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Towering   /tˈaʊərɪŋ/  /tˈaʊrɪŋ/   Listen
Towering

adjective
1.
Of imposing height; especially standing out above others.  Synonyms: eminent, lofty, soaring.  "Lofty mountains" , "The soaring spires of the cathedral" , "Towering icebergs"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Towering" Quotes from Famous Books



... could not see the reason of his actings and dispensations towards them. The same reason is good as to our present case. And hence it is that the apostle teacheth, the spiritual armour of Christians should be much exercised against those high-towering and self-exalting imaginations, that within our own bosoms do exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. That every thought, or carnal reasoning, may be not only taken, but brought as captive into obedience to Christ; that is, be made to stoop to the word of God, and to give way and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... over 300 miles. Our course lay across the northeastern part of the Sea of Showers, with enormous cliffs, mountain masses and peaks shining on the right, while in the other direction the view was bounded by the distant range of the lunar Appenines, some of whose towering peaks, when viewed from our immense elevation, appeared as sharp as ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... The sides rose steeply, the summit was lofty, and the towering palms afforded a deep, dense shade. The grass was fine and short, and being protected from the withering heat was as fine as that of an English lawn. Up the palm-trees there climbed a thousand parasitic plants, covered with blossoms—gorgeous, golden, rich beyond ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... plebeian name of farmer, offers to enlist. Standing with his back against the halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours to reach it by rising on tiptoe. This artifice, to which he is impelled by towering ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at—and the serjeant is a hero, and a great man in his way; "your hero always must be tall, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... before the picture left Wilbur's imagination. Josie Herrick, petite, gowned in white, crisp from her maid's grooming; and Moran, sea-rover and daughter of a hundred Vikings, towering above her, booted and belted, gravely clasping Josie's hand ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... they went, over big and little bowlders, up into the glen where the frowning, towering walls looked down on them. The passage became narrower. They were now approaching ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... Gradually the towering cliffs enclosing the creek became distinguishable against the loftier background of gaunt hills. Into the gap the submarine crept with the utmost caution, until it seemed as if she were on the point of running her nose against ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... to dispose of this too convenient hypothesis. In no country, perhaps, except France, is there more of that raw material from which good art is made. More plausible is the theory that the vast and towering greatness of English literature overhangs and starves all other forms of expression. In such a land as this it seems natural that any sense of art or power of creation should drift towards literature, and almost inevitable that the painters ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... chant of the bearers—sleep only partially broken when changes of the whole set of bearers had to be made—and awoke the following morning to find myself some fifty miles from the coast, and amidst the gorges of the Ghauts, with vast heights towering upwards, and almost all around, while the river, which had now sunk to what in English ideas would still seem to be one of considerable size, appeared as if it had just emerged from the navel of a mountain-barrier some miles ahead. After ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... with widespread radiance." Lucretius had all these lineaments of his Epicurean heaven from old Homer. They are scattered up and down the "Ilias" and "Odusseia" in the shape of disjecta membra. For instance, the Olympus which he beholds through a chasm in the walls of the universe, towering into the pure empyrean, has some of the features of Homer's island Elysiums, the blissful abodes of mortal heroes who have been divinized or translated. The Celtic island-valley of Avalon, the abode of King Arthur, "with its orchard-lawns and bowery hollows," so exquisitely alluded to by Tennyson, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... of troops. For the same reason the story attains a picturesqueness absent from the dreary plains of Galicia and Poland and Flanders. Austrians, Hungarians and Italians fought in a land known throughout the world to tourists for its grandeur of scenery, its towering, snow-clad peaks, and idyllic lakes and valleys. It was warfare where the best soldier was the man most able to surmount the natural difficulties and take advantage of the natural protection of the ground. The official statements of the Italian ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... gulf is filled on most days of the year by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. Amongst them the white head of Higuerota ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... which the haughty statesman revelled, his towering ambition, and the wealth he lavished on his private abodes, joined to the lofty, condescending air he assumed toward the nobles, soon provoked their jealous murmurings against him and his too partial master; and when, at last, the king, falling ill, repaired to the premier's ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... Bears a white sail, While the Gulf's towering crest Tops a green vale; Men thy bold deeds shall tell, Old Heart of Oak, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... shade of a name once mighty, Like to the towering oak in the midst of the fruitful field." (Lucan, ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home and keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it sprayed up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran. When I looked back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name of it—SMOKE!—though, upon my word, I had never heard of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... is as follows: "How beautiful is Dunfermline seen from the Ferry Hills, its grand old Abbey towering over all, seeming to hallow the city, and to lend a charm and dignity to the lowliest tenement! Nor is there in all broad Scotland, nor in many places elsewhere that I know of, a more varied and delightful view than that obtained from the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... little, after all our systems, the great bulk of men in Christian lands know lucidly and certainly of theological truth, and how wide are the differences of opinion amongst us, and how soon we come to towering barriers, beyond which our poor faculties can neither pass nor look, it ought to be a joy to us all, that a faith which is clouded with such ignorance may yet be a faith which Christ accepts. He that knows and trusts Him as Brother, Friend, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... and wide For him time's dark strait ways, like clouds that clung About the day-star, doubtful to divide, Waxed in his spiritual eyeshot, and his tongue Spake as his soul bore witness, that descried, Like those twin towering lights in darkness hung, Homer, and grey Laertes at his side Kingly as kings are none Beneath a later sun, And the sweet maiden ministering in pride To sovereign and to sage In their more sweet old ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... decorated apartments, lofty and elaborate, were put to uses that had an appearance of being incongruous. The cot of the soldier, shrouded in a mosquito bar, stood in the midst of sumptuous furniture, before towering mirrors in showy frames, and from niches looked down marble statues that would have been more at home in the festal scenes of pompous life in the sleepy cities of dreamy lands. There was no more striking combination than a typewriting machine mounted on a ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... was, Acadia had charms, and it has them still: in its wilderness of woods and its wilderness of waves; the rocky ramparts that guard its coasts; its deep, still bays and foaming headlands; the towering cliffs of the Grand Menan; the innumerable islands that cluster about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands of Mount Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls like an invading host, while the spires of fir-trees ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... none too reassuring to Malbihn. Evidently, unless he found means to escape, this devil would have both his secret and his life before he was done with him. He wished he would be gone and take his evil-eyed companion away with him. The swaying bulk towering high above him, and the ugly little eyes of the elephant watching his ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... land of rugged mountains and towering pine-forests, with other beauties of its own. Not many years ago it was, to most English people, an unknown land; but in these days, when travelling is so easy and rapid, year by year an ever-increasing number of our countrymen find their way ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently he shook off the restraining hand of Pierrot ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... made and the girls felt protected by the trunks, so they could take a livelier interest in the ride. As they left the road leading from Oak Creek, the sight of imposing mountains towering in the distance thrilled them in spite of their determination to dislike everything they saw. And the gorgeous hues and beauty of the strange wild-flowers caused exclamations from Eleanor, while Barbara gasped at the vast herds of cattle, grazing, as ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... stately ship of Clyde securely now may ride, In the breath of the citron shades; And Severn's towering mast securely now flies fast, Through the sea ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... what the night might bring forth. At midnight the female figure dressed in the flowing white robe appeared once more. It approached the cradle of the child, tended him and blessed him. Then the terror-stricken Luckharde stared motionless at the apparition as it rose and approached her bed. Towering there above her were the pallid features of the dead Wiltrud, and the lifeless entreating eyes looked steadily at this sinful woman who had taken the place of her benefactress. To Luckharde it seemed as if a great precipice was slowly bending over to overwhelm her. With a last mad effort ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... arm was tired; and flinging away from them, in a towering passion still, he went up the hill after his ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... saw nothing of any white man, but was gazing still when De Artigny emerged from some shadow, and stepped down beside the boat. I know not what instinct prompted him to turn and look up intently at the bluff towering above. I scarcely comprehended either what swift impulse led me to undo the neckerchief at my throat, and hold it forth in signal. An instant he stared upward, shading his eyes with ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... centres of population began to decline. In the clear light of the new order it was seen that they were not fit dwelling-places for men, either in the complicated and luxurious palaces where the rich fenced themselves from their kind, or in the vast tenements, towering height upon height, ten and twelve stories up, where the swarming poor festered in vice and sickness and famine. If I were to tell you of the fashion of those cities of our egoistic epoch, how the construction was one error from the first, and every correction of an error bred ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... when their numbers began to diminish, a superb-looking warrior stooped the towering plumes of his head-dress beneath the low portal, and entered the house. I saw at once that he was some distinguished personage, the natives regarding him with the utmost deference, and making room for him as he approached. His aspect was imposing. The splendid long drooping ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... and lover, it is his instinct to build a wall about his idol, that he may enjoy his moments of expansion unseen and unmolested. This square of earth, for instance, was not much larger than the space covered by the chamber roof above us; and yet, with the high walls towering over the rose-stalks, it was as secluded as a monk's cloister. We found it, indeed, on later acquaintance, as poetic and delicately sensuous a retreat as the romance-writers would wish us to believe did those mediaeval connoisseurs of comfort, when, with ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... ready, I sent Angeit, and the faithful ones whom I had fed privily, through the village to call assembly. And the tribe gathered on a great space of beaten snow before my door, with the meat caches towering stilt-legged in the rear. Moosu came also, standing on the inner edge of the circle opposite me, confident that I had some scheme afoot, and prepared at the first break to down me. But I arose, giving him salutation before ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... and confusion of crowding passengers getting on and off, tearful good-byes and joyful greetings, banging trunks, rattling trucks, hissing steam, the doctor watched. Then he saw him, his handsome head towering above the pushing, jostling crowd. The Doctor could not get to him, and with difficulty restrained a shout. But Dan with his back to them all pushed his way to an open window of the car he had just left, where a woman's face turned to him ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... Amulet that I tye round my legs to quicken their motion when I go out a Maying. (N.B.) I don't often go out a maying.—Must is the tense with me now. Do you take the Pun? Young Romilly is divine, the reasons of his mother's grief being remediless. I never saw parental love carried up so high, towering above the other Loves. Shakspeare had done something for the filial in Cordelia, and by implication for the fatherly too in Lear's resentment—he left it for you to explore the depths of the maternal ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... porter's efforts to find his bags. He turned it over and over in his thoughts, in the hansom, more to familiarize himself with its details than to add to them. He left the cab to wait for him at the mouth of a little alley which delves its way into Old Broad Street through towering walls of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... A very wonderful sight, of which I had never seen the like, lay below us. Rock and waste and towering crags, and the mighty ruin of the monastery set in the fangs of the mountain like a robber baron's castle, looking far away to the blue mountains of the Debatable Land—the land of mystery and danger. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... is worse, to hear for himself. After an excursion train to Eastbourne, upwards of a thousand people have been seen thus heaped together over an oblong space of a mile long by twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was a towering white cliff overhanging a practically desert beach; and one seagull circled above one solitary, motionless, supine man, really staying ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... food. Bill led the way, seconded by Hazel on easy-gaited Silk. Behind her trailed the pack horses like dogs well broken to heel, patient under their heavy burdens. Off in the east the sun was barely clear of the towering Rockies, and the woods were still cool and shadowy, full of aromatic odors from plant ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... own brother-in-law to insult me by disbelief. I can but relate the occurrence in the simplest words, and trust to chance and time to prove their truth. In the centre of this main street there was a large building, formed in the same primitive way as the others, but towering high above them; a stockade of beautifully polished ebony rails was planted all round it, the framework of the door was formed by two magnificent elephant's tusks sunk in the ground on each side and meeting at the top, and the aperture was closed by a screen of native cloth ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that formerly the Amycleans worshipped the noble Bacchus above all other gods, and gave him the name of Psila, which in the Doric dialect signifies wings; for, as the birds raise themselves by a towering flight with their wings above the clouds, so, with the help of soaring Bacchus, the powerful juice of the grape, our spirits are exalted to a pitch above themselves, our bodies are more sprightly, and their earthly parts become soft ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... up the falcon, which, towering upward, swooped down upon the head of the foremost bird, and so confused and alarmed him, that he could not defend himself nor continue his flight. So greatly was his speed checked that Jack overtook him, and hurling his lasso, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... striding across the room, and towering over the unmoved Baltic, 'I'll wring your neck, sir, if you dare to hint at such a thing.' 'I am merely stating facts, Sir Harry—facts,' he added pointedly, 'which I ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... amazement he was in when he realized the fact that Major Buckley of the —th was actually towering aloft under the chandelier, and looking round for some one to address! With what elephantine politeness and respect did he show the Major into a private parlour, sweeping off at one round nearly a dozen pint-pots that covered the table, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... being sighted by the various patrols on duty was impossible of explanation. It really seemed as if some potent Fate watched over that daring Scarlet Pimpernel, and his astute enemy almost felt a superstitious shudder pass through him, as he looked round at the towering cliffs, and the loneliness ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur to activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in the past we may have struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men offer to a towering personality; but the infinite is for ever within man: we sighed for other worlds and found that to be saluted as victor by men did not mean acceptance ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... and on the third day Tom Lennard, Ferrier, the patients, and the crew, were far more interested in the steward's efforts to boil coffee than they were in the arrowy flight of the snow-masses or the menace of towering seas. Ferrier attended his men, and varied that employment by chatting with Lennard, who was now able to sit up. Tom was much shaken and very solemn; he did not like talking of his ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... green towering hill-top: on its sides June showered her red delicious strawberries, Spotting the mounds, and in the hollows spread Her pink brier roses, and gold johnswort stars. The top was scattered, here and there, with pines, Making soft music in the summer wind, And painting ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... seven inches in his stockings. Lincoln was six feet four. As the President approached this giant towering above him, he stopped in amazement, and casting his eyes from head to foot and from foot to head, as if contemplating the immense distance from one extremity to the other, he stood ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... that age raise their style by a pompous description of this spectacle; the most magnificent that had ever appeared upon the ocean, infusing equal terror and admiration into the minds of all beholders. The lofty masts, the swelling sails, and the towering prows of the Spanish galleons seem impossible to be justly painted, but by assuming the colors of poetry; and an eloquent historian of Italy, in imitation of Camden, has asserted that the Armada, tho the ships bore ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... stood up and, towering over the younger man, struck one hand into the other as he cried: "This was the motto he told me: 'Live while you live, and then die and be ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... Tom, in a towering passion. "Kicked up a pretty mess—when I tell you I've seen my Grandfather just as ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney

... that her walk would include a last stroll past the towering gray walls of a certain stone building on Lincoln avenue, which bore over its massive oak doors the inscription, "The Sanford High School for Girls." Almost every day since her arrival, she had visited it, viewing it speculatively and with a curious ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... remains for me to say," continued Sem. "I only wish, lord, to turn thy attention to the general form of our edifices, and those of the Assyrians. When I was in Nineveh a few years ago, I observed the Assyrian buildings towering above the earth haughtily; it seemed to me that they were raging horses which had broken from the bit and reared on their haunches, but would soon fall and perhaps break ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... upland slopes the shepherds mark The hour when, to the dial true, Cichorium to the towering lark, Lifts her soft ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... the riverward portico, we saw traces of an old garden whose memory is kept green by the straggling box that long ago bordered the fragrant flower-beds. On beyond was a glint of the sun-lit river. A group of towering cottonwood trees, standing in the dooryard, is so conspicuous a feature of the landscape that it serves as a guide for the pilots on the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... pass," said Miss Mergle, in towering indignation. "How dare you resist my passage?" and so swept by him and into the dining-room, wherein ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... of marvels to me, as now for the first time I saw in all their beauty the tall cocoa-nut trees and other palms, like vast ferns, towering up on their column-like stems and spreading their enormous feathery leaves so gracefully towards the earth. Then after a few steps we came upon bananas, with their long ragged leaves and mighty clusters of curiously-shaped fruit, with hundreds of other trees, such as I had never ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn

... immense tulip-tree and clothes it with such a starry mantle have power also to invigorate and intensify the life of man? "I was rocked in a poplar trough," was the politician's boast a generation ago. Such a declaration might mean a great deal if the sturdy, towering strength of the tree out of which the trough was dug could have been absorbed by the embryo Congressman. The "oldest inhabitant" of every Western neighborhood recollects the "sugar-trough" used in the maple-sap-gathering season, ere the genuine "sugar-camp" had been abandoned. Young tulip-trees ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... times have been called a bold sort of a boy, but he also had a pretty well defined streak of caution in his make-up. Those towering horns had an ugly look to him. He could easily imagine how inconvenient it would seem to feel them brought into personal contact with some part of his body, with all that muscular power of the ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... the Fleet Already the vast bulk of the battleships oppressed our spirits. We looked up from the cockpit of our dancing pleasure boat and saw the huge misshapen iron monsters towering over us, minatory, terrible. We swept in and out, across the sharp bows, under the gloomy sterns of the ships of the first line. Ascher gazed at them. His eyes were full of sorrow, sorrow and a ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... end of the alley, wedged in between two towering warehouses, was Number One, a ramshackle tenement which in some forgotten day had been a fine old colonial residence. The city had long since hemmed it in completely, and all that remained of its former grandeur were a flight of broad steps that once boasted ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... compel me to cling tightly to the swaying rope to prevent being overcome. Close as I was the bark appeared scarcely more than a dense shadow swaying above me, without special form, and unrevealed by the slightest gleam of light, merely a vast bulk, towering between sea and sky. Forking out, however, directly over where I clung desperately to the wet hawser, my eyes were able to trace the bow-sprit, a massive bit of timber, with ropes faintly traced against the sky, the rather loosely furled jib flapping ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... just as I had left it, lay the deep-green grassy lawn, with its richly-burdened flower-pots, its laburnums, and white and purple lilacs, and drooping guelder-rose bushes, and its great English walnut-tree towering, like a Titan, in the centre. There was the hawthorn-hedge my father's hand had planted, and the fountain-like weeping-willow my mother had set, in memory of her dead, whose graves were far away; and there towered the lofty ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... three months' siege, gallantly maintained. The unyielding leader had now, therefore, no alternative but to retire into the impregnable passes of the Galtees, where he established his head-quarters. This mountain range, towering from two to three thousand feet over the plain of Ormond, stretches from north-west to south-east, some twenty miles, descending with many a gentle undulation towards the Funcheon and the Blackwater in ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... justice to Doria, I elaborated her reasons for setting Adrian on his towering pinnacle. Liosha nodded. She understood. False gods, whatever degree of godhead they usurped, had for a time the mystifying power of concealing their falsehood. And during that time they were gods, real live dwellers ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... the Brenner Pass of the Lago di Garda on to Italy. Mary was particularly struck by the beauties of Salzburg, with the immense plain half encircled by mountains crowned by castles, with the high Alps towering above all. She considered all this country superior to the Swiss Alps, and longed to pass months there some time. By this beautiful route they reached Verona, and then Venice. On the road to Venice Mary became aware (as we have already noted) of an intimate remembrance ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... turned and fled away screaming at my approach, and at last, finding that I would not obey her and drop the terrible reptile, she left me in a towering rage and went back ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson

... Michael Shields received orders to join his regiment in Canada, and upon their reception he had an explanation with Edith, and with her permission, had requested her hand of her uncle, Commodore Waugh. This threw the veteran into a towering passion, and nearly drove him from his proprieties as host. The young ensign was unacceptable to him upon every account. First and foremost, he wasn't "Grim," Then he was an Israelite. And, lastly! horror ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... amount of colonization could much alter its most striking scenery, geological and general. I had some sense of awe and mystery as I gazed down into a sort of "Dead Sea" depths at the southern end of salt, salt Korangamite, and then up at the abruptly towering "Stony Rises," capped by volcanic Porndon in my near vicinity. I passed the Manifolds', where a sprinkling of fat cattle left hardly an impression on the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... in Jamaica, we pushed onward in our appropriate inquiries, scarcely stopping to cast a glance at the towering mountains, with their cloud-wreathed tops, and the valleys where sunshine and shade sleep side by side—at the frowning precipices, made more awful by the impenetrable forest-foliage which shrouds the abysses below, leaving the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... see Lincoln I said: 'Mr. President, I am very anxious to learn how you disposed of Governor ——. He went to your office from the War Department in a towering rage. I suppose you found it necessary to make large concessions to him, as he returned from you ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... sweeping past with the gliding step foreigners practise, left their tributes as they went by. Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift, that when the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it formed the apex to a blooming pyramid—a pyramid blooming, spreading, and towering with such exuberance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. This ceremony over, seats were resumed, and we sat in dead silence, expectant ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... the skies. The path was so winding, that, as he looked round bewildered, he could not even imagine how he came there. To retrace his steps, seemed quite as difficult as to proceed. The sun too had declined, or was effectually concealed by the towering rocks, for sudden darkness seemed around him. There was but one way, and Stanley prepared to scale the precipitous crag before him with more eagerness than he would a beaten path. He threw off his cloak, folded it in the smallest possible compass, and secured it like a knapsack to his ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... foundations laid by him. The first Otis elevators were moved by steam or hydraulic power. They were slow, noisy, and difficult of control. After the electric motor came in; the elevator soon changed its character and adapted itself to the imperative demands of the towering, skeleton-framed buildings which were ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

... shapes, Of precipice and stern declivity; Of dizzy heights, and towering minarets; Colossal columns and basaltic spires Which pointing heavenward, appeared to wave In benediction ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... I walked, and made a halt upon every sixth hour, and did eat and drink, and look a little unto the monstrous towering of the Great Redoubt; and afterwards make strong mine heart, and go forward again. And always I did go warily, and chiefly among the low moss-bush; but sometimes out upon stony ground, and oft across places where sulphur did puff somewhat from the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... L. And didn't you think TREE was very good?—that part where he found out about his daughter, and stood towering over her with a knife in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 1, 1893 • Various

... at Macon of a rich and noble family, was one of those men of tumult and disturbances who seem to personify the masses. Gifted by nature with a towering stature and a martial figure, his voice thundered above the roars of the crowd. He had his agitations, his fury, his moments of repentance, and sometimes even of cowardice; his heart was not cruel, but his brain was disturbed. Too aristocratic to be envious, too rich to be ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... among them, and all the coloured silks and satins she had possessed before her widowhood. And more wonderful even than the dresses were a few, not very many, for indeed no room or wardrobe would have held very many, bonnets, or 'hats,' as I think they were then always called. Huge towering constructions, with feathers sticking straight up on the top, like the pictures of Cinderella's sisters in old-fashioned fairy-tale books—so enormous that any ordinary human head must have been lost in ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... tall factory chimneys, towering above that sea of clustered roofs, began with one accord to exhale their quivering vapor, with the energy of a steamer about to sail. Life was beginning anew. Forward, ye wheels of time! And so much the worse for him ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... of pattern, and blazing, even into autumn, with varied colour. In the midst of it, a large and absolutely symmetrical cedar "spread its dark green layers of shade," and supplied us in summer with a kind of al fresco sitting-room. The background of the garden was formed by the towering trees of Woburn Park; and close by there were great tracts of woodland, which stretch far into Buckinghamshire, and have the character and effect of ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... round the subject: he saw himself a slave, blotted out of existence—mere fuel for Hamilton's flame. In a week he was in a towering passion. Few men can afford to be angry. It is a run upon their intellectual resources they cannot meet. But Burke's treasury could well afford the luxury; and his letters to Hamilton make delightful reading to those ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... Towering pines, so tall and erect that they seemed shooting upward to kiss the clouds, were the pillars of their cathedral. Its roof of tasselled boughs was stabbed by flashing needles of sunlight, which let in a flickering, mellow radiance, and ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... a Cattleya which I purchased last autumn, suspecting it to be rare and valuable, though nameless; I paid rather less than one shilling. The poor thing tells me that some cruel person bought it five years ago—an imported piece, with two pseudo-bulbs. They still remain, towering like columns of old-world glory above an area of shapeless ruin. To speak in mere prose—though really the conceit is not extravagant—these fine bulbs, grown in their native land, of course, measure eight inches high by three-quarters ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... towering from the tide, Raise their blue banks, and slope thy barriers wide, To future sails unfold a fluvian way, And guard secure thy multifluvian bay, That drains uncounted realms and here unites The liquid mass from Alleganian hights. York leads his way embanked ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... and the June roses. The may-bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the redwings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering while there was a thorn, or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... Whose glory and renown Are spread o'er land and sea,— And wouldst thou hew it down? Woodman, forbear thy stroke! Cut not its earth-bound ties; O, spare that aged oak, Now towering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... There were the maples, there was the Kleiner Berg rolling up, soft and shadowy, among its pines. There were the mountains, towering and sharp—terrible shadows against the sky. Here, too, was the Dipper beneath her, swaying idly back and forth upon the water. She remembered, with a little cry of joy, that the boat was always locked; ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... years after Drake's famous voyage—Cook's ships descried thin, sharp lines of land in the offing. As the vessels drew nearer the coast towering mountains met the gaze of the explorers. Cook had orders to keep a sharp look-out in this region for the strait of Juan de Fuca; but storm drove him off-shore, and, although he discovered and named Cape Flattery at the entrance to the strait that now bears the name {47} of the old Greek pilot, ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... them, but in that minute the door came crashing in. There was a mighty roar, "Glengarry! Glengarry!" and the great Macdonald himself, with the boy Ranald and some half-dozen of his men behind him, stood among them. On all hands the fight stopped. A moment he stood, his great head and shoulders towering above the crowd, his tawny hair and beard falling around his face like a great mane, his blue eyes gleaming from under his shaggy eyebrows like livid lightning. A single glance around the room, and again raising his battle-cry, "Glengarry!" he seized ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... return to nature,—all this seethes in the blood of Moor, but he does not content himself with indignant rhetoric or sentimental repining. He takes arms against the sea of troubles. Instead of an excellent youth pitifully done to death by a jealous brother, we get a towering idealist who is the moulder of his own fate. With sublime [Greek: hubris] he takes it upon himself to wield the avenging bolts of Jove, but finds that Jove rejects his assistance. He errs disastrously ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... off in silence, and continued to coast round the line of cliffs, which were as even and unbroken as some of those monstrous Antarctic ice-fields which I have seen depicted as stretching from horizon to horizon and towering high above the mast-heads ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... is the decisive moment," said Sarah, with immovable self-control; for a towering ambition and unbounded selfishness had always been and still were the ruling motives ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... flattened hilltop. On three sides of this military suburb the hill sloped steeply to the valleys below. But beyond them, tumbled mass upon mass, rose the great mountains barring the way to Sikkim and Tibet, towering to the clouds that hid the white summits ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... consistent of any", until Chief Justice John Marshall died in 1835, Americans marveled at the quality, quantity, and political brilliance of this generation of revolutionary Virginians. And we have marveled since. It was not just the towering national figures like Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Marshall, or the great state leaders like Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, George Wythe, or Edmund Pendleton ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... already seen. Suddenly, as my eyes got on a level with the top, so that I could see over, I was struck almost breathless by the wonderful mountain that burst on my sight. The effect was startling. It rose towering in a massy parallelogram, disclosed from top to bottom in the cloudless sky, far above all the others. It was exactly opposite to me, and about the nearest in the whole range. So you may imagine that it was indeed a splendid spectacle. It has ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... battlefield, and by a pyrotechnic spectacle of terrifying magnitude. Layson had heard guns pop in untrained volleys at State Guard manoeuvres, and was instantly impressed by the amazing similarity of sound, but he had never in his life seen anything to be compared to the towering ring of flame-wall which almost instantly encircled them. He lost, perhaps, a minute, in astonished contemplation of the situation. Then realization of their peril burst upon him with a rush. To wait there, where they ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... saw a mighty landscape which I knew was not of the earth. It came to me like a picture, and a great stillness brooded over it. At the back of this landscape stood a towering cliff of stern rock thousands of feet high. Set at intervals along the edge of the cliff were golden figures, mighty and immovable. Whether they were living guards or only statues I do not know, for I never came ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... roofs of the city rise tier on tier from the water-front. Somber forest crept down to the skirts of it, and across the glistening water black hills ran up into the evening sky, with the blink of towering snow to ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... vanquisher, he shall become her mate, but if vanquished she will cut off his head, and on such wise hath she done with ninety-and-nine men of the noblest blood, as sons of the Kings and sundry others. Furthermore, she hath a towering castle founded upon the heights that overfrown the whole of this city whence she can descry all who pass under its walls." As soon as the young Prince heard these words from the love of the King's daughter ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Wau, rising over the edge and clutching the straight willow branches, saw Ugh-lomi towering over him, gigantic against the blue; saw his whole body swing round, and the grip of his hands upon the antler. The edge of the antler came sweeping through the air, and he saw no more. The water under the osiers whirled and eddied and went ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... And the towering unseen roof grows more intricate, and soon It is featureless and proof to the lost forgotten moon. But they could not look above as with blind-drawn feet they move Onwards on the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, For their circling fingers dread to caress some ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... stood upon a corner, occupying half of an avenue block—the northern half of which was the site of a towering apartment house in course of construction—and loomed over its lesser neighbours a monumental monstrosity of architecture, as formidable as a fortress, its lower tiers of windows barred with iron, substantial iron grilles ready to bar its main entrance, even ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... flaming red disk that swam in a sea of ever-changing color between the towering peaks of two mighty mountains miles westward—and the sky above the big level upon which Barbara and Harlan rode was a pale amethyst set in the dull gray frame of the dusk that was rising from the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... I'll deal with you," said grandma, turning to Andrew, in whom there appeared to be left no defence. Never have I seen so old a woman in such a towering rage, and rarely have I seen one of seventy-five with vigour sufficiently unimpaired to feel so extremely as ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... stones, preposterously steep cliffs. There had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years. The awkward-seeming vehicle trundled over the lava sea toward the rampart of mighty mountains towering over Lunar City. It reached a steep ascent. It climbed. And the way was remarkably rough and the vehicle springless, but it was nevertheless a cushioned ride. A bump cannot be harsh in light gravity. The vehicle rode ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... time, sailed in from the Ohio to establish an outpost of his nation there. At a little distance were the ruins of a rude fort cast up by the Cherokees in the days when the redoubtable Chickasaws had driven them from the pleasant shores of the western waters. Under the towering forest growth lay vast burial mounds and the sunken foundations of walled towns, telling of a departed race which had once flashed its rude paddles and had its dream of permanence along the courses of these great waterways. Now another ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... enough in German History; and indeed are only so dim now, because the History itself is, and was always, dim to us on this side of the sea. They did strenuous work in their day; and occasionally towered up (though little driven by the poor wish of "towering," or "shining" without need) into the high places of Public History. They rest now from their labors, Conrad and his successors, in long series, in the old Monastery of Heilsbronn (between Nurnberg and Anspach), with Tombs to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... chain of the Alps, which form a magnificent semicircle at from eighty to one hundred and twenty miles distant, Monte Rosa, Monte Cenis, Monte St. Gothard, the Simplon, &c. covered with eternal snow, being conspicuous from their towering height; towards the South the view is bounded by the Apennines, extending across the peninsula from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic; and on the South-west, the Piedmontese hills, in the neighbourhood of Turin, appear a faint purple line on the horizon, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... order, others disarranged by present use into that irregular order which seems chaotic to every eye but one, while for that one the displacement of a single sheet would insure perplexity and loss of time. But neither spreading table nor towering cases seemed to afford their owner room enough to store his printed treasures. Books were everywhere. Below the windows the recesses were filled out with crowded shelves; the door of a closet, left ajar, showed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... the captain, and those who were capable of intelligent observation, the ship did not immediately strike again, but sailed straight on as if right against the towering cliffs. Still onward it went, and as it did so there settled around them a darkness so profound that no one could see even an inch before his eyes. Then at last the ill-fated vessel struck, but not with her hull, as might have been expected. High up above them a terrific ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... dumb thrush brooding in her lilac hedge; The wild hawk towering in his proudest flight; A silver fountain splashed o'er mossy ledge; The sunrise ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... the distant Valley of Lost Souls held nothing to compel my interest then; but, towering far above me, the tower's carved wall riveted my ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... yes; I suppose so. That is, I may go. That is what you mean. Well, I suppose I had better go." Not a moment since he was towering with passion, and his voice, if not loud, had been masterful, determined, and imperious. Now it was low and gentle enough. Even now, could she have been tender to him, he would have relented. But she could not be ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... a vision of them as they would look. Vere stretched at full length, flat on her back, on that horrid-looking chair, and Mr Carstairs towering above her, with his face a-quiver with grief and pity, as I had seen it several times during the last week. If it had been me, I should have hated appearing before a lover in such a guise, and I am only an ordinary-looking girl, whereas Vere is a beauty, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... were eagerly watching the iceberg, as it came down very fast before the storm. All of a sudden it blew twice as hard as before, and then one of the men shouted out—'Turning, turning!'—and sure enough it was. There was its towering summit gradually bowing towards us, until it almost appeared as if the peak was over our heads. Our fate appeared inevitable, as the whole mountain of ice was descending on the vessel, and would, of course, have crushed us into atoms. ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... dangerous to Europe in the eventful days to come when he will be called back to office, and be once more the leader and spokesman of German policy. In the future Congress which will liquidate the world war Buelow will be the greatest asset of the enemy. In the Congress of Berlin Bismarck, towering like a giant, dictated his policy to subservient Europe. The day of German hegemony is past, and no German plenipotentiary will be able again to impose his will by the same methods. But the resources of diplomacy ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... base of the cliffs, stands the Sam's Point Hotel, scarcely more than a cottage in size. Here Fern Fenwick's party left the carriage. Taking the narrow, zig-zag pathway that led to the cliffs and often pausing to admire the immensity and grandeur of the black rock palisades towering so far above them, they soon found themselves under the nose of the point of rocks. Entering the crevice in the cliffs known as "The Chimney Stairway," they commenced the steep and toilsome climb to the summit; Fillmore Flagg taking the lead and assisting Miss Fenwick, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... the mood to flatter myself or any one else. I'm in a towering rage. And if dear old Roy is to be turned down into the bargain——!" Words failed him. He had his father's genius for making friends; and among them all ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... in a towering rage, "so would yours, let me tell you, sir, if you had helped to cook all that dinner": and gathering herself up and repeating the words "horrid paws, indeed, I like your imperence," she sailed out of the room like an exasperated turkey-cock; ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... he said. I replied that I had put about 5000 words on, and was only waiting for the odds and ends from Smalley. He flushed with surprise and vexation, and began to curse the telegraph officials "who never kept their engagements," and went off in a towering rage. My 6000 words went on before a single word of the message to the "Herald" ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... from her, Adele rose and left the room. As the door was closing behind her she turned and looked back. Before the crucifix, on their knees, were her aged father and mother, while towering above them, with hands outstretched toward the cross, was the white-haired priest, invoking blessings on those bowed at his feet. She knew it was her duty to be by their side. Stifling the choking tears, she was about to re-enter the room, when the haunting ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... going was rough and stony, and hard on the porters, but the scenery was very wild and fine. We met the river bottom again in the pleasantest oval meadow with fine big trees. The mountains quite surrounded us, towering imminent above our heads. Ahead of us the stream broke through between portals that rose the full height of the ranges. We followed it, and found ourselves on ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... is given entirely over to a few Sargents which are quite sufficient to maintain this great stylist, whom many believe the towering giant of the profession. One thing is evident from this work - that for surety of touch and technical directness he stands practically alone, though he does not possess the deliberate ease in which Duveneck rejoices. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus

... of the earth upon which present day humanity walks. We might call it a kingdom of plant-minerals, only we have to imagine that the main body of the Moon consists wholly of this plant-mineral substance, as the earth today consists of rock, soil and other substances. Just as now we have towering masses of rock, so there were then harder portions embedded in the Moon's bulk; these may be compared with hard wooden structures or formations of horn; and as plants now arise out of mineral soil, so the surface of the Moon was covered and penetrated by ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner

... Already several exquisite, lonely bits of water, gem-set among the eternal peaks, mirrors for cloud and soaring eagle, a glass for the moon as keystone to the towering arch of stars, had been ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... shakes aloft his Roman blade, Which, like a falcon towering in the skies, Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade, Whose crooked beak threats if he mount he dies: So under his insulting falchion lies Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells With trembling fear, as ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... She was clasped in her husband's arms and already was turning willing and responsive lips to his, when her eyes fell upon the porthole, through which the distant lighthouse was sending her a message—it seemed like a message of love and encouragement. She saw the mighty shaft towering serenely above dark rocks and crashing waters, and watched it change with beautiful gradations of light into a rugged cross to which a woman was clinging desperately. The waves beat against her, the winds buffeted her, but she cried to God ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... little tower, was covered with ivy and woodbine, and surmounted by tufted barberries, bird cherries, acacias, covered with their snowy chains, and other pendent and flowering trees. Beyond rose two poplars of unrivalled magnitude, towering like stately columns over the dark tall firs, and giving a sort of pillared and architectural grandeur ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... and towering shadow suddenly appeared at one of the farmhouse windows. Mrs. Lem, with Judge Trent an actuality and the splendid Mr. Dunham a constantly impending possibility, had been helmeted daily from early morn till set of sun. It was her imposing crest that John's storm ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... their designment bold, A fiery ball each on the engine throws, The stuff was dry, the fire took quickly hold, Furious upon the timber-work it grows, How it increased cannot well be told, How it crept up the piece, and how to skies The burning sparks and towering smoke upflies. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... feminine were alike inapplicable adjectives. Towering above me—she was at least five foot ten while I am of average height—she strode up and down the kitchen which apparently was office and laboratory also, waving her arms, speaking too exuberantly, the antithesis of moderation and restraint. She was an aggregate of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... T. H.? Not Master Anthony, Jr., at all events. But some one afar off, surely. Abstractedly, Tom Slade gazed off toward that towering mountain whence this clumsy but unerring messenger had come. It looked very dark up there. Tom recalled how from those lofty crags the great eagle had swooped down and met his match before the hallowed little home ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Count Bismarck, also, for at that busy time the chances of seeing him again were very remote. The great Chancellor manifested more joy over the success of the Germans than did anyone else at the Imperial headquarters. Along with his towering strength of mind and body, his character partook of much of the enthusiasm and impulsiveness commonly restricted to younger men, and now in his frank, free way be plainly showed his light-heartedness and gratification at success. That which for years his genius had been planning ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... possess, own, hold. Headstrong, wayward, wilful, perverse, froward. Help (noun), aid, assistance, succor. Help (verb), assist, aid, succor, abet, second, support, befriend. Hesitate, falter, vacillate, waver. Hide, conceal, secrete. High, tall, lofty, elevated, towering. Hint, intimate, insinuate. Hopeful, expectant, sanguine, optimistic, confident. Hopeless, despairing, disconsolate, desperate. Holy, sacred, hallowed, sanctified, consecrated, godly, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... while in the insignificant Arausio—a sort of antique Tewkesbury—to find such magnificence, durability, and vastness, impresses one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness of Empire can scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the colossal, towering, amorphous precipice which formed the background of the scena, we feel as if once more the 'heart-shaking sound of Consul Romanus' might be heard; as if Roman knights and deputies, arisen from the dead, with faces hard and stern as those of the warriors carved on Trajan's frieze, might take their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... was ready, the king came out, followed by his indunas and by me. As he appeared, wrapped in the kaross of tiger-skins and towering a head higher than any man there, all the multitude—and it was many as the game on the hills—cast themselves to earth, and from every lip sharp and sudden went up the royal salute of Bayete. But Chaka took no note; ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... the heavens,' towering up above the stars, and dwelling there, like some divine ether filling all space. The heavens are the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, rimming every horizon, holding all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... these divisions, but there have been, and probably always will be, a less number who, by reason of their greater achievements, are entitled to be included in both classes. Of these latter, Thomas Alva Edison is one, but in the pages of history he stands conspicuously pre-eminent—a commanding towering figure, even among giants. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... much less loves it than he hates All wrongdoing that is done Anywhere always underneath the sun Shall live a mightier life than time's or fate's. One fairer thing he shewed him, and in might More strong than day and night Whose strengths build up time's towering period: Yea, one thing stronger and more high than God, Which if man had not, then should God not be: And that was Liberty. And gladly should man die to gain, he said, Freedom; and gladlier, having lost, lie ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... direction indicated by Tailtackle, and sure enough, there was a dark mass towering above the surface of the water, dim and black like ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... under my eye. The animal was a fisher—black-cat the trappers call him—the most savage and powerful fighter of his size in the whole world, I think. In the instant that I first saw him, quicker than thought he had hurled himself twice at the towering bird's breast. Each time he was met by a lightning blow in the face from Quoskh's stiffened wing. His teeth ground the big quills to pulp; his claws tore them into shreds; but he got no grip in the feathery mass, and he slipped, clawing and snarling, into ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... nothing in the form of a hill or mountain obstructed our advance, for the light, reflected from a clear sky, streamed horizontally between the tree-trunks in front, while on either hand the vistas were dark, and the outlines of gigantic mountains could be discerned towering to mid-heaven. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... things that made a strong appeal to one side of his nature, and he had made no progress in the city. There was also no doubt that both Mr. and Mrs. Acton were glad to entertain him for a time. He sat still a few minutes, and then went on slowly beneath the towering redwoods and cedars until he came out of the forest, and saw the sunlight stream down on the shingled roof of ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... the brothers were further surprised to find themselves evidently not expected. The butler came to speak to them, saying that Mr. and Mrs. Rivers were gone out to dinner, but would return, probably, at about eleven o'clock. He conducted them upstairs, Harry following his brother, in towering vexation and disappointment, trying to make him turn to hear that they would go directly—home—to Eton—anywhere—why would ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... you to do. You see, the evening shadow was across the river, and a beautiful grass slope at your back. Over the way was a grove of trees whose birds were very busy because it was near their sunset, while towering over them were mountains, quite peaceful by way of contrast because THEIR sunset was still far distant. The river was in a great hurry, and was talking to itself like a man who has been detained and is now at last making up time to his important engagement. And from the deep black shadow beneath ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... of this incongruous group of dwellings rose the mansion of the Judge, towering above all its neighbors. It stood in the center of an enclosure of several acres, which was covered with fruit-trees. Some of the latter had been left by the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... came in for a charge, while killing the biggest bull that was slain by any of the party. He was out alone, and saw a small herd of cows and calves at some distance, with a huge bull among them, towering above them like a giant. There was no break in the ground, nor any tree nor bush near them, but, by making a half-circle, my brother managed to creep up against the wind behind a slight roll in the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... east to west across the Lowlands of Scotland, and away southward without a break to the southern uplands, close to the border of England;—this Ochil range, which means high ground, as Glenogle means high glen, bounds our view to the south-east. It has no towering peaks, but Bencleuch and its neighbour, King Seat, command magnificent panoramic views to north and south from an elevation of 2000 feet. The gap before us is Gleneagles,—Glen-eccles—Kirk glen—one of the passes into the Lowlands of Fife and Kinross, by ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... But his towering ambition remained unsated. He realized that he lived in a progressive age, and his superior talents enabled him to take a stand far ahead of his fellows. By diligent application to his noble profession, he was now a member of that exalted Institution, "The Prize Ring of America," and the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... the dark whispering poplars. Never had these trees seemed to me more stately, more noble. Towering up into the starry sky, they seemed like sentinels set to guard and defend us, while their taper fingers, piercing heavenwards, carried our thoughts to One who never deserts those who call on Him in faith ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... out below, and there seemed to be no safe spot whereon to land. The foul, deep swamp that reached for miles on every side, the towering trees that sprouted their spiny trunks and limbs from it, the interlaced razor-edged vines and creeper-growths—all was a stirring welter of tropic life, life varied and voracious and untamed. From the tiny poisonous bansi insects layers deep on the nearest tree to the monster gantor that ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... when a towering rock was observed jutting out from the bank. It was fully twenty feet high, rough, jagged and massive and obtruded half-way across ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... daintiness of contour and feature which was not ill relieved by the high head-dress of ribbons and bepowdered hair. Of the two ladies, one, even in despite of her crinoline, might have been seen to be of noble and queenly figure; the towering head-dress did not fully disguise the wealth of red-bronze hair. Tall and well-rounded, vigorous and young, not yet twenty, adored by many suitors, the Lady Catharine Knollys had rarely looked better than she did this morning as she drove out ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... avenue with its solemn files of gigantic timber towering at the right and the left hand, the chaise rolled smoothly, and through the fantastic iron gate of the courtyard, and with a fine swinging sweep and a jerk, we drew up handsomely before the door-steps, with the Wylder arms in bold and florid ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... guests of a district kadi, a venerable-looking and genial old gentleman whose acquaintance we had made in an official visit on the previous day, as he was then the acting caimacam (mayor). His house was situated in a neighboring valley in the shadow of a towering bluff. We were ushered into the selamluek, or guest apartment, in company with an Armenian friend who had been educated as a doctor in America, and who had consented to act as ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... Tom closely following, I climbed on till we were in a vast rift, whose sides were one mass of beautiful verdure spangled with bright blossoms. High overhead, towering up and up, were the mountains, whose snow-capped summits glistened and flashed in the sun, while the ridges and ravines were either glittering and gorgeous or shadowy and of a deep, rich purple, fading into the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... creek, a single spotted sandpiper was teetering along the edge of the water, and the next moment a big blue heron rose just beyond him and went flapping away to the middle of the marsh. Now, an hour afterward, he is still standing there, towering above the tall grass. Once when I turned that way I saw, as I thought, a stake, and then something moved upon it,—a bird of some kind. And what an enormous beak! I raised my field-glass. It was the heron. ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... Flint gazed about him. He saw the cave with its scintillating points of fire, as the man with the torch gesticulated. He saw the emissaries, and the realization that his position was perilous came to him. But it was only when he saw the towering form of the Automaton that his blood froze with horror and he made a frantic effort to escape the very thing which he had feared existed in Madagascar and had attempted to betray to Brent on the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... serious. She rose and turned to the window, which commanded a perfect view of the distant peaks of the Rockies, towering high above the broad, level expanse of the great muskeg. With her back still turned to him she fired an ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... the outside many times before, but only from water level, which limits one's view, though the towering cliffs are always wondrous fine, and more striking perhaps from below than from above. But Brecqhou always cut the view on one side or the other, whereas now, for the first time, I saw the whole western side of the Island at a glance, ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham



Words linked to "Towering" :   eminent, high, lofty



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