"Spectacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little known. His friends say that he has an easily ruffled delicacy, a sensibility open to poetry, but jealous of showing its emotion. They say that Degas's satirical bitterness is the reverse side of a soul wounded by the spectacle of modern morality. One feels this sentiment in his work, where the sharp notation of truth is painful, where the realism is opposed by colouring of a sober distinction, where nothing, not even the portrait of a drab, could be vulgar. Degas ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... beholding the old wreck, Tom Leslie found her a prominent feature in the spectacle, and his reflections took a shape which may have been taken by those of many sojourners at the Falls, who saw her ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... from some of them, and the ropes and oars from others. There they lay, thirty-eight in number, up against the mud banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless prodigality as the eye ever beheld. But the contractor who made them no ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... the sad spectacle was the stream of proclamations poured forth by the Communist authorities. They comprised not only decrees, but sensational stories of victories over the Versailles troops, denunciations of the Versailles government, and even elaborate legal arguments, including ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... were forced to conjugate our verbs in the future tense. No doubt our existence has been, in some respects, one of barbarism, but it has been the barbarism of life and not of death. A rawboned baby sprawling on the mud floor of a Kentucky log cabin is a more hopeful spectacle ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... left feeble and inept. Not only the colored, but the white also, were the recipients of this bounty. The Queen City of the Confederacy, the proud capital of the commonwealth of Virginia, saw the strange spectacle of her own white children gathered, for the first time, into free public schools which were supported by Northern charity, and taught by noble women with whom her high-bred Christian dames and dainty maidens would not deign to associate. The civilization ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... unhappy friend. One of the arteries, beginning at the joints of the hand, began to pain him, extending to other parts of his body; and then turned into a scorbutic sore. His whole person became covered with livid spots, presenting a frightful spectacle. I tried to reconcile myself to it, by considering that since it appeared we were to die here, it was better that one of us should be seized with the scurvy; it is a contagious disease, and must carry us off either ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... Campbell Airds, Campbell Saddell, and others of the race of Diarmid. I went for an hour to the ball, where there were many gay and some grotesque figures. A dressed ball is, for the first half-hour, a splendid spectacle; you see youth and beauty dressed in their gayest attire, unlimited, save by their own taste, and enjoying the conscious power of charming, which gives such life and alacrity to the features. But the charm ceases in this like everything ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... This spectacle had for him an eloquence, an authority, a felicity—he scarce knew by what strange name to call it—for which he said to himself that he had not consciously bargained. Her welcome, her frankness, sweetness, sadness, brightness, her disconcerting poetry, as he made shift at ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... itself could scarcely have presented a more terrible spectacle of writhing, tortured souls, pinned anguishing amid the flames; of white faces below looking up to ghastly ones above that gazed down with horror into the awful cavern, closed their eyes, clung to walls and windows, and knew not what ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the nervous alertness of the Yankee was the spectacle of the middle-class German and his ways. He sat by his plain, stout, ill-dressed Frau, with his back to the scenery, and ate. Occasionally he spoke in monosyllables: more often he drank; but the end ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle—they paid court to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and admiration. "Wonder who that lady is—makin' such a hit with the old man." "Must be some heiress." "Heiress? Golly, I guess I could ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the monkish life in him. When he saw the emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... smallest stable or errand boy in the land, prize-fighting, or "the noble art of self-defence," as it was grandiloquently styled, was really looked up to as a manly and worthy spectacle during the first quarter of the present century, and a little later. When the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., did not think it beneath his royal dignity to pet and encourage professional "bruisers," to attend the prize-ring, shake ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... exchange for the labor that they furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance, earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are in luck ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... the national spectacle; it excites Spaniards as nothing else can, and the death of a famous torero is more tragic than the loss of a colony. Seville looks upon itself as the very home and centre of the art. The good king Ferdinand VII.