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More "Awfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who tells the tale] may be by the just rule of the Sultan, the Vicar of God in His earth, and the goodness of his policy. The Sultan of times past needed but little awfulness, for that, when the people saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished policy and the utmost majesty, for that men are not as men of time past and this our age is one of folk depraved and greatly calamitous, noted ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... Oh, the awfulness of that moment when they both disappeared and we were left alone! With father gone it seemed as if there were no one left to keep order or inspire us with any show of courage. I think we all went mad or something like it, and, before we knew what was happening, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sat by mother's pillow, my mind full of the dread that seemed now as if it might any moment be realized,—of the awfulness of being left alone in that living tomb with the marble image of what was and yet was not my mother, the clock struck nine in the morning. Somewhere the sun was shining, I thought. Somewhere there were happy lovers, merry-makings in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... sympathy with that new school of poetry which, with Wordsworth as its representative, was searching out the deeper relations between nature and the human soul, he found in poetical composition a vent and relief for feelings stirred by the marvels of glory and of awfulness, and by the sorrows and blessings, amid which human life is passed. But his poetry was for a long time only for himself and his intimate friends; his indulgence in poetical composition was partly playful, and it was not till after much hesitation on his own part and also on theirs, and with ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... by the "initiates" and the "candidates" in symbolic sacrifices and purifications.[*] On one of these days the arch priest, the "Hierophant," has preached a manner of sermon at the Painted Porch in the Agora setting forth the awfulness and spiritual efficacy of these Mysteries, sacred to Demeter the Earth Mother, to her daughter Persephone, and also to the young Iacchus, one of the many incarnations of Dionysus, and who is always ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... mean that you'd send me on the—on the Death Trail?" he cried, aghast. The enormity of the peril swept over him in a flood, set him a-tremble. Though he questioned so wildly, he knew the truth, and the awfulness of it put his manhood in revolt, made him coward for the moment. The Death Trail! ... He had not been prepared for that. To back against the wall, and fight to the end like a trapped animal were one thing—a thing for which he had been ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... was now lighted up by their flames. On, on they went, carrying havoc, terror, and confusion wherever they went; their loud explosions, added to the roar of the guns, which opened on them from the whole French squadron, increasing the awfulness of the scene. The enemy soon saw that their firing was in vain: even their boats failed to tow aside the fiery masses borne down on them by the gale. One after the other they cut their cables, and attempted ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... the oil became very hot. A rupee was then thrown into the pot. The accused, when requested, came forward, stripped himself, said his prayers, and protested his innocence. He resisted every attempt to dissuade him from the trial. A crowd of people, impressed with the awfulness of such an immediate appeal to the deity, prayed devoutly that, if he were not guilty, he might pass through the test unhurt. Wagajee walked up to the boiling oil, dipped his hand into it, and laid hold of the rupee. He then held up his hand, that the spectators might satisfy ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... with the contrasts of the varieties of foliage, with the groups of houses where an active population swarms, with the lonely barren places where the granite will not suffer even the lichen to fasten on its surface, in short, with all the ideas we ask a landscape to possess: grace and awfulness, poesy with its renascent magic, sublime pictures, delightful ruralities,—all these are here; ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... the cold perspiration of dread and horror. His soul was moaning; his whole being was aghast with the awfulness of the deed; he could have shrieked aloud in his madness. How he lived through the hour in that theatre he never could have told, nor could he believe that he was sitting there with all those frightful ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... wonder or horror, such as they could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with Giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. It is also visibly gradual. "His face was bound about with a napkin." The nearest Apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living power ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... her serene yet awful brows was bent upon him, but under it, in a sudden reaction from its very serenity, its very awfulness, a firm determination rose in him to meet it. Turning very red but eyeing Imogen very straight: "I thought you inconsiderate, ungrateful, to your mother, as you often are," ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Cambridgeshire, and once induced me to write an article on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing for that paper she runs—Milady's Boudoir. She is a large, genial soul, with whom it is a pleasure to hob-nob. In her spiritual make-up there is none of that subtle gosh-awfulness which renders such an exhibit as, say, my Aunt Agatha the curse of the Home Counties and a menace to one and all. I have the highest esteem for Aunt Dahlia, and have never wavered in my cordial appreciation of her humanity, sporting ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her white form sitting up bowed in bed, the falling black hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him, the anger of her denunciations appeared to him now majestic with the awfulness of inspiration and of death. For it was not for nothing that the evil bird had uttered its lamentable shriek over his head. She was dead—may God have ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... home, safe and free of the horrors of war, is to me a strange thing. I think it comes into the experience of most of the men who have been over there and who have been invalided out of the service. Looking back on the awfulness of the trenches and the agonies of mind and body, the sacrifice seems to fade into insignificance beside the satisfaction of having done a bit in the great and ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... crimson carpet, in which my feet seemed to me buried, as in woodland moss, I used to be brought for recompense of having been "very good," and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me the fitting divinity of this shrine of pleasant awfulness. She bore a sweet Italian diminutive for her Christian name, added to one of the noblest old ducal names of Venice, which was that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... of Good and Evil, are all in our own hearts as they were in the heart of Adam. Heaven and Hell are there. The one stands fully revealed in the triumphant Adam, who is Christ; the other is {58} exhibited in its awfulness in the ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... The awfulness of their surroundings and the enormity of his responsibility, came upon Harvey with overwhelming force. He was too horrified for speech, and, for a few seconds, too ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?—of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... fancy that because these monks despised the world, and did not write about its landscapes, therefore they were dead to its beauty. This is mere vanity: the mountains, stars, seas, fields, and living things were only swallowed up in the one thought of God, and made subordinate to the awfulness of human destinies. We to whom hills are hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable quantities, speak, write, and reason of them as of objects interesting in themselves. The monks were less ostensibly concerned about such things, because ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of his bitterness was reached when a woman approached and began to speak to him about his soul, and the danger of hell fire. She dilated glibly upon the awfulness of sin, and even ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... of my hand in the warmth of his gratitude, for he see what I had kep' him from. "Yes, you wuz in the right on't, Samantha. I see the awfulness of the peril from which you rescued of me. But never," sez he, a lookin' down agin over the railin', onto some more wimmen a passin' beneath, "never did I see what I have seen here to-night. Not," sez he dreemily, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... happy messenger. At that moment something within her more than loved him, worshipped him, felt for him an idolatry that had something in it of pain. A number of thoughts ran through her mind swiftly. One was this: "Can it be possible that he will die some day, that he will be dead?" And the awfulness, the unspeakable horror of the death of the body gripped her and shook her in ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... looked down from the bridge over the river of the monks. The man passed over the bridge and I followed him; on the other side we stopped and turned round. The river was rushing and surging, the pot was boiling and roaring, and everything looked wild and savage; but the locality, for awfulness and mysterious gloom, could not compare with that on the east side of the Devil's Bridge, nor for sublimity and grandeur ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... marching, marching, marching, like an endless phalanx of fiery specters, and moving, as I remember, always from east to west. The absolute silence with which these mysterious evolutions were performed and the quavering reflections which were thrown upon the ground increased the awfulness of the exhibition. Occasionally enormous curtains of lambent flame rolled and unrolled with a majestic motion, or were shaken to and fro as if by a mighty, noiseless wind. At times, too, a sudden billowing rush would be made toward the zenith, and for a minute the sky overhead would ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... ever stopped and let the awfulness of these statements bear down upon us? Do we take in, that we ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... is too rare a gift, philanthropy is too weak a material, for that occasion. Nor is there an influence to be found to suit our purpose besides this solemn conviction, which arises out of the very rudiments of Christian theology, and is taught by its most ancient masters,—this sense of the awfulness of post-baptismal sin. It is in vain to look out for missionaries for China or Africa, or evangelists for our great towns, or Christian attendants on the sick, or teachers of the ignorant, on such a scale of numbers as the need requires, without the doctrine ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the cruelty of the sea, its relentlessness and awfulness, rushed upon me. Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime. I held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... jars, decayed stores, and a variety, of things besides, were thrown overboard with the utmost expedition. Every one exerted himself not only without murmuring and discontent, but even with an alacrity which almost approached to cheerfulness. So sensible, at the same time, were the men of the awfulness of their situation, that not an oath was heard among them, the detestable habit of profane swearing being instantly subdued by the dread of incurring guilt when a speedy death ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... all wonderful, Mike!" Her voice was reverent; the awfulness of the heavens had humbled her. "I was almost afraid—it seemed like the end of the world, the sky seemed all on fire. The destruction ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... the seven-handed god assumed an added majesty and awfulness, while, deep-seated as though from a smoldering caldron, two points of fire gleamed from the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... good nature was the least ingredient that formed the soul of this fair charmer, yet now she found she had a mixture of it, from her concern for Octavio; and that generous lover made her so many soft vows, and tender protestations of the respect and awfulness of his passion, that she was wholly convinced he was her slave; nor could she see the constant languisher pouring out his soul and fortune at her feet, without suffering some warmth about her heart, which she had never felt but for Philander; and this day ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... very powerful influence over the minds of the jury. All this is done, not without dignity, yet in a familiar kind of way. It is a sort of paternal supervision of the whole matter, quite unlike the cold awfulness of an American judge. But all this may be owing partly to the personal characteristics of Baron ———. It appeared to me, however, that, from the closer relations of all parties, truth was likely to be arrived at and justice to be done. As an innocent man, I should ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... planet, or of Saturn with its wondrous rings, or of Uranus and Neptune revolving in their tremendous orbits—the latter nearly three thousand millions of miles away from the centre of our system. . . But the true awfulness is yet untouched. What of the millions of millions of suns that blaze in immeasurable space beyond our comparatively little solar sphere? Sirius alone, at the foot of the constellation of Orion, is 125 times larger than our sun. Fifteen hundred millions of millions of miles away, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... starts she sang the "Batti Batti" through, sang it atrociously—not like a poor professional, but like a pretentious amateur, a reversion to a manner of singing she had once had, but had long since got rid of. She paused at the end, appalled by the silence, by the awfulness ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... to bed as usual. No presentiment of the coming awfulness clouded our young mirth. I remember Dicky and Oswald had a wrestling ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... then told that "the most lawless men did then really believe." Then that the American tribes were in the eyes of the colonists "real worshippers" of the Devil, and a few lines later we hear of "the real awfulness ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... something went wrong with the hoisting machinery, the upward movement was arrested, and the bucket hung motionless not more than ten feet above the deadly mine. In the awfulness of their common danger, the men forgot their enmity and gazed at each other with horror-stricken eyes. Then, with a groan of despair, Mike Connell sank limply to the bottom of ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... changing awfulness. Countries were sinking, cities crashing down, volcanoes were spouting fire; the end of the earth seemed to be at hand. We could see human beings running to and fro in thousands like ants. Then in huge waves hundreds and hundreds of feet ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... those who were entertained. It is also believed that she divined their lineage from the lines and features of the face, and could discern any man's birth by sheer shrewdness of vision. When she stood and fixed the scrutiny of her gaze upon Olaf, she was stricken with the strange awfulness of his eyes, and fell almost lifeless. But when her strength came slowly back, and her breath went and came more freely, she again tried to look at the young man, but suddenly slipped and fell forward, as though distraught. A third time also she strove to lift her closed and downcast gaze, but suddenly ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... it quick—we'll hit the bridge,' but it was like deef and dumb talk in a boiler shop, while a wilder howl went up from the water front as they seen what they'd done and smelled victory. There's an awfulness about the voice of a blood-maddened club-swingin' mob; it lifts your scalp like a fright wig, particularly if ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... sit down just outside his door, but he crouched his head to his knees and shielded it with the arch of his arms. And Jerry, who had never heard shell-fire, much less imagined what it was like, was impressed with the awfulness of it. It was to him a natural catastrophe such as had happened to the Arangi when she was flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind. But, true to his nature, he did not crouch down under the shriek of that first shell. On the contrary, he bristled his hair and snarled ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... The monarchy of France laboured in extremity, rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness—the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment to ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... crimes of lust and blood which haunted and half crazed the genius of Tourneur and Marston? Where in this brilliant and courteous and humane and civilized nation are the gigantic villains whose terrible features were drawn with such superb awfulness of touch by Webster and Ford? Where in this Renaissance of Italian literature, so cheerful and light of conscience, is the foul and savage Renaissance of English tragedy? Does the art of Italy tell an impossible, universal lie? or ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... hands clasped, bearing a cross. Never was a head designed with more genius than that strange Virgin, ecstatic, mysterious, sphinx-like; with half-closed eyes, she bends her face to meet her God's kiss. In this picture Botticelli sought to realise the awfulness of the Christian mystery: the Mother leans to the kiss of her Son—her Son, who is likewise her God, and her brain is dim with its ecstasy. She is perturbed and overcome; the kiss is in her brain, and it trembles on ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... passengers aboard one of these, I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no obstacles to the crews who heroically manned ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... had even begun to recover from the Awfulness of this Speech, Timothy of the Sore Heart had run on down the steps, was safe in the automobile, and Clay had ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... It is Jesus talking here. Jesus—the tenderest-hearted, the most mother-hearted man this world ever listened to. Look at Him, standing there on that hilltop, looking out toward the great world He has just died for, with the tears coming into His eyes, and His lips quivering with the awfulness of what He was saying—"he that believeth not shall be damned," as though it just broke his heart to say it. And it did break His heart that it might not be true of us. For He died literally of a broken heart, the walls of that great, throbbing muscle burst asunder by ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... forth from our shores to preach salvation by grace in heathen countries; that those who were agitating the subject were branded as fanatics, and the cause itself was subject to unjust suspicions and contempt; consequently the subject had an importance and awfulness which it does not now possess. The way has been broken, and all good men acknowledge that the heroism of the missionary woman is grand and sublime. The decision made by Harriet Atwood was different from that made by others in after years, inasmuch as she had no example, no ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... away and lost to her, but it is a mortification which more confident and peremptory systems than hers have had to undergo; the parting was not without its compensations if only that it brought home so keenly to many the awfulness and the seriousness of truth; and surely never did any man break so utterly with a Church, who left so many sympathies behind him and took so many with him, who continued to feel so kindly and with such large-hearted justice to those ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... receipt of that letter Bridget's reflections had been more disagreeable than any she had yet grappled with. In Nelly's company the awfulness of what she had done did sometimes smite home to her. Well, she had staked everything upon it, and the only possible course was to brazen it out. That George should die, and die quickly—without any return of memory or speech, was what she terribly and passionately desired. In all ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thought of her now. You have probably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but I, looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the loved being whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate, at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness. ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman
... furies. But balk her in a whim, and she would pour forth the eloquence of a fish-wife or a lady of easy virtue in a pot-house quarrel. There was no human creature near her who had mind or heart enough to see the awfulness of her condition, or to strive to teach her to check her passions; and in the midst of these perilous surroundings the little virago grew handsomer and of finer carriage every hour, as if on the rank diet that fed her ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... And think... think of the awfulness of it... it was hovering at the gates of life! It wanted to be! And I trembled.. . I suffered; at any moment I might have said the word, and it would have come. But I did not say the word... and it is gone. And now it will never ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... the awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs were deep and ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... rowing them, no ship of ours has ever been able to overtake them. Assured on that point, they have pillaged whatever their greed has dictated to them. Their method of attack is for all of them to land at once with a terrifying and barbaric cry, the awfulness of which strikes terror to the people as they are caught defenseless and separated and thus ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... at which dignity begins,' he exclaimed; 'further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket-Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's own hand; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... miserably; his body was shot through and through with cramping agonies. The very blood in his veins was liquid fire, searing his veins and arteries with pulsing awfulness. He staggered from the control cabin; threw himself on his bunk. The covers were electrified and clung to him like tissue to rubbed amber. The wall of the sleeping cabin vibrated with a screeching note. The floors trembled. Madness! That's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... in the living-room. When he was gone, my mother called me in; and with eyes which would have been tearful had she allowed herself such a weakness before us, told me very solemnly and slowly, as if to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter, that I was to be sent to a tailor's ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... therefore is not Truth at all. There is another Truth—the everlasting Truth—the pivot of all life, which never changes; and it is with this alone that my science deals. Were I to set you at liberty as you desire,—were your intelligence too suddenly awakened to the blinding awfulness of your mistaken notions of life, death, and futurity, the result might be more overpowering than either you or I can imagine! I have told you what I can do,— your incredulity does not alter the fact ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." But I can alienate and make void every promise and title, if I will or if I do not care. This is the unique glory, and awfulness of the human will. And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good. "If God is for us who is against us?" It must be so if God's laws are his modes of aiding men to conform ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... sends the flood sends the rainbow also? There are not two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... the cool depths beyond the pillars, all declared that in the God for whom that temple was built, there was mystery as well as revelation, Love as well as Justice, condescension as well as Majesty, beauty as well as awfulness, invitations as ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her yashmak for a moment in order to give me a better idea of the effect which she produced by suddenly revealing the awfulness of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... thing happened to her! To change like that. An awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... him, the smile on his lips took away the awfulness of the sight, and the serenity of the rain-drenched face rested as visible token of an ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... secondly, to temper, as it were, the awfulness of the first revelation, we find that the light of God is brought us through a medium; the glory, grace, and truth of God are shown us in the face of ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... he was bruised, shaken, and stunned by the suddenness and awfulness of the catastrophe. In spite of his bewilderment, however, his years of training as a brakeman were not forgotten. Casting but a single glance at the blazing wreck, he turned and ran back along the east-bound track. He was no coward running away from duty and ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... from a professorial chair in a venerable university—least of all from a professor not yet forty, who might have been expected to be weighed down and solemnized by the greatness of his function and the awfulness of his surroundings. Hence arose the simple and amusing wrath of pedestrian poets like Mr. Ichabod Wright, and ferocious pedants like Professor Francis Newman, and conventional worshippers of such idols as Scott and Macaulay, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... own distortions. I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively elucidated ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... blowing softly through the vine-latticed window and stirring its white draperies brought David to wakefulness. With the first surprise at the strangeness of his surroundings came a fluttering of memory. The fragrance of lilacs was always hereafter to bring back the awfulness of ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... if taboo were a form of magic as defined by Dr. Frazer, it would be a somewhat definite and measurable quantity; whereas the distinguishing characteristic of taboo everywhere is the "infinite plus of awfulness" always accompanying its violation. As Dr. Marett observes, there may be certain definite results, such as prescribed punishment for violations against which a legal code is in process of growth. There may be also social "growlings," showing the opposition of public ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... of the ravens which from time to time are heard from the tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These objects naturally raise seriousness and attention; and when night heightens the awfulness of the place, and pours out her supernumerary[75] horrors upon everything in it, I do not at all wonder that weak minds fill it with spectres ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... agony, but Prudence's face reassured them. Constance had told no tales. "I have told her she must spend all of her time up-stairs alone for a week, taking her meals there, too. She will go to school, of course, but that is all. I want her to see the awfulness of it. I told her I didn't think we wanted to eat with—a thief—just yet! I said we must get used to the idea of it first. She is heartbroken, but—I must make her ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Honora, ever become like that? Up to the present she felt that suffering had refined her, and a great love had burned away all that was false. But now—now that her god had turned to clay, what would happen? Desperation seemed possible, notwithstanding the awfulness of the example. No, she would never come to that! And she repeated it over and over to herself as she dressed, as though to strengthen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... extraordinary collection of bundles, he counted nine of them, to say nothing of a jackdaw in a cage. She embraced him with enthusiasm, dropping the heaviest of the parcels, which seemed to contain bricks, upon his toe, and in a flood of language told him of the peculiar awfulness of the row between his father and herself which had ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... told me, I will own I did not realize all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can't tell you how ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... her—called for help, laid his ear to her heart, her lips. Then the awfulness of the shock, and of his self-reproach, the crumbling of all his hopes, became too much to bear. Consciousness left him, and when the woman of whom Louie had spoken did actually come in, a few minutes later, she found the brother lying against the sister's knee, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rooted to the spot by the suddenness and awfulness of the fate that had overtaken his enemy. Then like a flash it came to him that, even while his attention was wholly centred on the tragedy just enacted, he had been aware of another man ascending the pathway ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... when he differs than when he agrees with them; at least they will do no harm, for nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of more concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carried through the arched doorway into the night; and, above all, that to each there were sixty minutes in the hour, and twenty-four hours in the day, and years and years of these days. This was the Secret, and he was its custodian. None of the others knew of it; but its awfulness made him sad and stern. He checked the days, he numbered the hours, he counted the minutes rigorously lest one escape. One did escape, and he turned back to catch it, and pursued it far away from the stone doorway and the dull twilight, and even the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... courts where the atmosphere was absolute poison; and using his brains with intense application, without ever allowing himself proper or sufficient relaxation. Now, will you tell me that Providence intended that this man should so labor and so suffer? Why, the very awfulness of the consequence forbids such a supposition for a moment. Or will you, perhaps, say that this dire calamity was sent upon him in order to try the fortitude, patience, and resignation of his wife, within a month of her confinement; or of his sister, whose nervous sensibility ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... long-drawn arches, cloisters, sounding aisles buttress it, begirdle it far and wide. Regimented companies of men, of whom our Jocelin is one, devote themselves, in every generation, to meditate here on man's Nobleness and Awfulness, and celebrate and show forth the same, as they best can,—thinking they will do it better here, in presence of God the Maker, and of the so Awful and so Noble made by Him. In one word, St. Edmund's Body has raised a Monastery round it. To such length, in such manner, has the ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... phantom of that form which I had upraised from the ice when it had sunk down in lifelessness, whose white face rested on my shoulder as I bore it away from the grasp of death; and that vision, with all its solemn, tragic awfulness seemed out of keeping with this. Miss O'Halloran? Impossible! But yet it must be so, since she thus confessed it My own memory had been at fault. The face on the ice which haunted me was not the face that I saw before me; ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... when he gives his blessing at St. Peter's; and the feeling you have when you stand by Napoleon's tomb—the awfulness of what he did and was—and being here in Switzerland, where I always feel somehow the pressure of all the past of Europe about me. Now,"—and she laughed lightly,—"I have ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... awfulness of volcanic and earthquake phenomena, there is some silver lining to the dark clouds. They prove that the earth is yet a living planet. Centuries must pass away before it will become like the moon—a dead planet—without water, air ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... gentleman who "controlled" all the cinematographs, and was reputed to make a million dollars a year net therefrom. He did not appear to be a bit weighed down, either by the hugeness of his opportunity or by the awfulness ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... penalty of his crime. At last I agreed to keep silent, and handed him a cheque for five thousand pounds, receiving in return the marriage certificate. I then made Moreland swear to leave the colony, which he readily agreed to do, saying Melbourne was dangerous. When he left I reflected upon the awfulness of my position, and I had almost determined to commit suicide, but, thank God, I was saved from that crime. I write this confession in order that after my death the true story of the murder of Whyte may be known, and that any one who may hereafter ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... "establish at once the majestic and formidable authority of divine justice, the avenger of crime." {2} They are followed by a series of solemn progressions in stern, sinister, unyielding, merciless, implacable harmonies. They are like the colossal strides of approaching Fate, and this awfulness is twice raised to a higher power, first by a searching, syncopated phrase in the violins which hovers loweringly over them, and next by a succession of afrighted minor scales ascending crescendo and descending ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... whom you ask for news. It has just missed being disastrous. Poor Dionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to her wits, poor little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it has required all my influence, and all the awfulness of your Excellency's name, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent her expulsion by the Sisters of the Stigmata. It appears that this mad creature very nearly committed a sacrilege: she was discovered handling in a suspicious ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... violins of a larger growth. The pizzicato is, indeed, oftenest heard from the double-basses, where it has a much greater eloquence than on the violins. In music of a sombre cast, the short, deep tones given out by the plucked strings of the contra-bass sometimes have the awfulness of gigantic heart-throbs. The difficulty of producing the other effects grows with the increase of difficulty in handling the instruments, this being due to the growing thickness of the strings and the ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and many hideous devils; yet the place is little Bungay, where my mother hath a cot by the river. When first the dream came I lay at Mechlin in the Monastery there; my flesh quaked and my hair stood up by reason of the awfulness of the vision; then as I mused and prayed I saw in it the call of the Lord, that I might wrestle with Satan for my mother's soul, for she was ever inclined to evil arts and spells, and thought little of ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... I am bound to say they can only form a meagre conception of what it must have been like on one of the diminutive frail sailing crafts that built up the supremacy of the British mercantile marine. No one can really imagine the awfulness of the work these vessels and their crews had to do except those who sailed in them. This vessel, like many others of her class and size, did useful work in her time in building up our trade with other parts of the world. Distance and danger were no obstacles to the crews who heroically ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... had my Greek Testament with me, and I read when I sat, and thought when I walked. I remember well enough that I was going to preach about the cloud of witnesses, and explain to my people that this did not mean persons looking at, witnessing our behaviour—not so could any addition be made to the awfulness of the fact that the eye of God was upon us—but witnesses to the truth, people who did what God wanted them to do, come of it what might, whether a crown or a rack, scoffs or applause; to behold whose witnessing might well rouse all that was human and ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the cataract deafened us, the awfulness of the catastrophe made us dumb. We were as if stunned, and I was conscious of nothing save a sickening sense ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... sound repeated. At the same time the walk of elms, with the croaking of the ravens which from time to time are heard from the tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These objects naturally raise seriousness and attention; and when night heightens the awfulness of the place, and pours out her supernumerary[75] horrors upon everything in it, I do not at all wonder that weak minds fill it ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... Appalled by the awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs were deep ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... monks despised the world, and did not write about its landscapes, therefore they were dead to its beauty. This is mere vanity: the mountains, stars, seas, fields, and living things were only swallowed up in the one thought of God, and made subordinate to the awfulness of human destinies. We to whom hills are hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable quantities, speak, write, and reason of them as of objects interesting in themselves. The monks were less ostensibly concerned ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... soot and sweat till you couldn't tell whether they were black or white. I'll never forget the horror of that first night on the ovens, I was almost dead long before I had finished shovelling my sixty-four tons of coke, but the awfulness of the scene was harder to bear than the pain of my body. I said to Mac, "What does this remind you of, Mac?" He said, "Jack, it's more like hell than anything that was ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... very hot. A rupee was then thrown into the pot. The accused, when requested, came forward, stripped himself, said his prayers, and protested his innocence. He resisted every attempt to dissuade him from the trial. A crowd of people, impressed with the awfulness of such an immediate appeal to the deity, prayed devoutly that, if he were not guilty, he might pass through the test unhurt. Wagajee walked up to the boiling oil, dipped his hand into it, and laid hold of the rupee. He then held up his hand, that the spectators might satisfy themselves of ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Grab it quick—we'll hit the bridge,' but it was like deef and dumb talk in a boiler shop, while a wilder howl went up from the water front as they seen what they'd done and smelled victory. There's an awfulness about the voice of a blood-maddened club-swingin' mob; it lifts your scalp like a fright wig, particularly if you are ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Life from a loftier height than he had ever before attained. Thus he sensed, as never before, the bigness, the fullness, the grandness, the awfulness, of Life. And so the man became very humble with a proud humbleness. He became very proud with a humble pride. He became even as ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... put the irons upon his wrists, but he remained in the same state of stupefaction, making no remark upon his unusual situation, or taking the least notice of his strange companions. When the vehicle stopped at the entrance of the county jail, then, and not until then, did the awfulness of his situation appear to strike him. Starting from his frightful mental abstraction, he eagerly demanded of the officers why his hands were manacled, and for what crime ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... delivered, he must have exercised a very powerful influence over the minds of the jury. All this is done, not without dignity, yet in a familiar kind of way. It is a sort of paternal supervision of the whole matter, quite unlike the cold awfulness of an American judge. But all this may be owing partly to the personal characteristics of Baron ———. It appeared to me, however, that, from the closer relations of all parties, truth was likely to be arrived at and justice ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the common people, sounder judges often of true nobility than many who fancy themselves their betters. Conceive—but which of us can conceive?—His perfect tenderness, patience, sympathy, graciousness, and grace, combined with perfect strength, stateliness, even awfulness, when awe was needed. Remember that, if, again, the Gospels are to be believed. He alone, of all personages of whom history tells us, solved in His own words and deeds the most difficult paradox of human character- -to be at once utterly conscious, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... in wondering admiration at this marvellous woman. Was it possible that a girl could have such nerve, such courage? Or had woman's hope, so persistent where her loved ones are concerned, made Beulah Sands blind to the awfulness of the situation? As I looked at her I could not doubt that she fully realised our position, that she was really suffering more than either of us, that she was only acting to ease Bob's anguish. Bob brought out his ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... carefully we shall find that, while there are a great many clear proofs of the certainty and awfulness of Hell, the proofs of this theory of Everlasting Torment are not much to be depended on. Practically they can all be gathered ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... the "goody," who, to a specially stricken and lonely young widow, tendered as "bed-side books," Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Browning's poignant The Ring and the Book. If they had wished to make her realise to the bitterest depths the awfulness of the world wherein she was left alone, and the blackest depravity of the human nature around her, they could not have done differently. Les Miserables she read till she reached the dreadful scene where a vicious cad hurls ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... he, graspin' holt of my hand in the warmth of his gratitude, for he see what I had kep' him from. "Yes, you wuz in the right on't, Samantha. I see the awfulness of the peril from which you rescued of me. But never," sez he, a lookin' down agin over the railin', onto some more wimmen a passin' beneath, "never did I see what I have seen here to-night. Not," sez he dreemily, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... of neighboring tenements glimmering across the street. The house probably seemed to her adrift on the great ocean of the night. A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of nature, so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless extent. Once, while the blast was bellowing, she caught hold of Zenobia's robe, with precisely the air of one who hears her own name spoken at a distance, but is unutterably ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... because it happened that immediately on my interview, I acquainted them with the nature of my errand and solicited their attendance in London. Conceiving that I had no right to ask them such a favour, or terrified at the abruptness and apparent awfulness of my request some of them gave me an immediate denial, which they would never afterwards retract. I began to perceive in time that it was only by the most delicate management that I could get forward on these occasions. I resolved, therefore, for ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... I would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the Laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of M. Angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar, (the plague of the Fiery Serpents,) but of which the choice was justified both by the place which the event holds in the typical system ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... an enchanting picture that he drew in spite of the horror that must ever mutter at their threshold; but to the awfulness of war they were both by this time more or less callous, although he was mortally sick of the war itself; and Gisela, who doled half-measures neither to herself nor others, had dismissed the morrow and yielded herself to the joy of the future as of the present. What she had felt for this ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... what a thing happened to her! To change like that. An awfulness about it. Death in life. Have I changed? No. I'm the same. But that's a lie. I was in love once ... a face like a mirror of stars. The phrase grows humorous with repetition. It doesn't mean anything. What did it mean? Like trying to remember a toothache ... which tooth ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... of destruction gripped in his hand. His mood was a singular mixture of fear and exultation. Chiefly he was afraid of being caught before he could accomplish his purpose, but behind this was a vaguer but larger fear of the awfulness of his crime. But his exultation far exceeded his fear. No Anarchist before him had ever approached this conception of his. Ravachol, Vaillant, all those distinguished persons whose fame he had envied dwindled into insignificance ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... away from it into a barren and trivial life, although the war itself occasioned a multitude of poems, songs, hymns, and political disquisitions. The hymns of this period, which are filled with a sense of dependence, of the greatness and awfulness of an invisible eternity, and breathe a desire for the peaceful traits of a remote religious life, are at once a confession of the weariness of the best minds at the turmoil and uncertainty of the contest and a permanent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... used to read prayers while the rest kneeled against the transoms and settees, was one of the merry young sparks, who had occasioned such agonies of jealousy to the poor tailor, now no more. In his rakish vest, and dangling watch-chain, this same youth, with all the awfulness of fear, had led the earnest petitions of his companions; supplicating mercy, where before he had never solicited the slightest favor. More than once had he been seen thus engaged by the observant steersman at the helm: ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... to be done twice a day, might live their own stupid, commonplace lives there. The chance visitor who spent a few hours in scaling difficult cliffs would perhaps catch a brief and fleeting sense of their awfulness, only too quickly dissipated by the unwonted toil and peril of his situation. But Roland Sefton felt himself exiled to their ice-bound solitudes, cut off from all companionship, and attended only by ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... together for an hour or so in the living-room. When he was gone, my mother called me in; and with eyes which would have been tearful had she allowed herself such a weakness before us, told me very solemnly and slowly, as if to impress upon me the awfulness of the matter, that I was to be sent to a tailor's workrooms ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... it. Mary is a dreamer. You capture her with your imagination—with your talk of your work—and your people and the little gardens, and all that. And she sees it as you want her to see it, not as it really is. But I know the deadly dullness, the awfulness. Why, man, I spent a winter down there, at one of the resorts and now and then we rode through the country. It was a desert, I tell you, Poole, a desert; it is ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... think for an instant that this comprehends in full the awfulness of the scene. What has just been mentioned is a large waste of territory swept as clean as if by a gigantic broom. In the other direction some few of the houses still remain, but they are upside down, piled on top of each other, and in many ways so torn asunder that not a single ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... family, or that he was kind to his family, or was loved by his family, always we are to understand not at all his wife and children, but the train and retinue of his domestic slaves. Now, the relation of the Apostles to their Master, and the awfulness of their dependency upon him, which represented a golden chain suspending the whole race of man to the heavens above, justified, in the first place, that form of expression which should indicate the humility and loyalty that is owned by ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a good sportsman and acutely alive to good and bad "form." Mr. Siddons made me aware of my clothed self as a visible object, I surveyed my garmented being in mirrors and was trained to feel the "awfulness" of various other small boys who appeared transitorily in the smaller Park when Lady Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality to certain benevolent London associations. Their ill-fitting clothing, their undisciplined outcries, their slouching, their bad ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... he had been nurtured by that sad lady whom we were going to see. I at least knew that he had acted, and was now acting, up to the very standard of his high calling. The place has lost much of its awfulness for me; it had become even ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... charging,—but the roaring of beasts, the crackling and hissing of fire, the rumbling of earthquake, the thunder of ruin, and, above all these, a clamor continual as of shrieks and smothered shoutings,—the Voices that are said to be the voices of the drowned., Awfulness supreme of tumult,—combining all imaginable echoings of fury and destruction ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... flood, that the God who sends the flood sends the rainbow also? There are not two gods, nor many gods, but one God, of whom are all things. Light and darkness, storm or sunshine, barrenness or wealth, come alike from him. Diseases, storm, flood, blight, all these show that there is in God an awfulness, a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... on vulgar conditions of wonder or horror, such as they could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with Giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. It is also visibly gradual. "His face was bound about with a napkin." The nearest Apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... else. Somebody else! As if any one were worth even looking at after Jack Curtis. I pitied every girl who was not engaged to him. How could my sisters be happy? Resigned, content, they might be; but to be married and done for, and afterwards to meet Jack—well, imagination failed me to depict the awfulness ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... [quoth he who tells the tale] may be by the just rule of the Sultan, the Vicar of God in His earth, and the goodness of his policy. The Sultan of times past needed but little awfulness, for that, when the people saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished policy and the utmost majesty, for that men are not as men of time past and this our age is one of folk depraved and greatly calamitous, noted for folly and hardness ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... filled with awe; at the Cavern with delight. At the Bridge we have several views that are awful; at the Cave hundreds that are pleasing. At the Bridge you stand and gaze in astonishment; at the Cave awfulness is lost in beauty, and grandeur is dressed in a thousand captivating forms. At the Bridge you feel yourself to be looking into another world; at the Cave you find yourself already arrived there. The one presents to us a God who is very "wonderful in working;" the other exhibits the same power, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... "There, that's the awfulness of it. I don't know. I only know that one day he was drunk, and the next day he was not, and never was again. He said he gave all ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... done the same before them. Among all the Eastern nations men had appeared, from time to time, to whom the things seen were but a passing phantom, the things unseen the only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... down the coast when men were drowned or lost in the ice or met with fatal injuries. But never before in the Bay had one man been cut down by the hand of another. It was a ghastly thought, and the awfulness of it was perhaps accentuated by the snow dashing against the window panes and the wind shrieking around the gables of ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... she did not even see by the shocked expression of their faces the awfulness of the thing they thought she confessed, and the obviousness of the reason to which their ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... we ever stopped and let the awfulness of these statements bear down upon us? Do we take in, that we are ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... its features of solemnity and grandeur, filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... my forehead was damp with a cold sweat, and I could hardly shake off the horror of the vision. It was ridiculous, I said to myself, and yet, even with my eyes open, I could see the white awfulness of that dead finger, as it beckoned me, shining palely in the light of ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... he realizes all the awfulness of my position?" Dolly resumed. "Not the slightest! ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the confusion was unbelievable. All that Gard had seen, heard, gone through in Deutschland proved the awfulness of the Force flung against Europe which had stupidly considered ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... civil occasions, they render his name so familiar to them, that they are likely to lose the reverence due to it, or so to blend religious with secular considerations, that they become in danger of losing sight of the dignity, solemnity, and awfulness of devotion. And it is not an unusual remark, that persons, most accustomed to oaths, are the most likely to perjury. A custom-house oath has become proverbial in our own country. I do not mean by this to accuse mercantile ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... taken place. Little by little his slack body began to stiffen; little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh of deeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, for Young Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through which ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... lunatic!" declared the father, descending to the library from a before-dinner interview with the outlaw, that evening. "I'd send him to military school, but I don't believe they'd take him. Do you know WHY he says all that awfulness happened?" ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... day, as I sat by mother's pillow, my mind full of the dread that seemed now as if it might any moment be realized,—of the awfulness of being left alone in that living tomb with the marble image of what was and yet was not my mother, the clock struck nine in the morning. Somewhere the sun was shining, I thought. Somewhere there were happy lovers, merry-makings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... uraeus snakes, was set upon her head; in her hand was the crystal cross of Life, and between her mantle's purple folds gleamed the eyes of her snake girdle. She sat awhile in silence speaking no word, and all the women wondered at her glory and at dead Pharaoh's awfulness. Then at length she spoke, low indeed, but so clearly that every word reached the limits of ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... recognized it! Yet it had come. It had been added to those other intimations of God, which also he had not recognized. Personal Joy on his wedding day had been the first; and the next had come when he looked up at the heights of Law among the stars, and then there had been the terrifying vision of the awfulness of Life, at Jacky's birth. Now, into his soul, arid with long untruth, came this flooding in of Love—which in itself is Life, and Joy, and the fulfilling of Law! Or, as he had said, once, carelessly, "Call ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... fratricides and incests, the frightful crimes of lust and blood which haunted and half crazed the genius of Tourneur and Marston? Where in this brilliant and courteous and humane and civilized nation are the gigantic villains whose terrible features were drawn with such superb awfulness of touch by Webster and Ford? Where in this Renaissance of Italian literature, so cheerful and light of conscience, is the foul and savage Renaissance of English tragedy? Does the art of Italy tell an impossible, universal lie? or is the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... German literature; and, indeed, the word 'German' was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although nobody knew exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn us from his evil companionship into the restful paths of British piety. The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often been prone to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has certainly in industry proved ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... who accompanied the Boer forces, gives the following striking description of the attack—a description which conveys to the mind of the reader something of the awfulness of war, as well as of the courage and heroism displayed by ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... tenderly over him, the smile on his lips took away the awfulness of the sight, and the serenity of the rain-drenched face rested as visible token of an ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... ever undergone; God has hitherto been pleased to spare all those whom I love, and to grant them the enjoyment of strength and health. This is my first lonely watching by a sick-bed, and I feel deeply the sadness and awfulness of the office.... Now that I am beginning to know what care and sorrow really are, I look back upon my past life and see what reason I have to be thankful for the few and light trials with which I have been visited. My poor dear aunt's illness is giving us a professional ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... in such a state of collapse that I did not seem to have any power over my muscles; but for all that, I heard Miss Minturn's voice at the foot of the companion-way, and knew that she was coming on deck. In spite of the dreadful awfulness of that moment, I felt it would never do for her to see me in the condition I was in, and so, shuffling and half-tumbling, I got forward, went below, and made my way to the steward's room, where I had already discovered some spirits, and I took a good dram; for although ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... prepared to receive it. And the greatest good comes to men only after they have learned the nothingness of the material ambitions and aims which they have been pursuing. By its own rottenness the world had been made fallow for truth. The awfulness of its own exposure in its rampant, unlicensed revels, had shown as never before the human mind's absolute nothingness—its nothingness as regards real value, permanence, and genuine good—in that first century of our so-called Christian era. And when the nothingness of the carnal mind ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to temper, as it were, the awfulness of the first revelation, we find that the light of God is brought us through a medium; the glory, grace, and truth of God are shown us in the face ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... time before I could piece the scraps of information together, but gradually I did so, and then assuredly I saw the awfulness of my influence and position, and determined, with God's blessing, to be a comfort and support to the widows and orphans who trusted in me, as well as a source of strength, security, and honour to the nation and its rulers, and I resolved that henceforth ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... he sit down just outside his door, but he crouched his head to his knees and shielded it with the arch of his arms. And Jerry, who had never heard shell-fire, much less imagined what it was like, was impressed with the awfulness of it. It was to him a natural catastrophe such as had happened to the Arangi when she was flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind. But, true to his nature, he did not crouch down under the shriek of that first shell. On the contrary, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... with the awfulness of the responsibility. It was a conscientious class, and Miss Jenny's high ideals had worked upon its sensibilities. No little girl dared to be "six." How could she know, for instance, in her reading ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... love! No more Thy aged form shall rise before The bushed and waiting worshiper, In meek obedience utterance giving To words of truth, so fresh and living, That, even to the inward sense, They bore unquestioned evidence Of an anointed Messenger! Or, bowing down thy silver hair In reverent awfulness of prayer, The world, its time and sense, shut out The brightness of Faith's holy trance Gathered upon thy countenance, As if each lingering cloud of doubt, The cold, dark shadows resting here In Time's unluminous atmosphere, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... There is a sharp, prickling sensation in the nostrils, which reminds one of breathing coal gas through a radiator in the floor, and you want to sneeze, but cannot. This was the effect on me, surmounted by a vague horror of the awfulness of the thing and an ever-recurring reflection that, perhaps I, sooner or later, would be in such a state and be brought to light by the blow of a pick in the hands of some Tommy ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... up and down Italy: consider here in Florence S. Croce, S. Maria Novella, S. Spirito, and above all the Duomo. Remember his aim was not the aim of the Gothic builder. He did not wish to impress you with the awfulness of God, like the builder of Barcelona; or with the mystery of the Crucifixion, like the builders of Chartres: he wished to provide for you in his practical Latin way a temple where you might pray, where the whole city might hear Mass or applaud ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... seven-handed god assumed an added majesty and awfulness, while, deep-seated as though from a smoldering caldron, two points of fire gleamed from the god's eyes ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... must be so if you say so," replied Lightfoot, "but you might tell me what all this awfulness ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess
... with the darkness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king (Charles VI), falling in at such a crisis, like the case of women labouring in child-birth during the storming of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the wild story of the incident which had immediately occasioned the explosion of this madness—the case of a man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon the bridle of the ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... shining of the water, now lost again in the woods, the train sped on its wonderful way. Elizabeth on her platform at its rear was conscious of no other living creature. She seemed to be alone with the night and the vastness of the lake, the awfulness of its black and purple coast. As far as she could see, the trees on its shores were still bare; they had temporarily left the spring behind; the North seemed to have rushed upon her in its terror and desolation. She found herself imagining the storms that sweep the lake ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to my mother, forever, on this earth. Oh! the pangs of that moment. Even after thirty years have elapsed the scene comes vividly to my memory as I write. A gloomy, dark cloud seemed to pass before my vision, and the very air seemed to still with awfulness. I felt bereaved, forlorn, forsaken, lost. Put yourself in my place; feel what I have felt, and then say, God is just; he will protect the helpless and right the wronged, and you will have some idea of my feelings and the hope that sustained me through long and ...
— Biography of a Slave - Being the Experiences of Rev. Charles Thompson • Charles Thompson
... "but I am depressed by the awfulness of it all. I feel of so little consequence—so small and helpless in the face of all these myriad manifestations of life stripped to the bone of its savagery and brutality. I realize as never before how cheap and valueless ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he could get no farther, for suddenly it occurred to him that this was a prayer which concerned Glory and himself as well. It was only then that he realized the magnitude and awfulness of the task he had undertaken. He had undertaken to ask God that Paul might not find Glory either, and therefore that he on his part might never hear of her again. When he put it to himself like that, the sweat started from his forehead and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... from her serene yet awful brows was bent upon him, but under it, in a sudden reaction from its very serenity, its very awfulness, a firm determination rose in him to meet it. Turning very red but eyeing Imogen very straight: "I thought you inconsiderate, ungrateful, to your mother, as you ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... not endure the voice and fire of Mount Sinai. They asked an intermediate messenger between God and them, who should temper the awfulness of his voice, and impart to them his ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... moral faculty of man. But after all these are only like anything else aggregations of molecules in a certain stage of evolution. To the unscientific eye they may be awful because they are mysterious, but let science analyse them and then awfulness disappears. If the interaction of all parts of the material universe is complete we fail to see why one object or one feeling is more cosmic than another. However we will not dwell on that which as we have already confessed we do not feel sure ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... as he rose from his chair, "appear to you very serious. You are overcome by their importance because you have not adequately realised the awfulness of your state in the sight of God. If you were to die now, your soul would be lost. Once you have grasped this central fact in its full significance, the rest will seem easy. I will lend you a book which I think will ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... 'forgotten or forgiven'—'your Majesty would then have known your friends from your foes.' It is much easier to agree with the apparent meaning of Aubrey's interrupted general reflection on the first meeting of King and subject: 'Sir Walter Ralegh had that awfulness and ascendency in his aspect over other mortals that the K—— '. At all events, the King ordered the speedy delivery of the authorization, that Ralegh might have no excuse for delay. The unwelcome guest took the hint. Acting-Secretary ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... if not from other eyes, at any rate from his own. He drew a picture of the little ship amid the storm, and of God's hand as it moved in its anger upon the waters, but of the cause of that divine wrath and its direction he said nothing. Then, of the suddenness of death and its awfulness he said much, not insisting, as he did so, on the necessity of repentance for salvation, as far as those two poor sinners were concerned. No, indeed; how could any preacher have done that? But he improved the occasion by telling those around him that they should so live as to be ever ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... bade adieu to his family, the lovers of Matilda and Ellen were each urgent for their respective marriages: but the awfulness of that sacred engagement into which they were about to enter, the consciousness they entertained of the goodness of their parents, and the happiness of the state they were quitting, held the young ladies for some time in a state of apparent ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... of the Ravens which from time to time are heard from the Tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These Objects naturally raise Seriousness and Attention; and when Night heightens the Awfulness of the Place, and pours out her supernumerary Horrors upon every thing in it, I do not at all wonder that weak Minds fill it ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... vine-latticed window and stirring its white draperies brought David to wakefulness. With the first surprise at the strangeness of his surroundings came a fluttering of memory. The fragrance of lilacs was always hereafter to bring back the awfulness of this waking moment. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... contemplations of escape from her position by immediate death, which, thought she, though it was an inconvenient and awful way, had limits to its inconvenience and awfulness that could not be overpassed; whilst the shames of life were measureless. Yet even this scheme of extinction by death was but tamely copying her rival's method without the reasons which had glorified it in her rival's case. She glided rapidly up and down the room, as was ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... rolling, and they can't keep out of the game. The very bigness of the thing lures them on; the bigger the issue, the bigger the fascination. The millions of men and the billions of dollars—that lures them. And the awfulness—the dead, the wounded, the horrors, that lures them like nothing else. There was one ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... won't bite, it is only his manner. Isn't it, Triss? Kiss me, kiss me at once," and amid many growls of almost subterranean awfulness, the dog licked ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... every circumstance of awfulness to make the impression of the sight indelible. Sometimes dense volumes of smoke hid everything, and yet, upwards, from out "their sulphurous canopy" fearful sounds rose, crashings, thunderings, detonations, and we never knew then whether ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... at the top jump of ponies used to the chase of the buffalo, as sudden and terrible and imminent as the loom of a black cloud on the wings of storm, and, like it, seeming to gather speed and awfulness as it rushed nearer. Each rider bent low over his pony's neck and shot—a hail of bullets, which, while most passed too high, nevertheless shrieked and spun through the volume of coarser sound. The ponies stretched their necks and opened their red ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... did so a wild desire to fly from the room and the house came over Miss Ludington. Not that she did not long inexpressibly to see the vision that was drawing near, whose beautiful feet might even now be on the threshold, but the sense of its awfulness overcame her. She felt that she was not fit, not ready, for it now. If she could only have more time to prepare herself, and then could come again. But it was too late to ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... smote heavily upon our ears. Poor fellow, he had met the Fate which, as he declared, walked about loose in Wambe's country. Then with an oath the remaining man sprung at the rock and clambered over it in safety. Aghast at the awfulness of what had happened, I stood still, till I saw the great blade of a Matuku spear pass up between my feet. That brought me to my senses, and I began to clamber up the rock like a cat. I was half way round ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... junction of neck and collar-bone which Christobal had said was so well understood by those of his ilk. At the foot of the stairs the Indian lay still, and Frascuelo tried to rise. She helped him gladly. The awfulness of this killing no longer appalled her. Each dead or disabled Indian was one less obstacle between her and Courtenay. A third time the revolver barked, but Christobal missed. It did not matter greatly, as Tollemache had shortened his bar, using it twice as a miner delves at a rock. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... explain to her the awfulness of it, the incongruity, but no, she couldn't see it! We jawed about it for a couple of hours with the result that our engagement ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is "the struggle for power." The antithesis "good and bad" to this first class means the same as "noble" and "despicable." "Bad" in the master-morality must ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... without feeling that if I stirred I was a doomed man. I clambered up the lower portion of the main rigging, but only saw black, turbulent waters, hissing and heaving, and raging on every side, and seemingly stretching away into infinity. With terrible force the utter awfulness and hopelessness of my position dawned upon me, yet I did not despair. I next thought it advisable to try and slip my anchor, and let the ship drift, for I still half-fancied that perhaps I might come across my companions somewhere. Before ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Do you know how it feels to be mortified? The—the awfulness—" Lila stopped and swallowed once or twice as if something stuck in her throat. "She might have told me in a different manner so as not to wound me so ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... utmost expedition. Every one exerted himself not only without murmuring and discontent, but even with an alacrity which almost approached to cheerfulness. So sensible, at the same time, were the men of the awfulness of their situation, that not an oath was heard among them, the detestable habit of profane swearing being instantly subdued by the dread of incurring guilt when a speedy death ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... then, I had been accustomed to sights and scenes of peril, and had witnessed the burning of short grass to some extent; but this was the first time I had been in such fearful danger—the first time I felt the awfulness of such a situation—the first time that I had really seen ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... Robert's mood, but as she could not account for it then, her sympathy failed. The keen salt air filled her with its own free buoyancy; her delicate skin flushed in the wind; she forgot the nervous strain of the morning, the awfulness of the grey chapel, the new state of things, griefs that were past, responsibilities that were to come. She turned to Orange as a child would turn to its inseparable comrade, and clapped her hands with amusement at an organ-grinder with a monkey ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... cheek of lady and knight,—that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world;—a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
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