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Overwhelming   Listen
adjective
Overwhelming  adj.  Overpowering; irresistible.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Overwhelming" Quotes from Famous Books



... formulas relating to the deadly germs contained in the phials. Step by step the process was described. The proof was positive and overwhelming. But most important of all was the setting down of the antidote that would neutralize the effect of ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... overflowing with devout worshippers, and anxious inquirers; that the universal voice of our city's population had become, What shall we do, that we may glorify God and extend his kingdom? Suppose, I say, that this mighty change in our city could be told throughout the country; who can estimate the overwhelming influence it would carry along with it? Where is the solitary village that would not feel the impulse, and have its eye and heart lifted to Heaven, in view of the bright cloud of incense, ascending from these hundred temples, and these thrice ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton

... is mine, it shall yield me riches; this broad river is mine, it shall be a highway between my great towns. Then, westward, red man, farther westward; nor think of rest, while you have the setting sun and this fair land before you!" Still onward and westward the white man held his ever-widening, overwhelming course. A little while and the red man should not have in all the green earth where to lay his weary head and say: "This is my home—here dwelt my fathers before me, and here they be buried; here with them shall I rest when my race ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... held my hand, and thus paternally admonished me. I held up my left hand with its wedding-ring, and began, "Oh, but the baby!" when the ludicrous look with which my reverend tormentor received this overwhelming testimony of mine, threw the whole company into convulsions, and nothing was heard throughout the room but sighs and sobs of exhaustion, and faint ejaculations and cries for mercy, while everybody was wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. As for me, I covered up my ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... result of the election the Republicans were placed in overwhelming control of the Legislature, and the desired joint resolution submitting the question to a vote was passed unanimously in the Senate on January 11, and by 33 yeas, 2 nays in the House ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... perfectly simple step—the sale of an estate. She cannot do this, is ruined, and thrown out into the unsympathetic world. Chekhov is the dramatist, not of action, but of inaction. The tragedy of inaction is as overwhelming, when we understand it, as the tragedy of an Othello, or a Lear, crushed by the wickedness of others. The former is being enacted daily, but we do not stage it, we do not know how. But who shall deny that the base of almost all ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... It must be a whole city. No! No! They're sparks! They're fire! They burn! They burn! Take the wheels away from me! They're grinding me like corn—oh, Lord! it's heavy, it's heavy! There, there! It crushes me! Now, now it's over. This is—death—" And he sank back, oppressed by a sudden, and overwhelming load of oblivion. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... in the sphere of politics an enlightened and sagacious leader, declared that such a proposal was "absolutely impossible." The House rejected the proposal by 61 votes to 2. Even the marriage decrees of the Council of Trent were not affirmed by such an overwhelming majority. In matters of marriage legislation England has scarcely yet emerged from the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... leave all I possess to you; yes, thankful should I be to think that from the very grave my love had still the power to benefit and bless you—if you would but give me the pledge I ask. You know how from this overwhelming affection which I have given you these long, interminable years, there has been born a hate deeper, deeper even than its parent love, for it constrains me rather to endure the bitterness of your reproaches, the agony of leaving you destitute on earth, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... realized that she had really scared him, and in the reaction of relief an overwhelming desire to laugh seized him. He managed to suppress it, to compose himself. Then he remembered the Tracer's admonition to acquiesce in everything, do what he was told to do, not to run away, and to pay his court ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... a case in which a man had to encounter three successive trials of all the courage and inventive faculty in him. Failure in one would have been ruin. The odds against him in each trial were desperate, and against ultimate victory were overwhelming. Nevertheless, he made the attempt, and was triumphant, by the narrowest margin, in every struggle. That which is of most value to us is often obtained in defiance of ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... have assimilated the new influences, which crowded thick upon her, it would have been better. But he could not keep silent—he had no patience to wait. He could not realize that the things which were as a thrice-told tale to him, had an overwhelming newness for her. That the influences which had molded his thought, were very far removed from the influences which had made her what she was. He could not understand that, while the world had progressed, this isolated community had remained ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... suddenly appeared, slew or secured all his attendants, who were so totally incapacitated, partly by the drink which they had taken, and partly by their astonishment at the sudden appearance of so overwhelming a force, that they were incapable of making ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... had not the courage to tell you. I had to choose between you, and in my weakness I turned away from my own little girl. For three years I have kept her existence a secret from you, but I heard from the nurse, and I knew that all was well with her. At last, however, there came an overwhelming desire to see the child once more. I struggled against it, but in vain. Though I knew the danger, I determined to have the child over, if it were but for a few weeks. I sent a hundred pounds to the nurse, and I gave her instructions about this cottage, so that she might ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... military. That is why my heart goes with my head. It is true that the Anglo-American army will come in overwhelming numbers, but they may be overwhelming numbers that will not overwhelm. As we know, the British commanders have not adapted themselves as well as the French to wilderness, campaigning. Their tactics and strategy are the same as those they practice in the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... special appeal for black America. Encouraged by these programs and heartened by Eleanor Roosevelt's public support of civil rights, black voters defected from their traditional allegiance to the Republican Party in overwhelming numbers. But the civil rights leaders were already aware, if the average black citizen was not, that despite having made some considerable improvements Franklin Roosevelt never, in one biographer's words, "sufficiently ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... attuned by it. It is loved by its lovers like life. The grape to them is no longer a luscious fruit; it is 'the mother of mighty wine,' and he who is bold enough to disown that motherhood must stand apart. How can a profession however strong, march all at once against such an overwhelming influence? Itself born, perchance, under the influence bred under it, how shall it immediately be transformed? Why disobey the influence? It is in the interest of the doctor to obey, in a worldly sense of view; but more—it is in his nature to obey. The strong bands of nature ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... eager not to let you? I'm selfish and my first answer to that letter was a rush of happiness. I forgot there was anything in time or space except the flood which carried me out on a sea of just you—the sweeping, overwhelming many waters of—you. I wonder if you'd think me brazen if I told you how it seemed? As if your arms were around me, and the world reeling. Some of those clever psychologists, James or Lodge, I can't remember who, have ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray

... myself, 'if, after all, I am surprised if Marjorie does see something in him.' For I perceived how a clever and imaginative young woman, seeing him at his best, holding his own, like a gallant knight, against overwhelming odds, in the lists in which he was so much at home, might come to think of him as if he were always and only there, ignoring altogether the kind of man he was when ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... hand of the Roman, who stood beside him, grave and thoughtful. For the young man it was a moment of almost overwhelming temptation. Love and ambition wrestled in his soul. ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller

... reported in favor of Montgomery for Chairman, and McGilvray moved to strike out his name, and substitute that of G. Q. Richmond, of Pueblo. It was a bitter fight, and the result was a McGilvray victory. Montgomery was thrown overboard by an overwhelming majority. ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... poet's almost inexpressible grief, and because we are convinced, we sympathize. And we feel too that the poet's sorrow is so overwhelming and has so filled his soul that it has entirely changed his views of life and of nature, or has at least contributed materially to such a change,—that it has assumed larger proportions and may rightly be called Weltschmerz. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... appeals to the different members of the Assembly, urging them to vote for the bill, while Major Haggerty was untiring in his advocacy of the measure. On May 3 there was an animated discussion:[246] the bill passed to its third reading by an overwhelming vote, which alarmed the opponents into making a thorough canvass, that proved to them the necessity of some decisive action for the defeat of the bill. The Hon. Erastas Brooks presented a resolution, calling on the attorney-general for his opinion on the constitutionality of the proposed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... crept through the darkness, followed by a black overwhelming shadow which threatened to engulf him in its depths. Still swaying, he waited for it calmly. All at once it was upon him, but swiftly receded. He seemed to sway backward out of it, and as he looked back upon it, gathering its forces for another attack, he saw that it was different from the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... goal later. They have grown suspicious of a strong feeling of attachment, because they have been forced to see in the experiences of many of their friends that this has not guaranteed later happiness. They expect to have sooner or later an overwhelming impulse to join their life to that of another human ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... inexperience. Any proposal of such a nature must have agitated me; but that it should have come from the man whom of all others I most loathed and abhorred, and to whom I had, as clearly as manner could do it, expressed the state of my feelings, was almost too overwhelming to be borne. It was a calamity, too, in which I could not claim the sympathy of my cousin Emily, which had always been extended to me in my minor grievances. Still I hoped that it might not be unattended with good; for I thought that one inevitable and most welcome consequence would result ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... institution which is specially to administer it. The companions did no wrong to the Laestrigonians, but note that just here judgment comes upon them. Ulysses escapes, but to him also these people appear as destroyers, as man-devouring cannibals; so the State often seems to the guilty, overwhelming the individual ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... was heard by Phil Evans, who was then in the bow, where Frycollin was overwhelming him with piteous pleadings to be ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... and the drama by Shakespeare and Goethe—and the only remaining thing of importance to do was to unite them all in one homogeneous mass, and by their combined operation accomplish a more profound and overwhelming effect than had been made before, or indeed would have been possible to them separately. In his autobiography, speaking of his early experiences as conductor, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... heart. It was written that not even that trace of her passage on the earth should remain with me; not to help but, as it were, to soothe the memory. Then I lighted a cigarette and came downstairs slowly. My unhappiness became dulled, as the grief of those who mourn for the dead gets dulled in the overwhelming sensation that everything is over, that a part of themselves is lost beyond recall taking with it all the savour ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... went on debating and dividing in the House, agitating and lecturing all over the country, for some years without any marked Parliamentary success following their endeavors. An immense and overwhelming majority always voted against them in the House of Commons. They were making progress, and very great progress, but it was not that kind of advance which had yet come to be decided by a Parliamentary vote. Probably a keen and experienced eye might have noted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... have been poured out during the same eruption that gave birth to the cone, cutting the lake in two, flowing a little way into the woods and overwhelming the trees in its way, the ends of some of the charred trunks still being visible, projecting from beneath the advanced snout of the flow where it came to rest; while the floor of the forest for miles ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... lane and reached the crest of that little hill where sudden sorrow had made mock of sudden joy. Coming toward them, as if apprised of their neighborhood, they saw a squadron of Russian cavalry numerically overwhelming. Both parties stopped for the breathing space preliminary to the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... arrival of Colonel Durnford with a body of frontier troops. The Zulus were presently seen advancing towards the camp. This was situate in a valley. At the back of the camp was a very high and steep hill, which, had time been given, could have been occupied and held against overwhelming forces. Unfortunately, however, no steps had been taken to occupy this point of vantage, or in any way to strengthen the camp. Had the force been pitched in Salisbury Plain, it could not have acted as if in ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... a greedy fit comes over you, and recollect that such a disinterested public functionary deserves some consideration. Besides, there is serious danger, quite apart from any question of injustice, in overwhelming him with work. If your legs are wearied out, you have it in your power to lie in bed. If your arm is in pain, you can keep it at rest. But your stomach is like those poor people who have to support their families by the labor of each day. He, too, labors ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... group, lying in the South Atlantic, to the eastward of Patagonia, were claimed as a possession by both Spain and Great Britain. The latter had upon them a settlement called Port Egmont, before which, in the year named, an overwhelming Spanish squadron suddenly appeared, and compelled the British occupants to lower their flag. The insult aroused public indignation in England to the highest pitch; and while peremptory demands for reparation were despatched to Spain, a number of ships of war were ordered at ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... But the crowd vanished as quickly as they had come, leaving the burly Thersites, and two or three irresolute fellows of his tribe, standing within pistol range of my levelled rifle. Such a sudden dispersion of the mob which, but a moment before, was overwhelming in numbers, caused me to lower my rifle, and to indulge in a hearty laugh at the disgraceful flight of the men-destroyers. The Arabs, who were as much alarmed at