—as precious a rascal as ever graced ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... but a most indirect influence on the internal policy of the nation. This was undoubtedly perfectly correct, but in the face of the curious political situation which prevailed at this period we have the remarkable spectacle of rapid and definite progress in commercial, industrial, and private life, while at the same time the official methods of the public authorities were degenerating with a rapidity that soon brought the circumstances of government almost to a point ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... spiritual, and then material significance to pose and draperies, Andrea loses all feeling for the essential in art. What a sad spectacle is his "Assumption," wherein the Apostles, the Virgin herself, have nothing better to do than to show off draperies! Instead of feeling, as in the presence of Titian's "Assunta," wrapt to heaven, you gaze at a number of tailor's men, each showing how a stuff you are thinking ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... credit secretly for the construction of these dainty devices. Yet new wonders were about to follow, when the bride and bridegroom, though wedded to each other's company, came forward to see the spectacle. Not a guest was missing. Even those most pleasantly occupied at the tables left their sack and canary, their spices and confections. The musicians, too, and the menials, seemed to have forgotten their several duties, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... organs of speech. It should have been a simple matter to develop the cat theme, but she found herself unable to do so. Her mind was concentrated, to the exclusion of all else, on the repellent nature of the spectacle provided by her loved one in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in the rain and mud. Upon occasions when he was afforded admission he was hustled through the yard by a warder and not allowed to hold private conversation with any of the prisoners. On several occasions he complained that he was refused admission by order of the gaoler, and the spectacle of England's representative being turned away by an ignorant and ill-conditioned official like Du Plessis was not an edifying one. It is only necessary to say that upon an occasion when Du Plessis adopted the same tactics towards the Portuguese Consul that gentleman proceeded at once to the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... to write. Had been on shore exactly nine hours, was delighted with the country, and had already written the first chapter of a book about it. Was, nevertheless, surprised to see none of the native Red Men upon the wharf when the Canada arrived. Should have thought the spectacle would have been both novel and imposing to them. After dinner, would, with permission, go into the forests about Foxden, and visit this singular people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... matter for my first book, "Enterprise and India," and therein you may read how I went first to Assam and then down to Ceylon following up this perplexing and complicated business of human enslavement to toil, exercised by this great spectacle of human labor, and at once attracted by and stimulated by and dissatisfied with those socialist generalizations that would make all this vast harsh spectacle of productive enterprise a kind of wickedness and outrage upon humanity. And behind and about the things I ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... great fleet of the crusaders, starting from Corfu, has this fine sentence: 'Et le jour fut clair et beau: et le vent doux et bon. Et ils laisserent aller les voiles au vent.' His account of the spectacle of Constantinople, when it appeared for the first time to the astonished eyes of the Christian nobles, is well known: 'Ils ne pouvaient croire que si riche ville put etre au monde, quand ils virent ces hauts murs et ces riches tours dont elle etait close tout autour a la ronde, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... delegates from the Provinces of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. He said Canada addressed us in the affecting language of Ruth —"Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to refrain from following after thee"—and he asked, "Whether the world had ever seen such a spectacle as great and growing nations, for such they were, with full and unqualified power to act as they pleased, insisting on devoting their honor, strength, and substance to the support of the common mother; and not only to be called, but to be, sons." And Lord Shaftesbury asked, "Whether any ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... wing, and Patty, seated decorously but unwillingly beside her father, was impatiently awaiting the entrance of the family, knowing that Mark would be with them if he had returned from Boston. Timothy Grant, the parish clerk, had the pew in between, and afforded a most edifying spectacle to the community, as there were seven young Grants of a church-going age, and the ladies of the congregation were always counting them, reckoning how many more were in their cradles at home and trying to guess from Mrs. Grant's lively or ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... along from curiosity; sometimes for protection. For that they were hardly needed. It is not too much to say that our party carried terror wherever it went. The flashlight of those days was contained in cartridges fired from a revolver. The spectacle of half a dozen strange men invading a house in the midnight hour armed with big pistols which they shot off recklessly was hardly reassuring, however sugary our speech, and it was not to be wondered at if the tenants bolted through windows and down fire-escapes wherever we ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... officers and men of the first regiment of Foot Guards at Potsdam, to which, in accordance with traditional usage, he was appointed on his tenth birthday as lieutenant. There may be some of my readers who were present on that occasion, and who may remember the spectacle presented by the little fellow, vainly endeavoring to keep step with the giant strides of these huge grenadiers, the tallest men in the German army, during the march-past that followed the ceremony. Since then ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... to the distant prospect that the king's eyes naturally turned at this crisis of his fate. His attention was arrested by a spectacle nearer at hand. For all the plain below was alive with troops, their banners waving gaily in the sun, the white tents of their many camps standing sharply out against the green and gold of the ricefields. Forty thousand ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... also delayed by the enormous difficulty of liquidating the Ottoman Empire and the reluctance of the United States to accept the obligation of mandates in Europe or Asia. The curious