the stove. The sharp pain and the smell of the burning flesh ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... into the office when no one was around, but how could he open the safe? Walking straight to the thing he was after had been fine. Having been put in a position to get to know what the notes looked like was another astounding piece of good fortune. All this, however, could turn out to mean nothing because he didn't know ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... speech which he always made on such occasions; but to-day, with the knowledge of the astounding contents of that will on his mind, his lips refused to utter it. He simply bowed, seated himself, and opened the document. The old-fashioned legal phrases soon were steadying him as the harness steadies an uneasy horse; and he was monotonously ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... eye see these astounding revelations, but the impartial evidence of inanimate chemicals could be brought forward to prove that the mind harbored no illusion. The photographic film recorded the things that the eye might see, and ghostly pictures galore soon gave a quietus to the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... was a wise one, for Marguerite tottered. Such a success, so quickly gained, was indeed astounding. "Is it ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... he spoke of brother Leonard, and this astounding threat, imported a new and dangerous element into the discussion: it stung Mrs. Gaunt beyond bearing. She turned with flashing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... entertain and in this tale of the invention of "cavorite," and the subsequent remarkable journey made to the moon by its inventor, he has succeeded beyond measure in alternately astounding, convincing and delighting his readers. Told in a straightforward way, with an air of ingenuousness that disarms doubt, the story chronicles most marvelous discoveries and adventures on the mysterious planet. Mr. Hering's many illustrations are admirable. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... difficulty restrained action. I think that it was the report of the British defeat at Stormberg that clinched the matter. All the news we heard in Pretoria was derived from Boer sources, and was hideously exaggerated and distorted. Every day we read in the 'Volksstem'—probably the most astounding tissue of lies ever presented to the public under the name of a newspaper—of Boer victories and of the huge slaughters and shameful flights of the British. However much one might doubt and discount ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... told us from time to time that there were no other villages anywhere in the moon and that she was absolutely the last of her race. Our method of conversation was not free enough to allow her to tell us how she had discovered the truth of this astounding information, and there were a thousand other questions for whose answers we were obliged to wait, ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... alarums. A dead stillness reigns in the jungle by day, but at sunset every leaf almost becomes instinct with life. You might almost fancy yourself beset by Gideon's army, when all the lamps in the pitchers rattled and broke, and every man blew his trumpet into your ear. It is an astounding noise certainly, and difficult to believe that so many pipes and rattles, whirring machines and trumpets, belong to good-sized beetles or flies, singing their evening song to the setting sun. As the light dies away all becomes still again, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in a manner that astounded every one, and took away all their breaths. It was in the dark, but George and Hensleigh Wedgwood held the medium's hands and feet on both sides all the time. I found it so hot and tiring that I went away before all these astounding miracles, or jugglery, took place. How the man could possibly do what was done passes my understanding. I came downstairs, and saw all the chairs, etc., on the table, which had been lifted over the heads of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... almost unearthly, something resembling that of an eclipse viewed through warm-coloured glass; beautiful in itself, yet abnormal, fantastic, suggestive of weird imaginings. Austin, absorbed in contemplation, moved slowly through the shrubbery until he reached the lawn; then came to a dead stop. An astounding vision appeared before him. Standing by the old stone fountain, scarcely ten yards away, he saw the figure of a youth. The slender form was partly draped in a loose tunic of some dim, pale, reddish hue, descending halfway to his knees; on his feet were sandals of the old classic ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the real life-drama, of which a midday representation takes place just opposite the Adelphi in Northumberland Street? The brave Dumas, the intrepid Ainsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the cold-shudder-inspiring "Woman in White," the astounding author of the "Mysteries of the Court of London," never invented anything more tremendous than this. It might have happened to you and me. We want to borrow a little money. We are directed to an agent. We propose a pecuniary transaction at a short date. He goes into the next room, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brought us to the Hof in the midst of preparations for the festival of the Holy Father. On Sunday, June 18, the whole Catholic world was to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas, where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take gloomy views of the Church, were not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... great mansion where all do so much learning have, even the petite cat must an education get! What more astounding ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... the scholars; he made no allusion whatever to the crimes of which Dick and Ted had been guilty, and gave no hint that he harboured any intentions that were not entirely generous and friendly. The two culprits, working with quite astounding assiduity, were beset with conflicting emotions. Dick, who had a vague sort of insight into the master's character, was prepared for the worst, and yet not blind to the possibility of a free pardon. Ted, after the first hour, was ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... haggard and depressed after a night of considerable pain, was sitting up in bed with his arm in a sling, drinking tea, when a fellow-subaltern, who with two others shared the bungalow with him, entered, half-dressed and dishevelled, with the astounding news that Mrs. Tudor was waiting in the compound to ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... everything; but that did not alter the background of their minds. That man, "the male," did all these things was to them a statement, making no more change in the point of view than was made in ours when we first faced the astounding fact—to us—that in ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... "It is a most astounding circumstance that you should have seen him," said Captain Prendergast. "Are you sure ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... "Olivia, it was astounding—incomprehensible! I should never have credited one word he said but for that. He told me the past as I know it myself. Events that transpired in a far foreign land a score of years ago, known, as I thought, to no creature under ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... my readers to use their common sense over this astounding fact—which, after all, is only one among hundreds; to let (as Mr. Matthew Arnold would well say) their "thought play freely" about it; and consider for themselves what those shells must mean. I say not may, but must, unless we are to believe ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... before the law would have disappeared, or they would have hurried on the Social Revolution, the Armageddon of Labor and Capital, the merciless conflict of class with class, which many persons already vaguely dreaded, or thought they saw looming like an ominous cloud on the horizon. It seems astounding that any one should have questioned the necessity of setting up regulations. And will not posterity wonder, when it learns that only in the first decade of the twentieth century did we provide laws against the cruel and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the back of the lock clanked open. Joe tried to walk toward it. He discovered his astounding clumsiness. To walk in magnetic-soled shoes in weightlessness requires a knack. When Joe lifted one foot and tried to swing the other forward, his body tried to pivot. When he lifted his right foot, he had to turn his left slightly inward. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... classes ought to co-exist and interact. Now, the popular notion of science, both in this country and in England, often relates not to science strictly so called, but to the applications of science. Such applications, especially on this continent, are so astounding—they spread themselves so largely and umbrageously before the public eye—that they often shut out from view those workers who are engaged in the quieter and profounder business of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... been a thrilling life—a life of startling dramatic interest—which covered the period occupied by the career of Madame de Stael, even had the person living the life been but an obscure observer of passing events. For the time was big with the most astounding things the world has known in these later centuries. But to a person like the daughter of Necker, with intellect to comprehend the prodigious events, and with the power oftentimes to influence them to a greater or less extent, the wonderful drama which was then enacted upon the stage ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... will content myself with but few reflections upon this most monstrous, astounding, and frightful determination of the King. I will simply say, that it is impossible not to see in it an attack upon the Crown; contempt for the entire nation, whose rights are trodden under foot by it; insult to all the Princes of the blood; in fact the crime of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... development for which Fraide had waited came indeed, but it came with a force he had little anticipated. With a thrill of awe and consternation men heard and repeated the astounding news that—while personally exercising his authority on behalf of British traders—Sir William Brice-Field, Consul-General at Meshed, had been fired at by a Russian officer ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Bootea was astounding. Neither Resident Hodson nor Captain Barlow had suspected that there ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... and he have left nothing undone, that could be done, to lose it. And you may rest assured, that whether I live or die, you shall not escape one jot or tittle of the deep damnation to which you are richly entitled for causing a loss so irretrievable, so astounding, so unnecessary and so fatal, and one which it will be impossible to excuse as owing to ignorance and stupidity. No degree of these misfortunes, can be pleaded in bar of judgment. You will have forced the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... a wonderful big bay horse, the astounding virtues of which stimulated the black boy to ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... of the little town recognized Ursula's perfect innocence, she recovered slowly. While in a state of bodily exhaustion, which left her mind and spirit free, she became the medium of phenomena the effects of which were astounding, and of a nature to challenge science, if science had been brought ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... he, indeed, of such impulses, and so much under the control of the imaginative department of his intellect, that, whatever might have been the accidental mood of his mind, at the moment when this astounding event first burst upon him, it would most probably have acted as a sort of mental catalepsy, and fixed his reason in the very attitude in which it found it. He had, however, been prepared for the part which he now took by much more deep and grounded causes. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... smile. "No doubt you are surprised at the delicacy and refinement of our tastes. Many human beings are under the deplorable mistake of supposing we live on slimy water and dirty insects—ha, ha, ha! whereas our cuisine is astounding in variety and delicacy of material and flavour. If it were not too late in the season, I wish you could have tasted our mushroom pates and ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... insult to credulity. The contrast between Moses, who hesitated not to take all risks in matters of disease with which he felt himself competent to cope, and his timidity and hesitation in matters of war, is astounding. But it is a common phenomenon with the worker of miracles and indicates the limit of faith at which the saint or prophet has always betrayed the impostor. For example: Saint Bernard, when he preached in 1146 the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... booth came the real odor of warm wafer-cakes. The spring even, which presented itself in the outer room, was full of significance. Certainly it was only represented by a tea-urn concealed between moss and stones, but the water was real water, brought from the well in Christiansborg. Astounding and full of effect was the multitude of sweet young girls who showed themselves. Many of the youngest students who had feminine features were dressed as ladies; some of them might even be called pretty. Who that then saw ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... most ably defended by Mr. Nimble, who declined to put any questions in cross-examination, and did not address his Lordship. The case created great sensation, and it is expected that at the trial some remarkable and astounding disclosures will be made. 'The young man from the country' was very remarkably dressed: he twirled in his hand a large old-fashioned white-beaver hat with a black band round it; wore a very peculiar frock, elaborately ornamented with needlework ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... carrying it logically, the result is invariably a display of paralogy so absurd that it becomes pathetic. Such nonsense one looks for in the works of gyneophile theorists with no experience of the world, and there is where one finds it. It is almost always wedded to the astounding doctrine that sexual frigidity, already disposed of, is normal in the female, and that the approach of the male is made possible, not by its melting into passion, but by a purely intellectual determination, inwardly revolting, to avoid his ire by pandering to his gross appetites. Thus the thing ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl, but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. We do not know what passed when she returned, further than that her father had a dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purpose that had so long been ripening in her mind. He dreamed that he saw her surrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evident and natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... not understand a word he said, Pargeter's attitude was eloquent of how he had taken the astounding news, and she looked at him with angry perplexity and pain. She said something in a low voice to Vanderlyn; as a result he walked up to Pargeter and ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... madam. I can see from the appearance of your lawn youre a lady who really cares for her garden. I'm introducing to a restricted group—just one or two in each neighborhood—a new preparation, an astounding discovery by a renowned scientist which will make your grass twice as green and many times as vigorous upon one application, without the aid of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... in connection with local journalism I must record here as being something almost unique. I refer to the astounding sketch Mr. H.J. Jennings—for many years editor of the Birmingham Daily Mail—wrote of himself in 1889, and the circumstances that led to its publication. After many years' connection with the Daily. Mail, Mr. Jennings went over ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... reached that stage when the guests were more or less accessible to emotion, and more or less touched by the astounding fact that every one was enjoying himself. This phenomenon, which is apt to burst into song or dance among other races, is constrained to voice itself in an Anglo-Saxon gathering by some explanation, apology, or ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... the prettiest Writing-Desk in the world, a desk for a duchess's boudoir, all made of polished rosewood, and standing tall and graceful on four curving legs. It had an astounding lid, this Writing-Desk had; that you either locked up or let down; and when you let it down the lid had a shining slab of plate glass all screwed on, thus becoming the loveliest place to write on that you could well imagine. And the inside parts of the Desk were running over with delightful ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... on their left. But it was in the eastern sky that the greater splendour was; for the low rays streaming across lit up some stormy clouds that were brooding behind the mountain and turned their gloomy forms to an astounding purple. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... movements. At length we reached the consulate. It was about three hundred yards from my original point of departure. Any other man in existence than my istrovoschik would have sunk into the earth upon seeing me make this astounding discovery. I knew it by certain landmarks—a church and a garden. But he did not sink into the earth. He merely sat on his drosky as cool as a cucumber. I felt so grateful to the worthy baker, who was a fat old gentleman, and perspired freely after ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... wasn't the wind: there it came again very hard; and what was particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be in a hurry, and not to be in the least afraid of the consequences. Gluck went to the window, opened it, and put his head out to ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... prophecy for him. He looked at her in heart-beating uncertainty, and it seemed to him that all his future was waiting on that moment. Should he speak? Should he utter that which had been so near utterance when her astounding revelation had stopped him?... After all, he knew nothing of her—but that she was lovely and wilful and enchanting—with a capacity for risk—and a dire disregard of consequences.... She was volatile, unstable, bewildering—so he thought stiffeningly as he looked at her, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... while New Jersey, with rich iron mines, has no coal, and one third of her area is south of the celebrated Mason and Dixon's line, the northern boundary of Maryland. The comparison, however, which I shall present hereafter, of New York and Virginia, will be the most astounding, while little less remarkable will be found that of North Carolina with Pennsylvania, Kentucky with Ohio, Tennessee with Indiana, Georgia and Missouri with Illinois, Arkansas with Michigan, Alabama and Texas with Iowa or Minnesota, Mississippi and Louisiana with Wisconsin, Delaware ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Peace that should never be dimmed by the black clouds of Militarism! And all this was not to be? He had never even heard that Liege had fallen, let alone Brussels, and here were the Germans apparently right round the Allied flank. It was astounding, irritating. In a vague way he felt deceived and staggered. It was a disillusionment! If the Germans were across the Sambre, the French could scarcely launch their ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... fall, and directly in front of it. The beams of the evening sun fell upon the cascade, and occasioned a most splendid rainbow; while the vapoury mists arising from the broken waters, the bright green woods that hung from the surrounding cliffs, the astounding roar of the waterfall, and the tumultuous boiling and whirling of the stream below, striving to escape along its deep, dark, and narrow, path, formed altogether a combination of beauty and grandeur, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... she would with her wisdom eclipse Solomon and destroy the value of the Scriptures. He finally hit upon an expedient. He either traversed every proposition she suggested, or else answered every inquiry with a statement which was simply astounding. She had therefore not been at the Towers a week before she was in the possession of facts furnished by the Major which ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... into the most dismal bray ever heard—a long-drawn misery-haunted appeal for help, which was prolonged in the most astounding way till it seemed to ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... terms summarizing everything of importance. Beginning with the fine literary flight that "heaven has refused to sympathize with our difficulties by allowing traitors to be born" he ends with the astounding phrase that although he had proposed to remain silent to the end of his days, "at the sight of the fallen nest he has, however, spat the stopper out of his throat," and he calls upon all China to listen to his words which are simply that the Republic ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... continued, "now I understand why it was my life was spared by those fellows. By Jove, this is astounding!" Then he took up the ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... of the day. When Betty starts asking questions, she mercifully quickly follows one with another, and does not wait for answers. The interior economy of the whale suggested various trains of thought, and she went skipping along beside me, or rather in front of me, propounding the most astounding theories. I was quite glad when Mr. Dudley and Hugh ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... impatient under this continued procrastination and evasion, and he resolved to take such measures as would accomplish the object desired. He had found, during his connection with Bucholz, that he had not the slightest regard for the truth. He would make the most astounding assertions, unblushingly insisting upon their truthfulness, and even when brought face to face with facts which contradicted his statements, he would stubbornly decline to be convinced or to admit his error or falsehood. All through their intercourse he had evinced ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... found a tribe of nearly nude cannibals. He saw one of them eating human flesh. Meeting Ka la ma ta, their chief, the next day in the presence of several hundred of his tribe, he made special inquiry in regard to their knowledge of God. The result was an astounding surprise. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... known in woman—but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the number of victims was very great. Visitors to Danvers to-day are often shown by local guides where some of the tragedies of the persecution were committed. The superstition was finally driven away by educational enlightenment, and it seems astounding that it lasted as long as it did. Two hundred years have nearly elapsed since the craze died out, and it is but charitable to admit, that although many of the witnesses must have been corrupt and perjured, the majority of those connected with the cases were thoroughly in ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... daughter of Francois Cabarrus, a wealthy Spaniard who was the banker of the Spanish Court. The great influence which she unquestionably exerted over her contemporaries was wholly due to her astounding physical beauty. Her intellectual equipment was meagre in the extreme. At one period of her life she courted the society of Madame de Stael and other intellectuals, but Princess Helene Ligne said of her that she "had more jargon than wit." As regards ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... one of the many ingenious appliances of mechanical science that is more appreciated or more successfully employed than the wedge; so subtle and imperceptible are the forces needed for the insertion of its "thin end," so astounding the results which its "thick end" may ultimately produce. Of the former process we shall see a beautiful illustration in a Congregation to be holden at Oxford on the 24th inst., when it will be proposed to grant, to those who have ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... of unreasoning, immeasurable happiness rushed over him, and, in that sudden, astounding instant of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... only feel that the language of Mamma must be singularly antiquated. So much she did not understand . . . had never heard. . . . What, indeed, was a simp, a boob, a nut? What a poor fish? . . . She held her peace, and listened, confused by the astounding vocabulary and the even more astounding intimacy. What things they said ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... down, seized the toad in his huge finger and thumb, and strode off in the direction of the potager, followed at a respectful distance by Jacques, who vented his awe and astonishment in alternate bows and exclamations at the astounding conduct ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... intercourse between this country and yours have seen an overflow of men and money from north to south; we have dashed the mist from our eyes and have endeavored to wring from you, more fortunate and wiser than ourselves, the secrets of your greatness and the causes of your astounding prosperity. ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... found at the bottom of it six hundred million pounds in bank-notes and a Russian named Oilivitch, who at first claimed to be a scenic artist, but finally admitted that he had been appointed by Lenin ambassador to the Netherlands. Communication with Scotland Yard has now established the astounding fact that he is the Abram Oilivitch who in 1914 kept a fish-and-chips shop in Lower Tittlebat Street, Houndsditch. Oilivitch first came under suspicion when it was discovered that Litvinoff had been seen to purchase a haddock at his shop. He was also known to have contributed eighteen-pence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... An astounding laugh arose at my expense, and I should have been annihilated, but that the smile which mantled on the lip of my partner, had a different expression from that of ridicule, and seemed to say, 'Do not take this to heart.' And I did not, Alan—my partner danced admirably, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and when the submarine had quite finished the supply of ships the obliging destroyers picked up the fragments in the open boats and brought them ashore. And the U-53 went on unchecked, after one of the most astounding spectacles in the history ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... and then stopped, evidently too overwhelmed by the astounding nature of the proposition laid down to be able even to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the mid-eighteenth century prepared to accept and adopt any literary dogma, especially when stamped with an English popularity, which shall represent an interest rather in extraordinary characters and unusual opinions than in astounding adventure; which shall display a knowledge of human feeling and foster the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... electoral vote, partly in consequence of dissensions between Cass and Van Buren, and partly in consequence of the free- trade opinions of Cass. In 1854 James Pollock was chosen governor by the sudden uprising and astounding development of the Native- American excitement as organized by the Know-Nothing party. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise aided the canvass of Pollock, but that alone would not have loosened the strong moorings of the Pennsylvania Democracy. Mr. Buchanan ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... his employer's many millions, and it was expressly stipulated that this great inheritance was given to him without qualification, hitch, or hindrance in the exercise thereof. Not a share of stock, not a penny of cash, was bequeathed to the dead man's relatives. As for his direct family, one astounding clause expressly stated that Wade Atsheler was to dispense to Eben Hale's wife and sons and daughters whatever moneys his judgement dictated, at whatever times he deemed advisable. Had there been any scandal in ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... immediately, and the clouds broke; so that, once more, I could see the sky. The stars were flying Westward, with astounding speed. It came to me now, for the first time, that, though the noise of the wind had passed, yet a constant 'blurred' sound was in my ears. Now that I noticed it, I was aware that it had been with me all the time. It was ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... Caers, however, is Carlisle. The Antonine Itinerary gives the town as Luguvallium. Baeda, in his barbarised Latin fashion calls it Lugubalia. 'The Saxons,' says Murray's Guide, with charming naivete, 'abbreviated the name into Luel, and afterwards called it Caer Luel.' This astounding hotchpotch forms an admirable example of the way in which local etymology is still generally treated in highly respectable publications. So far as we know, there never was at any time a single Saxon in Cumberland; and why the Saxons, or any other ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... were considerately furnished for the nonce by Mr. Rogers from his own wardrobe, to the manifest advantage of the Laureate's pocket, but more problematic improvement of his person, when one thinks on the astounding difference of 'build' in the two Poets:—the fact should be put on record, if only as serving to render less chimerical a promise sometimes figuring in the columns of provincial newspapers—that the two apprentices, some grocer or other advertises ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... forgotten, amorous widows would obliterate their previous husbands, angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a troupe of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... secular sciences one truth is incompatible (according to our human intellect) with another or inconsistent with itself; so you should not think it very hard to be told that there exists, here and there, not an inextricable difficulty, not an astounding contrariety, not (much less) a contradiction as to clear facts, between Revelation and Nature; but a hitch, an obscurity, a divergence of tendency, a temporary antagonism, a difference of tone, between the two,—that ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... that there is nothing in the life or work of Lincoln which cannot be explained without reference to any supernatural influence or power. That depends on what is meant by supernatural. There were no miracles, no astounding visions nor experiences. But there ran into Lincoln's life from his young manhood onward this steady and strong current of ideas and ideals from the Bible. In his second inaugural address he worded the thought that was the deepest horror of the Civil War— that on both sides of the strife men were ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... cells. This was followed by the researches of H. F. Mueller and Rieder, who discovered the frequency of eosinophilia in children, and its presence in chronic splenic tumours; further by the well-known work of Ed. Neusser, who observed a quite astounding increase of the oxyphil elements in pemphigus, and by the almost simultaneous analogous observations of Canon in chronic skin diseases. From amongst the flood of further papers upon this condition we will only mention the comprehensive ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... precaution, sir. I am obliged to take it in case you should be mad, though that does not seem likely. No, you are not mad. But you have come here with an object which I fail to grasp; and you have sprung upon me an accusation of so astounding a character that I am curious to know the reason. I have experienced so much disappointment and undergone so much suffering that an outrage of this kind ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Verity did indeed put back the clock for her in most astounding sort. Henrietta was no victim of impulse. Each of her three marriages had been dictated by convenience, carefully thought out and calculated. Over neither husband had she, for ever so brief a period, lost her head. But over Charles ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... white and crimson fire. There is a slender gilded wooden hoop by which to hang it up, and the price is four cents! How can people afford to make such things for four cents, even in this country of astounding cheapness? ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... occurrence. If the houses were not pulled down they fell of their own accord. He wrote: "The large, three-story house, corner of Broadway and Fourth Street, occupied for several years by Mrs. Seton as a boarding-house, fell today at two o'clock, with a crash so astounding that the girls, with whom I was sitting in the library, imagined for a moment that it was caused by an earthquake. Fortunately the workmen had notice to make their escape. No lives were lost and no personal injury ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... hour the whole army was armed and everything in readiness for the advance, when the scouts and the pickets of the 21st Lancers came galloping in with the astounding but most welcome news that the Khalifa, instead of waiting to be attacked behind his intrenchments, as did Mahmoud at Atbara, was rapidly advancing with his whole army upon the zareba. Nothing could have been more fortunate for the Sirdar or more foolish on the ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... along the ground, and twisted themselves in an almost impassable tangle. These had a knack of catching a fellow's feet, and causing him to sprawl forward on his face and hands, whereupon his knapsack would hit him an astounding thwack on the back. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... slippers and bangles and picture-hats, their faces showing ghastly white and drawn in the mote-ridden sunbeams that fell through the dirty windows. Others were busy doffing Cinderella garments, which rites were performed with astounding frankness in the open ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... life. It is no new astounding doctrine. It is not something new for us to preach. It is quite unspectacular. It is just a life to live day by day in whatever circumstances the Lord has put us. It does not contradict what we may have read or heard about the Christian life. It just ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... another; no words can describe that look! Planks were put down, and they walked over their own grave to their death. Is there a skeptic who tells me this was chance? Then I tell him he is a credulous fool to believe that chance can imitate omniscience, omnipotence and holiness so inimitably. In this astounding fact of exact retribution I see nothing that resembles chance. I see the arm of God and the finger of God. His arm dragged the murderers to the gallows, His finger thrust the heartless, cruel miscreants across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... North reported frequent cases of men with simple colds who actually believed that they had developed "consumption." Speakers who wished to discourage the exodus reported "exact" figures on the death rate of the migrants in the North that were astounding. As, for example, it was said by one Reverend Mr. Parks that there were 2,000 of them sick in Philadelphia. The editor of a leading white paper in Jackson, Mississippi, made the remark that he feared that the result of the first ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... campaigns, nor of the daring stratagems of that great leader in effecting his purposes. Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, each in turn fell into his hands, and when Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant-governor at Detroit, received the astounding news that the French on the Mississippi and the Wabash had sworn allegiance to the Americans, he abandoned his enterprise of capturing Fort Pitt and at once entered upon a campaign to retrieve the lost possessions and "sweep" the Kentuckians out of the country. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... the stream one passes through a massive megalithic gateway and finds one's self in the presence of the astounding gray-blue Cyclopean walls of Sacsahuaman, described in "Across South America." Here the ancient builders constructed three great terraces, which extend one above another for a third of a mile across the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Gazette gives sanction and circulation. That part of the American press which is under the influence or control of the Irish Home Rulers still goes on talking of the oppression to which the Irish tenant is subjected, just as the speeches of the Agitators (vide the astounding lies, as well as the appalling nonsense talked, when Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld were made citizens of Dublin, and it was asserted that the Government turned tail and fled before these "delegates") teem with analogous assertions wherein not so much as one grain ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
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