their boisterous obtrusiveness, now came up to patch a truce, in which they succeeded to everybody's satisfaction. A few ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... corps, which was tardily marching to the succor of General Kienmayer, already dislodged from the bridges of the Danube and the Lech. The engagement was short and brilliant; the fugitives bore at length to Ulm the conviction of the overwhelming forces which menaced the Austrian army. The Emperor Napoleon had arrived at Donauwerth. The first bulletin from the Grand Army was dated October 7th, explaining all the military operations: "This grand ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... talked, he visualized her father, keen, restless, resolute, a money-hunter, who had bred out of a few dollars many dollars, and out of many dollars an overwhelming fortune; her mother, a woman of clean, fine, shrewd, able New England stock (the Tyro, being of the old America, knew the name at once); and the daughter, born to moderate means, in the Middle West, raised luxuriously on the basis of waxing wealth, educated abroad and in America in a school ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... more enthusiasm than in his trip through Italy four months before; but now Dr. Orlando, the Italian Premier, went home and promptly got a virtually unanimous vote of confidence from his Parliament, which was supported by the overwhelming majority ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... Orange, two unsuccessful attempts were made to get an appropriation to build a much-needed High School. The men finally decided to call upon the women for help. Nearly 500 attended the meeting, and the $25,000 appropriation was carried by an overwhelming majority. The school at Westfield and two new High School buildings at Asbury Park and Atlantic Highlands were built because of the women's vote. Manual training was introduced into the Vineland schools through the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming satisfaction that they were allowed unheard-of liberty—liberty which afforded unrivalled opportunities.... "Out till four in the morning, gentlemen. A latch-key to let them in. A motor-car at their disposal. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... of dirt struck the refuse-can with violence, and Gipsy beheld the advance of overwhelming forces. They rushed upon him from two directions, cutting off the steps of the porch. Undaunted, the formidable cat raked Duke's nose again, somewhat more lingeringly, and prepared to depart with his fishbone. ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... after having admitted that, with an overwhelming run of good-luck, there MIGHT be one chance of success in a thousand, he pretended to yield entirely to the doctor's wishes; but, in order to still put off the journey, he opened the most varied series of subterfuges. He threw himself ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... the preceding lines were written, the "Military Service Bill" bringing to the Colours "every British male subject" between the ages of 18 and 41, except when legally exempted, has passed the House of Commons by an overwhelming majority, and will be law immediately. And the Prime Minister informed Parliament three days ago, that "the total naval and military effort of the Empire since the beginning of the war ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Spedding, 'Evenings with a Reviewer,' in two volumes, is an elaborate refutation, from the original and authentic records, of the most damning charges brought by Lord Macaulay against Bacon's good fame. It is a complete and overwhelming exposure of false coloring, of rhetorical artifices, and of the abuse of evidence, in the famous essay. As one of the most entertaining and instructive pieces of controversy in our literature, it deserves to be widely read. The unbiased reader cannot accept the special pleading by which, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... at me like a man thunderstruck. "There are some disclosures," he said, in his quaint way, "which are too overwhelming to be received on one's legs. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... found or anticipated, is too frequently forgotten, almost as soon as acquired. The influence of such a share, on the moral condition of society, is still more important. Crowded now into few employments, women starve each other by close competition; and too often vice borrows overwhelming power of temptation from poverty. Open to women a great variety of employments, and her wages in each will rise; the energy and enterprise of the more highly endowed, will find full scope in honest effort, and the frightful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... unnecessarily rigorous terms which could but result in future frictions—without slavery—and yet with sufficient safeguards against future disloyal association of the sections; and that purpose had been approved by an overwhelming majority of the people in his re-election ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... soul has root in soil divine, it cannot face earth's overwhelming expressions of the working out of the human laws which it sets in motion in the round ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.

... other poet than the author of "The Ring and the Book" and "The Inn Album" can equal. Its technique, moreover, is superb. From the outset of the tremendous episode of Ottima and Sebald, there is a note of tragic power which is almost overwhelming. Who has not known what Jakob Boehme calls "the shudder of a divine excitement" when Luca's murderer replies to ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... account"; and the pertinacity of Retribution in the matter of the Golden Dog. He saw that the justice of this life and the next are one, and are absolutely complete in their demands. One great conclusion came to him with overwhelming force; he saw that it was the plan of Heaven that no man must profit by any fruit of his wrong. He now himself must meet that justice and make ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... very dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crushing sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... observances—all these find a place in these amazing records. In short, there is scarcely any feature of the social life of our forefathers which is not abundantly set forth in our parish registers. The loss of them would indeed be great and overwhelming. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... (greenhouse gases, particulates) from the overwhelming use of high-sulfur coal as a fuel, produces acid rain which is damaging forests; water shortages experienced throughout the country, particularly in urban areas and in the north; future growth in water usage threatens to outpace supplies; water pollution from industrial ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... forcible, hard, adamantine, stout, robust, sturdy, hardy, powerful, potent, puissant, valid. resistless, irresistible, invincible, proof against, impregnable, unconquerable, indomitable, dominating, inextinguishable, unquenchable; incontestable; more than a match for; overpowering, overwhelming; all powerful, all sufficient; sovereign. able-bodied; athletic; Herculean, Cyclopean, Atlantean^; muscular, brawny, wiry, well-knit, broad-shouldered, sinewy, strapping, stalwart, gigantic. manly, man-like, manful; masculine, male, virile. unweakened^, unallayed, unwithered^, unshaken, unworn, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... daughter's portion—two hundred thousand francs for ten years' attachment to that old gloveseller—old Crevel!'—I disgust you no doubt, and what I am saying is horribly immoral, you think? But if you happened to have been bitten by an overwhelming passion, you would find a thousand arguments in favor of yielding—as women do when they are in love.—Yes, and Hortense's interests will suggest to your feelings such terms of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... the touches of racy realism being confined to subordinate incidents and details. Neither the subjects nor the mood of the artist lend themselves to the dramatic impressiveness of such cuts as the Blowing of the Sixth Trumpet or the St. Michael overwhelming the Dragon of the Apocalypse (see page 262), where the inspiration appears to be Gothic, perhaps developed under the influence of Mantegna's Combat between Sea Monsters, of which Duerer early made an elaborate pen-and-ink copy. We find an ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... her mother and kissed her. Moved by a sudden overwhelming impulse of tenderness, Hermione put her arms round the child's slim body. But even as she did so she remembered Vere's secret, shared with Emile and not with her. She could not abruptly loose her arms without surprising her child. But they seemed to her ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... pigs shortly followed, howling like mad, but Ginepro went straight to him and pointed out with so much volubility that he had done him a great service, that the man, after overwhelming him with reproaches, suddenly begged pardon, killed the pig and invited all the Brothers to feast upon it. Ginepro was probably less mad than the story would lead us to suppose; Franciscan humility never had a more sincere disciple; he could not endure the tokens of admiration which the populace ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... three objective points, Prince Albert and Battleford, both of which are now closely besieged, and Edmonton, which is threatened with a great body of rebel Crees and Salteaux under leadership of Little Pine and Big Bear. The Police at these points can hardly be expected to hold out long against the overwhelming numbers that are besieging them, and I expect that relief columns will be immediately dispatched. Now, in regard to this district here, do you know ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... her place on the edge of the couch, where with her forehead bowed for a minute on her hand she sat reflecting. An overwhelming desire for confidence, for sympathy perhaps, for the clearing up of mysteries in any case, was impelling her to tell Evie all that had ever happened between Ford and herself. It had been necessary to maintain so many reserves that possibly this new light would ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... pearl-tinted opera-cloak, which only partly concealed the curves of the shoulders, and poised aslant on the glistening coiffure was the identical blue hat with its wide brims that had visited the dome seventeen hours before. The total effect was calculated, perfect, overwhelming. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... 1. In an overwhelming majority of cases of mimicry, the animals (or the groups) which resemble each other inhabit the same country, the same district, and in most cases are to be found together on the very ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... Indo-European family,—has had a share, an appreciable share, in producing this changed state of feeling. No doubt, the release from alarm and struggle, the sense of firm possession, solid security, and overwhelming power; no doubt these, allowing and encouraging humane feelings to spring up in us, have done much; no doubt a state of fear and danger, Ireland in hostile conflict with us, our union violently disturbed, might, while it drove back all humane feelings, make also the old sense of utter ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... it fully at the first shock, I was dismissed. Her letter had reached me when I came home after old Rawdon's none too civil refusal to raise my wages. On this particular evening of which I write, therefore, I was in a state of feverish adjustment to two new and amazing, two nearly overwhelming facts, that I was neither indispensable to Nettie nor at Rawdon's. And ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... statement that "he does not throw the comic light upon counterfeit enthusiasm"—for this might almost be taken as the "philosophy" of his books of foreign travel. And yet Mr. Sherman's dictum, in its entirety, quite clearly provokes the question whether, as he intimates, the "overwhelming majority" of his fellow-citizens also were not mightily pleased with Mark Twain's point of view, and whether they did not enjoy themselves hugely in laughing, not at him, but ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... Tschaikowsky is hard, sometimes impossible, yet to me it seems anything but impossible that our descendants will be listening to him when students are turning to the biographical dictionaries to find out who Tschaikowsky was. A century ago Haydn was as fresh and novel as Tschaikowsky is now, and as overwhelming a personality in the world of music as the mighty Wagner. But time equalizes and evens things, and in another hundred years all that is merely up-to-date in musical speech and phraseology will have lost its flavour and seductiveness; but the voice that is sincere, whether the word is ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... their criticism as a basis for political action afterwards, were desperately anxious that it should meet with a reply. No one in Moscow at that time could have the slightest misgiving about the warlike tendencies of the revolution. The overwhelming mass of the people and of the revolutionary leaders want peace, and only continued warfare forced upon them could turn their desire for peace into desperate, resentful aggression. Everywhere I heard the same story: "We cannot get things ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... seemed to be forgotten; forgotten also the more recent lesson of the bloody and costly wars provoked by the ambition and exaggerated power of Louis XIV. Under the eyes of the statesmen of Europe there was steadily and visibly being built up a third overwhelming power, destined to be used as selfishly, as aggressively, though not as cruelly, and much more successfully than any that had preceded it. This was the power of the sea, whose workings, because more silent than the clash of arms, are less often noted, though lying clearly enough on the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... she was inconsolable. They passed the night in sorrowful embraces. She vowed that she could not live a day without him, and that she certainly should die before she reached the first post. The mighty heart of the King of Hades was torn to pieces with contending emotions. In the agony of his overwhelming passion the security of his realm seemed of secondary importance compared with the happiness of his wife. Fear and hatred of the Parcae and the Eumenides equalled, however, in the breast of Proserpine, her affection for her husband. The consciousness ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli

... Earth were created in six days, created in six days they were,—in six literal days of twenty-four hours each. The evidences of spontaneous variation of form, acting, over an immense space of time, upon ever-modifying organic structures, seemed overwhelming, but they must either be brought into line with the six-day labour of creation, or they must be rejected. I have already shown how my Father worked out the ingenious 'Omphalos' theory in order to justify himself as a strictly scientific observer who was ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... hypnotized, Judd gazed into her pleading face, with his passion for her overwhelming that other one, which had so short a time before swayed him. He stepped to meet her with a gesture of hopelessness, and, realizing that he was for the moment forgotten, Donald moved softly to the mountaineer's rifle, ejected the cartridges from the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... press, a mass of unimpeachable documents, consisting of laws, judicial decisions, trials, confessions of slaveholders, advertisements from southern papers, and testimonies of eye-witnesses. The proof was conclusive and overwhelming that the picture she had drawn of American slavery was unfaithful, only because the coloring was faint, and wanted the crimson dye of the original. A verdict of not guilty of exaggeration has been ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... races from the system of slavery and barbarism. In this direction is the trend of the nation. States may lag, parties may hesitate, leaders may halt, but to this complexion it must come at last. States, parties and leaders must, and will in the end, adjust themselves to this overwhelming and irresistible tendency. It will make parties, and unmake parties, will make rulers, and unmake rulers, until it shall become the fixed, universal, and irreversible law of the land. For fifty years, it has made progress against all contradictions. It stemmed the current of opposition ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various

... that a detachment of Chasseurs, of which Cecil was one, was cut to pieces by such an overwhelming mass of Arabs that scarce a dozen of them could force their way through the Bedouins with life; he was among those few, and a flight at full speed was the sole chance of regaining their encampment. Just as he ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... he looks to it for protection from death, and if perchance he is killed, it will conduct him safely to the happy hunting grounds, which he contemplates as his inheritance in the world to come. If he should lose it in the fight, let him battle never so bravely for his country, he suffers overwhelming disgrace, and is pointed at by the tribe as "a man without medicine," and remains a pariah among his people until the sacred mystery bag is replaced. This can only be done by rushing into battle, and wresting one from the ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... resolution was hastened by an advance of Oglethorpe's small naval force down the stream, and a successful attack on their fleet. Setting fire to the fort, they embarked so hastily that a part of their military stores were abandoned, and fled as if from an overwhelming force, Oglethorpe hastening their flight by pursuit with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... the uprising of The People; the thunder of the outbreak of revolt; the mob demanding to be led, aroused at last, imperious, resistless, overwhelming. It was the blind fury of insurrection, the brute, many-tongued, red-eyed, bellowing for guidance, baring its teeth, unsheathing its claws, imposing its will with the abrupt, resistless pressure of the relaxed piston, inexorable, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... labor union representatives, and once or twice by myself. In a few of the tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or sleeping or living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms—sometimes in one room. I have always remembered ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... loss to know what to say to this overwhelming compliment, and for that reason did not say anything, only submitting patiently to the third hug, which was all Mrs. Treat had time to give him, as she was obliged to rush behind the canvas screen again, ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... steadily deeper and deeper into the recesses of the cool twilight which prevailed around them, deepest blue below and an ever-darkening green above. They quickly overtook the Mercury and continued the descent almost side by side with her, watching, with awe-struck curiosity yet overwhelming pity and horror, the death-struggles of those who were being helplessly dragged down with her. They observed, with a feeling of intense relief, that the struggle for life ceased, in almost every case, in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... heart stopped; her trembling hands grew icily quiet. All the Past rose before her in mute, overwhelming reproach. She took up the lines which her own hand had written hardly a minute since, and looked at the ink, still wet on the letters, with a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... forlorn hope had followed him, while the main body came close behind. The guard, not strong in numbers and weak in being composed of young militiamen, gave way but kept on firing. 'Down with your arms if you want quarter!' yelled Morgan, whose men were in overwhelming strength; and the guard surrendered. A little way beyond, just under the bluff of the Sault-au-Matelot, the British supports, many of whom were Seminary students, also surrendered to Morgan, who at once pressed on, round the corner of ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues! Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... the Headmaster on March 2. The effect of such news coming without any previous warning can be imagined. The difficulty of commemorating the Diamond Jubilee year had seemed overwhelming and this unexpected offer from Mr. Walter Morrison dissipated the troubles in a moment. In the second place a School Chapel had alone been wanting to complete the seclusion and privacy of the School, and hitherto the prospect of such a building had seemed unattainable. It was now ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... at Olmutz," he said, quickly. "Here, the Russian guards; there, the united corps of Kutusof and Buxhowden; farther on, the vanguard under Prince Bagration. If they should advance now rapidly, resolutely, directly toward my front, the odds would be too overwhelming; if they should tarry, or if I should succeed in causing them to hesitate until I have got my Bohemian corps in line, I should defeat them. Let us try it, therefore; let us feign inactivity and timidity, so that they may not become active. Cunning is the best ally of a general; ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... one must who, escaping from an overwhelming flood, looks upon the destruction and wonders at her own escape. But she had escaped! That became, presently, the one gripping fact. She had escaped and ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... the door, showed us into his office, and set out chairs for us. Then he got down his register of births for 1876. It was not a large book, for the births at Etretat are not overwhelming ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... of a controversy respecting facts in the physical world. For a time he may succeed in making a theory which he dislikes unpopular by persuading the public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity. But, if at last an overwhelming force of evidence proves this maligned theory to be true, what is the effect of the arguments by which the objector has attempted to prove that it is irreconcilable with natural and revealed religion? Merely this, to make men infidels. Like the Israelites, in their battle with the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of declining productivity of the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry—poverty which can be explained only by the barrenness of their land. Many of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are familiar—the substitution of money payments for villain services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... she hated the slightest covering, and ran and frisked about my house with daring and unconscious immodesty. When she was at last overcome and worn out by her cries and movements, she used to sleep soundly and peacefully while the overwhelming heat brought out minute spots of perspiration on her brown skin, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... an odd exultation and freshness. He wanted a world that was like walking through rain, even though he could not see far ahead of him, but fate had put him in the world of Mr. Macy's fetid storerooms and corridors. At first merely the overwhelming need of change took him, then half-plans began ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... meet them. They killed numbers of Peruvians, but all their valor could not check the resistless force of the patriotic army. The Spaniards were swept back into the city, glad to escape with their lives before such overwhelming numbers; indeed, only a timely attack by a detachment in the rear of the Peruvians saved them from destruction then and there. Cuzco was at once invested. The Indians, with a heroism which cannot be too greatly commended, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... will not turn." Again he paused. "Listen. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire. Depart ye! Nay, Lord Jesus! not so! Have mercy upon us!" His voice broke in its passionate cry. The effect was overwhelming. The people swayed as trees before a mighty wind, and a voice cried aloud from the congregation: "God be merciful ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... it is often the most whimsically inconsequent, the most utterly ordinary, the most intrinsically prosaic of inanimate things that, with a sudden and overwhelming rush, will call into being memories the tenderest, the deepest, the saddest? It may be a worthless little book, a withered flower ghastly in its brown grave clothes, a cheap, tawdry trinket; it may be something as intangible as a few ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... such spontaneously beating tissues in a plant? What is the meaning of spontaneity? And lastly, when by the blow of death, life itself is finally extinguished, will it be possible to detect the critical moment? And does the plant then exert itself to make one overwhelming reply, after which response ceases altogether? Its autobiography can only be regarded as complete, if, with the help of efficient instruments, all these questions can be answered by it, so as to form ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... good cause for thinking that it might have received this compliment a little sooner, instead of the overwhelming mass of infamous accusations which it had formerly had to accept with a good grace. And above all, it is their opinion that if Norway had formerly adjusted its actions in accordance with their present ideas of the Swedish ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... colonizer of the world. In the short space of three centuries, America, sprung from her loins, has become a giant offspring, a new era in the history of the human race, a new birth whose future must be overwhelming. Of later date, and still more rapid in development, Australia rises, a triumphant proof of England's power to rescue wild lands from barrenness; to wrest from utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... ungainly women of the labour strain were inclined to herd by themselves and I hastened to direct my steps to avoid as much as possible their overwhelming presence. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... or disproof, the direct operations of the Creator not being subjects of science; and it must therefore be regarded as a corollary from the first, the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of evidence. Most persons imagine that the arguments in favour of it are overwhelming; but to some few minds, and these, it must be confessed, intellects of no small power and grasp of knowledge, they have not brought conviction. Among these minds, that of the famous naturalist Lamarck, who possessed a greater acquaintance with the lower forms of life ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... was furrowed, the breathing hard, the mouth dry and bloodless. Upon the mind of the new-comer, possessed as it was with the image of what David Grieve had been two short months before, the effect of the spectacle was presently overwhelming. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... army on its left was still unbroken, and had been joined by large numbers of troops from the centre. On discovering the smallness of the force under Lord Cornwallis, they attacked it in overwhelming numbers, led by Tippoo himself. The British infantry advanced to meet them with the bayonet, and drove them back with heavy loss. They rallied, and returned to the attack again and again, but were as often repulsed; continuing their attacks, however, until daylight, when Lord Cornwallis, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... child's;— That underneath his fair good fellowship He was debauched, and dead in love with sin;— That love of me had made him what I loved,— That I could only hold him till the wave Of some overwhelming impulse should sweep in, To lift his feet and bear him from my arms. I felt that morn, when he went trembling forth, With bloodshot eyes and forehead hot with woe, That henceforth strife would be 'twixt Hell and me— The odds against me—for ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... and the shock which her whole being experienced when she first encountered this strong and pitiless nature was now so overwhelming that she bowed before Philippe just as Rouget had been in the habit of bending before her. She anxiously awaited Vedie's return. The woman brought a formal refusal from Max, who requested Mademoiselle Brazier to send his things to the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... this dreadful, dreadful night!" Other similar ejaculations of love and joy she uttered; and if I HAD perilled life in her service, if I DID believe that hope of escape there was none, so exquisite was the moment of our meeting, that I forgot all else in this overwhelming joy! ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Young and I crossed the moraine slope, splashing through pools and streams up to the ice-wall, and made the interesting discovery that the glacier had been advancing of late years, ploughing up and shoving forward moraine soil that had been deposited long ago, and overwhelming and grinding and carrying away the forests on the sides and front of the glacier. Though not now sending off icebergs, the front is probably far below sea-level at the bottom, thrust forward beneath its ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... individual, hailing from New York, are enticed into a political meeting by a wily politician, and dexterously made to pose before the assembled company as two gentlemen who have come - one from the Atlantic, the other from the Pacific - to witness the overwhelming success of the only honest, horny-handed, double-breasted patriots - the... party. The roads are found rather sandy east of the pike, and the roadful of wagons going to the circus, which exhibits to-day at Norwalk, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... has a great deal to do with the case. Prohibitionists constantly point to the big majority in Congress, and the promptness and almost unanimity of the approval by the Legislatures, as proof of an overwhelming preponderance of public sentiment in favor of the Amendment. It is proof of no such thing. To begin with, nothing is more notorious than the fact that a large proportion of the members of Congress and State Legislatures who voted for the Prohibition Amendment were not themselves ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... schoolmasters plead in excuse? Why this, as I suggest—'You cite an extreme instance. But, while granting English Literature to be great, we would point out that an overwhelming majority of our best writers have modelled their prose and verse upon the Greek and Roman classics, either directly or through tradition. Now we have our own language gratis, so to speak. Let us spend our pains, then, in acquiring ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... betwixt his tribe and the impending enemy, and that his sacred duty of protecting the Englishwoman whom he had admitted as his guest was the only obstacle which prevented an amicable arrangement of the dispute. The Sheik hinted that his tribe was likely to sustain an almost overwhelming blow, but at the same time declared, that no fear of the consequences, however terrible to him and his whole people, should induce him to dream of abandoning his illustrious guest. The heroine instantly took her part: it was not for her to ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... its 'Marching away, at a Signal,' carry not only a visible Impropriety of Thought, but are infinitely below the Majesty of That God, who is so dreadfully represented thundering his Commands to the Ocean; They are directly the Reverse of that terrible Confusion, and overwhelming Uproar of Motion, which the Sea, in the Original, is suppos'd to fall into. The March of an Army is pleasing, orderly, slow; The Inundation of a Sea, from the Tops of the Mountains, frightful, wild and tumultuous; Every Justness and Grace of the original Conception ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... taciturn he found very little occasion to talk. There were matters of duty, of course—directions, orders, and so on; but the past being to his mind done with, and the future not there yet, the more general actualities of the day required no comment—because facts can speak for themselves with overwhelming precision. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... acquire those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life." These words, coming from the lips of a nation's idol, have fallen like a bomb shell in the camp of the pacifists. Not that Mr. Roosevelt's opinion was of overwhelming weight, but that he was voicing the opinion of some of the most influential thinkers of the modern world. Not long before the German philosopher Nietzsche had taken a like position, and he was indorsed by Von Moltke, the statesman; Ernest Renan, the historian; ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... is still necessary to use a threat of overwhelming force of a great league with a willingness to make the threat good in order to frighten nations into a use of rational and peaceful means to settle their issues with their associates of the league. Nor are we militarists or jingoes. We ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... seemed to me the embodiment of China crying out for God. When we were only half-way through the city, the endless masses of humanity had so impressed me that I could not restrain the tears. The sight was simply overwhelming. And all this the parish of one man! It is to save this great city, now almost wholly given to idolatry, that Mr. Groesbeck asks for money to build in its very center an assembly-room and an institutional church, and that ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... a contest between free traders and protectionists, not between the supporters of cooperation and the supporters of centralization. On this basis the issue was fought out in Great Britain and resulted in the overwhelming victory of free trade and the Liberal party, aided as they were by the popular reaction against the jingoist policy which had culminated in the war. When the fifth Conference, now termed Imperial instead of Colonial, met in 1907, there was ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... spread the glory. There came to her an overwhelming sense of greatness about to be revealed. She became strung to a pitch of expectancy that was almost anguish, while the music swelled and swelled like the distant coming of a vast procession as yet unseen. She stood as it were on a mountain-top before the closed gates of heaven, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... revolutionary Government which had just proclaimed its sympathy with malcontents and its resolve to dictate terms to our Dutch allies, would have been a sign of weakness. There was but one chance of peace, namely, that Parliament should give so overwhelming a support to Pitt and Grenville as to convince the tyros at Paris that they had to do, not with a clique, but a nation. This unanimity the efforts of Fox impaired. Some of his friends voted with him from a sense of personal regard; but the greater number passed over to the Government ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... in the name of the American people, thanks you and your officers and men for your splendid achievement and overwhelming victory. In recognition he has appointed you acting admiral, and will recommend a vote of thanks to you by Congress as a ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... of his presence, and the perception was as too much light turned upon his new sensibility. He was still in the road, and by moving on he hoped that neither would recognize that he had originally intended to enter the field. He passed by with an utter and overwhelming sensation of ignorance, shyness, and doubt. Perhaps in her manner there were signs that she wished to see him—perhaps not—he could not read a woman. The cabala of this erotic philosophy seemed to consist of the subtlest ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... after hour we retreated, fighting every step of the way. Of the eighteen thousand Huguenots who had marched out to battle it seemed as if we alone remained. Again and again the royalists bore down in overwhelming numbers; their heavy guns ploughed lanes through our ranks; the arquebusiers pelted us with bullets unceasingly; the horsemen charged ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... little band with him fought bravely, but against such overwhelming numbers could do nothing, and fourteen of them, including their chief, were killed. The five white men defended themselves till the afternoon, when two of them managed to make their escape, and the other three surrendered. One of them was already ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... fact, is the cause of the present fierce action of the radicals. They know they must get the power at once, or there will soon be an overwhelming loyal party opposed to them. The 'claybank' leaders control all the conservative elements in the State, and give to Genl. S., as the representative of the President, an honest support. They will continue to support him in the execution of any policy the President ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... chivalrous king and an even more chivalrous prince had infected the whole people with their martial spirit, and the result was that their armies were for a time invincible, and the most astonishing successes were gained against numbers which would appear overwhelming. The victories of Cressy and Poitiers may be to some extent accounted for by superior generalship and discipline on the part of the conquerors; but this will not account for the great naval victory over the Spanish fleet off the coast of Sussex, a victory even more surprising and won against greater ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... circles, and lines of wonderment came visibly upon her countenance. She had not once regarded Manston as a lover since his wife's sudden appearance and subsequent death. The death of a wife, and such a death, was an overwhelming matter ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... press reports, the services declared in mid-1965 that the "overwhelming majority" of overseas installations were free of segregation problems in housing or public accommodations. One important exception to this overwhelming majority was reported by General Paul Freeman, the commander of U.S. Army Forces in Europe. He not only admitted that the ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... feelings, corporeal and mental, and moulding them to its will—a power of this nature seems to equal in dignity the highest faculties of genius in any of its forms, as it undoubtedly surpasses all the others in the overwhelming and instantaneous efficacy of its agency while thus working its wonders. Tame is the triumph of the artist in the exhibition-room, dim and distant the echo which the poet receives of the public praise, compared with the unequivocal and irrepressible bursts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... the widely-known and popular proprietor of the Kingsley House at Ashuelot, N.H.: "It may seem useless to add testimony to the overwhelming mass already given of the many remarkable cures performed at your Institution, but I deem it a pleasure and a duty to add mine to your long list as very remarkable. I had a rupture of twenty-seven years' ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... this time the Federals had boasted that Morgan would not fight anything like an equal force; that he always attacked isolated posts with overwhelming numbers. They were now to learn something different. Morgan had been kept well posted by Calhoun and his scouts with regard to every movement of Johnson. Although he knew that he was greatly outnumbered, Morgan resolved to ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... imagines that he has eluded his foreordained fate by leaving Corinth; but the oracle has fulfilled itself, as the spectator knew from the beginning that it would. The interest of the tragedy turns largely upon the overwhelming remorse of Oedipus and Jocasta when they ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... on Mr. Carlyle's ear. He drew back mechanically, a thousand perplexing sensations overwhelming him, and the man followed him into the room—a white man, as Lucy called her father. Aye, for he had been hours and hours on foot in the snow; his hat, his clothes, his eyebrows, his large whiskers, all were white. "Lock ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... prototype, but it is less profoundly despairing. He satirizes evil rather by exposing it and contrasting it with good, than by vehemently denouncing it. The colours of the pictures are sombre, and the gloom is almost overwhelming, but still it is illumined from time to time with the hope of coming amendment, when the great reformer Piers the Plowman, by which is typified Christ,[5] should appear, who was to remedy all abuses and restore the world to a right condition. In this sustaining ...