spectacle was afforded of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race indulging in a rivalry of retirement and endeavouring to saddle each other with fresh acquisitions of territory; and between them Armenia was almost abandoned once more to the Turks and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... more fleeting image, and finally from an image fleeting, though still pictured, to the picturing of the act by which the image is pictured, that is to say, to the idea. Thus is revealed to the intelligence, hitherto always turned outwards, a whole internal world—the spectacle of its own workings. It required only this opportunity, at length offered by language. It profits by the fact that the word is an external thing, which the intelligence can catch hold of and cling to, and at the same time an immaterial thing, by means of which ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... own victorious legions. Little could be expected from districts where to the mass of the population the old regime of German independence had meant nothing more than attendance at the manor-court of a knight, or the occasional spectacle of a ducal wedding, or a deferred interest in the droning jobbery of some hereditary town-councillor. In Northern Germany there was far more prospect of a national insurrection. There the spirit of Stein and of those who had worked with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... trouble and anxiety in autumn. He also found, somewhat to his surprise, that legislation was by no means the easy—we might say free-and-easy—business which he had supposed it to be. In short, the camp presented the interesting spectacle of a human society undergoing the process of mushroom growth from a condition of chaotic irresponsibility to ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... magnificent hall, hung with choice armour, and ascending a staircase, of Pentelic marble, were ushered into a suite of lofty chambers, lined with Oriental tapestry, and furnished with many costly couches and cabinets. While they admired a spectacle so different to anything they had recently beheld or experienced, the Seneschal, followed by a number of slaves in splendid attire, advanced and offered them rare and choice refreshments, coffee and confectionery, sherbets and spiced wines. ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... kind of truce, which allowed Christianity a little space for secret growth. In their upper rooms the brethren met to break bread and pray to their ascended Lord. It was the most beautiful spectacle. The new faith had alighted among them like an angel, and was shedding purity on their souls from its wings and breathing over their humble gatherings the spirit of peace. Their love to each other was unbounded; they were filled with the inspiring sense of discovery; and, as often ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... yet how much it says! It is the nation speaking. You have the spectacle of that unsentimental thing, a Government, making reverence to that name and saying to its agent, "Uncover, and pass on; it is France that commands." Yes, the promise has been kept; it will be kept always; "forever" was the King's word. (1) At two o'clock in the afternoon the ceremonies of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... district entirely. I made up my mind to pursue philosophically the course of my labors and my pleasures, to show a soul superior to circumstances, and in short, to give to the Amazons, the centaurs, and the millers the fine spectacle of the ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... ladies did not gaze upon the picture gallery of the streets, the huge and grotesque figures and the obscene words drawn by some evil-spirited pencil. They had not perpetually before their eyes the spectacle of human infirmities exhibited at every barrier in France, and treacherous book-stalls did not vomit out upon them in secret the poison of books which taught evil and set passion on fire. This wise school-mistress, moreover, could only at Ecouen preserve a young lady for you spotless ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... there. The Emperor taking no notice of this suggestion, Shigemune went so far as to declare his intention of committing suicide unless the fencing lessons were discontinued. Thereupon the young Emperor calmly observed: "I have never seen a military man kill himself, and the spectacle will be interesting. You had better have a platform erected in the palace grounds so that your exploit may be clearly witnessed." When this incident was reported by the shoshidai to Yedo, the Bakufu concluded that some decisive measure must be taken, but before their resolve had materialized and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... front, followed by wild cheers, stirred us up to a "double," and we speedily came upon a moving spectacle. Jackson had struck the Valley pike at Middletown, twelve miles south of Winchester, along which a large body of Federal horse, with many wagons, was hastening north. He had attacked at once with his handful of men, overwhelmed resistance, and captured ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... alone, and the shades of evening were stealing over the earth: conceive then my utter dismay and superstitious horror upon suddenly entering, what I could but suppose to be a charnel-house! Its effluvium was intolerable, and well accounted for by (loathsome spectacle!) a disorderly collection of human fragments in various stages of preservation and decay! A dozen grisly skeletons grinned upon me from pedestals round the room, and in the centre of it, the half dissected ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... brief moment of triumph, to throw a lustre over the historian by a passing epithet, [Footnote: Gibbon himself thought it an event worthy of record in his Memoirs. "Before my departure from England (he says) I was present at the august spectacle of Mr. Hastings's Trial in Westminster Hall. It was not my province to absolve or condemn the Governor of India, but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence demanded my applause, nor could I hear without emotion the personal compliment ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... anticipate the action of the House of Representatives, assume not only the function which belongs exclusively to that body, but convert themselves into accusers, witnesses, counsel, and judges, and prejudge the whole case, thus presenting the appalling spectacle in a free State of judges going through a labored preparation for an impartial hearing and decision by a previous ex parte investigation and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... mystery. "C'est gentil" seems to be a talismanic spell; and "Ce n'est pas gentil ca" is sufficient to check every rising irregularity. O that some savant would write a book and tell us how it is done! I gazed for half an hour on the spectacle. A more charming sight my eyes never beheld. There were grayheaded old men, and women, and invalids; and there were beautiful demoiselles working worsted, embroidery, sewing; men reading papers; and, in fact, people doing every thing they would do in their own ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... new kind of spectacle, such as had never been heard of before. For he made a bridge, of about three miles and a half in length, from Baiae to the mole of Puteoli [415], collecting trading vessels from all quarters, mooring them in two rows by their anchors, and spreading earth upon them to form a viaduct, after ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... moonlight, she saw a strange-looking creature,—a man,—who rolled and ambled rather than walked; he was leading a white horse by the bit, and the horse was dragging the "saloon" down the road. The man was a truly terrifying spectacle. He seemed to be a giant; his head projected far forward between his shoulders, and on his back was what looked like a camel's hump! His feet were not like human feet, but rather like huge hoofs; and the man, if he was one, wabbled forward on them in a way that turned Catherine ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... dark, and hang there reefing while the vessel jerked so that you might have fancied she must send his ribs through the skin. I say it was nothing, because he performed this feat nearly every winter night, after the midnight haul, and the spectacle grew common. I never knew him bungle over a rope or make a bad slip, and it was simply a pleasure to see him steer. He never threw away an inch, and his way of stealing foot by foot was worthy of any jockey. Sometimes when I was at the wheel and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... time the Europeans were all up and out, enjoying the spectacle, and Simpson's Ranges echoed their laughter, it being assumed that the Celestials' gods were being punished for the sins of those diggers who had wrecked the camp. Jim and Con joined a few curious men sauntering down to take a nearer view of ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... lay open to me thereafter? How could I ever again hold up my head among men, when every finger should be pointed at me in scorn, every tongue speak my blistering shame, and when I should be a monstrous spectacle to all eyes? I was overwhelmed by the remembrance that, according to the dread letter of the law, God holds eunuchs in such abomination that men thus maimed are forbidden to enter a church, even as the unclean and filthy; nay, even beasts in such plight were ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... retained the use of his senses; and, when Peregrine approached, stretched out his hand with manifest signs of satisfaction. The young gentleman, whose heart overflowed with gratitude and affection, could not behold such a spectacle unmoved. He endeavoured to conceal his tenderness, which, in the wildness of his youth, and the pride of his disposition, he considered as a derogation from his manhood; but, in spite of all his endeavours, the tears gushed ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the course of a short siege this line of stakes would be prolonged till it formed a bloody pale between the two contending armies. This horrible spectacle had at least the effect of shaking the courage of the besieged, and of hastening the end of hostilities. When at length the town yielded to the enemy, it was often razed to the ground, and salt was strewn upon its ruins, while the unfortunate inhabitants were either ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the butlers, requesting to be announced. The man led the way to a spacious hall, coated and floored with chunam, when Newton perceived the colonel, who presented rather a singular spectacle. "Burra Saib; Saib," said the Indian; and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and take station near the door we shall be presented with the spectacle of several hundred backs in a kneeling position—that is, the individuals to whom the backs belong will be ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Zecca. Shaking off old prejudices now, such a procession as that of some four hundred passably ugly men carrying their tapers in open daylight, Diogenes-fashion, as if they were looking for a lost quattrino, would make a merry spectacle ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... to vastness and great numbers of people, nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as he watched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersed with many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisation of the full significance of the feast of several ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... restored. But late at night the detachment of troops posted at the Office of Foreign Affairs was attacked by a band of rioters. The commanding officer ordered them to fire, and several persons in the crowd were shot down. Their dead bodies were paraded through the city. This spectacle raised the indignation of the multitude to the highest pitch. Fresh barricades were erected in all the most populous quarters of the city, and the soldiers, stupefied and panic-struck, renounced all further opposition to the revolt. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... leaves to Lord Clarendon's kind heart to imagine what this spectacle of woe must be, and how deeply afflicted and impressed we must be—who have only so lately had a child born to us and have been so fortunate! The Prince has been completely upset by this; and she was besides like a dear sister to us. God's will be ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... with his horse whip. The old man bore it patiently, to the last, answering each blow with a slight shrug of the shoulders, and a groan. I cannot think that{89} Col. Lloyd succeeded in marring the flesh of Old Barney very seriously, for the whip was a light, riding whip; but the spectacle of an aged man—a husband and a father—humbly kneeling before a worm of the dust, surprised and shocked me at the time; and since I have grown old enough to think on the wickedness of slavery, few ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... answer? Then I thus Dare myself to solve the problem, [He tears the cloak from the Figure, and finds beneath it a skeleton. And find out . . . . Oh, save me, heaven! God! what's this I see? what horrid Spectacle! What frightful vision! What death-threatening fearful portent! Stiff and stony corse, who art thou? That of dust and ashes formed Now ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... monarch proceeded to the Great Church to be crowned. The huge edifice was filled to overflowing. From north and south, from mountain and valley, all of note in the three kingdoms had flocked thither on this day to behold the imposing spectacle. Gustaf Trolle, now once more archbishop, stood at the high altar, lined on either side by the six Swedish bishops and the Upsala Chapter. The whole chancel was one blaze of gold and silver; and as the king marched through the main aisle with his splendid ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... acquainted with the classics; and 'Tom Jones' is one of them. Many of the introductions to the chapters, not to mention a certain travestie of an Homeric battle, must needs be as wearisome to those who are not scholars, as the spectacle of a burlesque is to those who have not seen the original play. This is still more the case with our old poets, especially Milton. I very much doubt, in spite of the universal chorus to the contrary, whether 'Lycidas' is ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... and out upon the marble causeways, rending their purple vestures in the moonlight, there was weeping among the lords of Chaldea,—"Wo! wo! wo!" was walled in the streets of Babylon. A similar destiny awaited Paris, but as yet a different spectacle was visible; as yet the carousals of the metropolis were at their zenith; as yet the current flowed in its ancient channel; as yet the woes of the empire were not written on the wall of the palace. Festivities were never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... situation. He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined. In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human suffering in his own breast, to make him realise what Grassette was undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of the world and its happenings, and he had a natural ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... means of the Zephyrs, has executed on them swift justice for their envenomed and jealous malice. Those winged ministers of his just wrath, under pretence of restoring them again to you, cast them both to the bottom of a precipice, where the hideous spectacle of their mangled bodies displays but the first and least torture for that stratagem the cunning of which was the cause of the ills ...
— Psyche • Moliere
... landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the spectacle portended. ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... enormously with the efficiency and power of the German cavalry. It was on about the third day of the manoeuvres that the Emperor arrived by train at five in the morning to find the troops drawn up on the plain close by to receive him. I have never seen a more magnificent military spectacle than they presented on that brilliant August morning, numbering some 15,000 horsemen with a large force of horse artillery, jaeger and ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... white men cast apprehensive glances rearward as though momentarily expecting the materialization of some long expected danger from that quarter. The boy had paused after his first sight of the caravan, and now was following slowly in the wake of the sordid, brutal spectacle. Presently Akut came up with him. To the beast there was less of horror in the sight than to the lad, yet even the great ape growled beneath his breath at useless torture being inflicted upon the helpless slaves. He looked ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lady Caroline; "the spectacle of a strong, brave woman weeping at a private view in the Rutland Galleries would have been so sensational. It would certainly have been reproduced in the next Drury Lane drama. And I'm so unlucky; I never see these sensational events. I was ill with appendicitis, you know, when Lulu ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... him. The raillery that was always the raillery of a gentleman; the irony so delicate as really to deceive some men who passed for acute; the fine urbanity that pervades even the passages called severe; the genuine reverence of the author for virtue; the spectacle revealed of a man uniting in himself all that is good in sense, with all that is agreeable in the man of the world,—how pleasing it must all have been to our inky apprentice as he ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... on sentry duty gave the alarm and the lads saw a row of heads bob above the logs, and the gleam of weapons. Then Captain Jonathan Wellsby moved out into the open and was joined by Mr. Peter Forbes. They stood gazing at the singular spectacle, the bedraggled runaways who had vanished without trace, the odd flag of truce, the brawny, dignified savage making signs of friendship. The men in the stockade were ordered to lay down their arms. They came running out to cheer ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... been tormented by the spectacle of her friend's wife flirting recklessly with the young Marquess of Strathdene while her husband was at the Border with the troops. But she was far more sharply wrung when she saw Kedzie flirting with her husband, playing ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... frantic mob, who climbed on the gates, tried to scale them, and pressed against them with such force that at last they bent in several places so far that it was feared they would be thrown down. This multitude of people presented a frightful spectacle, and seemed as if determined to pillage ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... are only the outward and visible signs of the angel, incarnate in a world of three dimensions, striving to realize higher spatial, or heavenly, conditions. This spectacle, for example, of a millionaire hurled across a continent in a special train to be present at the bedside of a stricken dear one, may be interpreted as the endeavor of an incarnate soul to achieve, with the aid of human ingenuity applied to space annihilation, that which, discarnate, it could ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... life was Tiny so lonely. He had come to help the World, said he, talking to himself, and the World cared not half so much about it as it would about the doings of a wonderful "learned pig," or the extraordinary spectacle of a man cutting profiles with ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... animals coming out of the Ark. Our entry was a veritable triumph; and we endeavoured (I think successfully) to live up to it: walking stately through the narrow streets, made narrower by the close-packed crowds pressing to see so rare a poetic spectacle; through the cool long corridors of the Lycee; and so out upon a prettily dignified little park—where, at a triad of tables set within a garlanded enclosure beneath century-old plane-trees, our ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... from the church. We were in truth nothing loath to accept the invitation, and found little to excuse in the savory soup, the fresh-laid eggs and the fruit that composed the simple feast, while we were scarcely less regaled with the neatness of the rooms and the spectacle of well-washed floors and spotless though coarsely-woven linen. But most of all to be enjoyed and remembered was the peep we got into this good old man's life and history. From his youth he had been schoolmaster at St. Laurent, and it seemed never to have occurred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... roomes) kindled so quickly, and went on with such rage, as that it consumed the greatest part of the citie almost within the space of foure houres, being of 30 miles or more of compasse. Then might you haue seene a lamentable spectacle: besides the huge and mighty flame of the citie all on light fire, the people burning in their houses and streetes, but most of all of such as laboured to passe out of the gates farthest from the enemie, where meeting together in a mightie throng, and so pressing euery man to preuent ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... new soul that had been given her last year, on her birthday, when she had been born again to her sweet human destiny. At times she had glimpses of the perfect thing it might have been. There was no logical sequence in the events that had destroyed it, the return of Lady Cayley and the spectacle of her triumph. She could not say that her husband had deteriorated in consequence. The change was in herself, and not in him. He was what he always had been; only she seemed to see him more completely now. At times, when the high spiritual life died down in sleep, she ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... members of his flock at public bars; who also—I do not hesitate, you see, to give our little games of chance their harshest name—in a friendly way gambled with them; and I can imagine that the spectacle of a parish priest engaging with his parishioners, up and down the street of a quiet village, in a fight with six-shooters and Winchesters would be ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... but before he could make his horse gallop, Zbyszko perceived a most wonderful spectacle; he beheld a girl sitting like a man, on a swift piebald horse, rushing toward them; she had a crossbow in one hand and a boar-spear on her shoulders. Her floating hair was full of hop strobiles; her face was bright like the dawn. Her shirt was opened on ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... after there had been read to the command an order from army headquarters dismissing the four from the service, the scene was brought to a close by drumming the cowards out of camp. It was a mortifying spectacle, but from that day no officer in that division ever ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The whole village of several hundred Indians was in sight and a most frightful sight it was. Everyone young and old was running about crying, wailing, with faces painted black and white. They did not seem even to see the big steamer. It was such an appalling spectacle that the captain deemed it best not to land, but there were two men on board, residents of St. Paul returning from St. Louis who got into a boat and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... can't help feeling that the crucial point of the Prince's tour was his landing on his foreign possessions, say at Bombay or Rangoon; that the landing should have been made magnificent and historic. Here was an opportunity just such as there was at Bombay; all the material at hand for a splendid spectacle, light, water, sky, ships, masts, boats, wharfs, the most beautifully dressed crowds and people of every nationality for background. A fraction of fancy was all that was necessary to have set up the most magnificient ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... little faster at this extraordinary spectacle. And while I stood in uncertainty gazing after the retreating concourse, I perceived a figure running towards me, lifting his hands and crying out in a voice sonorous and inhuman. He was of a stature ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... would have lost the ponies—the toy-shop expedition took precedence. Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed happiness, but the light cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of Circassian descent, possessing as much boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... comprehend it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies. Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to form some idea of a thing that has no limits, you who were born yesterday and who will die to-morrow! This spectacle of immensity in every country in the world produces the wildest illusions. Religions are born of it; it was to possess the infinite that Cato cut his throat, that the Christians delivered themselves to lions, the Huguenots to the Catholics; all the people of the earth have stretched ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... on some clothes and went downstairs. A crack of light showed under the kitchen door, and, pushing it open with some force, he gazed spellbound at the spectacle before him. ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed—I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for life—for life—but for life—solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly. Yet not until the last instance, amid the most convulsive ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... the large family upon the father is only less disastrous than it is upon the mother. The spectacle of the young man, happy in health, strength and the prospect of a joyful love life, makes us smile in sympathy. But this same young man ten years later is likely to present a spectacle as sorry as it is familiar. If he finds that the children come ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... shouted to Mr Bitts, and in another minute the fighting, which had gone on for so many hours, altogether ceased. Both decks presented a terrible spectacle. In all directions lay the bodies of dead and dying men. Many had already passed away, others were writhing in agony, while the surgeon's attendants, regardless of what was going on around, were employed in carrying below ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... spectacle of this bright new day lies spread before us, and certainly no spot could have been better chosen for dramatic effect. In front of the waggons is a large, flat, open space, backed by bold rising ground with jutting crags and dotted clumps ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... resort to stratagems similar to those that previously held the birds enthralled. Reynard seems to have learned from the weasel's manoeuvres, for he, too, is wont to entice the rabbits towards him by extraordinary methods, twirling round, like a cat, in pursuit of his tail, and affording such a spectacle to any onlookers that they must needs, from sheer curiosity, find out the meaning of a woodland farce, which, alas! is often followed by a tragedy. It is not known that the fox ever succeeds in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that some priests arrived, lifted the earthenware pot, examined their departed colleague, who by now had become an unencouraging spectacle, removed old dishes of food, arranged more about him, and went off. Also the clouds grew thicker and thicker, and the air more and more chilly, till, had we been in any northern latitude, I should have ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... household. Miss Lois's conscience would not allow her to employ half-breeds, who were sometimes endurable servants; duty required, she said, that she should have full-blooded natives. And she had them. She always began to teach them the alphabet within three days after their arrival, and the spectacle of a tearful, freshly-caught Indian girl, very wretched in her calico dress and white apron, worn out with the ways of the kettles and the brasses, dejected over the fish-balls, and appalled by the pudding, standing confronted by a large alphabet on the well-scoured table, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Peterkin said, as he put an enormous quid of tobacco in his mouth, and walked away, thinking to himself, 'Twould take an all-fired while to scrape them tar and feathers off of me, I'm so big, and I b'lieve the feller meant it. Them high bucks wouldn't like no better fun than to make a spectacle of me; so I guess I'll dry ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... him my regards, and beg him to cheer up," said the burgomaster. "He must not allow his brave spirit to be agitated by a tale which may after all have originated in the heated imaginations of a few ignorant men. Had the whole city witnessed the spectacle it might ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... parents. The old birds generally live in pairs; but among the inland basaltic cliffs of the Santa Cruz I found a spot where scores must usually haunt. On coming suddenly to the brow of the precipice, it was a grand spectacle to see between twenty and thirty of these great birds start heavily from their resting-place, and wheel away in majestic circles. From the quantity of dung on the rocks, they must long have frequented this cliff for roosting and ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... reproved the colonel for delaying, but he took a very philosophical view, and pointed out that it was extremely doubtful whether he even now had men enough to carry the enormous position, and that he certainly could not do so with exhausted troops. So we had the extraordinary spectacle of our men lying down flat, blowing their fires and drinking their tea and laughing and joking as though they were at a picnic, but when they had finished and had formed up they made short work of the fellows in the trench. But think ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Patsey Hubbard through the varied duties of a single day, would have acknowledged that there is no spectacle in this world more pleasant, than that of a human being, discharging with untiring fidelity, and singleness of heart, duties, however humble. The simple piety of her first morning prayer, the plain good sense of her domestic arrangements, and thorough performance of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... stood on the brow of the hill, my young head filled with these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash down ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... notice, by its buz and its struggles, of its being entangled, but out steps the self-circumscribed tyrant, winds round and round the poor insect, till he covers it with his bowel-spun toils; and when so fully secured, that it can neither move leg nor wing, suspends it, as if for a spectacle to be exulted over: then stalking to the door of his cell, turns about, glotes over it at a distance; and, sometimes advancing, sometimes retiring, preys at leisure ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the house, Casanova disposed of his gold in a safe corner of the turret chamber. Thence he descended to the garden, where a spectacle awaited him, not in itself remarkable, but one which touched him strangely in his present mood. Upon a bench at the edge of the greensward Olivo was sitting beside Amalia, his arm round her waist. Reclining at their feet were the three girls, tired out by the afternoon's ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... ivory thing with a point of real lead. And it won't write on any other paper except the kind that is in the book, and this is often very annoying when you are in a hurry. Then was seen the strange spectacle of a little ivory stick, with a leaden point, standing up at an odd, impossible-looking slant, and moving along all by itself as ordinary pencils do when you ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... the spectacle! independent States stretched over an immense territory, and known only by common difficulty, clinging to their Union as the rock of their safety, deciding, by frank comparison of their relative condition, to rear on ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Thus was the extraordinary spectacle presented to the civilized world of a Government, in violation of its own express agreement, having twice rejected a minister of peace invested with full powers to adjust all the existing differences between the two countries in a manner just and honorable ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... incurred enormous debts, under the burden of which their subjects still groan, and which must absorb no small part of the product of the honest industry of those countries for generations to come, the United States have once been enabled to exhibit the proud spectacle of a nation free from public debt, and if permitted to pursue our prosperous way for a few years longer in peace we may do ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... to him it was a novel investment, and perhaps more difficult to manage than any other article he possessed. Partly from a dim consciousness that he had wandered beyond his depth, and probably from the loneliness consequent to so uncongenial a spectacle, a companion had become necessary; and, when I approached, his jump of cordiality was as uncouth as it was unexpected. So stunned were my senses by the extraordinary events, that, had he cried out, "Come to ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... to him to ask if he would rather accept from the emperor six lispund of gold, or would have the emperor give the games in his honour which the emperor was used to have played at the Padreim. King Sigurd preferred the games, and the messengers said the spectacle would not cost the emperor less than the money offered. Then the emperor prepared for the games, which were held in the usual way; but this day everything went on better for the king than for the queen; for the queen has ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... interest of the representation of this drama, the hero of which possessed the admiration of all and the good graces of many. Some of the upper seats were occupied by women of high rank, who did not dare to show themselves publicly at this strange spectacle, and came, like beggars, to enjoy a scene which they would be ashamed to have acknowledged. Places, too, had been reserved for the patrician women, near the bench of the judges and advocates. These cold, careless creatures, attracted by mere curiosity, were not the most ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... observes that the sacredness of the occasion is somewhat marred by the presence in church of the unbidden curiosity-seekers, who have come for much the same reason as that which prompts them to go to the theatre—to enjoy the spectacle. But Bessie's face showed nothing but that intense amiability for which she had all her life long been noted; and as for Thaddeus, he never ceased to smile from the moment he turned and faced the congregation until the carriage door ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... spite of the whisper of our guardian angel, Wellington, in a little war, and experiencing all its degrading and ruinous consequences to our commerce, our military and naval reputation, our statesmanship, our honour. Did ever this great empire exhibit such a spectacle before as that which it thus presented to the anxious eye of the new Premier? Having concluded the disheartening and alarming survey, he must have descended to his cabinet oppressed and desponding, enquiring who is sufficient for these things? With no disposition to bestow an undue encomium ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... more deplorable than the spectacle, which every hour of the day and night affords, of young and vigorous men made up to look like grandfathers. I am told that the theatrical costumiers and perruquiers are worn to a shadow by the overwork which these contemptible shirkers have subjected them to, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... oftener used. Horror (etymologically a shivering or shuddering) denotes a shuddering fear accompanied with abhorrence or such a shock to the feelings and sensibilities as may exist without fear, as when one suddenly encounters some ghastly spectacle; we say of a desperate but fettered criminal, "I looked upon him with horror." Where horror includes fear, it is fear mingled with abhorrence. (See ABHOR.) Affright, fright, and terror are always ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... admitted by Time.—Her queenly robes (she was to sing some scenes from Anna Bolena) in nowise suited or disguised her figure. Her hair-dresser had done some tremendous thing or other with her head—or rather had left everything undone. A more painful and disastrous spectacle could hardly be looked on.—There were artists present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some impression of a renowned artist—perhaps, with the natural feeling that her reputation had been exaggerated.—Among these was Rachel—whose bitter ridicule of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten |
