"Impressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressive and sublime, so replete with generous emotions, moved me to tears; and addressing myself to the Genius, I exclaimed: Let me now live, for in future ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... his "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," prints the poem, with the title of "The Soul's Errand," and he also gives it to Sylvester, "as the now generally received author of an impressive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Bible, and, turning towards the man, whose bright eyes were fixed earnestly upon him, read, in a low impressive voice, several of those passages in which a free salvation to the chief of sinners is offered through Jesus Christ. He did not utter a word of comment; but he read with deep solemnity, and paused ever and anon to look in the face of the sick man as he read the blessed words of comfort. The man ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Warrior, the Negro Servitor, the Mongolian Warrior. On they come to join the Nations of the West in the great Court of the Universe. This group is as fine as any group ever seen at an exposition. It rises in its impressive pyramidal height to a climax in the Spirit of the East - a fitting pivot on which to ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... eighteen feet. It covered an area of two acres, three roods, and twenty-one poles, or about that of an ordinary London square. The cubic contents amounted to above nine million feet of solid masonry, and are calculated to have weighed 702,460 tons. The height was not very impressive. Two hundred and twenty feet is an altitude attained by the towers of many churches, and the "Pyramid of the Sun" at Teotihuacan did not fall much short of it; but the mass was immense, the masonry was excellent, and the ingenuity shown in the construction was great. Sunk in the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... in an impressive diminuendo, and the young man turned toward her. His eyes were languishing, his voice gentle, persuasive, as though it had but been the ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... could not understand why Mr. Mathews should underrate it as he did. Longfellow showed us a book given him by Charles Sumner. In it was an old engraving (from a painting by Giulio Clovio) of the moon, in which Dante is walking with his companion. He said it was a most impressive picture to him. He knew it in the original; also there is a very good copy in the Cambridge Library among the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... his speech without smoking the pipe or shaking hands, which was a breach of etiquette; and, above all, he was the chief of a tribe that had inflicted upon them an injury, for which blood alone could atone. Under these discouraging circumstances, Keokuk proceeded, in his forcible, persuasive and impressive manner. Such was the touching character of his appeal, such the power of his eloquence, that the features of his enemies gradually relaxed; they listened; they assented; and when he concluded by remarking, proudly, but in a conciliating tone, "I came here to say that I am sorry for the imprudence ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... A rather impressive example of possession may be selected from Livingstone's 'Missionary Travels' (p. 86). The adventurous Sebituane was harried by the Matabele in a new land of his choice. He thought of descending the Zambesi till he was in touch with white men; but Tlapane, 'who held intercourse ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... its strength and in its weakness; brilliant in passages, faulty in architechtonic, and uneven in execution. Its supernatural machinery—Byron said that it had more "gramarye" than grammar—is not impressive, if due exception be made of the opening of Michael ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... contemporary with each generation. For while the mediaeval frame-work upon which Dante constructed the "Divine Comedy" becomes obsolete, the fundamental thought of the poet about human souls and the identity of the deed and its result not only remains true to experience but has received the most impressive confirmation from subsequent history ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... delightful to the ear. They are the outcome of a discontent with prose, not of that high-strung sensibility which compels the true poet into verse. This must not be said without exception. The Threnody, written after the death of a deeply loved child, is a beautiful and impressive lament. Pieces like Musquetaquid, the Adirondacs, the Snowstorm, The Humble-Bee, are pretty and pleasant bits of pastoral. In all we feel the pure ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... pots, or cut freshly and set in crystal vases, were grouped together with the greatest taste and artistic selection of delicate colouring, forming, as it seemed, a kind of blossom-wreathed shrine, above which, against the carved chimney itself, hung a wonderfully impressive picture of the Virgin and Child. Placed below this, and slightly towarde the centre of the room, was the Bishop's table-desk and chair, arranged so that whenever he raised his head from his work, the serene soft ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... liquor-case, and having polished up his old beaver anew, left the office by the side door, carrying under his arm a mahogany box about two feet long and one foot wide, partially covered with a large linen cloth. His beaver hat was cocked on the side of his head, with an air supposed to be impressive. He wore the Major's coat and flowered velvet waistcoat respecting which he had won so signal a victory in the morning, and he flaunted a large bandanna handkerchief, the ownership of which he had transferred still ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... words suggest more than they reveal. Cooper was not a writer of this kind. He belonged to that class of literary artists who convey their precise meaning by exactness and fullness of (p. 051) detail. The vagueness and indefiniteness with which this story abounds is not, therefore, that impressive obscurity which springs from the mysterious; it is, on the contrary, the obscurity of the unintelligible and absurd. In all of Cooper's novels, it is a fault that the characters are often represented as acting without sufficient ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... general poverty of the country, and the scarcity of clocks and watches, must have given rise to the adoption of the hour sand-glass, a simple instrument, but yet elegant and impressive, for the measurement of a brief portion ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... "The last we heard of him he was in the Maine lumber woods. But that was three years ago. I don't know where he is now, and," added Peter deliberately, taking his gum from his mouth to make his statement more impressive, "I don't care." ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... swing as the ocean itself. Particular attention should be called to the fugue in the Messiah "And by His stripes we were healed [Transcriber's Note: And with His stripes we are healed]." One of the most impressive fugues in modern literature is the a capella chorus Urbs Syon Unica from H.W. Parker's Hora Novissima. From among the organ works of Bach everyone should know the Fugues in G minor, in A minor, in D major[38] ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... cannot be broken into any steady habits of industry, but where by wise kindness the black fellow has been kept from the vices of civilization he is a most engaging savage. Tall, thin, muscular, with fine black beard and hair and a curiously wide and impressive forehead, he is not at all unhandsome. He is capable of great devotion to a white master, and is very plucky by daylight, though his courage usually goes with the fall of night. He takes to a horse naturally, and some of the finest riders ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... may be best suited to their respective capacities: in conjunction with the most approved course of common school-education. Particular attention is likewise paid to the elevation of their moral character, so likely to be permanently