"Monster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happier in results. Down the broad driveway Sharon had piloted the monster, and through the wide gate, though in a sudden shuddering wonder if it were really wide enough for his mount; then he had driven acceptably if jerkily along back streets for an exciting hour. It wasn't so bad, except once when he met a load of hay and emerged with frayed nerves ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... The old monster was not slow to perceive the effect which my draught had produced and that I carried him more lightly than usual, so he stretched out his skinny hand and seizing the gourd first tasted its contents cautiously, then drained them to the very last drop. The wine was strong and the gourd capacious, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... he knows by saying Longfellow lives in the United States—as if he lived all over the United States, and as if the country was so small you couldn't throw a brick there without hitting him. Between you and me, it does gravel me, the cool way people from those monster worlds outside our system snub our little world, and even our system. Of course we think a good deal of Jupiter, because our world is only a potato to it, for size; but then there are worlds in other systems that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to—like the planet Goobra, for instance, ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... circumstance that city derived its name of Caermardin, or the city of Merlin; the other Merlin, born in Scotland, was named Celidonius, from the Celidonian wood in which he prophesied; and Sylvester, because when engaged in martial conflict, he discovered in the air a terrible monster, and from that time grew mad, and taking shelter in a wood, passed the remainder of his days in a savage state. This Merlin lived in the time of king Arthur, and is said to have prophesied more ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent's head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine tail. Ea had several monster forms. The following description of one of these ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... involuntarily. As Le Maitre stepped here and there in a dull way while a chest that belonged to him was being lowered into the boat, Caius could not help realizing that his preconceived notions of the man as a monster had been exaggerated; he was a common man, fallen into low habits, and fixed in them ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of any grade of desert in intellect or character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency and honor is held in the least regard; when any man in that free country has freedom of opinion, and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... currents of our love are poured Through the slow welter of the primal flood From some blind source of monster-haunted mud, And flung together by random forces stored Ere the vast void with rushing worlds was scored— Because we know ourselves but the dim scud Tossed from their heedless keels, the sea-blown bud That wastes and scatters ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... peacocks dragging enormous white-feather tails. By night the bay view from the central hill-spine shows the cities of Berkeley and Oakland like enormous planes of crystal tilted against the distance, the ferryboats illuminated but still peacock-shaped, floating on the black waters like monster toys of Venetian glass. In the background, rising from low hills, peaks the blue triangle of Mt. Diablo. In the foreground reposes Tamalpais—a mountain shaped in the figure of a woman-lying prone. The wooded slopes of Tamalpais form the nearest big playground ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... the Neanderthals had seemed to the twentieth century. And as man made progress so did he rarely outstrip it. So far he had done less for himself than for what passed for progress and the higher civilization. Naturally enough, when the Frankenstein monster heaved itself erect and began to run amok with seven-leagued boots, all the pigmies could do was to revert hysterically to Neanderthal methods and use the limited amount of brains the intervening centuries ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... continual successes of the French armies overrunning Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Wuertemberg, a monster of corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable figures and their ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... dear, whispered the Lady Betty, I now find that an hideous description of a person we never saw is an advantage to them. I thought the woman was a monster—but, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... exclaimed Mrs. O'Connor, incensed. "Then my husband would do the same to you, you brute! I am glad the boy's gone, so I am, and I hope he'll never get into your clutches again, you monster! Tim, wake up there, and defind yer wife from the thafe that's ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... words burst involuntarily from his lips as the keen blade buried itself under the knotty scales deep in the monster's throat. The mighty jaws relaxed and dropped the limp ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Charley West and Walter Hazard meet deadly rattlesnakes; have a battle with a wild panther; are attacked by outlaws: their boat is towed by a swordfish; they are shipwrecked by a monster manatee fish, and pass safely through many exciting scenes of danger. This book should be ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... more formal plan. He received delegations at his home in Canton and discussed the issues of the campaign from his front porch, leaving to an army of well-organized orators the task of reaching the people in their home towns. Parades, processions, and monster demonstrations filled the land with politics. Whole states were polled in advance by the Republicans and the doubtful voters personally visited by men equipped with arguments and literature. Manufacturers, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... serpent, coiled in a ring round the wall. Ragnar, nothing daunted, struck it boldly with his spear, and before it could move in defence struck it a second blow, pressing the spear until it pierced through the monster's body. So fiercely did the snake struggle that the spear broke in two, and it would have destroyed Ragnar with the venom it poured out if he had not ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the Humber in Lincolnshire dwell two shepherds, Tyterus and Melebeus, each the possessor of a beautiful daughter, by name Gallathea and Phillida. Every year the god Neptune is accustomed to exact the sacrifice of the fairest girl of the country to his pet monster, the Agar (the Humber eagre), and this year each fond father dreads lest his daughter will be chosen for the victim. To save them the girls are disguised as boys. Strangers to each other, they meet and fall in love, each ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Doctor, what would have been the reply of that suave practitioner. He goes to low dance-houses, and the interesting result of his reflections on what he beheld there is, "that vice, however gilded over, is still a hideous monster; in which conviction, I resigned myself to that power that 'must delight in virtue.'" When he speaks of his billiard-pupils, he loftily denominates them "hundreds of the best gentlemen-players scattered over the earth's surface," from which we draw the pleasing inference that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... For some twelve centuries the Holy Church carried out this inhuman policy. And to this day the term "free thought" is a term of reproach. The shadow of the fanatical priest, that half-demented coward, sneak, and assassin, still blights us. Although that holy monster, with his lurking spies, his villainous casuistries, his flames and devils, and red-hot pincers, and whips of steel, has been defeated by the humanity he scorned and the knowledge he feared, yet he has left a taint behind him. It is still held that ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... part of Paul's work was accomplished when he was first sent to Rome as a prisoner to be tried in the imperial courts; and there is but little doubt that he finally met the death he so heroically contemplated, at the hands of the monster Nero, who martyred such a vast multitude ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... and ridges, as well as the deepest valleys and ravines, were covered with the embowering forest; but here and there a huge boss of granite or porphyry reared its bare scalp out of the verdure like the head and shoulders of some antediluvian monster. The gigantic palms and foliage trees, all tufted with air-plants or strangled with climbers, were literally buried in flowers of every hue, and the crown of the forest rolled under us like a sea of blossoms. Every moment one enchanting prospect after another opened to our wondering eyes. ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... conscience to slumber for a moment, and plies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent he is better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own hands the retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity for his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in that which ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, though not coolly and maliciously ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... nothing to wear, And it's perfectly plain you not only don't care, But you do not believe me" (here the nose went still higher). "I suppose, if you dared, you would call me a liar. Our engagement is ended, sir—yes, on the spot; You're a brute, and a monster, and—I don't know what." I mildly suggested the words Hottentot, Pickpocket, and cannibal, Tartar, and thief, As gentle expletives which might give relief; But this only proved as a spark to the powder, And the storm I had raised came faster and louder; It blew and it rained, thundered, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but for all time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairs gives ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferocious monster that the sea ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of warning be unheeded. Let all be up and doing, so that the monster may be exterminated from the face of the earth, and the youth of the present ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... have fought to the death! There's treachery! What paynim dog dare face His lance, who naked braved yon lion's rage, And eyed the cowering monster to his den? Speak! ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Kadu was in the woods a long way from the coast. He was sent for at once, as he was looked upon as a great traveller, and he might perhaps be able to say what the great monster approaching the island was. Now Kadu had more than once seen European vessels, and he persuaded his friends to go and meet the strangers, and to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... oppressors as they tortured their poor unfortunate victims? You said you would shoot the man who struck you down, shoot him like a dog, if he were escaping your clutches. Don't you think Kitty Lambton's children have as great, if not a greater right to shoot that bloodless, heartless monster like a dog or a cat or any other vermin, if they met him on this earth? I'd tell them to do it; I'd tell them to do it if there were no other way to make his last hours more full of misery and agony. That's ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... rules, such as not to be seen by a strange man, not to eat flesh or fish, and so on. She goes nowhere, not even to the pagoda. But this state of seclusion is discontinued during eclipses; at such times she goes forth and pays her devotions to the monster who is supposed to cause eclipses by catching the heavenly bodies between his teeth.[165] This permission to break her rule of retirement and appear abroad during an eclipse seems to shew how literally the injunction ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... these visits to the mountain he was the host, and his supplies were good. But before the descent with the empty teams began, young Ephraim did what appeared to me to be a gallant and straightforward thing. He stood on the chine of the fallen monster, forty feet above us, having gained the post of vantage by activity and strength, and he asked if he might ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... same year she is a monster of unscrupulous deceit and vindictive cruelty. Now, what had happened in the five months between the dates of these poems to produce such a change ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... intruder upon their domains. They were evidently puzzled over the appearance of the strange visitor, and when Storms gave one of them an ugly prod with the point of his knife, he darted out of sight, instantly followed by the others, who seemed to suspect they were in danger from the monster, whose ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... one. But that one was a monster—the largest Phil and Roger had been able to buy. They had not told the others about this big fellow, not even Dave, for they wanted the explosion of that to ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... so ran for it, but, in my excitement, directly within the line of descent of the machine. I heard the wind screaming through the wires, a terrifying sound to the novice, and glancing hurriedly over my shoulder, I saw what appeared to be a monster of gigantic proportions, almost upon me. It passed within three metres of my head ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... "Monster of iniquity!" cried the painter, "fiend of wickedness! thou art caught in thine own snares. Hast thou not sold me five pounds' worth of plate for twenty? Have I it not in my pocket? Art thou not a convicted dealer in stolen goods? Yield, scoundrel, yield thy money, or ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... five days had passed did my little neighbor emerge again from its den, and then only for a moment. That terrible black monster with the large green-yellow eyes,—it might be still lurking near. How the black monster had captured the alert and restless squirrel so quickly, under the circumstances, was a great mystery to me. Was not its eye as sharp as the cat's, and its movements ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... table. Seeing Porkington enter, she cried out, "Look to your wife, sir, look to your wife. She received signals across the table. It has nothing to do with the cards. Look at that man who is called my husband—that monster—that bundle of lies and deceit, who has ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... getting rid of an obstruction of this kind. One is to betake yourself to your thinking chair and pipe and to rake up the possibilities of the Pleiocene and Meiocene ages, and prove that when the immense ear of the elephant was evolved there must have been some carnivorous monster, some sabre-toothed tiger or cave bear, which preyed ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... beauty and power, attended by knowledge, health, and truth, while the harmonies of domestic life, of civil concord, and social duty, accompany him, and make music in his path. But where is the angel of intemperance, discord, and destruction? Hideous monster, behold him! No longer great nor terrible, he flies, or rather totters, from before his serene opponent—he shudders—he stutters and hiccups in his howlings—his limbs are tremulous—his hands shake as if with palsy—his eye is lustreless and bloodshot, ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the gallows itself, and I escaped only by an alarm from the royal troops. Had they been a quarter of an hour later, I must have died. There was I placed in the midst of unfeeling men, and gaping women and children, as a monster to be cursed. When I would pray to God, my ears were insulted with the history of my crimes; and when, in all that multitude, I looked around for a single face that showed me any pity, I could ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the great filcher. Nyssia had fled so swiftly that it would have been impossible for him then to overtake her; and, moreover, he had been dazzled, fascinated, thunder-stricken, as it were, rather than charmed by that superhuman apparition, by that monster of beauty! ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... forward before the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, and the huge bluntness of the posteriors; and all these features are combined with such masterly unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the diminutive model insensibly grows mighty beneath your gaze, until you realize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. The action of the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... won't happen in, will he, Blanche? Because he might be jealous, you know, at this close proximity; and your black-a-vised men of unknown antecedents are generally the very dickens when they fall a prey to the green-eyed monster." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... it was when the brother was alive, and Sir Harry at his worst; and Mrs. Poynsett did not like it, though she gave in at last, and tried to make the best of it; but then she—Camilla—as you call her—met the old monster, Lord Tyrrell, made up a quarrel, because Mrs. Poynsett would not abdicate, and broke ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Eben left the track, and leaped among the bushes down where Bill was lying, half buried beneath a tangle of stones, trees and truck. The man was very still, and to all appearance dead. But, as Eben began to free his body, he opened his eyes and moaned. Fortunately none of the monster stones rested upon him, but only a small bent tree held his legs as in a vice. With considerable difficulty Eben was able to free the man, and then lifting him in his arms staggered out of the ruins, and laid his burden gently upon the ground a short distance away. In another minute Jess was kneeling ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... old Persian prayer-rugs are all of Jim's treasures brought to France. He must have been a boy of individual, independent nature, for it seems he disliked the idea of killing things for pleasure, and was never a hunter or even a fisherman. Consequently, there are no monster fish under glass, or rare birds or butterflies, or stuffed animals. He must have loved wild creatures though, for five of the beloved pictures are masterly oil-paintings by well-known artists, of lions and tigers and stags, chez eux, happy and at home, not being hunted, or ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... keep a strict guard upon yourself, or the odious monster will soon lose its terror by becoming familiar to you. The modern history of our own times furnishes as black a list of crimes as can be paralleled in ancient times, even if we go back to Nero, Caligula, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... mind of her daughter, the Empress of Germany, and of her granddaughter, the future Empress of the French. Doubtless the young Marie Louise would have been much astonished if any one had prophesied to her that she would marry this Bonaparte who was represented to her as a monster. Marie Caroline did not leave Schoenbrunn to return to her own kingdom until July 29, 1802. For two years she had worked persistently and not without success, to augment, if that was possible, the detestation which the court, the aristocracy, and the whole ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... devoured such a quantity of the richest tarts, that his stomach could not digest them; so that he soon fell into a violent fever, which in a few days hurried his unworthy soul out of the body of a young country 'squire (for such he would have been) into the carcass of this hairy and awkward young monster which now stands before you. He so well understands what I have been saying, and is so much vexed at the character I have given of him, which he knows to be a very just one, that if you will promise to quit the room and leave him to himself he will pleasure you with one of his best dances before ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... said Don Benito, sadly; "you were with me all day; stood with me, sat with me, talked with me, looked at me, ate with me, drank with me; and yet, your last act was to clutch for a monster, not only an innocent man, but the most pitiable of all men. To such degree may malign machinations and deceptions impose. So far may even the best man err, in judging the conduct of one with the recesses of whose condition ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... unanimous indignation of the whole civilized world, the English at the same time call forth amazement at their traits, instincts and aspirations which positively make them a monster in the family of cultured and civilized European nations. As the proverb says, there is no family without a black sheep. Every monstrosity, however, is to be explained—Jews come ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... considering such an alternative. To meet him here upon the ground, in this awful solitude! To die together, but not in each other's arms; to perish from this bright earth; to reach out to my Irene; to call to her as she reached out and called to me, when the terrible monster— It was too much! ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... some respects, like a mighty animal. The engine is its heart; the paddle wheels are its limbs; the guns are its voice; the captain is its head; and, finally, there is a man always stationed on the lookout in the extreme forward part of the ship, who serves the monster for eyes. ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... windy day, but sufficiently mild: a boat up from New Orleans, with a mail; the first received since my arrival; latest date from England, December 23rd. Walked down to Natchy-under-hill, to inquire about a boat to New Orleans: saw one monster come groaning down the stream, looking like a huge cotton-bale on fire. Not a portion of the vessel remained above water, that could be seen, excepting the ends of the chimneys: the hull and all else was hidden by the cotton-bags, piled on each other, tier ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... following month died Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England. This papistical monster was born at Bury, in Suffolk, and partly educated at Cambridge. Ambitious, cruel, and bigoted, he served any cause; be first espoused the king's part in the affair of Anne Boleyn: upon the establishment of the Reformation, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... actually inhabit the earth and cover the sea with their handiwork, until you consider the tremendous fact that your world's work is done by heroes, and not by politicians and commercial travellers, that, in short, your intellectual Frankensteins have made a million-brained monster whom you cannot, dare not destroy, your drama will not be a living force. I hold out no hope that the problem is easy of solution; I only know it exists. You will first of all become as little children, and learn, as best you may, what makes the wheels go round. Learn, that you may teach, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... fairly bulging, like two monster morning-glories, as Elkins, putting the note carefully in his jacket ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... pretty worm of Nilus] Worm is the Teutonick word for serpent; we have the blind-worm and slow-worm still in our language, and the Norwegians call an enormous monster, seen sometimes in ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... fifteen years or so since they launched her at Portsmouth, and I hear tell she'll have to be reconstructed, though even then I guess they won't trust her far at sea. She has no speed, either, for these days. Oh, she's a holy fraud!" And Master Dick poured in a broadside of expert criticism as the monster felt her way and slowly headed around the Winter Buoy ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... instant into the monster's face. Her terror-stricken eyes were piteous to behold. She tried to speak; but her voice failed. Then, like stricken bird, she fell ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... legend, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia (Cassiope, Cassiepeia), king and queen of the Ethiopians. Cassiopeia, having boasted herself equal in beauty to the Nereids, drew down the vengeance of Poseidon, who sent an inundation on the land and a sea-monster which destroyed man and beast. The oracle of Ammon having announced that no relief would be found until the king exposed his daughter Andromeda to the monster, she was fastened to a rock on the shore. Here Perseus, returning from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... formed by the monster-questions—United Germany, the Latin races, the East, the future of catholicism and the papacy, the strife of liberty against despotism—from all these parent problems you can detach none of the smaller incidents of the age; you are obliged to take count of the little Danish Campaign, which taught ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... observe the action of the spider. Search under the webs of spiders in attics and sheds and learn, from the skeletons found there, what the spider feeds upon. It will be found that flies, beetles, and other spiders are killed by this monster. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... had disappeared, and they saw a hideous shape take form as the monster came into plain sight, a foot beneath the surface, and turned over upon its back to ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... If then an animal falls into the net, the net-keeper will grip his boar-spear and (41) advance, when he will ply it as I have described; if he escape the net, then after him full cry. In hot, sultry weather the boar may be run down by the hounds and captured. Though a monster in strength, the creature becomes short of breath and will give in from ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... escaped, and at length he committed an act which aroused the indignation of the whole kingdom. Don Alfonso de Guzman had refused to follow the king into exile. He now kept out of his reach, but his mother, Dona Urraca de Osorio, fell into the hands of the monster, and was punished for being the mother of a rebel by being burned alive on the ramparts ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... lust for lands Infects thee too; the dread disease Hath left its plague-spots on thy hands; Thy monster area still expands; For, blind to history's Nemesis, Thou ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... and then finished it in a hurry; but he has assuredly had something to do with it; it is not likely that anybody else would have refused all aid from the usual spectral company with which common painters fill the scene. Bronzino, for instance, covers his canvas with every form of monster that his sluggish imagination could coin. Tintoret admits only a somewhat haggard Adam, a graceful Eve, two or three Venetians in court dress, seen amongst the smoke, and a Satan represented as a handsome youth, recognizable only by the claws on his feet. The picture is dark and spoiled, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... tongue with baffled fury at the trembling group in the middle of the cage. This I saw by the first flash. Grasping a sword from among the weapons with which the walls were studded, I made a pass to sever the monster; but the Mangouste was quicker than I, as he darted upon the coils of the serpent, which, in a moment, fell heavily to the floor, a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... compact state, well-organized, and well-administered, westernized at least superficially, and ready to play a conspicuous role in the international politics of Europe. The man who succeeded in doing all these things has been variously estimated. By some he has been represented as a monster of cruelty and a murderer, [Footnote: Peter had his son and heir, the Grand Duke Alexius, put to death because he did not sympathize with his reforms. The tsar's other punishments often assumed a most ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... but his act spelled his doom. One blow of the huge smiting-stone laid him dead. Anak hurled Invar's spear and again his weapon found its mark. The Neanderthaler roared with pain and sank gradually to his knees. Uglik dashed in, knife in hand. He threw himself on the prostrate monster and stabbed him again and again. The blows struck home, but with a last effort the apeman threw off his assailant and struck at him with the huge stone which had already robbed the tribe of two of its members. Before the blow could fall, ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... stage. The name Physcon, which afterward became his historical designation, was originally given him in contempt and derision. He was very small of stature in respect to height, but his gluttony and sensuality had made him immensely corpulent in body, so that he looked more like a monster than a man. The term Physcon was a Greek word, which denoted opprobriously the ridiculous ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... learned to read with comparative facility. He had studied a little history and geography, and he had a taste for sculpture, painting, and architecture. Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling for art, he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... forest in the Amazons. The spider was a hairy fellow, with a body two inches long, and eight legs measuring seven inches each, from end to end. The writer describing the incident says: "I was attracted by a movement of the monster on a tree trunk; it was close beneath a deep crevice in the tree, across which was stretched a dense white web. The lower part of the web was broken, and two small birds, finches, were entangled ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... swan, had at last seen it assume such colossal proportions that it coiled itself all around the house where she dwelt. Here it watched over her with jealous care, allowing none to approach except the servant who brought the princess her meals and who provided an ox daily for the monster's sustenance. Jarl Herrand had offered Thora's hand in marriage, and immense sums of gold, to any hero brave enough to slay this dragon; but none dared venture within reach of its powerful jaws, whence came ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... place so naturally and easily, made himself so thoroughly at home and so agreeable to every one, that it was almost impossible for Horace Smithson to resent his audacity! Mr. Smithson's vitals might be devoured by the gnawing of the green-eyed monster, but however fierce that gnawing were, he did not want to seem jealous. Montesma was there as the very incarnation of some experiences in Mr. Smithson's past career, and he dared not object to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... heart, to the one-eyed! the shaggy-haired Diana. Alas! what a horrible vision affronted my eyes? Was that a rat I saw skulking into his hole? Are these the picked bones of the little angel who has been cruelly devoured by the monster? Ye gods! and what do I behold—is that the departed spirit, the shade, the ghost, of my beloved puppy, which I perceive sitting with a grace so melancholy, in the corner? Hearken! for she speaks, and, heavens! it is in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in tone as the voice of my friends; but they saw what I was trying to do, and could, after growing familiar with the sound of my pipes, decipher my meaning. The astonishment of my captor and his family at finding that their monster Batrachian could not only express simple ideas with his one mouth, but all the most complex notions by pieces of bamboo fastened together and held on his knees before him, was beyond measure. From this time my progress in learning their speech was very rapid; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... pops, but nothing is coming through. But thanks much, anyway. I feel a lot better, knowing I'm not going to give birth to a monster. Or ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... given by the ancients to a fabulous monster represented as a large winged lizard or serpent. It was regarded as the enemy of mankind, and its overthrow is made to figure among the greatest exploits of the gods and heroes of heathen mythology. The symbol, being drawn from the natural world, directs us by analogy to persecuting, tyrannical ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... the sun has risen by a hand's breadth, all those who watch shall see which of us is better at the game of war. Come on, then! Come on, for I say that my blood boils over and my feet grow cold. Come on, thou grinning dog, thou monster grown fat with eating the flesh of men, thou hook-beaked vulture, ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... In his present mood Colonel Dodd would not admit to this interloper that he planned reforms, and in that moment he unwittingly created his Frankenstein's monster. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... hated their master was almost a matter of course. At the same time they were far from regarding him as an exceptional monster of cruelty, for they knew from their friends that flogging prevailed almost everywhere, and accepted it as a necessary portion of the woes of boyhood. Indeed, in some respects, when not smarting under the infliction, ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... Hercules and the Hydra, then, was to the general Greek mind, in its best days, a tale about a real hero and a real monster. Not one in a thousand knew anything of the way in which the story had arisen, any more than the English peasant generally is aware of the plebeian original of St. George; or supposes that there were once alive in the world, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... a blind, selfish, infatuated monster, brutal and vehement, that knows not what is meant by reason, justice, liberty, or truth. M'Mahon, merely because he gave utterance with proper spirit to sentiments of plain common sense, was assailed by every description of abuse, until he knew not where to take refuge from that cowardly and ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... out here and do sentry-go, it was on one condition, Master Ronald: don't you forget that! Military discipline, my boy! Our beat is this path close about the house. Down, Towzer! good boy, good boy—gently, then!" he went on, caressing his confounded monster. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people. A constitution, which should be republican in its head and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of the situation. "I heard of him two years ago—he killed a man in the Sixth North Carolina, and took to the hills. Since then he has developed into quite a leader for such scum, and has proven himself a merciless monster. You have no suggestion to offer as to how we had ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... impossible to hold mankind together as at present existing, and to accomplish the purpose of our temporal co-existence. We must sacrifice much to these divinities. Like the Athenians, we send every year a heavy boatload of youths and maidens as tribute to this monster which rules the labyrinth of our society. There is no longer a heart that has not broken; there is no longer a man of true feelings who has not been obliged to break the wings of his love before he came into the cage of society ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... if he does not love me he will be a monster of ingratitude, for since our separation I have thought of him constantly; Heaven has taken away many beings that were dear to me, but Moumouth will be the ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... last she was down in Old Man Packard's valley and within hailing distance of his misshapen monster of a house, she set her horn to blaring like the martial trumpet of an invading army. Cattle and horses along her road awoke from their dozing in the moonlight, perhaps leaped to the conclusion that it was old Hell-Fire himself in their midst, flung their tails aloft and scampered to ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... left a hollow column where it had found a solid one. The 'Tower of Babel' is another wonderful sight, with twenty-two rows of dwarf columns, and from it we pass into the Giant's Hall, where the colossal stalagmites look like monster chess kings and queens standing on pedestals. One of these is particularly beautiful, being white below and changing above to a delicate rose-pink, the colour of the inside of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Sometimes a straw hat was blown away. Tulips burnt in the sun. Numbers of sponge-bag trousers were stretched in rows. Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink, querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs. Triangular hoardings were wheeled along by men in white coats. Captain George Boase had caught a monster shark. One side of the triangular hoarding said so in red, blue, and yellow letters; and each line ended with three differently coloured ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... together, "the great principle of Irish life is quieta non movere. Because, when you lay a finger on the most harmless and impotent things, they spring at once into hissing and spitting things, like the Lernaean hydra; and then, like that famous monster, you must cauterize the wound to heal, or prevent new hideous developments. You have, as yet, no idea of how many ways, all different and mutually antagonistic, there are, of looking at things in Ireland. To your mind there seems but one,—one judgment, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... faded out behind the irregular lines of buildings two miles to the west. A block south, a huge red chimney was pouring tranquilly its volume of dank smoke into the air. On the southern horizon a sooty cloud hovered above the mills of South Chicago. But, except for the monster chimney, the country ahead of the two was bare, vacant, deserted. The avenue traversed empty lots, mere squares of sand and marsh, cut up in regular patches for future house-builders. Here and there an advertising landowner had cemented a few rods of walk and planted a few ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... he said. "What? Am I such a monster as all that? Juliet,—my dear, don't be silly! What are you afraid ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... shoulders of bluffs, with the audacity of gradient and contempt of curve that marks the handiwork of American engineers. I wonder that one of these did not take Mount Cenis in hand, and save the monster tunnel. The line was strongly picketed; everywhere you saw the same fringe of murky-white tents, and at every station the ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... a gray monster of a thoat was beckoning to him. Pointing toward the low hills on ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... the varmint was skeered and went screamin' away!" And the black giant laughed till the forest shook to its roots, and every inquisitive squirrel and prying fox within a half mile peered warily forth from its hole to discover what jovial monster this might be that had invaded their leafy wilds. Suddenly checking his laughter, Burl said: "But, Bushie, I forgot to ax you if you axed your modder to let you come out here to ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... not to be baulked. In recording the circumstances of his birth he writes at some length in the jargon of astrology to show how the celestial bodies were leagued together so as to mar him both in body and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every rule, to have been born a monster, and, under the circumstances, it was no marvel that it was found necessary to tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with my head covered with black curly ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... similarly meeting with an officer of the law, scowled upward, and said: "Do it again, and I'll break you." The first person came out of the uptown palace like a fairy from a grotto; the second emerged from the downtown rookery like some prehistoric monster from a cave. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... long ago understood and powerfully described? In that delightful tale of the Arabian Nights, where the poor fisherman draws up a jar from the bottom of the sea, and, on opening it, gives escape to a confined spirit or genie, this monster of ingratitude immediately draws a huge sabre, with the intention of decapitating his deliverer. Some parley ensues; and the genie explains that he is only about to fulfil a vow that he had made while incarcerated in the jar—that, during the first thousand years of his imprisonment—and, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the news spread like wildfire. Mess kids, grog kids, pipes, were all let fall, and some three hundred sailors clustered on the rigging like bees, to view the long-talked-of monster. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... your teeth without your knowing any thing about it, and divorce your spirit from your body, sending it wandering away to distant regions, while the body remains unconscious though not inanimate. In short, there is no end to his wicked devices, and he is the most mischievous, malignant monster in the world, inexorable in his revenge, and clothed with the power of gratifying it to its utmost extent. It is to warn you against him that I am here. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... a terrible person! Go back, there's a dear, and do keep quiet!" cried a muffled voice from behind the dining-room door, as Shylock dodged back to escape observation; and Mrs Asplin retreated hastily, aghast at the sight of a hairy monster, in whom she failed to recognise a trace of her beloved son and heir. Shylock's make-up was, in truth, the triumph of the evening. The handsome lad had been transformed into a bent, misshapen old man, and anything more ugly, frowsy, and generally ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... distance and in that brief time, Robert Cairn could see the ivory face, the abnormal, red lips, and the long black eyes of this arch fiend, this monster masquerading as a man. He had much ado to restrain his rising passion; but, knowing that all depended upon his cool action, he waited until Ferrara had entered the photographer's. With a word of apology to the furniture dealer, he passed quickly into Baker ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the threat of instant imprisonment for the whole fraternity; "and then," says Maurice, "they prevailed with us. We all swore as we were required, making one condition, that we submitted only so far as it was lawful for us so to do. Thus, like Jonah, we were delivered from the belly of this monster, this immanis ceta, and began again to rejoice like him, under the shadow of the gourd of our home. But it is better to trust in the Lord than in princes, in whom is no salvation; God had prepared a worm that smote our gourd and made ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... formidable kind. Columba and a band of his disciples are going to cross the river Ness, when they meet those who bear on their shoulders the body of one who, endeavouring to swim across the same river, had been bitten to death by a monster of the deep. The saint, in the face of this gloomy procession, requires that one of his disciples shall swim across the Ness, and bring over a boat which is on the other side. A disciple named Mocumin, whom the saint had miraculously cured of a bleeding of the nose, confident ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... saw what an auspicious beginning and ending the adventure had had for his master, he heaved a sigh of relief and contentment and climbed down from his tree, approaching the lifeless monster with caution and superstitious awe. But he had taken only one look into his face, when he began to cross himself with so many motions and contortions that Don Quixote thought his squire had gone insane. Turning to his master, who had been contemplating ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he had seen, and suffered the nameless agonies and degradations which he had suffered. The young man was perpetually raving about some indescribable den of horror which was own brother to Lessingham's temple and about some female monster, whom he regarded with such fear and horror that every allusion he made to her was followed by a convulsive paroxysm which taxed all the ingenuity of his medical attendants to bring him out of. He frequently called upon his sisters by name, speaking ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... act of doing so, when he happily appeared among them covered with dirt and bruises, and hardly to be recognised by those who knew him best. The noise and uproar were on the increase every moment. The air was filled with execrations, hoots, and howlings. The mob raged and roared, like a mad monster as it was, unceasingly, and each new outrage served ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... "Borodino," one of the largest of the Russian battle-ships, clustered five of the Japanese, pouring in their fire so fiercely that flames soon rose from her deck and the wounded monster seemed in sore distress. This was Rojestvensky's flag-ship, and the enemy made it one of their chief targets, sweeping its decks until the great ship became a veritable shambles. Admiral Rojestvensky, wounded and his ship slowly settling under him, was transferred in haste to a ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... resist it; she tried to turn away her eyes, but she could not. They were held as in horrid fascination upon the glittering, lidless orbs of the great brain that faced her. Slowly, every step a painful struggle of resistance, she moved toward the horrific monster. She tried to cry aloud in an effort to awaken her numbing faculties, but no sound passed her lips. If those eyes would but turn away, just for an instant, she felt that she might regain the power to control her steps; but the eyes never left hers. They ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure, the handiwork of those who write. Those who write have to see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make it, answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not suppose himself an angel or a monster; nor take this world for a hell; nor be suffered to imagine that all rights are concentred in his own caste or country, or all veracities in his own parochial creed. Each man should learn what is within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... others called him a monster. Keseberg denied these charges and repeatedly accused Fallon and his party of making false statements. He sadly acknowledged that he had used human flesh to keep himself from starving, but swore that he was guiltless of taking human life. He stated ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... noble who does his duty in fighting France with Frenchmen, without the help of foreigners. I am a woman; I feel that if my child struck me in anger I could forgive him; but if he saw me beaten by a stranger, and consented to it, I should regard him as a monster." ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... charming. He spoke against bad books; there was a large crowd. He demolished all the horrible opinions of Monsieur Renan. What a monster that man is! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the rare scene held the priest spellbound. As he gazed upon it a king vulture—called by the natives the Vulture Papa, or Pope Vulture—suddenly swooped down from the depths of heaven and, lighting upon the carcass of a monster crocodile floating down the river, began to feast upon the choicest morsels, while the buzzards which had been circling about the carrion and feeding at will respectfully withdrew until the royal appetite should ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... are excellent chaps in most respects, but frightfully stuffy about loans and gifts. No.... The Djinn? No, his money is all tied up in Arabian oil speculation. Aha! Why didn't I think of that before? The Sea Monster, of course!" ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... of my words, I will answer him by this, and suchlike questions. 'Where is the Prince Emmanuel? When did a man or woman in Mansoul see him? When did you hear from him, or taste any of his dainty bits?' You are now a feasting with this Diabolonian monster, but he is not your Prince. I say, therefore, though enemies from without, had you taken heed, could not have made a prey of you, yet since you have sinned against your Prince, your enemies within have been ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... consternation of Servia and the horror of his mother, he announced his intention of making her his Queen. Even Milan, degraded as he was, was horror-struck when the news came to him in Paris. "And this," he exclaimed, "is the act of 'Sacha'—my own son. He is a monster, a thing of evil in the eyes of all men! The Maschin will be Queen of Servia. What a reproach! What an evil! A creature like her! A sordid creature! Could he not have put aside his love for this low-born woman? But I ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... a tolerably correct idea of the character of this greatest representative of the heroic Six Nations. No expression of opinion was evermore unjust than that which has persistently held him up to the execration of mankind as a monster of cruelty. That the exigences of his position compelled him to wink at many atrocities committed by his troops is beyond question. That, however, was a necessary incident of Indian warfare; nay, of all warfare; and after a careful consultation and comparison ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... would be willing to believe it," said I. "However, he will be easy to mark. Such a monster can hardly be mistaken for an ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Tristram, "meseems it is the business of any knight to rid the world of such a monster as that, whatever may be the danger to himself. Now as there is no knight hereabouts who hath heart to undertake such an adventure, I myself shall undertake it so soon ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... lying on the mud-bank of a river in Bengal inspired confidence in the accuracy of early teachings, because they were so like the hideous monster in the picture hung on the nursery wall. A crocodile can see and breathe while the whole of its body is immersed in the water, because its eyes and nostrils are on a plane on the surface of the head. A person incautiously bathing, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... animated by a fervent hatred against Cardinal Ximenes,—or "Jimines," as he sometimes calls him. He terms him "a monster," and "a wretch," and is especially indignant at his having "founded the Samanca collection of papers." "Any one," he adds, "who will carefully examine them will see that hardly a single paper has been put into this collection that does not, in some way, reflect glory on the church, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... in the capital had been numbered among the children devoured by the insatiable monster. A few, however, were still left, and she seems to have made new ones and to have again gone into Parisian society. The condition of affairs was more conducive to social pleasures than it had been the year before. Robespierre was ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the others, but Colonel Cochrane had heard of him as a monster of cruelty and fanaticism, a red-hot Moslem of the old fighting, preaching dispensation, who never hesitated to carry the fierce doctrines of the Koran to their final conclusions. He and the Emir Wad Ibrahim ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... later period, when the soul Forsakes its high resolves and wild desires, When stern Ambition can no more control, And Love has shrouded o'er its smothered fires; When Expectation ceases to console, And Hope, the last kind comforter, expires; And Avarice, monster of the gilded vest, Creeps in and occupies the ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... shot, she knew. She believed that she could be a good shot too. It would not be easy to mark the striped body sliding through the undergrowth, but it would be a serious thing to miss. Olga's eyes closed. She began to wander down that jungle path, in search of the monster that lurked there. The lust of the hunt was upon her. She was about to secure the largest tiger that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... was jerked almost overboard. He thought of the forest fire the year before—it would never do to have another such mishap on his shoulders. Suppose the great monster did come up and capsize them—they were ever so far from land. What a to do there would be if they were all drowned, and it came out that it was his fault. Involuntarily he felt for his knife to cut the line—then thrust it back again, and went ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... thought. "I have one of those nasty, unserviceable, betwixt-and-between talents: voice not high enough for 'Robert, toi que j'aime,' nor low enough for 'Staendchen'; not flexible enough for 'Caro Nome,' nor big enough for 'Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster'; poor French accent, worse German; awfully good English, but that doesn't count. Can sing old ballads, folk-songs, and nice, forgotten things that make dear old gentlemen and ladies cry—but not pay. If I were billed at all, it ought ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... maintained unblushingly that, so far from helping the French Protestants, "there was nothing in the world of which she entertained such horror as of seeing a body rising in rebellion against its head, and that she had no notion of associating herself with such a monster."[638] And again and again she protested that she was not intriguing in France—that she had sent the Huguenots no assistance.[639] At the same time Admiral Winter had been despatched with four or five ships of war and a fleet of merchantmen, to carry to La Rochelle, in answer to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the years of 1408 and 1409, and many years previous to these dates, India experienced some terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith, it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... practise the same means of defence. Who does not recollect, with lively interest, Isaac, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, who was seized twice by a crocodile, and twice escaped from the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the creature's eyes while under water. The African Isaac, and the young American girl, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Dryden's prefaces, of which Swift made such excellent, though malicious, fun that I cannot forbear to quote it. "I do utterly disapprove and declare against that pernicious custom of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monster-mongers and other retailers of strange sights to hang out a fair picture over the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description underneath; this has saved me many a threepence.... Such is exactly the fate at this time of prefaces.... This expedient was admirable at first; ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... will not disappoint you, I promise. I would be a monster of iniquity if I did not do my best, after making so much ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... for the past, fearful of the future, which, to her overwrought imagination, crouched like a huge black monster ready to spring upon her and engulf her in its cruel jaws, Evelyn watched the swiftly passing landscape with unseeing eyes. When a voice from the seat behind her suddenly addressed her with, "Good evening, Miss Ward," she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower |
