"Terrifically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brought to a stand, than, looking round, it espied its captor, who, however, springing back, avoided the onslaught. The pig, after making several strenuous efforts to escape, grunting and squeaking terrifically all the time, exhausted by its exertions, lay down, with its keen eyes watching for an opportunity of ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... safe at last; but even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... was showing signs of weakening. The Thessians got a third ray into position for operation, and opened up. Almost at once the tubes heated terrifically. In an instant they would give way. Arcot threw his ship into space, and let the tubes cool under the water jacket. Morey reported the coils ready as soon as he ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... two of our regiments came over a hill and saw the valley that lay before them being terrifically shelled by the cannon and assailed by hail from the machine guns, the whole column was seen to pause and a look of worry came over the faces of these men that for just an instant was pitiful. They knew that ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... at the same time the greatest kindness to Bayle, whom he admired, he dispersed three thousand copies of this proclamation to be posted up through Paris; the alarm and the curiosity were simultaneous; but the latter prevailed. Every book collector hastened to procure a copy so terrifically denounced, and at the same time so amusing. The author of the "Livres condamnes au Feu" might have inserted this anecdote in his collection. It may be worth adding, that Maimbourg always affected to say that he had never read Bayle's work, but he afterwards confessed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... apparently set together, as if working over some fearful determination. When Connor awoke, Flanagan broke out into a laugh that no language could describe. The character of mirth which he wished to throw into his face, jarred so terrifically with his demoniacal expression when first seen by Connor, that, even unsuspecting as he was, he started up with alarm, and asked Flanagan what was the matter. Flanagan, however, laughed on—peal after peal succeeded—he tossed the pitchfork aside, and, ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... on all-fours, scrambling across the floor, and saying, "Peep, peep"; and down went Marjorie, and lumbered across the floor after her sister, while she roared and growled terrifically. ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... one apart, and people of undoubted consequence deferred to him—to the very last. He earnestly wished his mother could see that; his nervous little mother with the flushed face and tired eyes, always terrifically concerned about one small matter or another. He thought she would have liked to see that his father was some ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... a "fizzer"—the right length, a bailer, terrifically fast, but just off the wicket. Desmond snicks it between short slip and third man; it goes ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... republished in this pleasant edition, Ravenshoe has always seemed to me the best in every respect; and in spite of its feeble plot and its impossible lay-figures—Erne, Sir George Hillyar, and the painfully inane Gerty—I should rank The Hillyars and the Burtons above the more terrifically imagined and more neatly constructed Geoffry Hamlyn. But this is an opinion on which I lay ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... beds, the pallets, the mere blanket, or no blanket, on the floor. They could keep away the tormenting flies, drawn by the heat, the glare, the blood and effluvia, could give the parched lips water, could watch by the less terrifically hurt. All the city laboured; putting aside the personal anguish, the private loss known, suspected, or but fearfully dreaded. Glad of the victory but with only calamity beneath its eyes, the city wrestled with crowding ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... so pretty,' my friend said, 'and one of the saddest parts of it was that I hear she was terrifically disfigured, and she took this most sadly to heart. The right side of her face was utterly ruined, and the sight of the right eye lost, though, strange to say, the left side entirely escaped, and seeing her in profile one would have had no notion of what had happened. Was ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... and slime at the very moment when her emancipation seems to be assured. The woman, with her flashy dress in one arm and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realization of the future as it is terrifically conveyed to her. The negress, in the happiness of serving LAURA in her questionable career, picks up the melody and hums it as she unpacks the finery that has been ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... possession of some of its suburbs. Between these suburbs and the concrete citadel were the coal pits, with their fathomless depths of ages and the mysteries of kultural strategy. The struggle became a succession of avalanches of gas, burning oil, rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides lost terrifically, but the Germans had held the town. Now it was given up without a blow and its great coal fields were once more in possession of the French. Before retreating the Germans showed their usual destructive energy and the mines were found flooded as ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... an' see. You won't hev yur patience terrifically tried: for thar ain't much time to spare about it. Thar's another passage up the cliffs, not far off; not a doubt but these Injuns know it; an' ef we don't make haste, they'll git up thar, and come in upon us by the back door, which ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... drawn back from the apparition, scared and startled, and Gregory, in confronting it, felt an actual twinge of fear. The vast, unexpected form loomed to his imagination, for a moment, like a tidal-wave rising terrifically in familiar surroundings and poised in menace above him and his wife. He controlled an exclamation of dismay, and the ominous simile receded before a familiar indignation; that, too, he controlled; he could ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... was cut short, or rather it ended in a shriek of pain and fright, as the cook, suddenly swinging himself from his shoulders, landed a terrifically propelled right foot in ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... his conceptions, yet the whole note of character is distasteful to me. I don't like his male men; I should dislike them and be ill at ease with them in real life, and I am ill at ease with them in his books. This is purely a matter of taste; and as to the animal stories, terrifically clever as they are, they appear to me to be no more true to life than Landseer's pictures of dogs holding a coroner's inquest or smoking pipes. The only book of his that I re-read is The Light that Failed, for its abundant vitality and tragicalness; but ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trysail was blown to atoms, and the ship was lying-to under bare poles, and laying beautifully to the wind, with her helm amidship and perfectly tight. The hurricane was accompanied with a deluge of rain. At 4 P. M. the wind shifted to the south-east, and was blowing so terrifically that all the hatches were obliged to be battened down, the sea making a fair breach over the vessel. The starboard-quarter boat was washed away. About half-past 6 P. M. there was a lull, and it was nearly calm, the wind backing to the south-west, ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... sea. It blew a hurricane: there were no more squalls now; but one continuous tornado, which in its passage through that great gaunt skeleton, the ship's rigging and bare poles, howled and yelled and roared so terrifically, as would have silenced a salvo of artillery fired alongside. The overwhelming sea ran in dark watery mountains crested with devilish fire. The inky blackness added supernatural horror; the wrath of the Almighty seemed upon them; and His hand to drop the black sky down on them for their ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Murray is a terrifically hard worker, and tires himself out very rapidly by prodigious effort. He is a hard fighter and a hard man to beat. He works at an enormous pace throughout ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... three years now we have been making surveys in the State of Oregon, and we have surveyed tree by tree, year after year, the same orchards, the same trees, and our observations now go into the thousands, and we find that this black line is a terrifically serious thing. In some orchards 22 per cent of the trees will develop black line in one year's time. So, you see, at that rate it would only take you five or six years with a good bearing orchard until you ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... many) I will take the opportunity of warning against such forms of false theological satisfaction. This engraving represents a young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress, tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid stone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... and Wednesday were left for real work. After that only signal practice and blackboard lectures remained. Andy Miller showed up again, and with him two other coaches who had absented themselves for a few days, and life became once more terrifically strenuous for the 'varsity players. Saunders got back into practice that afternoon, but it was plain that his injury still inconvenienced him and he was not allowed to take part in the forty-five-minute scrimmage. Clint held down the left tackle position and held it down pretty well. Although ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... it the more if I did," Nan said, lazily. These competitions in unselfishness between Pamela and Frances Carr always bored her. There was no end to them. Women are so terrifically self-abnegatory; they must give, give, give, to someone all the time. Women, that is, of the mothering type, such as these. They must be forever cherishing something, sending someone to bed with bread and milk, guarding ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... orders, Henri," smiled Jules, as full of merriment as ever. Indeed, the fiercer the conflict had grown, the more desperate the efforts of the Germans had become, and the more terrifically the fighting had developed, the higher had this young fellow's spirits risen. Of fear he showed not a trace, though of excitement he showed every evidence. Sparkling with wit, as lively as a cricket, wonderfully cheery, he had ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... a struggle for several minutes ensued upon the ground. Blood flowed freely in the lion's mouth, and nearly choked him. His motions were thus so frustrated that the hunter was upon his feet first, and, aiming a blow with all his might, he knocked out one of the lion's eyes. He roared terrifically with pain and rage, and, during the moments of delay caused by the loss of his eye, the hunter got behind him, and, animated by his success, hit him a dreadful stroke on the back of the neck, which he knew was the most tender part. The stroke, however, appeared to have no effect, for the lion immediately ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... about her first father for us to know he had had a terrifically bad influence upon her. She also long associated with bad companions who instructed her thoroughly in the ways of immorality. She described attacks in which she felt weak and thought she was going to fall, but never did. (The young child ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Harrie wandered over the castle together, for the two Miss Harpers did not approve of climbing. The little boys and "Pa" reappeared now and then at all sorts of improbable and terrifically dangerous corners, and occasionally Mrs. Dugdale made frantic darts after them. Especially when they were all seen standing on one of the topmost precipices, the father giving a practical scientific lesson on the momentum of falling bodies; in illustration of which Harrie declared ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... diplomat, landing from his steam launch on his return from the palace; from the devil-may-care English youth in white flannel to the graceful Turkish adjutant on his beautiful Arab horse; from the dark-eyed Armenian lady, walking slowly by the water's edge, to the terrifically arrayed little Greek dandy, with a spotted waistcoat and a thunder-and-lightning tie. He sees them all: the Levantine with the weak and cunning face, the swarthy Kurdish porter, the gorgeously arrayed Dalmatian embassy servant, the huge, fair Turkish waterman in his spotless white dress, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... terrifically into a door half ajar, and received such a crash between the eyes that it not only brought me broad awake, but gave me a bump as big as a hen's egg, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... curious, and interesting