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Stupendous   /stupˈɛndəs/   Listen
Stupendous

adjective
1.
So great in size or force or extent as to elicit awe.  Synonyms: colossal, prodigious.  "Has a colossal nerve" , "A prodigious storm" , "A stupendous field of grass" , "Stupendous demand"






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"Stupendous" Quotes from Famous Books



... not physically, at first. But, one way or another, something dynamic was bound to happen in the bateau cabin within the next half-hour. Now that the impending drama was close at hand, Carrigan's scheme of luring St. Pierre into the making of a stupendous wager seemed to him rather ridiculous. With calculating coldness he was forced to concede that St. Pierre would be somewhat of a fool to accept the wager he had in mind, when he was so completely in St. Pierre's power. For Marie-Anne and the chief of the Boulains, the bottom of ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... monetary success, but one that would give Spanish autocracy another shattering blow. These ancient mariners never trifled with life, and no sombre views or fatal shadows disturbed their spirited ambition or caused them to shrink from their strenuous and stupendous work. They went forth in their cockleshell fleet as full of hope and confidence as those who are accustomed to sail and man a transatlantic liner of the present day. Some of their vessels were but little larger than a present-day battleship's tender. Neither roaring forties nor Cape Horn hurricanes ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... allow herself to be utterly overwhelmed and borne down, the lady of the caravan unfolded another scroll, whereon was the inscription, 'One hundred figures the full size of life,' and then another scroll, on which was written, 'The only stupendous collection of real wax-work in the world,' and then several smaller scrolls with such inscriptions as 'Now exhibiting within'—'The genuine and only Jarley'—'Jarley's unrivalled collection'—'Jarley is the delight of the Nobility and Gentry'—'The Royal Family are ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... that there is a Hereafter, a spirit land in which the Soul, stripped of all evil, reaches a state of perfection and divine happiness which justifies the stupendous feat of the Creation and the travail of those who are bound ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... World War. Almost overnight the massive bridge of "Mitteleuropa" has crumbled at its central span, leaving exhausted Turkey foredoomed to speedy surrender and laying distracted Austria open to the combined assaults of Allied arms and domestic revolution. So stupendous are the possibilities flowing from the Allies' September offensive in Macedonia that we are almost tempted to believe that the age of miracles is ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... us daily transformations as stupendous as that of the evolution of man from the lower animals, and we marvel not. We see the inorganic pass into the organic, we see iron and lime and potash and silex blush in the flowers, sweeten in the fruit, ripen in the grain, crimson in the blood, and we marvel ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... ousting the old one; and which now, terribly emphasised by Campion's arguments and illuminated by the fire of his personality, towered up imperious, consistent, dominating—and across her brow her title, The Catholic Church. Far above all the melting cloudland of theory she moved, a stupendous fact; living, in contrast with the dead past to which her enemies cried in vain; eloquent when other systems were dumb; authoritative when they hesitated; steady when they reeled and fell. About her throne ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... of the Allies in occupation has been stupendous. We have had to start at the very bottom, assisting local governments to reform on democratic lines. We have had to give them bread to replace that which was stolen out of their mouths by the Germans. We have had to make it possible for the Italians to raise and use their own local crops. We have ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt

... produced on the imagination by their prodigious elevation is, that the peaks tower in the air and pierce the clouds, and such are the terms generally used in descriptions of similar alpine scenery; but the observer, if he look again, will find that even the most stupendous occupy a very low position on the horizon, the top of Kinchin itself measuring only 4 degrees 31 minutes above the level of the observer! Donkia again, which is 23,176 feet above the sea, or about 15,700 above Mr. Hodgson's, rises only 1 degrees 55 minutes above ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Voltaire was a stupendous power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw many new things after which the spirits of others were unconsciously groping and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... the President, "I cannot share the views of Count von Koenitz. I regard this affair as of the most stupendous importance. Messages or no messages, extraordinary natural phenomena are occurring which may shortly end in the extinction of human life upon the planet. A power which can control the length of the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... had become terrific. No fashionable audience at a Yale-Princeton football game, no damp mob at a world's series, could be compared with the panoply that talked, stared, laughed, and honked about the lady in black and lavender. It was stupendous; it was terrible. A quarter mile down the block a half-frantic policeman called his precinct; on the same corner a frightened civilian crashed in the glass of a fire-alarm and sent in a wild paean for all the fire-engines of the city; up in an apartment high in one of the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... Aggregation of Attractions," said Tom, looking over one of the showbills. "The Most Stupendous Exhibition on Earth. Daring bareback riding, trained elephants and a peanut-eating contest, likewise an egg-hunting raffle. All for a quarter, ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield

... and two beasts could not possibly pass each other on that narrow ledge! But I was totally unprepared for the ghastly thing that actually did happen. The miserable horse had been seized with the awful mountain-madness that sometimes overtakes men on stupendous heights,—the madness of suicide. With a frightful scream, that sounded partly like a cry of supreme desperation, partly like one of furious and frenzied joy, the horse reared himself to his full height on the horrible ledge, shook his head wildly, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... cruelties of the Hindu gods and the practices of the priests. They do not authorize animal worship, caste, child-marriage, the burning of widows or perpetual widowhood, but the Brahmins have built up a stupendous system of superstition, of which they alone pretend to know the mystic meaning, and their supremacy is established. Thus the nature worship of the Vedas has disappeared and has given place to terrorism, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... forty-two strokes per minute. It was a glorious night, and the keen air put fresh strength into our muscles, so that we kept on untiringly for nearly three hours. Just at 11 o'clock we came underneath a stupendous cliff, its dark, rugged face glittering in the moonlight, extending far up towards the sky above us, with a few ragged fir trees crowning its summit. It was the grandest scenery we had ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson

... a stupendous prospect, bounded only by the spherical form of the earth. And standing there, with the earth beneath and the heavens all around, one fully realizes that we live upon a great planet rolling in its orbit through ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... shoals, fields, and floating mountains of ice, among which he steered his perilous course, and which presented such terrifying prospects of destruction; those, I say, were the very means of his support, by supplying him abundantly with what he most wanted. It had been said that those stupendous masses of ice, called islands or mountains, melted into fresh water, though Crantz, the relator of that paradox, did not imagine they originated from the sea, but that they were first formed in the great rivers ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... violation of Belgian territory, though discounted in the cynical atmosphere of our time, when it came to the issue was, without question, a stupendous moral event. It was the first time that anything of this sort had happened in the history of Christian Europe. Historians unacquainted with the spirit of the past may challenge that remark, but it is true. One of the inviolable conventions, or rather sacred laws, ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... abruptly; and, which from the fantastic shapes into which their gigantic outlines have been wrought by the action of the atmosphere, are called by the names of the Tortoise Rock, the Eel Rock, and the Rock of the Tusked Elephant. So impressed are the Singhalese by the aspect of these stupendous masses that in ancient grants lands are conveyed in perpetuity, or "so long as the sun and the moon, so long as ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... modern rage for exploration, but few of our countrymen have hitherto pierced the stupendous barrier of the Paropamisan range; but the works of Hanway, Forster, Moorcroft, and Trebeck, Masson, and Sir Alexander Burnes, convey most valuable information concerning the wild regions through which they travelled, and ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... flowing always in the midst of its deserts, seems to have had for mission, during nearly two thousand years, the maintenance on its banks of a kind of immobility and desuetude, which was in a way a homage of respect for these stupendous relics. While the sand was burying the ruins of the temples and the battered faces of the colossi, nothing changed under this sky of changeless blue. The same cultivation proceeded on the banks as in the oldest ages; the same boats, with the same ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... "Stupendous!" exclaimed Marillac, as he jumped back a few steps, and then stood as motionless as a statue. Without wasting any time in unnecessary explanations, his friend gave him a brief account of the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... whole thing has been far more agreeable than was to be expected. The doubt now is, whether I have made a sufficient provision for my household. I should have roughly guessed that ten beeves would feed as many million people, it has such a stupendous sound; but General Saxton predicts a small social party of five thousand, and we fear that meat will run short, unless they prefer bone. One of the cattle is so small, we are hoping it ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of fortune determined to undertake the conquest of that distant empire—a stupendous resolution. Being almost without means, they were forced to enlarge the company by taking on a third partner, a priest named Luque, who had, or could command, the necessary funds. With the sanction of Pedrarias, who demanded ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... were represented: 100,000 statues ornamented the public squares, the temples, the streets, and the houses; 90 colossal statues raised on pedestals; 48 obelisks of Egyptian granite, besides, adorned various parts of the city; nor was this stupendous magnificence confined to Rome, or even to Italy. All the provinces of the vast empire were embellished by Augustus and his successors, by the opulent nobles, by the tributary kings and the allies, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... same—I put something instead of "angel"; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the more apt, for when eventually we heard from Corvick it was merely, it was thoroughly to be tantalised. He was magnificent in his triumph, he described his discovery as stupendous; but his ecstasy only obscured it—there were to be no particulars till he should have submitted his conception to the supreme authority. He had thrown up his commission, he had thrown up his book, he had thrown up everything but the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... from its temporary madness, and became a useful animal, affording a striking example of the passing insanity of the male passion, and the power of careful management in subduing a brute of such stupendous force. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... the great staples of life; and when we add to them those considerable minor interests which we share more equally with the rest of the world, namely, wool-growing and mining, as well of the precious ores as of coal and the baser metals, how stupendous seem our resources, how tremendous the influence we are to wield among the great human family! And is it a necessity of social life that these great interests should jar? that political and commercial antagonisms should ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, 'Hallo, you sir! You Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I'll report you!' The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... hints and nods of the head, Tom revealed his stupendous scheme for bringing the teacher ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... not only forgave sin; he was also empowered to perform the stupendous miracle of the Mass. The early Christians had celebrated the Lord's Supper or Holy Eucharist in various ways and entertained various conceptions of its nature and significance. Gradually the idea came to be universally accepted that by the consecration of the bread and the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... of the Holy Ghost," how can we expect to convert a heathen who has a religion; who has plenty of gods and bibles and prophets and Christs, and who has a religious literature far grander than our own? Can we hope, with the story of Daniel in the lion's den, to rival the stupendous miracles of India? Is there anything in our bible as lofty and loving as the prayer of the Buddhist? Compare your "Confession of Faith" ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... fingers; most authors are simply men of talent. Talent learns to do by doing, and by observing how others have done. When Brunelleschi left Rome for Florence, he had closely observed and had drawn every arch of the stupendous architecture in that ancient city; and so he was adjudged by his fellow citizens to be the only man competent to lift the dome of their Duomo. His observation discovered the secret of Rome's architectural grandeur; and the slow accumulation of such ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... himself to be, to the great torment of Sir John, a stupendous genius in his own way; ever on the watch to be treated al paro di teste coronate—equal with crowned heads; and, when at a tilt, refused being placed among the ambassadors of Savoy and the States-general, &c., while the Spanish and French ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... and are planted with rice or coffee. Nature is here young and vigorous, and amply rewards the planter's toil. The darker portions of the picture are composed of palms or other trees, and the back-ground consists partly of towering mountains, in a holiday suit of green velvet, partly of stupendous and romantic rocks in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... the blaze was borne, And daisy white and hoary thorn In borrowed luster seemed to sham The rose of red sweet Wil-li-am. To those who on the hills around Beheld the flames from Drury's mound, As from a lofty altar rise, It seemed that nations did conspire To offer to the god of fire Some vast stupendous sacrifice! The summoned firemen woke at call, And hied them to their stations all: Starting from short and broken snooze, Each sought his pond'rous hobnailed shoes, But first his worsted hosen plied, Plush breeches next, in crimson dyed, His nether bulk embraced; Then jacket ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... extensive; but nothing indicated either a speedy change of country or a termination of the river. To the westward, the land was a perfect level, with clear spaces or marshes interspersed amidst the boundless desert of wood. To the east, a most stupendous range of mountains, lifting their blue heads above the horizon, bounded the view in that direction, and were distant at least seventy miles, the country appearing a perfect plain between us and them. From north-west ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... There was a deficit in the finances of France at the fall of Napoleon. It was the result of his disasters, and of the stupendous efforts he was obliged to make. There was no deficit ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... east of our off-look, there projected boldly into the Valley from the dominant line of the base a square stupendous tower that might have been hewn by the diamond adzes of the Genii for a second Babel-experiment, in expectance of the wrath of Allah. Here and there the tools had left a faint scratch, only deep as the width of Broadway and a bagatelle of five hundred feet in length; but that detracted no more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... origin of the different outbreaks, the manner in which the disease is communicated, etc. This was known as the Indian Plague Commission, and its exhaustive report, together with the minutes of the evidence presented to the committee, represents a stupendous amount of work on this subject and is the basis for much of the later investigation that ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... the spot which had long been consecrated to rural sports and guiltless festivity, near the village of Ruthyn. The sun shone with unusual splendour; the Druidical temples, composed of immense and shapeless stones, heaped upon each other by a power stupendous and incomprehensible, reflected back his radiant beams. The glade, the place of destination to the frolic shepherds, was shrouded beneath two venerable groves that encircled it on either side. The eye could not pierce beyond them, and the imagination was in a manner embosomed ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... The most stupendous fact in history is announced by the angel chiefly as the reason for Joseph's going on with his marriage. Surely that strange inversion of the apparent importance of the two things speaks for the historical ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... early to congratulate the public upon the final accomplishment of a work, that must constitute one of the greatest ornaments of the present age. We have now before us, in one view, and described by the uniform pencil of one historian, the stupendous and instructive object of the gradual decline of the greatest empire; circumscribed by degrees within the narrow walls of a single city; and at length, after the various revolutions of thirteen ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... estrecho narrow, close, m. strait. estrella star. estremecer to shudder, tremble. estrenar to use for the first time. estrepito noise. estructura structure. estruendo noise, clamor. estudiante m. student. estudiar to study. estupefacto amazed. estupendo stupendous, marvelous. estupido stupid, stupefied. esturion m. sturgeon. eternidad f. eternity. eterno eternal. Europa Europe. europeo European. evitar to avoid. exacto exact. exagerar to exaggerate. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... on the south side is much more precipitous and wonderful than the ascent from the north. On the south, the rocks are craggy and stupendous; the little river falls headlong down; it is not a stream, it is one broken, panting cascade far away in the gulley ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... thing was glorious. It silenced him, yet did not awe or stun. His body and brain, weary and dull from the toil of travel, received a singular and revivifying freshness. He had a strange, mystic perception of this rosy-hued stupendous arch of stone, as if in a former life it had been a goal he could not reach. This wonder of nature, though all-satisfying, all-fulfilling to his artist's soul, could not be a resting-place for him, a destination where something awaited him, a height he must ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... had a hood; the roads were very bad, and the behaviour of that hood was stupendous! Its attachment to the cart was, so to speak, partial; therefore it possessed a semi-independent motion which was perplexing. You could not count on its actions. A sudden lurch of the cart to right or left did, of course, carry the hood with it, and, counting on that, you ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... it's a stupendous beginning!" exclaimed Major Vernon; "it's a princely beginning; it's a Napoleonic beginning. But that two thou isn't meant for a blind, is it? It's not to be the beginning, middle, and the end? You're not going to ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Vincent," Adelaide repeated. It seemed to her an absolutely stupendous coincidence, and her imagination pictured the clash between them—the effort of Vincent to put the fear of God into this man. Would he be able to? Which one would win? Never before had she doubted the superior ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... these figures will convey some notion of the importance and nature of the Sun, the stupendous orb on whose rays our very existence depends. Its apparent dimension (which is only half a degree, 32', and would be hidden from sight, like that of the full moon, which is about the same, by the tip of the little finger held out at arm's length), represents, as we have seen, a ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... and Mozart raised instrumental composition in Germany to an astonishing elevation; and Beethoven may be said not only to have maintained the art in that stupendous altitude, but even in some respects to have brought it to a still higher degree of perfection. "Haydyn," says Reichardt, "drew his quartets from the pure source of his sweet and unsophisticated nature, his captivating simplicity ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball

... down the country as he did. He thought, that, by fixing such an enormous sum for the indemnity, France would be under the heel of Germany for years to come, as the Prussian troops were not to leave until the money was paid. Instead of which, by a general and stupendous movement of her population, inflamed by a praiseworthy spirit of patriotism, the five milliards were paid within a year and the French soil clear of the invader—this being the most wonderful thing connected with the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... free In highlands by the western sea, On that east hill whence springs the sun, Or where he sinks when day is done. Call the great chiefs whose legions fill The forests of the Lotus Hill,(643) Where every one in strength and size With the stupendous Anjan(644) vies. Call those, with tints of burnished gold Whom Mahasaila's caverns hold: Those who on Dhumra roam, or hide In the wild woods on Meru's side. Call those who, brilliant as the sun, On high Maharun leap and run, Quaffing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... cave opened out once more in fan shape, the roof running upward to a high arch, from which hung stupendous stalactites of white and brown. Here the water dripped down in the form of a ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... beautiful in the extreme. The gorge itself is one of those combinations of the picturesque and sublime with the useful; and viewed as a specimen of scenery, it is surpassingly grand. Looking at it in its ascent, where its two stupendous sides raise their gigantic masses in rocky precipices, upwards of two thousand feet high; which seem to frown upon the bold traveller who ventures within their cavernous precincts; one cannot contemplate the vast fissure other than as the work of a beneficent providence, as a gateway ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... support the armies with which that monarch recovered his possessions from the English, London, too, had its Hende, Whittington and Norbury affluent and magnificent enough to lend their sovereign immense sums of money, and adorn the city in which they had amassed their stupendous fortunes with useful and ornamental buildings—Bridewells, Colleges, Hospitals, Guildhalls and Public Libraries. Well might Bracciolini, without the slightest particle of exaggeration, say of London, as he saw it, that it was "COPIA negotiatorum et commeatuum ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... and yielding a complete and happy obedience to Khuns, I wandered along through the stupendous vestiges of past eras, dead ambitions, vanished glory, and long-outworn belief, and I ignored eras, ambitions, glory, and belief, and thought only of form, and height, of the miracle of blackness against silver, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... very situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world. The most stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are made the foil for a greater than themselves. Was ever terror more magnificently embodied than in the phantom figure ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... which the stream of thought flows, or their merely rhetorical features. Mr. Bancroft's glittering generalizations do not always seem to us to wear the sober livery of truth. For instance, on page 500 we read: "The most stupendous thought that ever was conceived by man, such as never had been dared by Socrates or the Academy, by Aristotle or the Stoics, took possession of Descartes on a November night in his meditations on the banks of the Danube." It may be coldness of temperament, it may be the chilling influence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... things our friends would listen openmouthed—it seemed to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as tremendous as the universe—the laws and ways of its working no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... hall, Harris was coming—the new-made first captain, adjutant and quartermaster escorting—the commandants of table all over the hall springing to their feet, and the wild rumble of hollow iron beginning the crescendo of swift-coming, stupendous thunder, and Willett stood and swung his hat, and classmates half-way down the slope turned back to see, and understood without seeing, that there was something back of it besides Willett. And then a tornado burst forth, as Harris, pale to the lips, halted ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... that the stupendous events which followed the disastrous invasion of the earth by the Martians should go without record, and circumstances having placed the facts at my disposal, I deem it a duty, both to posterity and to those who were witnesses of and participants in the avenging counterstroke that the earth dealt ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss

... become difficult, and even dangerous, owing to the rugged nature of the ground over which he proceeded. The scenery had completely changed in its character. Dick no longer coursed over the free, open plains, but he passed through beautiful valleys filled with luxuriant trees, and hemmed in by stupendous mountains, whose rugged sides rose upward until the snow-clad peaks pierced ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... we advanced along the banks of the Bidassoa, through a succession of beautiful little fertile valleys, thickly studded with clean respectable looking farm-houses and little villages, and bounded by stupendous, picturesque, and well wooded mountains, until we came to the hill next to the village of Bera, which we found occupied by a small force of the enemy, who, after receiving a few shots from our people, retired through the village into their position behind it. Our line of ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... immense round loaf of bread, nearly as large as a grindstone, and made of wheat and Indian meal, the half of a huge cheese, a piece of cold pork, a peach pie, an apple pie, and, as it had been baking day, there was the customary addition of a rice pudding, in an earthen pan of stupendous size. The last finish of the decorations of the table was a large bowl of cool water, placed near the seat occupied by the father of the family, who never could begin any of his meals without a copious draught of ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... well," as he says in one of his letters, but "absolutely unite, like chemical elements—rush together with a shock;"—and in it he strikes his deepest note. In his steady envisagement of the horror that envelops the stupendous universe of science, in his power to evoke and revive old myths and superstitions, and by their glamour to cast a ghostly light of vanished suns over the darkness of the abyss, he was the most ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of the loveliest seclusions in the world. It terminates in a semicircle of rocks of stupendous height, that seem to have been hewn down perpendicularly. At the head and centre of the vast amphitheatre, and at the foot of one of its enormous rocks, there is a cavern of proportional size, hollowed out by the hand of nature. Its opening is an arch sixty feet high; but it is a double cavern, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an interest on the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid in New York, and deal with conditions among both ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... shawls and plunged her hands into the glittering hoard to the wrists, flinging out upon the couch and the floor, upon Pearse's knees and into his hands, rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls, golden chains and ornaments for the hair in a bewildering, stupendous litter. And, her face turned from him, her narrowed eyes were fixed upon him, and in their gleaming depths burned a smoldering anxiety that was ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... which are described appear all the more dreadful, as is natural, the nearer they are brought to the imagination, but it seems only too probable that the final reckoning in loss of life and material wealth will prove far more stupendous than has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... hardly an island can be named on which our smaller quadrupeds have not become naturalised and greatly multiplied. It cannot be said, on the ordinary view of creation, that there has not been time for the creation of mammals; many volcanic islands are sufficiently ancient, as shown by the stupendous degradation which they have suffered and by their tertiary strata: there has also been time for the production of endemic species belonging to other classes; and on continents it is thought that mammals appear and disappear ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... content ourselves with simply pointing to the salient features of Luke's condensed account. The mention of the place as 'over against Bethany' recalls the many memories of that village where Jesus had found His nearest approach to a home, where He had exercised His stupendous life-giving power, whence He had set out to the upper room and the near Cross. His last act was to bless His followers. He is the High-priest for ever, and these uplifted hands meant a sacreder thing than the affectionate good wishes of a departing friend. He gives the blessings which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth eulogium from the discriminating traveller; for Humboldt, usually not profuse in his panegyrics, says, 'The roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... Adversity works a stupendous change in tender youth; many a young man is never recognized by his parents after having been ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... that a stupendous catastrophe was at hand. Opening the Book of the Revelation of St. John he read, pondered, and interpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark things that were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... heaven did the Creator bend, At the stupendous and unequalled feat, And said: "I thee above that dame commend. Whose death drove Tarquin from his royal seat; And I to register a law intend, 'Mid those which ages change not as they fleet, Which — I attest the inviolable river — Unchanged through future times, shall ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... curtain of green woods there came the sound of some stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of infantry volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... the universe, there does not need to be any stupendous breaking in of God into his own world after any miraculous fashion. We do not need an infallible guide in religion any more than anywhere else, unless we are in danger of eternal loss because of an intellectual mistake. We do not need any ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... only through absolute necessity) being then to build a temple to their God. Gradually vast fabrics appeared, where before there was nothing but one eternal forest, or a howling wilderness; and although it does come over one, when looking at the splendid moles, and firm—built bastions, and stupendous churches of the New World—the latter surpassing, or at the lest equalling in magnificence and grandeur those of Old Spain herself—that they are all cemented by the blood and sweat of millions of gentle Indians, of whose harmless existence ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate verse amphigouri of the Fanfreluches Antidotees, and on the mock scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy. Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the "echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a future occasion, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... material and intellectual results of those conditions he could not but confess to be astonishing; and though he saw evil beyond all he could have imagined possible, he also saw much good, among both poor and rich. The stupendous riddle of it all, the countless contradictions, were above his powers ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... rivers, its text will be found a narrow stream flowing swiftly amidst great mountain scenery. Its abundant illustrations cover not only the giants' fairyland south of the peak, but also the equally stupendous scenes that await the adventurer who penetrates the harder trails and climbs the greater glaciers of the north and east slopes. * ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams

... time warning him by signs that the least movement would ruin everything. It seemed to Archie, when he thought it over afterward, that he had never endured such pain. He knew beyond reasonable doubt that Hannibal was awaiting some one by appointment. Who could it be? That was the stupendous question that Roseleaf might have answered in a whisper, but that he preferred for some mysterious reason his friend should discover in the natural course of events. And that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... of the hotel, and at the Irishman's invitation I sat with him to smoke a comradely cigar. Carmody was not pointedly inquisitive as to my doings; was content to be told that I had been "prospecting around." Beyond that he was good-naturedly willing to talk of the stupendous undertaking over which he was presiding, expatiating enthusiastically upon air-drill performance, porphyry shooting, the merits of various kinds of high explosives, deep-mine ventilation, and ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... sat spell-bound—hushed into stillness by those transcendent harmonies which seemed like the very song of the angels themselves; like that "new song" which is spoken of in Revelation. The grandeur of Handel's stupendous chords was renewed, and every one present ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... all of a sudden that he had not grasped the stupendous nature of this desert setting. There was the measureless red slope, its lower ridges finally sinking into white sand dunes toward the blue sea. The cold, sparkling light, the white sun, the deep ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... "Establish the credibility of the miracles of Jesus, or, better still, let Him work a miracle to-day, and we will believe," they say. This age is credulous; it hungers to believe the extraordinary. Yet, while it is running after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right before its eyes and is open to every kind of proof. It cannot see the miracle of Jesus in the world to-day, the miracle beside which all the works He did in His ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... And always an essential function of this revelation, looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the stupendous ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... stars began Their round of Cosmic law, And souls evolved in ways unsolved, And kingdoms reached their prime Has Destiny held out to Man A gift so full of awe, As England's crown which she hands down In this stupendous time. ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... the morning papers still devote much space to the old-fashioned kind of 'leader,' in which the pretence is of weightiness, rather than of fervour, sprightliness, or erudition. The effect of weightiness is obtained simply by a stupendous disproportion of language to sense. The longest and most emphatic words are used for the simplest and most trivial statements, and they are always so elaborately qualified as to leave the reader with a vague impression that a very difficult matter, which he himself cannot ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... Honorius, but by the prudence or humanity of the Gothic King; who employed a milder, though not less effectual, method of conquest. Instead of assaulting the capital, he successfully directed his efforts against the port of Ostia, one of the boldest and most stupendous works of Roman magnificence. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... What a stupendous chasm, gorgeous in sunset color on the heights, purpling into mystic shadows in the depths! There was a wonderful brightness of all the millions of red and yellow and gray surfaces still exposed to the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... and Mulready the last words in Art. They were the days when there had been but one Great Exhibition—think of it!—and the British Fleet could still get under canvas. We, being an old fogy, would so much like to go back to those days—to think of daguerreotypes as a stupendous triumph of Science, balloons as indigenous to Cremorne, and table-turning as a nine-days' wonder; in a word, to feel our biceps with satisfaction in an epoch when wheels went slow, folk played tunes, and nobody had appendicitis. But ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... that the party had gone aboard a cabin cruiser was tenable, and this means of hiding and confounding the searchers, seemed likely to succeed. The general opinion was that ere long the child would be forthcoming in response to a stupendous ransom. But this means of recovering the little fellow did not ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... birds, the dead Swarm'd turbulent; he, gloomy-brow'd as night, 740 With uncased bow and arrow on the string Peer'd terrible from side to side, as one Ever in act to shoot; a dreadful belt He bore athwart his bosom, thong'd with gold. There, broider'd shone many a stupendous form, Bears, wild boars, lions with fire-flashing eyes, Fierce combats, battles, bloodshed, homicide. The artist, author of that belt, none such Before, produced, or after. Me his eye No sooner mark'd, than knowing me, in words 750 By sorrow quick suggested, he began. Laertes' ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... morbidity that, with a slight change of light and color, becomes an obsession of conceit. The odd one, the mystery to self and others, is he not the great one that shall occupy the center of the stage in some stupendous drama? A man now prominent in educational circles testifies how that on a drizzly night on the streets of old London the lad, then but sixteen years of age, came to a full stop, set his foot down with dramatic pose, and exclaimed ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains,—a region of savannahs and forests, sun-cracked ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... dwelling-place. Armies were employed, in the intervals of their warlike labors, to level hills, or pile them up; to turn rivers, and to build aqueducts, and transplant woods, and construct smooth terraces, and long canals. A vast garden grew up in a wilderness, and a stupendous palace in the garden, and a stately city round the palace: the city was peopled with parasites, who daily came to do worship before the creator ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... reading was over and people crowded around Margaret and congratulated her, he stood aloof. He felt that he could not speak of this stupendous thing with her until they were alone. Then Doctor Sturtevant's great bulk pressed against him and his sonorous voice said in his ear, "By Jove, old man, your wife has drawn a lucky number. Congratulations." Wilbur gulped as he thanked him. Then Sturtevant went on talking about a matter ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... catalogue of visible stars actually mapped down in their places within the space of less than a square degree in the nebula about [Greek: e] Argus which I have just completed comprises between 1300 and 1400 stars. This is indeed a stupendous object. It is a vastly extensive branching and looped nebula, in the centre of the densest part of which is [Greek: e] Argus, itself a most remarkable star, seeing that from the fourth magnitude which it had in Ptolemy's time, it has risen (by sudden starts, and not gradually) ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... trooped to the front door, where Miss Todd was verifying the good news from the butcher boy. For five minutes the school went wild; everybody joined hands and danced in a circle on the drive, shouting "Hurrah!" After all the long suspense and anxiety the relief was stupendous. There was hardly a girl who had not some relation at the front over whose safety she might now rejoice. That the shadow of more than four years had at length been removed, seemed almost too good to be true. Miss Todd and Miss Beverley had gone indoors to find ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... no time in setting out on their mission. Such a stupendous undertaking, however, was fraught with obvious difficulties. In the first place, the system of slavery had assumed such large proportions that it required a number of years to visit and treat with any appreciable number of slaveholders. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... received his death-blow before he left our shores. But what is George Thompson doing there? Is he not now laboring there, as effectually to abolish American slavery as though he trod our own soil, and lectured to New York or Boston assemblies? What is he doing there, but constructing a stupendous dam, which will turn the overwhelming tide of public opinion over the wheels of that machinery which Abolitionists are working here. He is now lecturing to Britons on American Slavery, to the subjects of a King, on the abject condition of the slaves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... perfect maze of little Venetian streets, in which it is easy to lose oneself if it were only larger. To walk upon the Riva and gaze upon those precipitous mountains which tower above the town and its militarily guarded walls is a sight which at first is hardly to be comprehended. It is too stupendous. Such a masterpiece of Nature ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... civilization. For here was this wonderful island folk—a people standing between and bridging East and West—these Cretan men and women who, though they show us their faces, their delicate art and their stupendous palaces, have held no parley with the sons of men, some say for three and thirty centuries. 'But wait! They'll tell us tales before those fellows have done! I wouldn't mind hearing what this beggar has to say for himself!' At last he shared the picture. They agreed that he was a beggar ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... simply. "Three days. Him bad. Ram Das, him say you help." With this stupendous effort of eloquence he became speechless again, still holding the torn ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... in admiration, leaned out of the perpendicular, and promptly drew from his trousers' pocket a roll of stupendous proportions. Wetting his thumb, he began to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... did he meddle again with the stupendous development of the Food of the Gods he of all men had done ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... magnificent illustration of that stupendous and vital truth that the mission and sphere of woman is in the inward life of man; that she must be the building up and governing power that comes from those better impulses, those inward secrets of the heart and sentiment that govern men to ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... the old days of Egypt great ideas possessed the minds of men, and apart from the vastness of their other monuments, had ever kings before or since such impressive resting-places as the royal tombs cut deep into the bowels of the Theban hills, or the stupendous ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... the second coming of Christ is looked upon simply as a doctrine. It is, however, more than a doctrine merely to be believed; it is an impending event, something that is to take place on earth, and the most stupendous, all-transcendent event for the world since Christ came the first time to die on Calvary ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... of course, at his post; and all the private secretaries were with the public secretaries on the scene of action. On the 13th of February Mr. Palliser made his first great statement in Parliament on the matter of the five-farthinged penny, and pledged himself to do his very best to carry that stupendous measure through Parliament in the present session. The City men who were in the House that night,—and all the Directors of the Bank of England were in the gallery, and every chairman of a great banking company, and every Baring and every Rothschild, if there be Barings and Rothschilds ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... origins. The bridge, built by human hands, is, indeed, a triumph of the perfection of skilful contrivance; the strength and beauty of the arch are among the most simple yet exquisite results of science, wonderful as they may appear to the untaught beholder: but how shall we explain the formation of stupendous rock-arches across deep ravines and rolling torrents, in countries where none but the wild and picturesque forms of nature rise to gladden the eye and heart of the inquiring traveller? Of the latter description ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... was so stupendous. He could only realise one thing, for the moment:—that the woman who watched him read it, must not as yet see ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... to run away. What is awful in a housemaid and in anybody's wife became in her case stupendous. The spirit that could resolve it, decide to do it without being dragged to it by such things as love or passion, calmly looking the risks and losses in the face, and daring everything to free itself, was, it must be conceded, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... was gained. It was a flat plateau of great expanse, almost the whole of which was covered by an enormous building of massive walls and stupendous towers. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... the favourite idea, which he never afterwards relinquished, that the East is a fine field for glory, inspired him with the wish to proceed to Constantinople, and to enter the service of the Grand Seignior. What romantic plans, what stupendous projects he conceived! He asked me whether I would go with him? I replied in the negative. I looked upon him as a half-crazy young fellow, who was driven to extravagant enterprises and desperate resolutions by his restless activity of mind, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... twelve Syrens playing on hautboys, who were in their turn succeeded by a pyramid whose summit was crowned by a gigantic figure of Neptune, surrounded by water-gods and marine divinities and insignia of every description. This stupendous machine paused for a moment beneath the window of their Majesties, and the aquatic deities having made their obeisance, it passed on, and gave place to twenty-four other pages, habited and attended like the former ones. These preceded the Duke himself at the head of twelve young and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... with its financial resources, the West with its farm products, the East with its industries, all seem to participate in the general welfare of the country. In conclusion let me thank you again for the courtesy extended to our people, and we wish you great success in this stupendous enterprise." ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... there was a topic of conversation that would outlast the day, and as the story of the Enchanted Island passed from lip to lip, both story and island grew in size till the latter was little less than a continent, containing cities and castles, palaces and cathedrals, towers and steeples, stupendous mountain ranges, fertile valleys, and wide spreading plains; while the former was limited only by the patience of the listener, and embraced the personal experience, conclusions, reflections, and observations of every man, woman, and child in the parish who had been fortunate enough to see ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... town by the Great Western, and, for the first time, knew what was meant by railway travelling. True, I had seen and travelled on that monument of human industry, the Hobson's Bay Railroad, but that stupendous work hardly prepared me for the Great Western. And on this journey I began to understand, for the first time in my life, what a marvellous country this England of ours was. I wondered at the wealth and traffic I saw, even in comparatively unimportant towns. I wondered at the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... under the first stupendous shock of finding that Marty was with that girl, that death was the next certain thing. Day after day and night after night, cut to the quick, she waited for it to lay its cold hand upon her and snuff her out like a tired candle, whose little light was meaningless in a brutal ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... away and avoided it. It was in sight all the afternoon; and when we got to leeward of it the wind died away, so that we lay-to quite near it for a greater part of the night. Unfortunately, there was no moon, but it was a clear night, and we could plainly mark the long, regular heaving of the stupendous mass, as its edges moved slowly against the stars, now revealing them, and now shutting them in. Several times in our watch loud cracks were heard, which sounded as though they must have run through the whole length of the iceberg, and several ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... I am but a cool searcher of the stupendous monuments of the mighty races that are no more, but have left the history of their passage on earth written on the stones of the palaces of their rulers, upon the temples of their gods. The glowing fires of enthusiasm do not ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... France,—when we call up, in imagination, her new colonies, the germs almost of empires,—we cannot admire too much the courage and energy which have called into existence such magnificent resources. To what are we to attribute this stupendous change? What have been the methods of this growth? By what steps has this grand progress from weakness to strength ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... rotted in the sun. Three hundred thousand buffalo, driven north from the more settled plains of western Nebraska, and huddled in a territory covering not more than a hundred and fifty square miles, perished like cattle in a stockyard, almost overnight. It was one of the most stupendous and dramatic obliterations in history of a species betrayed by the sudden change of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... has felled is one of this sort, he must cut off the head of a live hen on the stump of the tree with the very same axe with which he cut down the tree. This will protect him from all harm, even if the tree be one of the animated kind. The silk-cotton trees, which rear their enormous trunks to a stupendous height, far out-topping all the other trees of the forest, are regarded with reverence throughout West Africa, from the Senegal to the Niger, and are believed to be the abode of a god or spirit. Among the Ewespeaking peoples of the Slave Coast ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche,[380:1] unheard, 71 Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast— Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 75 In adoration, upward from thy base Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears, Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud, To rise before me—Rise, O ever rise, Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! 80 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... my family and friends, and I was in some measure repaid for the past, by the good intelligence they conveyed: that my wife and children were well, and the colony was in the most flourishing condition,—since, during my absence, that stupendous mine had been discovered, which has yielded such profit to the owners—and the pastoral pursuits of the colonists were in an equally flourishing condition. Mr. Browne, too, received equally glad tidings from his ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... attention of the American government was attracted to the subject, and the memorable expedition under Messrs. Lewis and Clarke fitted out. These gentlemen, in 1804, accomplished the enterprise which had been projected by Carver and Whitworth in 1774. They ascended the Missouri, passed through the stupendous gates of the Rocky Mountains, hitherto unknown to white men; discovered and explored the upper waters of the Columbia, and followed that river down to its mouth, where their countryman, Gray, had anchored about twelve years previously. Here they passed the winter, and returned across the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... of Picenum filled thirty-two folios. The best of all this national and municipal patriotism was given to the service of religion. Popes and cardinals, dioceses and parish churches became the theme of untiring enthusiasts. There too were the stupendous records of the religious orders, their bulls and charters, their biography and their bibliography. In this immense world of patient, accurate, devoted research, Doellinger laid the deep foundations of his historical knowledge. Beginning ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... revenons a nos moutons. Lord Rockstone is right, I do not want to sell my discovery, for mine it is. I am the penniless inventor. I only want an opportunity of showing it to the heads of the Powers that are now at war, and of demonstrating to them the stupendous and overwhelming force that is now practically in the hands of the greatest of the neutral governments, and thus try, if possible, to convince them of the uselessness of continuing this loss ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... the knowledge I have wrung from pain: We, yea, all lovers, are not one, but twain, Each by strange wisps to strange abysses drawn; But through the black immensity of night Love's little lantern, like a glowworm's, bright, May lead our steps to some stupendous dawn. ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... the Mohammedan have sufficiently secured the remembrance both of the places and of the events with which they are associated. But no length of time can wear out the impression of deep reverence and respect which are excited by an actual examination of those interesting spots that witnessed the stupendous occurrences recorded in the inspired volume. Or, if there be in existence any cause which could effectually counteract such natural and laudable feelings, it is the excessive minuteness of detail and ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... national, the overloaded horse-car will be celebrated in painting and sculpture. And in after ages, when the oblique-eyed, swarthy American of that time, pausing before some commemorative bronze or historical picture of our epoch, contemplates this stupendous spectacle of human endurance, I hope he will be able to philosophize more satisfactorily than we can now, concerning the mystery of our strength as a nation and our weakness as ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... given to an antechamber in Sweden, seemed overflowing with dazzling uniforms and showy liveries. It was a very cold night, and all the guests were muffled up to the tips of their noses when they came in. The display of india-rubbers was stupendous. You can see how necessary were the twenty-two large porcelain stoves which, in Sweden, are built into the walls. For my ballroom I was obliged to add an American stove of the kind one fills once a day ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... but which she could not but regard as being very indiscreet. The Duke was at the Castle during the Christmas week, and the descriptions of the Duke and of his solicitude as to his heir were very comic. "He comes and bends over me on the sofa in the most stupendous way, as though a woman to be the mother of his heir must be a miracle in nature. He is quite awful when he says a word or two, and more awful in his silence. The devil prompted me the other day, and I said I hoped it would be a girl. There was a look came over his face which ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... mountains, he discovered vast caverns inhabited by a species of genii, who were employed in working upon masses of iron-stone, which they dug from the rock. The prince having entertained them with a hospitable feast, they, in return, shewed him the easiest route through the stupendous mountains, and he at length arrived in safety before the capital of sultan Amir bin Naomaun, to whom he sent an envoy, requesting leave to encamp on the plain, and to offer himself as a candidate for the beautiful ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... an outlook both inspiring and chastening; with the scenic grandeurs to give the exalted uplift, and the still, gray-green face of the vast mountainous desert to shrink the beholder to microscopic littleness in the face of its stupendous heights and depths, its immeasurable bulks and interspaces. Miss Alicia said something like this to Ford, in broken exclamations, when she had taken her first quailing ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... dodge, as Mr. Potts calls it. He professes to be stricken down by grief on account of late family circumstances; wears black, and puts on the most piteous aspect, and asks ministers of various denominations to tea with him; and the last announcement is the most stupendous of all. Stop, I have it in my greatcoat;" and, ringing the bell, George orders a servant to bring him a newspaper from his great-coat pocket. "Here it is, actually in print," Warrington continues, and reads to us:—"'Newcome ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... places as those which had been sanctified by the presence of Christ himself. For the man of the world, for the man who could not, or would not, go into monasticism, the pilgrimage was the one conspicuous act by which he could satisfy the ascetic need, and gain its rewards. A crusade was a stupendous pilgrimage, under especially favorable and ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... blessed. It wins fragrance from the crushed flower. It melts in aged hearts sympathies which prosperity had frozen. It purges the soul's sight by blinding that of the eyes.[189] Throughout that stupendous Third Act the good are seen growing better through suffering, and the bad worse through success. The warm castle is a room in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary. The judgment of this world is a lie; its goods, which we covet, corrupt us; its ills, which break our bodies, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... thermometer, barometer, compass, field glasses, quart pot, waterbag, and matches. In about four miles we reached its foot, and found its sides so bare and steep that I took off my boots for the ascent. It was formed for the most part like a stupendous turtle back, of a conglomerate granite, with no signs of water, or any places that would retain it for a moment, round or near its base. Upon reaching its summit, the view was most extensive in every direction except the west, and though the horizon was bounded in all directions by ranges, yet ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... under-ground cemeteries, are among the most stupendous wonders of antiquity, and have ever since their discovery excited the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... older men than I. John Alvarez, my first officer, is twenty years my senior. He stood at my side on the bridge as the ship glided closer and closer to those stupendous waves. He watched my every move, but he was by far too fine an officer and gentleman to embarrass me ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... work of one pushful, shoving creature, a man named Harman. Imagine him! Imagine what he must be! Don't you feel his soul defiling us?—this summit of a stupendous pile of—dough, thinking of nothing but his miserable monstrous profits, seeing nothing in the delight of life, the beauty of the world but something that attracts attention, draws eyes, something that gives him his horrible opportunity of getting ahead ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... Benefactor; let him there peruse the awful denunciations against impenitent sinners; let him labour to become more and more deeply impressed with a sense of his own radical blindness and corruption; above all, let him steadily contemplate, in all its bearings and connections, that stupendous truth, the incarnation and crucifixion of the only begotten Son of God, and the message of mercy proclaimed from the cross to repenting sinners.—"Be ye reconciled unto God."—"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... hand, and towering aloft in the entrancing grandeur of celestial beauty, rose the dome of the Pantheon,—so close, indeed, and so grandly great and beautiful in contrast with all the rest, that it seemed the stupendous creation of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... that time established a very important colony at the province of Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama. This isthmus, connecting North and South America, is about three hundred miles long and from forty to sixty broad. A stupendous range of mountains runs along its centre, apparently reared as an eternal barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. From several of the summits of this ridge the waters of the two oceans can at the same time be distinctly seen. Here the Spanish court, in pursuit ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... time we should chance to wet our torch while diving into the cavern. As we stood for a few minutes after it was out, waiting till our eyes became accustomed to the gloom, we could not help remarking the deep, intense stillness and the unutterable gloom of all around us; and, as I thought of the stupendous dome above, and the countless gems that had sparkled in the torchlight a few minutes before, it came into my mind to consider how strange it is that God should make such wonderful and exquisitely beautiful works never to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... roll of the drum had become familiar music to those listening hundreds; but when the clear notes of the bugle floated through the morning air there was an instantaneous raising of hats, and hardly had the assembly call died away than a stupendous cheer seemed to make the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... had never thought of that! These were the pains of love! So this was what they were like! Did those who took their lives on account of unhappy love feel any different? His grief, to be sure, was not very stupendous; when the young master made a joke or cursed in his funny way he could laugh quite heartily still. That, with his disgrace, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... nothing more than the usual night breeze of early autumn, the lime-tree was swaying violently to and fro, as if under the influence of a stupendous hurricane. Lilian Rosenberg and Kelson were so fascinated that they stood and watched it in silence. At last it left off swaying and became absolutely motionless. They then noticed, for the first time, that there were three figures ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... Stuart Russell, in his work The Parousia, has contended for the belief that the fall of Jerusalem and Judaism in 70 A.D. marked a stupendous epoch in the unseen world, a personal—although unrecorded—return of the Saviour to the earth then taking place (cp. Ac 7:55; 9:7; 1Co 9:1), accompanied by a spiritual judgement of bygone generations, a resurrection from Hades to Heaven of the ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth

... read and re-read the curt statement in a stupor of distress. She had lost her last trace of Evelina. All that night she lay awake, revolving the stupendous project of going to St. Louis in search of her sister; but though she pieced together her few financial possibilities with the ingenuity of a brain used to fitting odd scraps into patch-work quilts, she woke to the cold daylight fact that she could not raise the money for her ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... things as lie behind recorded history, and have survived into our own times. For underneath the general life of Europe, with its splendid epic of great Rome turned Christian, crusading, discovering, furnishing the springs of the Renaissance, and flowering at last materially into this stupendous knowledge of today, the knowledge of all the Arts, the power to construct and to do—underneath all that is the foundation on which Europe is built, the stem from which Europe springs; and that stem is far, far older than any recorded history, and far, far more vital than ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... such as these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... the enterprise, in the face of these stupendous difficulties, should ever have succeeded. The explanation lies in the great enthusiasm of all England for this attempt to extend the British domains to the shores of the New World, and in the devotion ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... of the storm found harmonious tones of different pitch and swelled in glorious accord from the faintest breath of melody to an almighty blast that stunned the senses with stupendous harmony. Then the chord seemed to melt and lose itself in the wild dissonances ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... small garret, where I was waited on by the widow of a court plate-washer, who at every meal served up the familiar thin Saxon coffee as almost my sole nourishment. In this attic I did little else but write verses. Here, too, I formed the first outlines of that stupendous tragedy which afterwards filled my family with such consternation. The irregular habits I acquired through this premature domestic independence induced my anxious mother to consent very readily to my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... with his jokes he brought to bear a certain scornful manner, either real or assumed, that made him more formidable. But now he strained every nerve in the matter, for it was a question of the most stupendous and best-arranged farce that the town of Lancia had ever witnessed since the monks of San Vicente came to found it. The cause of it was that Fernando Estrada-Rosa was to marry (the pen scarcely dares write ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds



Words linked to "Stupendous" :   large, colossal, big, prodigious



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