— English Satires • Various

... and rapidly followed their fragments in a confused mass over our light intrenchments. The charging ranks of the enemy, the flying remnants of our broken troops, and the double ranks of our first line of defense, coming back from the trenches together, produced the momentary impression of an overwhelming mass of the enemy passing ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... the old argument of "Economy." They would vote against the Constitution in order to prevent an increase in the burdens of taxation. This argument of itself could not possibly have defeated ratification, since there was at this time an overwhelming majority who desired admission into the Union. And yet the plea of economy (which always appealed strongly to the pioneers) undoubtedly contributed somewhat to the defeat and rejection of the Constitution ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... liquor I had had would not be denied. In vain I drew my hands across my drooping eyelids, in vain I tried to master my knees that knocked together. The spell of the love-drink that Heru, blushing, had held to my lips was on me. Its soft, overwhelming influence rose like a prismatic fog between me and my enemy, everything again became hazy and dreamlike, and feebly calling on Heru, my chin dropped upon my chest, my limbs relaxed, and I slipped down in drowsy ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... the ways of fate! Looking backward now on the pitiful story of the Greely party, we see that the second relief expedition, intended to succor and to rescue these gallant men, was in fact the cause of their overwhelming disaster—and this not wholly because of errors committed in its direction, though they were many. When Greely abandoned the station at Fort Conger, he could have pressed straight to the southward without halt, and perhaps escaped with all his party—he could, indeed, have started ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... election day. Stationed at ten or twelve different points in the Territory, they served by their mere presence to overawe disorder, and for the first time in the history of Kansas the two opposing parties measured their strength at the ballot-box. The result was an overwhelming triumph for the free-State party. For delegate in Congress, Ransom, the Democratic candidate, received 3799 votes; Parrott, the Republican candidate, 7888—a free-State majority of 4089. For the Legislature, even under ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... nor the loving ministries of tender friends, was of any avail to Grace Darling. For a time the remedies were patiently persisted in, but every week made the conviction of their failure more overwhelming. It was seen that a stronger hand than those of the human friends around her, was gently leading her into "the valley ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... Susan pass the time? For the first day or so, she was too angry and offended to cry. She went about her household duties in a quick, sharp, jerking, yet absent way; shrinking one moment from Will, overwhelming him with remorseful caresses the next. The third day of Michael's absence, she had the relief of a good fit of crying; and after that, she grew softer and more tender; she felt how harshly she had spoken to him, and remembered how angry she had been. ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell

... convoy and pushed ahead as fast as he could. A short distance below the town he met a second steamer with the news that Harding was surrounded. At 8 P.M. he arrived, and found the Union forces not only surrounded by overwhelming ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... patience to pretend to persuade us that such a confiscation scheme as is now recommended to the country would not throw the whole work of the Church into confusion and disaster, not perhaps irreparable, but certainly for the time overwhelming and perilous. People speak sometimes as if such a huge transfer of property was to be done with the stroke of a pen and the aid of a few office clerks; they forget what are the incidents of an institution which has lasted in England for more than a thousand ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... would not be talking to himself, and therefore there must be another man with him. At the risk of detection, and filled with an overwhelming curiosity to hear more she kneeled at the edge of the cut and listened intently, first making sure that the horse she had seen ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... nothing else to give brightness to her life, and little by little it filled her heart. Her nature was so strong that she could do nothing by half measures, and it was with a feeling of extreme relief that she surrendered herself to this overwhelming passion. It seemed to her that she was growing in a different direction. The yearning of her soul for someone on whom to lean was satisfied at last. Hitherto the only instincts that had been fostered in her were those that ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... a reputation for his campaign against the Celtae, advanced as far as the ocean, inflicted an overwhelming defeat upon the barbarians, collected and buried the bones of those who had fallen under Varus, and won ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... Grasse was equally active in the equipment of his fleet, in order to proceed to leeward and form a junction with the Spaniards, for the purpose of carrying into execution their grand object—the reduction of Jamaica, with an overwhelming force of sixty sail of the line and twenty ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross

... desperately on her critics. I understand that the Australian boomerang is a weapon that comes back to its caster, and the vindictive feeling which has prompted Miss Vaughan to a fresh burst of revelation has returned upon herself in a very overwhelming manner. "I am driven, and I will do it," is her position. "I will reveal the English Palladists such as they actually and personally are." And she does so to her own destruction ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... Naval Air Service had had an uphill task; they had worked untiringly in the cause of naval aeronautics, to achieve progress in the new art, and to get recognition for it from the Sea Lords. The recognition, when it came at last, was overwhelming. The navy claimed the Royal Naval Air Service as its own, and absorbed it into itself. The immediate motive for this was disciplinary, but the thing was a compliment, none the less, to the work of the air service. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... the grey dawn; together they would seek the carriage that was waiting at the turn of the road; together they would drive away. She would be his for evermore. This would be the crown of his life; that at an age when others were doomed to a sad senility, he, by the overwhelming might of his unconquerable personality, would have won for himself the youngest, the most beautiful, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... And with such consummate skill, That if God had not been near I might have pursued my ill. He who at such timely hour Helped me to resist the power Of this fearful violence, Will my humble innocence Guard, whatever dangers lower.— Livia, my cloak: whene'er [Exit LIVIA. Overwhelming griefs oppress, I to holy church repair, Where we secretly confess The true faith. [LIVIA returns with the cloak, which she places on JUSTINA. LIVIA. 'Tis ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... won, and although there were a few protests, they were silenced by cries of "Question! Question!" and the motion was carried by a majority which, if not overwhelming, was large enough to be ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... custom of our party to spend Sunday afternoons in the woods. I kept the first check and showed it as we sat under the trees in a favorite grove we had found near Wood's Run. The effect produced upon my companions was overwhelming. None of them had imagined such an investment possible. We resolved to save and to watch for the next opportunity for investment in which all of us should share, and for years afterward we divided our trifling investments and worked ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... on sense and memory. With a dull groan he fell forward, slipping from the stone on which he had been seated, in a helpless heap on the ground,—involuntarily he threw up his arms as a drowning man might do among great waves overwhelming him,—and so went down—down!—into silence ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli



Words linked to "Overwhelming" :   resistless, intense, irresistible



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