influenced by means of impressive friendly admonition, the frequent inculcation and daily observance of religious duties, and the exciting hope of reward for good behaviour in a mitigation of their sentence: in short, by the most encouraging and kind treatment, as far as is compatible with the strictness ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... of the girl was singularly compelling; there was something vividly impressive about her just now, though her pallid, prematurely mature face and the thin figure in the regulation black dress and white apron showed ordinarily only insignificant. "Tell me now," she repeated, with a monotonous emphasis that somehow moved Sarah to obedience against ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... and the stately dome Which, ovaled by the slow but tireless hand Of eons of disintegrating time, Still with impressive aspect rears its brow ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... "Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... mysterious. The connexion of the mail with the state and the executive government—a connexion obvious, but yet not strictly defined—gave to the whole mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive were those terrors because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at those turnpike gates: with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... been in a generous mood when she had endowed Mrs. Pennypoker, for she had given her a massive frame and constitution of bronze, which made her thoroughly intolerant of those unfortunates who were not similarly blessed. But, impressive as Mrs. Pennypoker was in most respects, there was yet one undignified peculiarity which marred the otherwise perfect majesty of her appearance. Like Samson, her vulnerable point lay in her hair; or, more properly speaking, in her lack of it. The ravages ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... observing. There is action enough in the plot, energy enough in the dialogue, and abundance of individual beauties in both; but there is throughout a certain air of stiffness and effort, which abstracts from the theatrical illusion. The language, in general impressive and magnificent, is now and then inflated into bombast. The characters do not, as it were, verify their human nature, by those thousand little touches and nameless turns, which distinguish the genius essentially dramatic from the genius merely poetical; the Proteus ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... rolled out magnificently over the awed gathering, and the minister flattened his chin and rolled his eyes up at the people in his most impressive way. ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... itself among the pleasant fruits of the tree of knowledge. See, then, that you love in the spirit, and not in the flesh. If you love in the spirit, and if you meet with one who seeks the same God, you should love that seeker; and should he be only——" here her words became very impressive—"should he be only a distant seeker, yes, even a wanderer, who but dimly catches a glimpse of the light, and who follows it but feebly, and be his appearance, conversation, and natural mind ever so doubtful, you should love him for ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... a fine person, which perhaps was even more impressive at fifty-seven than it had been earlier in life. There were no distinctively clerical lines in the face, no tricks of starchiness or of affected ease: in his Inverness cape he could not have been identified except as a gentleman with handsome dark features, a nose ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... my style. It's too slow. Besides, it admits of nothing impressive being said, and I ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... let us consider Boris Godounof, for there is a historical drama suited to its music. I saw Boris Godounof with considerable interest. I heard pleasant and impressive passages, and others less so. In one scene I saw an insignificant friar who suddenly becomes the Emperor in the next scene. One entire act is made up of processions, the ringing of bells, popular songs, and dazzling costumes. In ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... and directed their course through the woods. On this occasion, Mr. Park says, "the stillness of the air, the howling of the wild beasts, and the deep solitude of the forest, made the scene solemn and impressive. Not a word was uttered by any of us, but in a whisper; all were attentive, and every one anxious to show his sagacity, by pointing out to me the wolves and hyenas, as they glided, like shadows, from one thicket to another." The following afternoon they arrived ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... simple but impressive ceremonies were held in the public square at the rear of Independence Hall. On temporary platforms sat 5,000 distinguished guests, and a chorus of 1,200 singers. The square and the neighboring streets were filled with a dense throng. Richard Henry Lee, grandson of the mover of the Declaration of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... wait till he comes," said the old lady, with a sort of tender confidence that was impressive and almost solemn. Mrs. Barclay's thoughts made a few quick gyrations; and then the door opened, and Lois, who had left the room, came in again, followed by one of her sisters bearing a plate ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... most of the land had been confiscated; and now, shrunken like the papal power at Rome, the temple claimed, in land, only those acres bounded by its own hedges and stone temple walls. There were the main building itself, silent, impressive in towering majesty; subordinate chapels and dwellings for priests, a huge smoke-stained refectory, the low nunnery in its spreading gardens and, down the northern slope of the hill, the cemetery, a lichen-growth, as it were, ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... fact, it is idle to say that, being unaccustomed to the grand scale on which law costs present themselves on occasion, he was unspeakably shocked and he grew very pale and silent on hearing these impressive sentences. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the new town-hall, With sundry farmers from the region round. The Squire presided, dignified and tall, His air impressive and his reasoning sound; Ill fared it with the birds, both great and small; Hardly a friend in all that crowd they found, But enemies enough, who every one Charged them with all the crimes beneath ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... reached the cemetery impressive services, according to the ritual of the order, were conducted by Commander Ben Richards of Artesian Tent, Knights of the Maccabees, a final prayer was offered by Rev. Crouch and the body of Tom Davis was lowered to rest. The floral tributes were beautiful. Friends brought ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... attending as children any other than the regular Sabbath services; but we were not neglected in this respect at home, so far as it lay in our parents' ability to help us. We regularly gathered around our mother's knee, reading the impressive little stories found in such illustrated booklets as the Teacher's Offering, the Child's Companion, the Children's Missionary Record (Church of Scotland), the Tract Magazine, and Watts' Divine Songs for Children. These readings were always accompanied ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn't know why he was so tired, he had felt quite "bobbish" all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... voice was a feminine one, low and sweet, but clearly distinct, and vibrant with joyous confidence, on through one after another of the ever familiar, but ever impressive phrases of the service that gives into the hands of one man and of one woman the future happiness, each ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the ancient edifice, one impressed me in the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,— centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse of a living past, like the graffiti of Pompeii. I find it is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention and takes hold of my memory. This is a tendency of which I suppose I ought to be ashamed, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the whole camp was astir, when the Arabs went down on their knees looking towards Mecca to say their prayers, an impressive sight, for every man seemed in earnest. Soon afterwards the Sheik approached and inquired whether Stephen and Roger ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers, or what awfully dull people, they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly unaccountable. Here I expected to doze all the way across the desert, while in fact I 've grudged my eyes time ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Helen and the others look coarse and slovenly beside her. Sitting lightly upright she seemed to be dealing with the world as she chose; the enormous solid globe spun round this way and that beneath her fingers. And her husband! Mr. Dalloway rolling that rich deliberate voice was even more impressive. He seemed to come from the humming oily centre of the machine where the polished rods are sliding, and the pistons thumping; he grasped things so firmly but so loosely; he made the others appear like old ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... an established Frohman star. After "Heartsease" had had several successful road seasons, Frohman presented Miller in "The Only Way," an impressive dramatization of Charles Dickens's great story, "A Tale of ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... impressive, as it always is to me while I roam through the woodlands or lie in hiding to watch the creatures that haunt the gloom-wrapt clearings among the oaks and the beeches. In the darkness, long intervals, during which nothing will be seen or heard, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... and splendour of Athens, this institution rose into celebrity and magnificence, until it appears to have become the most impressive spectacle of the heathen world. It is evident that a people so imitative would reject no innovations or additions that could increase the interest or the solemnity of exhibition; and still less such as might come (through whatsoever ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... influenced by pity. And it will be desirable to produce that effect by common topics, such as those by which the power of fortune over all men is shown, and the weakness of men too is displayed, and if such an argument is argued with dignity and with impressive language, then the minds of men are greatly softened, and prepared to feel pity, while they consider their own weakness in the contemplation of the misfortunes ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... streamers into which the whole ponderous volume of the fall separates, two or three hundred feet below the brow. So glorious a display of pure wildness, acting at close range while cut off from all the world beside, is terribly impressive. A less nerve-trying view may be obtained from a fissured portion of the edge of the cliff about forty yards to the eastward of the fall. Seen from this point towards noon, in the spring, the rainbow on its brow seems to be broken up and mingled ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... that Miss RHODA BROUGHTON has not thought fit to publish her total fictional tonnage (if without disrespect I may employ a metaphor of the moment) on the title-page of her latest volume. Certainly the tale of her output must by this time reach impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that A Thorn in the Flesh (STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... the gardens, leading the way under the impression that the stranger is following him. The majestic one, however, comes straight into the room to the end of the table, where, with impressive deliberation, he takes off the false nose and then the domino, rolling up the nose into the domino and throwing the bundle on the table like a champion throwing down his glove. He is now seen to be a stout, tall man between forty and fifty, clean shaven, with a midnight oil pallor emphasized ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... to obtain, at first sight, the most impressive view of the Cathedral Church of St. Alban, should alight at the London and North-Western Station, at which all the trains from Euston and many of those from King's Cross arrive. This station is about half a mile south of the city, and from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... had brought the dead to life? They only laughed when such things were related. Why did He not do something now? Just one miracle, and we should be saved. Perhaps He is intentionally letting things come to the worst, so that His power may appear the more impressive. They will take Him and put Him in chains, lead Him out amid the joyful cries of the mob, and suddenly a troop of angels with fiery swords will come down from heaven, destroy the enemy, and the Messiah revealed will ascend the throne. ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... outside the cathedral, we saw an English ecclesiastic in a stringed, sub-shovel hat. He had a young lady with him, presumably a daughter or niece. He eyed us with much the same incurious curiosity as that with which we eyed him. We passed them and went inside the duomo. How far less impressive is the interior (indeed I had almost said also the exterior) than that of San Domenico! Nothing ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... imposing hills around the Vale of Blackmore. To most who travel in search of the picturesque and the beautiful, the Dorset coast and the country immediately in the rear, will make the greatest appeal. The line of undulating cliffs, often towering in bold, impressive shapes, that commences almost as soon as Dorset is entered and continues without a dull mile to the eastern extremity of Weymouth, is to some minds the finest stretch of England's shore outside Cornwall, a ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... gravity— the reflection, as it were, of the sombre countenance of the austere and relentless Grand Master. The lower part of the hall was filled with guards and others whom curiosity had drawn together to witness the important and impressive ceremony. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... regular army, three of foot and two of dragoons, under the command of Lacy, Lawless, Wogan, O'Reilly, and O'Gara. But it was in France that the Irish served in the greatest number, and made the most impressive history for themselves ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... The impressive dignity of the occasion was such that there was little need of the admonition of the Chief Justice to abstention from conversation on the part of the audience during the proceeding. No one there present, whether ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... his feet; young girls strewed flowers in his path, the choir chanted. Then, the Anabaptists having deposed the Elector Princes, were to take their places. The Prophet was anointed with holy oil, a great and impressive ceremony took place, and all the city rang with the cries that proclaimed him king. Faith and Bertha could not see the new king, but they were in the crowd, and they cursed this Prophet again—none so vigorously as Bertha, while Faith hailed her as a new Judith. After a time, all being prostrate ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning man may have when fighting his desperate fight with the salty waves. But more impressive than that was the frequent outer resemblance. The waves of the ocean rise up and reach out and batter against the rocks and battlements of the shore, retreating again and ever returning to the assault, covering the obstacles thrown in the way of their progress with thin sheets ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... by the happy nests of the young were like spirits of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living, yet who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the feast, the impressive acolytes by the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... resolve and repressed action. Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was far more impressive. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... utter; and presently the train carried them out into the gas-sprinkled darkness, with an ever-growing speed that soon left the city lamps far behind. It is a phenomenon whose commonness alone prevents it from being most impressive, that departure of the night-express. The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The draw bridges that gape upon the way, the trains that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sectors. On the downside, the government must deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially is 21%, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. Long-term prospects are overshadowed by the prospects of a leveling off in ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... his maker and the saints of heaven, that he was guiltless of the death of his brother. He had no sooner concluded than all eyes were turned upon the Cid, who, in deep, solemn tones, and with the most impressive earnestness of manner, imprecated on the head of his king every curse that heaven or hell could inflict, if, in taking that oath, he had committed perjury. The awed assembly then broke up. Rodrigo, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... very curious, and the authenticity of its facts has been confirmed to me by various testimonies, but the author is too clever for his position; I mean too full of flash and wit. There's an air of levity, and of effective writing, without which the book would have been more impressive and convincing; don't you think so? And here we get to the heart of most of the difficulties of the subject. Why do we make no quicker advances, do you say? Why are our communications chiefly trivial? Why, but because we ourselves are trivial, and don't bring serious souls and concentrated ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... An impressive sight! The making of a fist of the left hand is a great addition of power, and should be followed in modern practice. The gentle sullation of the front fingers, with the clenched fist behind them, says as plainly as possible, Put suaviter ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... it would be frightfully crude, and it is. And yet, Wiggie, it's impressive, in its way... nobody can miss the ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... retaining the freshness of its colors most remarkably, considering the length of time it had probably been there. The portrait was that of a man who might be somewhat advanced in middle life, perhaps forty-seven or forty-eight. It was a remarkable face,—a most impressive face. If you could fancy some mighty serpent transformed into man, preserving in the human lineaments the old serpent type, you would have a better idea of that countenance than long descriptions can convey: the width and flatness of frontal; ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... forced to recognise facts that he deplored, and would have preferred to leave untouched—things he personally would rather have treated with ridicule if possible. It made his words peculiarly dignified and impressive, and I listened with an increasing uneasiness as to the sort of help the doctor would look to me for later. It seemed as though I were a spectator of some drama of mystery in which any moment I might be summoned to ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... this, so much the more positive was their association of the THUNDER-STORM as that which brings both warmth and rain with the renewed vernal life of vegetation. The impressive phenomena which characterize it, the prodigious noise, the awful flash, the portentous gloom, the blast, the rain, have left a profound impression on the myths of every land. Fire from water, warmth and moisture from the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... a house was visible, nothing but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide expanse—Stonehenge and the barrows, which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few hay ricks. On the top of a mountain the old temple would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with their flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It looked as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded by the veneration of the British race to the old egg out of which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... till he had done abusing her, and then politely explained my errand. After much beating about the bush, he gave me the information that I wanted, and then, to the astonishment of his servant, went downstairs with me and put me into my cab with the most impressive politeness. Just as I left he told me he had allowed me to break his rule and spoil his lunch because I was ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Honey descended from a throne of faded wine-colored velvet, and addressed the Princess with her most impressive and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... pasteboard a little stiffly retained between forefinger and thumb, this struck him as really, in comparison his introduction to things. It hadn't been "Europe" at Liverpool no—not even in the dreadful delightful impressive streets the night before—to the extent his present companion made it so. She hadn't yet done that so much as when, after their walk had lasted a few minutes and he had had time to wonder if a couple of sidelong glances from her meant that he had best have put on gloves she almost pulled him up ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... House,—for he had quite got the ear of the House,—a certain impressive good sense, a habit of saying nothing that was not necessary to the occasion, had chiefly made for him the high character he enjoyed; but in the law courts it was perhaps his complaisance, his peculiar courtesy, of which they who praised him talked the most. His aptitude to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... Midi is more impressive from the hotel, don't you think?" she remarked, "than it ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... lenses of television cameras were focused on Him from every part of the balcony at the rear of the hall. The microphones were ready. Weaver walked forward as the congregation knelt, and waited an impressive moment before He spread His hands in the gesture that meant, "Rise, my children." Simon, previously coached, translated. The congregation rose again, ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... Warr reached "James Citty" and made his landing. He entered the fort through the south gate, and, with his colors flying, went on to the church where Reverend Richard Buck delivered an impressive sermon. Then his ensign, Anthony Scott, read his commission, and Gates formally delivered to him his own authority as governor. De La Warr's arrival had given the settlement new life and new hope. Lean times lay ahead, yet the most difficult ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... inven-tions. The first of them, Alexander Bell, had invented a system for the correction of stammering and similar defects of speech. The second, Alexander Melville Bell, was the dean of British elocutionists, a man of creative brain and a most impressive facility of rhetoric. He was the author of a dozen text-books on the art of speaking correctly, and also of a most ingenious sign-language which he called "Visible Speech." Every letter in the alphabet of this language represented ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... noble type of our race. He was of massive, compact form, a face of strong intelligence and glowing with masculine beauty, in his prime. His portraits, though imposing, by no means do justice to the impressive and vivacious presence of the man. This pen picture is by one who knew the ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... length, but space must yet be found for the last three, the surviving members of the brilliant quartette who produced 'New Numbers'. Mr. Drinkwater wrote as follows: "There can have been no man of his years in England who had at once so impressive a personality and so inevitable an appeal to the affection of every one who knew him, while there has not been, I think, so grievous a loss to poetry since the death of Shelley. Some of us who knew him may live to be old men, but life is not likely to give us any richer memory than ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... puppies, Ruby and Remus, who had unaccountably developed a virulent form of mange, were immediately taken in hand by the all-accomplished tinker, and anointed with a mixture whose very noisomeness was to Patsey Crimmeen a sufficient guarantee of its efficacy, and was impressive even to the Master, fresh from much ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... narrow black tie were so nearly even that the tying must have cost him a protracted struggle. His appearance struck her all the more because it was the first time she had looked him full in the face since the night at Nettleton, and nothing in his grave and impressive demeanour revealed a trace of the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... distinguished by the favor of those who then held the government, fenced round by the superstitious reverence of millions, was hanged in broad day before many thousands of people. Everything that could make the warning impressive, dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the proceeding, was found in this case. The helpless rage and vain struggles of the Council made the triumph more signal. From that moment the conviction of every native was that it was safer to take the part of Hastings in a minority than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... jurisprudence. I defy you, sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you were saying and doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man we may possibly see him as he is; the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... is that we have a continent, with a hundred million half-educated people, materially prosperous, but spiritually starving; so any man who possesses personality, who looks in any way strange and impressive, or has hunted up old books in a library, and can pronounce mysterious words in a thrilling voice—such a man can find followers. Anybody can do it with any doctrine, from anywhere, Persia or Patagonia, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... of a lofty rock, abruptly rising from the very edge of the Seine, whose sinuous course here shapes the adjoining land into a narrow peninsula. The chalky cliffs on each side of the castle are broken into hills of romantic form, which add to the impressive wildness of the scene. Towards the river, the steepness of the cliff renders the fortress unassailable: a double fosse of great depth, defended by a strong wall, originally afforded almost equal protection on ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... there was a deep stillness in the climbing forest which the roar of the river emphasized. Those trees were vast of girth, and they were very cold. In spite of whirling snow, and gale, and frost, they had grown slowly to an impressive stateliness. In Nature, as he recognized, all was conflict, and it was the fine adjustment of opposing forces that made for the perfection of grace, and strength, and beauty. Then it seemed to him that his companion was like the forest—still, and strong, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... believed the Lady Isabella's union with Lord John Comyn was one of choice, not of necessity, nor did his visit to her after the battle of Falkirk recall any former feeling. His mind had been under the heavy pressure of that self-reproach which the impressive words of Wallace had first awakened; the wretched state of his country, the tyranny of Edward, occupied the mind of the man in which the emotions of the boy had merged. He was, too, a husband and a father; and he was, as his fond wife so trustingly believed, too nobly ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... would be either there in perfect accordance with the principles admitted to be just in his conference with the Secretary of State by the Mexican minister himself, or were already withdrawn in consequence of the impressive warnings their commanding officer had received from the Department of War. It is hoped and believed that his Government will take a more dispassionate and just view of this subject, and not be disposed to construe a measure of justifiable ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... class, there was no great intimacy with the law as a science, and its higher philosophy was beyond their reach. Like Mathews, however, he had always lived in sea-ports, and as he studied his cases well, he was always very impressive with the jury, and was heard with great respect by the court; and when he had reached the zenith, a slow shake of the head or even of his finger at an argument that was too hard for him, went a great way even with the court, and almost ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... the two illustrations shown in this plate is surely a very impressive testimony to the value of the knowledge given by the theosophical teaching. Undoubtedly this knowledge of the truth takes away all fear of death, and makes life easier to live because we understand its object and its end, and we realise ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... must have looked just the same when the Romans marched through it as it looks now. No trees could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the English climate can generate no available soil. I do not know that I have seen anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. The notch of the White Mountains, as I remember it in my youthful days, is more wonderful and richly picturesque, but of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... various points along the river witness the ceremony which closes the festivities of Yule-tide. At Petrograd a dome is erected in front of the Winter Palace, where in the presence of a vast concourse of people the Czar and the high church officials in a grand and impressive manner perform the ceremony. In other places it is customary for the district priest to officiate. Clothed in vestments he leads a procession of clergy and villagers, who carry icons and banners and chant as they proceed to the river. They usually leave an open space in their ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... the captain, with his peculiarly gentle but impressive voice, "you know my project of going to the Pole; I want to get your opinion of the undertaking. What do ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... them, or ladies in modern, often extravagant, toilets singing the parts of the grand, imposing figures of the Old and New Testaments has always disturbed me to such a degree that I could never attain to pure enjoyment. Involuntarily I felt and thought how much grander, more impressive, vivid, and true would be all that I had experienced in the concert-room if represented on the stage with costumes, decorations, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... possibly arise, Madam," said the Captain in his most impressive orotund, and with his hand thrust into the bosom of his Prince Albert coat, "is something which my loyalty to Lattimore, my faith in my fellow citizens, my confidence in Mr. Elkins and Mr. Barslow, and my regahd fo' my own honah, pledged as it is ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... on the stage, he would ring it ferociously, and everything would come to a stop, until Mrs. Kean, who always sat on the stage, had set right what was wrong. She was more formidable than beautiful to look at, but her wonderful fire and genius were none the less impressive because she wore a white handkerchief round her head and had a very beaky nose! How I admired and loved and feared her! Later on the fear was replaced by gratitude, for no woman ever gave herself more trouble to train a young actress than did Mrs. Kean. The love and admiration, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially was 23.8% in 2004, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the second highest in the world and threaten Botswana's impressive economic gains. An expected leveling off in diamond ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... lectures on ritual, and contains the macte esto which I was then at pains to explain. Augustus prayed for the safety and prosperity of the State in every way, and also for himself, his house, and his familia.[941] The scene on the bank of the Tiber, illuminated by torches, must have been most impressive. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of the autumn leaves as they fell from the chestnuts around the Perkins Institution and the elms that darkened the sombre, deserted castle of Harris's Folly. With this sense of strangeness though, comes a sense still more striking and impressive of the turbulent, active, and brilliant period through which John Gilbert has lived. Byron had been dead but four years [1828] and Scott and Wordsworth were still writing when he began to act. Goethe was still living. The works of Thackeray and Dickens were yet to be created. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... feature of the entire service is always the sermon, after which comes a hymn and the benediction. The evening service followed the order of that of the morning. Of elaborate liturgies there has been no hint, yet the service has ever been both impressive and interesting. People explained it at first by the peculiar power of the man who occupied the pulpit, yet this can hardly account for its continuance to the present day in its original form. The ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... visited them. His son Gaetano had been educated and brought up with Aminta, and a close friendship had been the consequence. Gaetano was twenty years of age, and his features bore the imprint of masculine and impressive Neapolitan beauty, deficient neither in the dark locks nor black though somewhat glassy eye, which is as it were the ordinary seal of the countenances of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... are raised about their heads, forming a nimbus to each. The other two wings are depressed. These mighty angels were formerly whitened and partially gilt, and the effect of the great figures looming out of the dark vault is most impressive. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... when an extraordinary, unheard of, unprecedented event took place in the magistrate's office. Constant, the serious, impressive, immovable, deaf and dumb Constant, rose from his ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... London with a poor apology for the crime, by pretending that the Protestants had conspired against the life of the king. The embassador was received in the court of the queen with appalling coldness and gloom. Arrangements were made to invest the occasion with the most impressive solemnity. The court was shrouded in mourning, and all the lords and ladies appeared in sable weeds. A stern and sombre sadness was upon every countenance. The embassador, overwhelmed by his reception, was overheard to exclaim to himself, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... them. You see, I was only eight years old. I couldn't make my own life. After Saidee was married and taken to Algiers, my stepmother began to imagine herself in love with an American from Indiana, whom she met in Paris. He had an impressive sort of manner, and made her think him rich and important. He was in business, and had come over to rest, so he couldn't stay long abroad; and he urged Mrs. Ray to go back to America on the same ship with him. Of course ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... material; not invention, but selection of existing material appropriate to his genius, and complete absorption of it into his being; that is how the epic poet works. Allegory is a beautiful way of inculcating and asserting some special significance in life; but epic has a severer task, and a more impressive one. It has not to say, Life in the world ought to mean this or that; it has to show life unmistakably being significant. It does not gloss or interpret the fact of life, but re-creates it and charges the fact itself with the poet's own sense of ultimate values. ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... and blushing like a girl. "Not less'n it happened sence last We'n'sday, an' that hain't noways likely," replied the other, with more interest than he had yet shown. Woodward's embarrassment was more impressive than his words. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... from the Burial Service from Corinthians. Perhaps it has never been read in a more magnificent cathedral and under more impressive circumstances—for it is a grave which kings must envy. Then some prayers from the Burial Service: and there with the floor-cloth under them and the tent above we buried them in their sleeping-bags—and surely their work has not been ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... him the right to consider her as his betrothed bride, for after a brief farewell and a few kisses of the hand flung to him from the threshold, she had escaped to the little bow-windowed room and thereby also evaded from the departing lover an impressive, well-prepared speech concerning the duties of a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... animated by the frequent passage of the merchant vessel plowing its way toward the port of Quebec, or hurrying upon the descending tide to the Gulf; while, from the summit of the hill upon which Tadoussac stands, the sublime and impressive scenery of the Saguenay rises to view."—Picturesque Tourist, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... even the leprous corpse does not, through various stages of decay, pass into absolute nothingness: on the contrary, its constituents take new forms, and subserve a re-growth of life, as in the flowers which bedeck the grave. From this single and impressive instance the poet passes to the general and unfailing law—No material object of which we have cognizance really dies: all such objects are in a perpetual cycle of change. This conception has been finely developed in a brace of early poems of Lord ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... meekness which makes the good man wronged so impressive a spectacle, Ashe produced ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... fitting that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... hair lift at the back of my head, and my heart thump like a thermantidote paddle. Luckily, the seal cutter betrayed himself by his most impressive trick and made me calm again. After he had finished that unspeakable crawl, he stretched his head away from the floor as high as he could, and sent out a jet of fire from his nostrils. Now I knew how ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... not linger on the intervening time. The doctor who attended us usually, came in next day "by accident," and we had a long conversation. On the following day a very impressive yet genial gentleman from town lunched with us,—a friend of my father's, Dr. Something; but the introduction was hurried, and I did not catch his name. He, too, had a long talk with me afterwards, my father being called away to speak to some ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... head-light as the locomotives use would cost several hundred dollars, although I could have made one nearly as good for much less. Such a thing in the center of a man's forehead, and the whistle at the end of his nose, would give him quite an impressive appearance.' ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... if the full meaning of the Roman Catholic faith was borne upon him for the first time. With a tremendous influence upon his emotions, its intimate relation with the soul and the sentiment of the human hearts gathered there quickened the utmost depths of his nature. Having thus witnessed that impressive service, it was impossible for him to feel that he was not one with it, and of it; and all differences of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace. The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of erudition and gentility to the pair that was quite impressive, while their unquestionably good descent was a source of social capital to all of humbler origin who were fortunate enough to draw them to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... hopes and fears and the joys and sorrows that are the perdurable stuff of existence, the inexhaustible and unchanging principles of activity in man. Now it is only to the few that reduced to their simplest expression the 'eternal verities' are engaging and impressive. To touch the many they must be conveyed in human terms; they must be presented not as impersonal abstractions, not as matter for the higher intelligence and the higher emotions, but as living, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... It was an impressive sight to see this procession of fine-blooded stock arrive at the farm, and the eyes of both Bob and his aunt were glistening when they looked at each other as the procession came up the ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... my temper. I had an edge on the fellow on account of the high-powered voice he owned, so when he suggested that I had been dreaming, I climbed to my feet so that I could make my words more impressive when I started to tell him my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... laboring man's protest against the tyranny of that militarism which terrorizes Europe.[2] And since military tyranny is heaviest in Germany, Socialism has there risen to its greatest strength. The increase of the Socialist vote in German elections became perhaps the most impressive political phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1912 this vote was more than one-third of the total vote of the Empire, and the Socialists were the largest single party in Germany. The Socialists of France are almost equally ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... whole plantation, however, has been so miserably storm-stricken that the poor stunted trees are not even worth the trouble of cutting them down for fuel, and so they continue to disfigure the spot. In all other respects this impressive monument of former times is carefully preserved; the soil within the enclosure is not broken, a path from the road is left, and in latter times a stepping-stile has been placed to accommodate Lakers with an easier access than by striding ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... tower and some crumbling tombs. As we walked along the curving road, we caught glimpses now and then of the venerable tower; and gradually it emerged as out of the shadows of the past, and we stood facing it. Silently we gazed at the ancient pile, the most impressive ruin of English colonization. A hollow shaft of brick, with two high arched openings, a crumbling top, and a hold on the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Not the least impressive feature of the scene was the profound silence which marked it. The shout that first arrested the attention of Ashman and his companion, must have been some kind of a signal, probably announcing the ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... either prohibitory or permissive; which means that it can say what shall not be done, or else that which may be done according to law, all other acts being forbidden. Your lawyer must decide which form is best. For my part, I greatly prefer the prohibitive form, as being the stronger and more impressive of the two. I think it is the province of the law to forbid the destruction of wild life and forests, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... afterwards recalled with much clearness the thoughts and reflections which passed through his mind during that delirium of more than two hours. He even remembered the senseless bray of laughter which, to the sympathetic mind, is not the least impressive feature of that iniquitous trial. His overwrought nerves being temporarily relieved by the cachinnation, he regained for a few minutes some measure of composure and sanity. With the return of reason came a returning sense of injustice and oppression. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible. Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest. Honora sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that Mrs. Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the floor and leaned ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... an impressive pause. The women were too dumfounded to comment. Never in the history of Monterey had such a ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... craned forward; people in the gallery leaned over, looking eagerly down; a loud murmur and a wide hiss of whispering emphasized the life in the court. The tall, loose-limbed figure of Esme Darlington, looking to-day singularly dignified and almost impressive, pushed slowly forward, followed by the woman whose social fate was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... This noble beast's impressive form is seen 'Mong the possessions of a king or queen. Hard-favored, yet so valuable is he, He's ever kept beneath a lock and key. And, since his temper can't find vent in speech, He stamps and punches ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... well-proportioned, the picturesque costume of the 129th Bobtails could add but little to the effect already produced by so martial a figure. His face was whiskerless; his eyes gray; his cheek-bones a little higher than the average; his hair auburn; his nose not Grecian—or Roman—but still impressive: his air one of quiet dignity, mingled with youthful joyance and mirthfulness. Try—O reader!—to bring before you ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... continued, in an impressive, awestruck whisper. "He had to come out of his bed at night—Santissima Maria!—and it was the ghosts of all the people buried in San Marcuolo who dragged him and kicked him to teach him better, because he wanted to make believe the dead stayed in their graves! So where was ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... face, from the point of his full white beard to his fine forehead, crossed by his impressive black eyebrows, expressed all the dignified concern which a father ought to feel in such an affair; but what he was really feeling was a grave reluctance to have to intervene in any way. "What do you want me to say to him?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... threats have something in them and this be the warning bell of which he spoke? Surely it is impossible. Yet his manner was indescribably impressive. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the abbey church itself is as plain as almost any similar edifice I remember, its great extent, and the noble windows and doors, rendered it to me deeply impressive. On the other hand, the chapel is an exquisite specimen of the most elaborated ornaments of the style. All sorts of monstrosities have, at one period or another, been pressed into the service of ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hands together. That day he was not in the solemn, raven-hued finery in which he had visited Ravensdene Court; instead he wore a suit of grey tweed, in which, I thought, he looked rather younger and less impressive than in black. But he was certainly no ordinary man, and as he stood there smiling at Miss Raven's eager face, I felt conscious that he was the sort of somewhat mysterious, rather elusive figure in which women would naturally ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... impressive. The man seemed even taller than before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was trickling down his beard. "You English!" he said. "I saw you stone Haynau—I saw you cheer Kossuth. The free blood of your people ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was Luck, arriving in due time at the railroad. He said good-by to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a cigarette while he ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... She recognized in the well-groomed figure which stepped out, case in hand, one of the city surgeons with whom her husband was often closely associated in his hospital work, Dr. Van Horn. He was a decade older than Red, possessed a strikingly impressive personality, and looked, to the last detail, like a man ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... seen so many people or so much traffic before. The crowd of workmen pouring out of the shipyards in Belfast was more impressive than this London crowd, but not so perturbing, for that was a definite crowd, having a beginning and an end and a meaning: it was composed entirely of men engaged in a common enterprise; but this crowd had no beginning and no end and no meaning: there was no common enterprise. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... eminent criminologists ... but I believed the man was sincere in his repentance and accepted him as a sort of text for other sinners to point a way toward regeneration.... The higher Rasputin rose, the greater his fame became, the more impressive would be his textual example to other aspiring souls,—even a criminal should not be denied the consolation of hope where crime is the result of ignorance or misdirected patriotism.... If I sinned in pardoning a sinner then sin must be an unpardonable crime!... ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... his actual necessities will permit. Nothing so strongly encourages this spirit in the Negro as a savings bank operated in his community by persons of his own race. The powerful influence exerted in this direction by such institutions may be shown by some impressive figures which have been secured from reliable sources: Atlanta, with no such institution to stimulate its colored population to save, has only 1,000 colored depositors in the associated banks of that city out of a total colored population of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... resources of the country will permit, to exonerate it of the principal itself." Many subjects relative to the interior government were succinctly and briefly mentioned; and the speech concluded with the following impressive and admonitory sentiment. "In pursuing the various and weighty business of the present session, I indulge the fullest persuasion that your consultations will be marked with wisdom, and animated by the love of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... arouse the public conscience. Do the long columns of figures, the impressive statistics, wake men to activity? It is rather the keen, bright thrust of the satirist that saves the day. Once in a New England town meeting there was a movement for a much-needed new schoolhouse. By the installation of ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... revolved. His mind was polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings of this superintending ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day. There is no reasonable ground for believing that the oldest remains yet obtained carry us even near the beginnings of life. The impressive warnings of Lyell against hasty speculations, based upon negative evidence, have been fully justified; time after time, highly organised types have been discovered in formations of an age in which the existence of such forms of life had been confidently declared to be impossible. The ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of your—er—well-wishers persuaded him to take you ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Cu Sith) was heard howling on stormy nights. He was "big as a stirk," one informant has declared The "fearsome tail" appears to have been not the least impressive thing about it. The MacCodrums were brave and fearless, and were supposed to be descended from Seals, which were believed to be ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... intuition, especially one that becomes intimate with some one aspect of nature. With me it was the growing time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked upon by the impressive experience of a change of country that I was more than commonly alive to impressions, which are the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... experience, which confirms this solemn truth. The soul can repose only on the certitudes of heaven; those who are joined together by the gospel feel alike the misery of the fall and the glory of the restoration. The impressive earnestness which overpowers the mind when eternal and momentous truths are the subjects of discourse binds people together with a force of sympathy which cannot be produced by the sublimity of a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... immense parallel masses of dense clouds stretched across the entire horizon; the upper limb of the planet, of a deep crimson, was alone visible betwixt them, and shed a sombre light over the waste. He thought he had seldom seen any thing so impressive; combined with the low moaning of the night-breeze, which rose and sank at intervals, with a wild and wailing murmur. The light was so indistinct that he could discover nothing of his horse, and in the lawless state ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... almost boyishly blunt and direct; in a word, one of those miraculous New York girls whom abstractly one may disapprove of, but in the concrete must abjectly adore. This easy predominance of the masculine heart over the masculine reason in the presence of an impressive woman, has been the motif of a thousand tragedies in times past, and will inspire a thousand ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cares for and not myself; and he wanted to take me away, not to his own house, but to some man who would be the physician of my soul, he said. I am generally ready enough to laugh, but what he said was so impressive and solemn, and so wonderfully earnest and startling that I could not jest over it. At last I was more angry at his daring to speak to me in such a way than any of you ever thought I could be, and that drove him half mad. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a man with thin, iron-grey hair and a stubby, pugnacious moustache. He sat at a desk at the end of a long, narrow room, down both sides of which were rows of cases filled with impressive-looking books. He did not raise his eyes when Grant entered, but continued poring over a file ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... beautifully and placid, with all the glory of a mild night, in a latitude as low as that they were in. They who have never seen the ocean under such circumstances, know little of its charms in its moments of rest. The term of sleeping is well applied to its impressive stillness, for the long sluggish swells on which the ship rose and fell, hardly disturbed its surface. The moon did not rise until midnight, and Eve, accompanied by Mademoiselle Viefville and most of her male companions, walked the deck by the bright starlight, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... brightness of my Lord's presence every mystery that now troubles me shall be made clear. Dear Lord, I await Thine own time. Do what seemeth good in Thine own eyes;" and she meekly folded her hands and bowed her head. For a moment or two there was the same impressive silence that fell upon us before she spoke. Then a louder and nearer peal of thunder awakened Zillah, who raised her head from her mother's lap and looked wonderingly around, as if some ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... buried the poor lady on the evening of that day, in a particularly lovely and peaceful spot, some distance up the valley, which had been a favourite resort of her daughter. The ceremony was singularly moving and impressive, every negro on the place following the body to the grave, and Don Hermoso himself, in the absence of a priest, reading the funeral service over his departed wife. But although the loss of the lady was deeply felt by all, there can be little doubt ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... nearly all of us eat and drink too much. Were we to mortify our stomachs we should be healthier animals and more capable of sustained thought. The word animal in this connection is coarse, but the article is most impressive, and a crushing reply to Dr. McQueen's assertion that the editor drinks. In the school-room I have frequently found my thoughts of late wandering from classwork, and I hastily ascribed it to sitting up during ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... "a good deal like his own style of oratory—impressive and energetic, but not very polished." We question the last; but, be this as it may, polish is only desirable so long as it does not impair truth and utility. Plain-speaking has been the best rule of conduct for public men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... dining-room, at a long table in the centre of which sat about twenty officers in full uniform, wearing their gold- and silver-handled swords, the ribbons and crosses of Imperial decorations. All rose politely as I entered, and made a place for me beside the Colonel, a large, impressive man with a grizzled beard. Orderlies were deftly serving dinner. The atmosphere was that of any officers' mess in Europe. Where ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed |
