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adverb
Wonder  adv.  Wonderfully. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wonder" Quotes from Famous Books



... to sail, after a three months' blockade.) And then I had handed to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... from the first secondary. We arrive at the higher feelings which are 'as independent as if they were underived,'[582] and yet, as happiness has been involved at every stage as an end of each desire, it is no wonder that the ultimate result should be to make the general happiness the end. The coincidence, then, of the criterion with the end of the moral sentiments is 'not arbitrary,' but arises necessarily from 'the laws ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... wonder at these "hundreds of thousands of men fighting with their eyes doggedly fixed upon the Holy Sepulchre and dying in order to conquer it." They pity these "multitudes of men who threw themselves on Islam the unknown, these ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... wicked man, a covetous man, a proud man, a carnal man, an unhumbled man; therefore he will readily miscarry in his judgment. So divines have argued against the Pope's infallibility! The Pope hath been, and may be a profane man; therefore he may err in his judgment and decrees. And what wonder that they who receive not the love of the truth be given over to "strong delusion, that they should believe a lie?" 2 Thess. ii. 9, 10. It is as good an argument: He is a humbled man, and a man that feareth God; therefore, in so far ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... teachers of philosophy live not by leading popular opinion, but by pandering to it; a bastard brood trick themselves out as philosophers, while the true philosopher withdraws himself from so gross a world. Small wonder that philosophy gets discredited! Not in the soil of any existing state can philosophy grow naturally; planted in a suitable state, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... at the implied confession of the nature of his vespers—"I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself! Have you no higher regard for the dignity of the bar you represent, than to expose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... congratulations and efforts to say something agreeable and complimentary, I selected one compliment as unique. He was an enthusiast. "Chauncey Depew," he said, "I have for over twenty years wanted to shake hands with you. Your speech was a wonder. I was half a mile off, way up under the roof, and heard every word of it, and it was the only one I was able to hear. That you should do this in your eighty-seventh year is a miracle. But then my father was a miracle. On his eighty-fifth birthday he was in just as good ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... their souls in the best manner they could, considering that he well earned his 700 pounds per annum by preaching a dull, plethoric sermon once a week, christening all the infants, marrying the adults, and burying the dead. It was no wonder that Dr. Leatrim found the parish, as far as religion was concerned, in a very ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie

... sense," says Joe. "You surely ain't a darn fool. Out in this storm, dark as the inside of a cow; blowin' forty mile, and the 'quick' froze. Can't be done. I wonder ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... not stay to help him bring in the sheep that day, for there was nothing left for her to wonder over, or stand wistfully by her saddle waiting to receive. Neither was there any sound of weeping as she rode up the hill, for the male custom of expressing joy in that way had gone out of fashion on the sheep ranges of this world long ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... indicating any weakness in the Buddhist propaganda. Unquestionably the influence which Buddhism exerted upon Japanese [187] civilization was immense, profound, multiform, incalculable; and the only wonder is that it should not have been able to stifle Shinto forever. To state, as various writers have carelessly stated, that Buddhism became the popular religion, while Shinto remained the official religion, is altogether misleading. As a matter of ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... was a question never raised by Rimrock Jones. Perhaps he was surprised beyond the point of resistance; but it is still more likely that, without his knowing it, he was hungry to hear a woman's voice. His black mood left him, he forgot what he had come there for, and sat down to wonder and admire. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... what you mean," replied my brother, in accents of wonder, "but to us the discovery we have made completes our misery. No one would believe it at first; and even now Elizabeth will not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who would credit that Justine Moritz, who was so amiable, and fond of all the family, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... surprise at the rarity of a species, and yet to marvel greatly when the species ceases to exist, is much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the forerunner of death—to feel no surprise at sickness, but, when the sick man dies, to wonder and to suspect that he died by ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... early mental cravings with the narrow store of borrowed books in a rural section; but he had studied diligently and worked hard to enter college and to graduate, and his subsequent life for many years was one of unintermitted mental toil. No wonder, therefore, that institutions of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... reverently say, politeness "suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of evil." Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... You have no confidence in me. (Control, his emotion.) Will you ever, I wonder, come to under stand that the only thing I crave for now is—one ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... your children are healthy and merry and hopeful,—in looking on to Future Years. The more happy you are, the more there is of awe in the thought how frail are the foundations of your earthly happiness,—what havoc may be made of them by the chances of even a single day. It is no wonder that the solemnity and awfuluess of the Future have been felt so much, that the languages of Northern Europe have, as I dare say you know, no word which expresses the essential notion of Futurity. You think, perhaps, of shall and will. Well, these ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... gathered around me and threatened me with death if I entered the door again. I went away followed by them, and wandered in a thin coat up and down the streets, and through the woods all night. The wonder was that I did not freeze to death. I could hear crowds of excited people at the court house discussing me, I thought. When I started to go there, every door and window of the building flew open and fiery devils darted out and cursed me away. ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... conclusion of this trivial investigation, and it is this—If so much doubt and obscurity have already settled on circumstances which took place scarcely beyond the recollection of living people, can we wonder at that which invests the events of a more remote epoch? If editors in our enlightened time have contrived so soon to give the history of Burns a mythical character, what safety have we in trusting to such ancient narrations ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... She strayed away last night. Susan didn't miss her till the mornin'. She found her just inside the gates of the demesne—by old Lizzie's lodge. She was soaked wid rain an' in a dead faint. I wonder Susan ventured with that blackguard about. She brought Miss Stella to and helped or carried her back. She's wanderin' like in her mind ever since, the poor ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... is a terrible old man," he answered. "Just before you came in he discovered one of my secrets by only looking in my face." He paused, rallied his courage, pushed on at all hazards, and came headlong to the point. "I wonder," he asked, bluntly, "whether ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... at Princeton and two years of travel abroad, he was returning to Sequoia to take over his redwood heritage—that he discovered that a stranger and not the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood was to reap the reward of his fifty years of endeavour. Small wonder, then, that he laid his leonine head upon his desk and wept, silently, as the aged and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... wonder you folks know something! With that start, I believe I might know something myself! As an astronomer, you may be interested in this star-chart and stuff—or do you know all ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... very touch by Garuda of great might with his feet, the branch of the tree broke as it was caught by Garuda. Casting his eyes around in wonder he saw Valakhilya Rishis hanging therefrom with heads downwards and engaged in ascetic penances. Reflecting that if that bough fell down, the Rishis would be slain, the mighty one held the elephant and the tortoise still more firmly with his claws. And from fear of slaying the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... divine seems to have been this, Know thyself. And this it was which gave Socrates an occasion and beginning of doubting and inquiring into it, as Aristotle says in his Platonics. And yet this appears to Colotes ridiculous and fit to be scoffed at. And I wonder that he derides not also his master himself, who does as much whenever he writes concerning the substance of the soul and the creation of man. For if that which is compounded of both, as they themselves hold,—of the body, to wit, and the soul,—is man, he who searches into the nature of the soul ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... had recently, through Taylor's death, become President, and was making his first visit to his home after his elevation, with members of his Cabinet and other conspicuous figures of his party. How Douglas came to be of the company I wonder, for he was an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, but there he was on the platform before the multitude, and I, a boy of sixteen, watched him curiously, for he was young as compared with the grey heads about him. His image, as he stood up to speak, is very clear to me even now—a face strong-featured ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... were called just now to that which goes under Magliabechi's name, to hear an eulogium finely pronounced upon our circumnavigator Captain Cook; whose character has attracted the attention, and extorted the esteem of every European nation: far less was the wonder that it forced my tears; they flowed from a thousand causes: my distance from England! my pleasure in hearing an Englishman thus lamented in a language with which he ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... milk. She held her breath as the snake drew near, and watched it throw up its head again as if it was smelling something nice, while its forky tongue darted out greedily. At length its eyes fell upon the milk, and in an instant it was lapping it so fast that it was a wonder the creature did not choke, for it never took its head from the bowl as long as a drop was left in it. After that it dropped on the ground and slept heavily. This was what the princess had been waiting for, and, catching up her husband's sword, she severed ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... same thing as lying to the person you love. I wish—I wonder whether you'd mind if I never told her it was a lie? Couldn't I tell her that we were engaged but you've broken it off? That you found you liked ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... would win the heavenly race must say "No," to self, and "flee youthful lusts," and "endure hardness." He whose soul can be mastered by his body has lost the bridle, and cannot wonder if he lose ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness

... Though the presence of her husband was a strange and long unwonted occurrence there, at such an hour, and though she felt the strangeness of the visit, the power of the opiate overwhelmed her so, that she could only see this apparition gliding slowly back and forward before her, with the passive wonder and curiosity with which one awaits the ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... as if she had found it. And Lizzie could not say that was not true, and she felt so puzzled at first that she didn't know what to say. The young woman offered to change it for her so that nobody could wonder how she had got a gold piece, but Lizzie said she would think about it first. And then she went home, and thought, and thought, till at last it came quite plain into her mind that though it was true that the lady ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... them, smaller, not so strongly formed. That thing's mate, I suppose—female of the species. Ugh! I wonder how many hundred of thousands of years it will take for our descendants ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... "I wonder if he can fight?" said Saunders, changing his tactics. "He's a well-built chap, and I'd like to see what he can do. How can we get him to fight if we can't haul him ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby

... gone before we know where we are. I own I am glad. As for Frank, I really believe he'd rather let it remain. But this is not all. The Marquis has promised that we shall hear from him "in a spirit of kindness." I wonder what this will come to? It certainly was not a spirit of kindness that made him write to the bishop and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... wide-spreading desolation and the overwhelming ruin of European warfare. The whites have too frequently set them an example of violence by burning their villages and laying waste their slender means of subsistence, and yet they wonder that savages do not show moderation and magnanimity towards those who have left them nothing but mere ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... he was, Birt experienced a subacute wonder that any one could feel so bitterly toward him as to laugh at a moment like this. How had he made Andy ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)

... "Oh wonder!" said Miranda, "what noble creatures these are! It must surely be a brave world that has such ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... apparently had thought it well not to betray knowledge? Such things were symptomatic—though indeed one scarce knew of what—on the part of a young lady betrothed to that curious cross-barred phantom of a Mr. Porterfield. But I am bound to add that she gave me no further warrant for wonder than was conveyed in her all tacitly and covertly encouraging her mother to linger. Somehow I had a sense that she was conscious of the indecency of this. I got up myself to go, but Mrs. Nettlepoint detained me after seeing that my movement wouldn't be taken as a hint, and I felt ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James

... to this utterance, and it filled her with a sort of weird wonder as at a revelation of heredity. Mrs. Hicks had ever been taciturn before her, and now this rapid outpouring of thoughts and phrases echoed like the very speech of the dead. Thus had Clement talked, and the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... resources, the masterful little fellow, about his eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that excited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches toward Newton's ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... theatrical world with a sensational play. Indeed, this parallel could have been pursued, for Donnegan was the nameless actor and the mountain desert was the stage on which he intended to become a headliner. No wonder, then, that his lean face was compressed in thought. Yet no one could have guessed it by his conversation. At the moment he was interrupted, his talk ran somewhat ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... understand better when you have seen Mr. Harvey, sir. Now I will be making for home; it is about my usual hour, and John Wilkes will be beginning to wonder and worry about me." ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... wonder, when they hear what it was, why he never thought of it before, and it is somewhat surprising, but by no means without precedent. Artemus Ward has told us somewhere of a ferocious bandit who was confined for sixteen years in solitary captivity, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... groote zon, en ging te Bazel onder! De Rykstad eer' en vier' dien Heilig in zyn grav; Dit tweede leeven geevt, die't eerste leeven gav: Maar 't ligt der taalen, 't zout der zeden, 't heerlyk wonder. ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... thousand times as heavy as the air its bulk displaces, and only those who have tried to rival it know how inimitable her work is, for the "way of a bird in the air" remains as wonderful to us as it was to Solomon, and the sight of the bird has constantly held this wonder before men's minds, and kept the flame of hope from utter extinction, in spite of long disappointment. I well remember how, as a child, when lying in a New England pasture, h watched a hawk soaring far up in the blue, and sailing for a long time without any motion ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... with blood, must naturally form a cruel and vindictive character. Such these islanders seemed to us on our first visiting them. The sight of beings so extraordinary (for thus we Europeans must have appeared to them) excited in their savage minds the greatest wonder; and they thought we were sent as a scourge and an enemy; and though Cook, one of their earliest visitors, adopted every method his ingenuity could devise to conciliate them, yet, as they never could thoroughly understand his intentions, they ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... nearly one over the other, are very small, and built only of reeds and palm-leaves; every kind of refuse was thrown before the doors. It requires considerable self-denial to pass through such a place, and I wonder that plague, or some other contagion, does not continually rage there. Diseases of the eyes and blindness are, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... may be puzzled to understand why Dr. Wyville Thomson, not being a cynic, should relegate the "Land of Promise" to the bottom of the deep sea, they may still more wonder what manner of "milk and honey" the Challenger expects to find; and their perplexity may well rise to its maximum, when they seek to divine the manner in which that milk and honey are to be got out of so inaccessible a Canaan. I will, therefore, endeavour to give some answer to ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... pithy dialogue took place in Drysdale's rooms one evening soon after the conversation recorded in the last chapter. He and Tom were sitting alone there, for a wonder, and so the latter seized the occasion to propound this question, which he had had on his mind for some time. He was scarcely satisfied with the above rejoinder, but while he was thinking how to come at the subject by another road, Drysdale opened a morocco fly-book, and poured its contents ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... dealings they are very straightforward and correct, and so trustworthy that they rarely attempt, even after a lapse of years, to evade payment of a just debt. On the reverse of this picture there is little unfavorable to be said; and the wonder is, they have learned so little deceit or falsehood where the examples before them have been so rife. The temper of the Dyak inclines to be sullen; and they oppose a dogged and stupid obstinacy ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... "You know that the Radical Candidate arrived drunk at one of his meetings? He had to be lifted out of the carriage, and kept in the Committee Room till he was sober. Shocking, isn't it? and then such shameful hypocrisy to talk about Local Option! But can you wonder? You know he's an atheist? Oh yes, I know he goes to Church, but that's all a blind. His one object is to do away with Religion. Yes, they do say he has been in the Divorce Court, but I should not like to say I know it, though I quite believe it. His ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... see a later paper than this. If it is true that the Federals were utterly routed and thrown into such confusion that their officers could do nothing with them, our victorious troops must have followed them into Washington, and I shouldn't wonder if they were there at this moment, dictating terms of peace to ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... Lavretzky walked down the dining-room, and inquired—was it not some one's Name-day? He was answered, in a whisper, that it was not, but that the Vigil service had been ordered at the desire of Lizaveta Mikhailovna and Marfa Timofeevna; that the intention had been to bring thither the wonder-working ikona, but it had gone to a sick person, thirty versts distant. There soon arrived, also, in company with the chanters, the priest, a man no longer young, with a small bald spot, who coughed loudly in the anteroom; the ladies all immediately trooped ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... described with such a magical pen, he felt himself with an unmatched keenness. They mastered his whole frame with an intensity surpassing all romance. His descriptions of the passions, descriptions which have been the wonder of thousands, such is their fire and temper, were not rhetorical studies, but the ebullition of a soul sensitive to their lightest breath, and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... cannot wonder that we know so little of Shakespeare, and that we must go to town records, cases at law, and book registers for our knowledge. Thanks to the diligence of modern scholars, however, we know much more of Shakespeare than of most of his fellow-actors and playwrights. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... scorn me. My institutions, my benefactions, my victories—these are the true titles of my glory. Let them call me a Corsican, a corporal, an usurper.... I don't care.... I shall not be less the object of wonder, perhaps of veneration, in all future time. My name, new as it is, will live from age to age, whilst the names of all these kings, and their royal progeny, will be forgotten before the worms will have ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... the writings which are brought forward under the name of that venerable man, Theodoret, late bishop, we wonder, first, why it should be necessary or with what desire anything should be done to the disparagement of the name of that priest, who more than a hundred years ago, in the judgement of the sacred and venerable ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... only on this theory. In many instances the motto of investigation in the domain of history, criticism, and science has been, "Believe all things false until you prove them true." If such is the spirit of the age, and if literature be colored with the light of the century which produces it, shall we wonder if the nineteenth-century literature is distinctively ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... idea. "Then I can be sure beforehand about everything, and get things all in order for you; and there'll be Mr. Kinney to take care of me; I feel as if he was a kind of father to everybody." And Draxy in her turn began to wonder about the Elder's appearance as he had wondered about hers. Her mental picture was quite as unlike the truth as was his. She fancied him not unlike her father, but much older, with a gentle face, and floating white hair. Dim purposes of how she might make his lonely old age more ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... and when he realized that I also noticed it, he was frightened by my frown into saying that her feet were enormous. How silly! . . . For I didn't mean to frighten him. . . . He frightened me—once or twice—I mean he irritated me—no, interested me, is what I do mean. . . . Heigho! I wonder why she ran away? I wonder why he can't find her? . . . It's—it's silly to run away from a man like that. . . . Heigho! . . . She doesn't deserve to be found. There is nothing to be afraid of—nothing to alarm anybody in a man ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... Three years! I wonder if she'll know me? I limp a little, and I left one arm At Petersburg; and I am grown as brown As the plump chestnuts on my little farm: And I'm as shaggy as the chestnut burrs— But ripe and ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... No wonder that when people saw that we were contented with gifts of this kind, they were anxious of their own accord to minister to our needs with those things that they were more willing to dispense with than the things they secured by ministering to our ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury

... his power over her, he had remained in absolute ignorance of her. He had not heard where she was or how she was; but now, as the few weeks before Class Day and Commencement crumbled away, he began to wonder why she made no sign. He believed that since she had been willing to go so far to get him, she would not be willing to give him up so easily. The thought of Cynthia had always intruded more or less effectively between them, but now that this thought began to fade into the past, the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... which he received occasional letters from his old chum, not quite so spontaneous as he had expected, but filled with the wonder of the ancient worlds. Then the intervals became longer, and longer, and ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... rather insisted on it—but of New Jersey, Rhode Island or Delaware, one of the smallest and most intimate States: he couldn't remember which, though she insisted too on that. It was not in him—we may say it for him—to go so far as to wonder if their group were next to be recruited by some friend of her own; and this partly because she had struck him, verily, rather as wanting to get the Miss Lutches themselves away than to extend the actual circle, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... said Raffles, "and had a look at the races. I always prefer to measure my man, Bunny; and you needn't sit in the front row of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guillemard. No wonder he doesn't ride his own horses! The steeple-chaser isn't foaled that would carry him round that course. But he's a fine monument of a man, and he takes his troubles in a way that makes me blush to ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... arise as it were by a natural sequence in the course of his reasoning, and few men have a greater facility for making "crooked paths straight, and rough places plain." The most abstruse and knotty points he makes so obvious and clear that his hearers are inclined to wonder why they did not think of them in that light before—giving to themselves, or to the merits of the question in hand, a credit that is only due to the preacher whose discernment has removed the lions of doubt and difficulty ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... had been a surprise, this was a positive wonder, a dream. Here, within earshot of the rumble of Fleet Street, I was in an old-fashioned garden enclosed by high walls and, now that the gate was shut, cut off from all sight and knowledge of the urban world that seethed without. I stood and gazed in delighted astonishment. ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... you on the quiet way in which you have told me all this. For a young fellow of twenty-six with deep feelings it is little short of a wonder. But the question is, what do you intend ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... lemon for house culture is the Ponderosa, or American Wonder, of comparatively recent introduction. Most florists now have it. Easily grown and a very attractive plant. The ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... costliest of the contents, caused the sailors carry it up to the palace, where I went in to the King and laid my present at his feet, acquainting him with what had happened, especially concerning the ship and my goods; whereat he wondered with exceeding wonder and the truth of all that I had told him was made manifest to him. His affection for me redoubled after that and he showed me exceeding honour and bestowed on me a great present in return for mine. Then I sold my bales and what other matters I owned making a great profit on ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... would seem that the Captain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto-of-whisky. A rich odour of that delicious perfume breathed from out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. The hand which performed that grasp shook wofully: it was a wonder how it could hold the razor with which the poor gentleman ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to serve the living and true God." He had been a sincere believer in St. Nicolas, and implicitly believed the absurd account of that saint having raised to life three children who had been brutally murdered by their father and secreted in a barrel. He brought me a picture of this wonder-worker tapping the barrel, and the little ones in the act of coming ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... who have raised themselves a name by their own ingenuity, great poets and celebrated historians, are commonly, if not always, envied by a set of men who delight in censuring the writings of others, though they could never produce any of their own."—"That is no wonder," quoth Don Quixote; "there are many divines that would make but very dull preachers, and yet are quick enough at finding faults and superfluities in other men's sermons."—"All this is true," says Carrasco, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... fixed, there is no person will be the worse for me. I to rush down the street and to meet with my most enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would fail me, and I thrusting for it to scatter any share of poison in his body or to sink my teeth in his skin. I wouldn't wonder I to have hung for some of you, and that plan not to have ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... ministrations Robin received with grave wonder—he was not of the sort that can easily magnify a fetish into a deity—but, evidently struck by the intense importance attached by the Twins to their own doctrines, he showed himself a most amenable pupil. Probably he realised, in spite of hereditary preference for inward ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... drama ranges from the thorny, far-stretching fields which man, only trusting in himself, has to work with the sweat of his brow, to that wonder-land of mystery— ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... When he reached the wonder stage, thought deserted him. He simply looked and kept on wondering. Through this confusion, words presently reached him. The masquerader within was bowing and scraping comically, and in ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... how the world is repeated, The work of each day o'er and o'er. We all have our broken dollies Away on the golden shore. Did he think, I wonder, of that one He threw on the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... of his pleasure and wonder had subsided, he applied to Mr. Pennington to procure him materials for painting. That gentleman was desirous of getting possession of the first picture, and had only resigned what he jocularly alleged were his just claims, in consideration ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... that help? It's just life and we can't make it different." She drew gently away from him, while a clairvoyance wiser than her years saddened her features. "I wonder if love ever lasts?" she whispered half ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... bread but the fruit kind. It is, therefore, little wonder that the West Indian planters were anxious to grow this valuable fruit in their own islands, as, if it flourished there, food would be provided with little trouble ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... it by silence, and to bide his time. "Zimri," in Absalom and Achitophel, shows how deep had been his secret oath of vengeance, and how carefully the sweltered "venom" had been kept, in which at last he baptizes Buckingham, and embalms him at the same time for the wonder and contempt of posterity. Here is the danger of the smaller wits in a controversy of this kind. Their squibs excite a sensation at the moment, and sometimes annoy the assaulted giant much, and his friends and publishers more; but he continues to live and grow, while their spiteful effusions perish; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... in front were pressed close up to the sharp lines of bayonets, were prodded savagely by the troops. Militia youngsters but half trained, in two thin lines opposing what appeared to them a furious sea of faces, fists and angry cries—no wonder they were nervous. Bricks came flying from all sides and even heavy paving-stones, and then a few pistol shots out of the mass. I saw a militia man drop on one knee and slowly topple over. I saw an excited young officer ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... will find them happy; and if so, perhaps you will kindly let me know; and—and—I wonder whether Jessie's child is like her? It is a boy; somehow or other I would rather it ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... matter of wonder to intelligent foreigners that the "Toyshop of the World" ("Workshop of the World" would be nearer the mark) has never organised a permanent exhibition of its myriad manufactures. There is not a city, or town, and hardly a country in the universe that ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... so twittered, piped and croaked the London world over the early rumours of the marriage, this Amazing Marriage; which it got to be called, from the number of items flocking to swell the wonder. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... responded Coleman; "the six shillings paid annually to the constable by each man who does not wish to serve is a corruption fund. The constable can pocket three-fourths of it, and, with the other fourth, he can employ the irresponsible characters he does. I wonder the people ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... alighted but Mr. Gerrish and Northwick. Mr. Gerrish found it most remarkable that he should have come all the way from Boston on the same train with Northwick and not known it; but Northwick was less disposed to wonder at it. He passed rapidly beyond the following of Mr. Gerrish, and mounted to the place Elbridge made for him in the cutter. While Elbridge was still tucking the robes about their legs, Northwick drove away from the station, and through the village up to the rim of the highland ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... opened the door next morning, she gave a loud cry, clapped her hands, and then stood still; quite speechless with wonder and delight. There, before the door, lay a great pile of wood, all ready to burn, a big bundle and a basket, with a lovely nosegay of winter roses, holly, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... dear, Mr. Burton," she declared. "I wonder what your wife would say, though?" she ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... been thinking since we parted at the door of the Ursulines a year ago. Then we were going to meet again in a few weeks, and now twelve months have gone! How have I spent them? Not wickedly, I hope, and yet sometimes I wonder if Mere St. George would quite approve of me; for I have such wild spirits now and then, and I shout and sing in the woods and along the river as if I were a mad youngster home from school. But indeed, that is the way I feel at times, though again I am so quiet that I am ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "I don't wonder that the settlers fail to come in here on this strip of land between George and Champlain," said Robert to Tayoga. "It's a No Man's land, roamed over only by warriors, and even the most daring frontiersman must have some regard for the ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... "I sort o' wonder if they'll all fail me," he muttered, as he removed the frying-pan from the coals but set it near enough to keep the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... and its economical applications. During the first season, we prosecuted our investigations together, travelling in a one-horse wagon, which carried all our necessary implements, and visiting, before the campaign ended, every parish in the State. Great was the wonder our strange outfit and occupation excited in some rustic neighborhoods; and very often were we called upon to enlighten the popular mind with regard to our object and its uses. This was never a pleasant task to Percival. He did not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... Billy a thrill of absurd tenderness and delight.... She was so very small and childish, sitting there in the Libyan desert with him, looking up at him with such adorable simplicity.... In her eyes he seemed to see something of the wonder and the joy in his. It was a moment of magic. It brought a lump into his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... on form and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, Until we pause at last, awe-held, before The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... it's pulled him down nervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty people waiting to congratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't wonder he fights shy. If he could take his bride by the hand and walk out of the house with her I believe he could start to-morrow; but if there must be a wedding and a lot ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... about forty-eight;—of a sedate look, something approaching to gravity. I did not wonder.—I went up rather to the basket than him, and having lifted up the napkin, and taking one of his pates into my hand,—I begg'd he would explain the appearance which ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... hussy—do you—to marry Lieutenant Puddock? I should not wonder! Why, of course, her fortune you and she may give away to whom you like; but remember, she's young, and has been much admired, brother; and may make a great match; and in our day, young ladies were under direction, and did not marry without apprising their ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... she will, if anything better comes along. But Trix is getting passe, and I should n't wonder if she kept him to his word, just out ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... perspiring projectors of bills, and even the lobbies were sometimes choked with them. To have borne that noisome atmosphere and heat would have tested the constitutions of salamanders, and engineers were only human. With brains kept in a state of excitement during the entire day, no wonder their nervous systems became unstrung. Their only chance of refreshment was during an occasional rush to the bun and sandwich stand in the lobby, though sometimes even that resource failed them. Then, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... mind, so many responsibilities upon his shoulders, it is small wonder that the little formality of payday should slip by without being properly observed. When it was called to his attention ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... not to speak with indifference of any friend of yours,-far from it; any such will always command my good wishes: yet I own I am rather disappointed; and though I doubt not the justice of your reason, to which I implicitly submit, you must not wonder, that, when upon the point of being honoured with your confidence, I should feel the greatest regret at finding ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... are some characters with whom mendacity has become so essential a part of their nature, that we cease to wonder at any possible extreme of lying. It was, however, no new thing with the cardinal to assume immaculate innocence. Over two years before this time, at the beginning of the reign of Francis II., when bloody persecution was at its height, Sir Nicholas Throkmorton ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... "I wonder what the Kaiser's Admiral of the Air would think if he knew how matters really stand," he said to himself as he read the letter through for a second time. "Quite certain of doing what he threatens, is he? I'm ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... hills, far up the firth beyond us, a strange sound that seemed to draw nearer, like and yet unlike thunder, roaring and jarring ever closer to us, till it was all around us and beneath us everywhere, and our very hearts seemed to stop beating in wonder. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... one of these consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest conduct toward men. With such a classification as this, it is no wonder, considering the strong re-action of language on thought, that many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, are fain to seek for the grounds of social duty; and without entertaining any private intention of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... understand, rendering it higher in them than in their neighbours, and, by exalting them first to the requisite condition, causing them to determine the course of the discharge. Hence the selection of the path, and the solution of the wonder which Harris has so well described[A] as existing under the old theory. All is prepared amongst the molecules beforehand, by the prior induction, for the path either of the electric spark ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... the rare confidence you have placed in me?" That would never do; it sounded exactly as if an acceptance were to follow. Of course I might go away without writing a word, but that would be brutal and my idea was still to exclude brutal solutions. As my confusion cooled I was lost in wonder at the importance I had attached to Miss Bordereau's crumpled scraps; the thought of them became odious to me, and I was as vexed with the old witch for the superstition that had prevented her from destroying ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... be careful," she answered. "I only spoke of it for this reason. Before you left, when we were sitting together, you sketched out the career which you proposed for yourself. In many respects, I suppose, you have been highly successful, but I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that your work has not proceeded upon the lines which ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of Merritt's poetry, so that I didn't kick when I saw that another one was coming. It was a good assortment: a Legless Wonder, The Man Who Breaks Paving Stones With His Bare Fists, a pair of Siamese Twins, a Leopard Boy and a particularly fuzzy Circassian Beauty. I saw Merritt's eyes grow soft when he looked at her photograph, and I ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... no wonder that at the conference of 1778, at Leesburg, Va., at which five circuits in the most disturbed regions were unrepresented, there was a decline in numbers. The members were fewer by 873; the preachers fewer ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeve, displaying a great red-brown mass of bone and muscle, and a mighty fist. "Lookye here, your worship. See there. Why, if I'd hit that boy with that there fist as hard as ever I could, there wouldn't be no boy now, only a coroner's inquess. Bah! I wonder at you, Sir Francis! There's none of my marks on him, only where I gripped his arms. Take off your jacket, youngster, and ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... explained the officer at the Coast Guard station. "The Guard drove them back to the sea. He counted over a dozen. They made pretty poor practice, for he isn't wounded, but his gravel walk looks as though some one had drawn a harrow over it. I wonder," exclaimed the officer suddenly, "if you are the three gentlemen who first gave the alarm to Colonel Raglan and then went on to warn the other coast towns. Because, if you ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis



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