items of news, his pen making not half so many curls, and twists as did his small, red tongue. As he wrote, he frowned terrifically, and sighed oft betwixt whiles; and Bellew watching, where he stood outside the window, noticed that Anthea frowned also, as she bent over her accounts, and sighed wearily ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... instant something rapped the Costa Rica terrifically on the starboard side amidships and tore through her with a grinding, wrenching noise, followed ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... wrists now. His blond head is bowed down over hers, so that his lips hover close to the part of the dusky hair. "My hat, Maidie," he cries, "or I'll—I'll take what I want!" Both hands tugging terrifically at those slender wrists now, and yet not gaining an ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... completely by surprise; they had not had the least notion of affairs getting to such a length. The smell of the powder, the loud report, and the sensation of positive danger that accompanied these phenomena, alarmed them most terrifically; so that, in point of fact, with the exception of the empty chest that was thrown down in the way of the first soldier, no further idea of defence seemed in any way to find a place in the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the splotches fade, so you never had them," he said absorbedly. "Something like that happened on Tralee, once! There's a virus—a whole group of virus particles! Normally we humans are immune to them. One has to be in terrifically bad physical condition for them to take hold and produce whatever effects they do. But once they're established they're passed on from mother to child.... And when they die ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Nellie would be up to all their tricks; so, you see, you will be quite indispensable. I shall get on very well; don't worry about me in any case, for if the storm should prove terrifically bad we could even stay at Fort Garry all ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... a pretty pickle for Whitney Barnes! His cane had clattered to the pavement and he did not dare stoop to pick it up. The anguish from the bundle he held increased terrifically in volume. He could feel beads of ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... gulf was revealed, which would have made the stout heart of Quintus Curtius quail ere he took the awful plunge. Time or contest had removed the ivory obstructions in the centre, but the shores on each side of the gulf were terrifically iron-bound, and appeared equal to crushing the hardest granite; the shinbone of an ox would have been to her like an oyster to ordinary mortals. She revelled in this luxurious operation so long, that I began to fear she was suffering from the antipodes ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... had all winter was December 8th. It was blowing terrifically from the south-east The sea was tumbling in on the beach in enormous waves, fringing the whole line of the shore with a broad stretch of white foam. The rain swept over the country pitilessly. I came out of town by the 5.10 ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... wasn't worth while to speculate upon it. The old man's son! They went out, locking the door. By this time Dennison's laughter had reached the level of shouting, but only he knew how near it was to tears—wrathful, murderous, miserable tears! He fought his bonds terrifically for a ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... the south side of the straits, and found a channel through which we could make but slow progress. The wind increased and blew terrifically all night, forcing the vessels to beat back and forth in the mouth of the straits, and we had a similar experience on the night of the 22d, running the gauntlet under reefed mainsail and jib through loose ice and in imminent danger of shipwreck. Next day the ice ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft tattoo on the back of his ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... though, or perhaps for no definite reason at all, she said nothing to her husband, on his return from Toledo, of her encounter with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of temper. Somebody or other—presumably some ass of a practical joker, he figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious methods of taking vengeance—had lured him into taking a hot, dusty, tiresome and entirely useless trip. There ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... by the common moral standards of life, with the terrific momentum of centuries; the common temptations known to us, but with a fierceness and subtlety wholly unknown to us in Christian lands—and yet how terrifically fierce and cunningly subtle some of us know them to be!—these all make every letter in that word "greatest" stand out in biggest capitals, and in ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... me, it was the worst month in the year for coasting in Barbary. The wind comes in sudden puffs and gales, blowing with extreme violence everything before it, prostrating and rooting up the stoutest and strongest palm-trees. So, in fact, as soon as we got out, a gregale ("north-easter") came on terrifically, and occasioned us to return early next morning to Jerbah. During the night, we were nearly swamped a few miles from the shore. The gregale continued the next two days, striking down several of the date-trees with great fury. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the other Floud, he of the eyebrows, and a cousin cub called Elmer, who, I understood, studied art. I became aware that they were both suddenly engaged and silenced by the sight of Cousin Egbert. I caught their amazed stares, and then terrifically they broke into gales of laughter. The cub threw himself on a couch, waving his feet in the air, and holding his middle as if he'd suffered a sudden acute dyspepsia, while the elder threw his head back and shrieked hysterically. Cousin Egbert merely glared ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... he got half-way, his coronation pace degenerated into a strut, and then into a shamble, and with an awkward and confused countenance, half impudent and half flinching, he held forward his left hand to his newly-arrived visitor. Mr. Cleveland looked terrifically courteous and amiably arrogant. He greeted the Marquess with a smile at once gracious and grim, and looked something like Goliath, as you see the Philistine depicted in some old German painting, looking down upon the pigmy ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... however, Skipper Gordon had sailed the motor-yacht well out to sea. When he shifted the helm to run for the entrance to the bay, the waves began to slap against the Stazy's side. She rolled terrifically and the aspect ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... masts tremble with their violence — I tried to look around and below me. The sea was literally raging beneath, and great masses of livid-looking foam were dashing be- tween the masts, which were oscillating terrifically. It was still dark, and I could only faintly distinguish two figures in the stern, whom, by the sound of their voices, that I caught occasionally above the tumult, I made out to be ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... there neither of those pairs of eyes could have made its fullest effect. The most terrifically gratifying way of seeing one's hero and his eyes for the first time is to see them in his own home. Anywhere else, believe me, something of his essence is forfeit. 'The rose of roses' loses more or less of its beauty in any vase, and rather more than less there in a nosegay ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Where was she? He was unconscious of the fact that his hand was gripping hard at the automatic in his pocket. For a space his brain burned red, seething with a physical passion, a consuming anger which, in all his life, had never been roused so terrifically within him. He rushed forward and took his place in the thin circle of watching men. He did not look at their faces. He did not know whether he stood next to white men or Indians. He did not see the blaze in their eyes, ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... before," Joan cried. "Of course. An Englishman performs some terrifically heroic exploit, and is very modest and reserved—refuses to talk about it at all—and the effect is that by his silence he as much as says, 'I do things like this every day. It is as easy as rolling off a log. You ought to see the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... the best of it. We had cleaned up everything in our front, and the "chip was still serenely resting on our shoulder." But what had been the outcome elsewhere on the line we did not know. That our army had been terrifically battered was certain. Our own losses indicated this. We were therefore both relieved and rejoiced on receiving the congratulatory order. I confess to have had some doubts about the extent of the victory, and whether, had Lee remained and shown fight, we would ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... to the sight of masts, and, when approaching, occasionally hesitated, and seemed half inclined to turn round and be off. So agreeable a smell as burning walrus fat dispelled all distrust, and brought him within musket-shot. On receiving the first ball, he sprang round, growled terrifically, and half raised himself on his hind-legs, as if expecting to seize the object which had caused so much pain; woe to any one who had at that moment been within reach of his merciless paws! Although a second and third ball laid him writhing on the ice, he was not ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... to each Tragedy are very abundant. Indeed, they are of the most laborious research. We quote an extract relative to "grinning skulls" as terrifically interesting: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... His trousers were terrifically too big for him. When he walked (in an insecure and frightened way) his trousers did the most preposterous wrinkles. If he leaned against a tree in the cour, with a very old and also fragile pipe in his pocket—the stem (which looked enormous in contrast to the owner) protruding ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... awful Cyclops, stood upon the floor of the hall some twenty feet below, yet rearing terrifically up through the well of the building till his head and shoulders alone seemed to fill the entire space beneath the skylight. Though his feet rested unquestionably upon the ground, his face, huge as a planet in the sky, rose looming and half lighted ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of the Odd. Methought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the curtains, and in the hollow, detestable tones of a rum puncheon, menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the contempt ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a thousand shrieks. Impelled by the Frenchman's tremendous heave, the winged man shot forward and struck full, with a splashing sound, against the terrifically revolving armature. A thunderbolt seemed to explode in our faces. All in that room, we as well as the Orconites, reeled dazedly back. A stench of seared flesh and short circuited wires smote our nostrils. Darkness—smothering, thick, ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... bordering, indeed, on the miraculous—herself, everything about her, her acts, her methods, her cleverness, intangible in one sense, were terrifically real in another. Jimmie Dale shook his head. The miraculous and this practical, everyday life were wide and far apart. There was nothing miraculous about it—it was only that the key to it was, so far, beyond ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... briskly. "That's why we're going to be so terrifically happy. Some day I'll be passing the Singer building, and I'll glance up at it and think how pitiful it would look next to Long's Peak. And then I'll be off, probably, to ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... there is an account of "ball lightning" that struck a tree. It made a dent such as a falling object would make. Some other time I shall collect instances of "ball lightning," to express that they are instances of objects that have fallen from the sky, luminously, exploding terrifically. So bewildered is the old orthodoxy by these phenomena that many scientists have either denied "ball lightning" or have considered it very doubtful. I refer to Dr. Sestier's list of one hundred and fifty instances, which he ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... said I, "stop! will you leave me here with the pony? Stop, we have not paid the reckoning. Stop!" He, however, never turned his head for a moment, and in less than a minute was out of sight. The pony, which was tied to a crib at one end of the cabin, began now to neigh terrifically, to plunge, and to erect its tail and mane in a most singular manner. It tore and strained at the halter till I was apprehensive that strangulation would ensue. "Woman," I exclaimed, "where are you, and what is the meaning of all ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow |
