"Shattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two must have fallen and burst close by, the noise had been so ear-shattering. Up from the street below our windows came a clamour of voices, shrill and sharp, which cut through the constant whirr of the giant motor. Near the head of the bed was an open window, and mechanically, ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Carter, the lengthy pitcher of the Cleve. The curious thing was that on this point Stover himself was quite undecided. Was he a coward, or was he not? Would his legs go back on him, or would he stand his ground, knowing that the stinging ball might strike anywhere—on the tender wrist bones, shattering the point of the elbow, or landing with a deadly thud right over his temple, which he remembered ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... The revolution is accompanied by much noise and violence. Perhaps this is inevitable. I do not know. There is, what must seem to many of us who stand outside the fight, a terrible wastage, a straining and a shattering of the forces of life and love. To earn salvation quickly and riotously may not, indeed, be the surest way. It may be only a further development of the sin of woman, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... try, Miss Noble?" she asked pleasantly, by way of shattering the frigid silence that had settled down ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... by that Spirit Whom the white man worships, and Who also works through nature, as you learned, Hokosa, when He rolled the lightning back upon your head, shattering your god ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... now confronted with a serious situation which, if not controlled by action of the right kind, at the right time, and at the right place, may result in shattering his basic plan. However, if the commander takes action along correct lines in due time, he can still preserve the integrity of his basic plan and so continue to control ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... trail led far away from the beaten road toward a stretch of coarse dry yucca and loco-weeds that hid a little steep-sided draw across the plains. At the bottom of it a man lay face downward beside a dead pony. We scrambled down, shattering the dry earth after us as we went. Jondo gently lifted the body and turned it face upward. It was ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... enough at home, Jeff had to admit. Calaxian calm-crystals did what no refinement of Terran therapeutics had been able to manage. They erased the fears of the neurotic and calmed the quiverings of the hypertensive—both in alarming majority in the shattering aftermath of the Fourth War—with no adverse effects at all. Permanent benefit was slow but cumulative, offering for the first time a real step toward ultimate stability. The medical, psychiatric and political fields cried out for ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... kept up a continuous fire with her bow guns. The heavy reports crashed through the darkness, the sounds rolling sullenly away, and not every shot went wild. There was a tearing of sails, a splintering of spars, a shattering of wood, and now and then the fall of a man. Under the insistent and continuous urgence of the captain the men on the schooner replied with the Long Tom in her stern, and, when one of the shots swept the deck of the sloop, ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from Byron, Goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention many distinguished private observers,—I confess it is not very affecting to my imagination; for it seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. What flutters the church of Rome, or of England, or of Geneva, or of Boston, may yet be very far from touching any principle of faith. I think that the intellect and moral sentiment are unanimous; ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... but before George had had time to draw breath after it, he and Roger and Maxime were all three in the water. The ball from the little cannon of the prison-boat had done its work better this time, striking the electric launch on her nose and shattering ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... a plea to cruel parents in behalf of smoothing Freddy's path toward the coveted post—or the course of his courtship of the candy-lady's daughter. It is simply an effort to point out how important it is to avoid shattering early in life that precious mirror in which alone visions are to be seen. When you have ridiculed the policeman out of further consideration, you are likely with the same act to have weakened Freddy's faith in ideals—and to this extent you have ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Esther, now that she had put aside her first half-understood glimpse of passion, it was sweet to be near him, to hear his voice, to touch his hand and, above all, to spend her strength in his service. But to him the strain was almost intolerable. The sight of her, the touch of her, the whole soul-shattering nearness of her beauty meant constant conflict; all the fiercer since it ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... water. The third and fourth balloons let fall their dejectiles, the one among the tenements near Tompkins Square destroying an entire block of houses simultaneously; the other on High Bridge, completely shattering that structure, and so breaking the aqueduct through which the city obtains its ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... the altar room of the Temple, shattering the silence. The Hirlaji turned in surprise to the altar—and ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... did not know all the insidious forces that were working in the silences of the hills, but he divined enough to feel the brewing of a storm, which, in its bursting, might strike closer and with more shattering force than the bolt that had scarred the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... It is therefore not so much Science that the religionist is fighting, but the scientific method. This scientific method of approach, he rightly perceives, has so pervaded our mode of thinking that it is the subtle and most disintegrating force that is shattering the religious foundations. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... a luxurious home and an idolising husband rather than continue intimate intercourse with the enemy of my religion. This new sort of flattery intoxicated me with its fumes. I recoiled from the thought of shattering the pedestal to which I had found myself elevated. What if I should discover my daughter in one from the touch of whose robe these holy women would recoil as from the rags of a leper! No; it would be impossible for me to own ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a mighty beam of light which sprang from the ground, shattering itself against the roof in countless sparks, falling and flowing all together into a great pool in the rock. Brighter was the light-beam than molten gold, but silent in its rise, and silent in its fall. The sacred stillness of a shrine, a never-broken hush of joy and wonder, filled the cavern. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... between his feet and lurched heavily across the room where it fell hard upon the television set, shattering the glowing screen into a thousand fragments. Simultaneously, Sutter slid forward into the bisected shell as the cone of light ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... sees all things in Divine solution; the visible is lost in the invisible, and nature retires before her God. Surely they are splendid reveries those of the Platonic school; but it is sad to reflect that they have not cast the slightest gleam of light on the dark, frightful, faith-shattering mysteries which perplex all inquirers. The old shadows of sin, death, damnation, evil, and hell, are found to darken the 'ideas' of Plato's world quite as deeply as they do the actualities of this weary, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... floor. It had taken the time that a watch takes to tick. Came the roar of a report again, as Jimmie Dale fired in turn—at the electric-light bulb a few feet away from him on the wall. There was the tinkle of shattering glass—and darkness. Came shouts, cries, a yell from the door from Reddy Mull, a fusillade of shots from Reddy Mull's revolver, the rush of many feet from the pool room—and Jimmie Dale, in the blackness, dropped silently from the window to ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... bull-like roar, the shrill CHEEP-CHEEP-CHEEP of the patrolman's whistle, and a shattering crash as the officer flung his body against the partition—then the bark of a revolver shot, the tinkle of breaking glass, as the man fired through the office window—and past Jimmie Dale, speeding now for the front door, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... only invented, it is very clear that in spite of the War and its shattering way with so many ancient shibboleths the cult of the actor is still strong; for this is the kind of thing that lasted all the way from Hyde Park Corner to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... at Gilgal, he and Saul met no more, though their homes were but a few miles apart, and it must have been difficult to avoid each other. Samuel yearned over the man whom he had learned to love, and it must have been pain to him to see the shattering of the vessel which he had formed. However natural his mourning, and however indicative of his sweet nature, it was wrong, because it showed that he had not yet reconciled himself to God's purpose, though his conduct obeyed. The mourning which submits while it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wills; and the special theme of tragic drama is a struggle necessarily foredoomed to failure because the individual human will is pitted against opposing forces stronger than itself. Tragedy presents the spectacle of a human being shattering himself against insuperable obstacles. Thereby it awakens pity, because the hero cannot win, and terror, because the forces arrayed ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... trenches crept closer and closer to the walls, upon which the heavy artillery now played at short range with deadly effect. Bombs and grenades hissed over the shattering ramparts and burst in the crowded streets; roundshot and grape tore their way through the wooden barracks; while mortars and musketry poured a hail of shell and bullet upon the brave defenders. Nothing could save Louisbourg now ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... their rock-breaking plant, called Saxifraga, or "sassafras." And the further we penetrate into this charmed circle of traditions the more evident does it appear that the power of cleaving rocks or shattering hard substances enters, as a primitive element, into the conception of these treasure-showing talismans. Mr. Baring-Gould has given an excellent account of the rabbinical legends concerning the wonderful schamir, by the aid of which Solomon ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... would pass on his way, shattering the peaceful air at half-minute intervals with his bilingual disharmonies. He was pallid, meagerly built, stoop-shouldered, bristly-haired, pock-marked, and stiff-gaited, with a face which would have been totally insignificant but for an obstinate chin and a pair of velvet-black, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... foreign potentate, or at any rate accept a present which might or might not influence his judgment, A commissioner to Illyria had been suspected of pocketing money offered him by the potentates of that district in 171,[127] and the first hint was given of that shattering of public confidence in the integrity of diplomatists which wrought such havoc in the foreign politics of the period which forms the immediate subject of our work. The system of the Protectorate, which Rome had so widely adopted, with its secret diplomatic dealings ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of pontifical hierarchs, as regards all those profound mysteries which from the beginning have swayed the human heart, sometimes through the light of angelic smiles lifting it upwards to an altitude just beneath the heavens, and sometimes shattering it, with the shock of quaking anguish, down to earth. As it was the function of the hierophant, in the Grecian mysteries, to show the sacred symbols as concrete incarnations of faith, so was it De Quincey's to reveal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... owned that when Bertie Fellowes received this letter, which was neither more nor less than a shattering of all his Christmas hopes and joys, that he fairly broke down, and, hiding his face upon his arms as they rested on his desk, ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... and mouldy precedent that needs shattering—for the coming of our country into its proper station and influence ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... helpless. What of armies and cannon, of navies, of aircraft, when from some unreachable height these monsters within their bulbous machines could drop coldly—methodically—their diminutive bombs. And when each bomb meant shattering destruction; each explosion blasting all within a radius of miles; each followed by the blue blast of fire that melted the twisted framework of buildings and powdered the stones to make of a proud city a desolation of wreckage, black and silent beneath ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... something worse yet for him, or thought he was. He was tired of seeing him simply wander hopelessly on the ocean; he wanted to plague him more. He could do this, he thought, by giving him now and then a little hope and then shattering it and sinking it to the bottom of the sea, and dragging the man's heart to the bottom of the sea, too, with a ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... we live, we see the disintegration of that which Christianity means, the shattering of that brotherly love that makes men nations and nations the children of God. Not without truth did Shylock say of his money that he made it breed. The pieces of silver have bred well; they jingle to-day in the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... neighboring ledges, I gathered a heap of rocks at the cave-entrance. Red-Eye was now several yards beneath me, concealed for the moment by an out-jut of the cliff. As he climbed, his head came into view, and I banged a rock down. It missed, striking the wall and shattering; but the flying dust and grit filled his eyes and he drew back ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... him, was not so fortunate, for he happened to be standing behind— almost in line with Jim—and the tumbler, which missed the latter, struck him with terrific force just above the temple, and, glancing therefrom, struck the window-sash behind, shattering two of the panes to atoms from the force ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... in all the Southland, the queen of a thousand hearts. Agatha Holmes became Mrs. Cannable, and thereby hangs a tale. It would appear, from all the current but unpublished records of social Louisiana, that Agatha had gone about shattering hearts in a most unintentional but effective fashion up to the time Mr. Jimmy Cannable refused to be routed. Certainly it is no blot upon this fair young coquette's fame to admit that she had plighted herself to at least four ardent suitors in days gone by, and it was equally her own affair ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... might exhibit their valour, not by the help of their respective sides, but by a trial of personal strength. The end was that, though the blows rained thick on either side, Athisl prevailed and overthrew Frowin, and won a public victory as well as a duel, breaking up and shattering the Danish ranks in all directions. When he returned to Sweden, he not only counted the slaying of Frowin among the trophies of his valour, but even bragged of it past measure, so ruining the glory of the deed by his wantonness of tongue. For it is sometimes handsomer for deeds of valour ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Easter had broken, and racing clouds, thick as a pall, sped across the sky that had been so blue and so cheerful; a wind screamed all day, now high, now low, shattering the tender flowers of spring, ruffling the Derwent against its current, by which he rode, and dashing spatters of rain now and again on his back, tossing high and wide the branches under which he went, until the ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... depths of Asia, seized upon with a robber's hand, and, lawlessly trampling under foot, administered up to this time the affairs of Greece, after his own lust and will. Needs it was that we, sooner or later, shattering this iron and heavy sceptre, should recover, at the price of life itself (if that were found necessary), our patrimonial heritage, that thus our people might again be gathered to the family of free and self-legislating states. Moving, then, under such impulses, the people of Greece advanced ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... her defences there was one force with which she omitted to reckon and against which she in consequence made no preparation, a force which, nevertheless, was capable of shattering all her ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... The shattering ring of the telephone awoke Heldon Foyle with a start. There was only one place from which he was likely to be rung up at one o'clock in the morning, and he was reaching for his clothes with one ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... the pump gun bellowed in its cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves. Comet turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant—and then the puppy in him conquered. Tail tucked, he ran away from ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... cross, which they accordingly attempted to do. A few yards from the bank the cart stuck on a rock, and whilst in this position the Boer escort poured a volley into it. Poor Elliot was instantly killed, one bullet fracturing his skull, another passing through the back, a third shattering the right thigh, and a fourth breaking the left wrist. The cart was also riddled, but, strange to say, Captain Lambert was untouched, and succeeded in swimming to the further bank, the Boers firing at him ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... Hanno to hold himself in readiness, another to inform him that every one in the white house had gone to rest, and that Hermon was there too. The pirates were to enter the black-bearded Greek's studio. While some were shattering his statues to carry away in sacks the gold and ivory which they contained, others were to force their way into Myrtilus's workroom, which was on the opposite side of the house. There they would find the second ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... setting Arnold and his men had routed a party of Germans, and a wounded German, lying on the ground, shot at Arnold, killing his horse and shattering his leg - the same leg which had ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... young men marching into battle—muddle-headed, sentimental, dangerous and futile hobbledehoys—there will be thousands of sober men braced up to their highest possibilities, intensely doing their best; in the place of charging battalions, shattering impacts of squadrons and wide harvest-fields of death, there will be hundreds of little rifle battles fought up to the hilt, gallant dashes here, night surprises there, the sudden sinister faint gleam of nocturnal bayonets, brilliant guesses that will drop catastrophic ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... an' let auld scores be wiped off in this shattering calamity. Us have differed wheer us could these twoscore years; but theer mustn't be no more ill-will wi' me tremblin' on the lip ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... If we leave scripture and human belief aside, science reveals to us that nature has her catastrophes—that there is just so much of the failed cycle, of the unrecovered, the unbalanced, the incompleted, the fallen-short, in her motions, that the result must be collision, shattering resumption, the rage of unspeakable fire. Our world and all the worlds of the system, are, I suppose, doomed to fall back at length into their parent furnace. Then will come one end and another beginning. There is many an end and many a beginning. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... snarl of rage and hate Buck rose from his chair and sprang clear, his gun flashing to a level with the movement, its savage roar shattering ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Saracen seize his sword; His eyes he oped, and he spake one word— "Thou art not one of our band, I trow," And he clutched the horn he would ne'er forego; On the golden crest he smote him full, Shattering steel and bone and skull, Forth from his head his eyes he beat, And cast him lifeless before his feet. "Miscreant, makest thou then so free, As, right or wrong, to lay hold on me? Who hears it will deem thee a madman born; Behold the mouth of mine ivory horn Broken for thee, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten, Because my heart is pure. The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splintered spear shafts crack and fly, The horse and rider reel; They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And when the tide of combat stands, Perfume and flowers fall in showers, That lightly ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... well he remembered her as she stood there, shattering his life with her cold, light words—a tall, slim girl, in her white dinner dress! She had been very fair then, with a quantity of soft flaxen hair, which shortly after she had taken to dyeing—a thing he had always hated. She had a small, heart-shaped face, so ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... is equally advantageous to concentrate a very powerful artillery-fire upon a single point where it is desired to make a decisive stroke, with a view of shattering the enemy's line to such a degree that he will be unable to withstand an attack upon which the fate of the battle is to turn. I shall at another place have more to say as to the employment of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... artificial creatures called women (with the accent) who dare not be spontaneous, and cannot act independently if they would continue to be admirable in the world's eye, and who for that object must remain fixed on shelves, like other marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... softened more and more, the mire reached to the axles, and the helepolis stopped, leaning over frightfully to one side. The catapult rolled to the edge of the platform, and carried away by the weight of its beam, fell, shattering the lower stories beneath it. The soldiers who were standing on the doors slipped into the abyss, or else held on to the extremities of the long beams, and by their weight increased the inclination of the helepolis, which was ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... have been a match for the best. His guard was strong, his counter was like lightning, he took punishment like a man of iron, and when he could safely close he always brought his lighter antagonist to the ground with a shattering fall. But the one stunning blow which he had courted before he was taught respect for his adversary weighed heavily on him all the time. His senses had lost something of their quickness and his blows of their sting. He was fighting, too, against a man who, of all the boxers ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the door, waiting for a place at dinner, and talking to Mr. Machugh, of the Daily Telegraph. The shell struck him full in the thigh, leaving his left leg hanging only by a piece of flesh, and shattering the right just at the knee. "Hold me up," he said, and did not lose consciousness. We moved him to the hospital, but he died within an hour. I have little doubt that the shells were aimed at the hotel, because the Boers know that Dr. Jameson and Colonel Rhodes are in ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... a pounding, skull-shattering madness closing in on him. This was a joke, of course. No, no joke. A dream then? No, not that either. In only a few split seconds it happened. Tyndall had leapt the rail around the patio, and was streaking ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... death might sweep, swift and shattering, along these electric-lit enclosed spaces where they stood waiting; the great ship was being driven head-long by unseen forces towards an unseen foe. But of that foe, none of the hundreds of men between decks save the straining gunlayers with their eyes at the sighting-telescopes ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... careful who I'm seen goin' into barracks with," he said to himself. "That damn kike may be a German spy or a secret-service officer." A cold chill of terror went over him, shattering his mood of joyous self-satisfaction. His feet slopped in the puddles, breaking through the thin ice, as he walked up the road towards the barracks. He felt as if people were watching him from everywhere ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the delightful entertainments were said to be given, but the only artistes we discovered were a dozen hungry prisoners trying to coax a tune out of a rebellious mouth organ! Our belief in German statements received another shattering blow. During my twelve months in this camp I never caught a glimpse of or heard a note from an eminent German impressario or artiste of any description. All the amusements we ever obtained were due to our own efforts, and I am glad to say that they evidently were vastly superior to any that the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... before, he would have been spared days and weeks of uncertainty and worry. He realized now that he had never felt right, felt happy about that bill. Yet although his bonds were now to be broken, and he was to be free at last, the shattering of his fetters was not to be a pleasant process. He knew Mr. Carter too well to deceive himself into imagining that the affair would pass off lightly. Mr. Carter was a proud man. He would not like having his gift hurled back into his face. Nor would he enjoy being beaten. Greater ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... by far more careless than it is at present, and liable to thousands of interruptions and mal-practices, supporting themselves upon old traditionary usages which required at least half a century, and the shattering everywhere given to old systems by the French Revolution, together with the universal energy of mind applied to those subjects over the whole length and breadth of Christendom, to approach with any effectual reforms. Knowing this, and having myself had ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... this shattering of his last hope. When it was dark he slunk past a farm. Ropes hung over the walls; he pulled one off and hurried to the mountain. The sun was setting behind Jerusalem, over the heights, like a huge, red, lustreless pane of glass. Once more for the last time his eye sought the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... hut, and the light spreads and rests on the hills. Immediately we are deafened by a shattering report close behind us, and starting round, find the long nose of Joey projecting almost over our heads, while the scream of the shell dies away in the distance as it speeds towards the Boer hill. One of the naval officers gives ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... all probably being whirled round and round one of the pools they had passed, like scraps of straw, and the shattering of the raft seemed a certainty; but their big companion was a man of resource. Seating himself upon the edge of the raft as it glided evenly along, he waited with legs extended for the coming contact. His feet touched the rock, and a ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... into the air. Returning to earth with nerve-shattering shock, he whirled suddenly, pitched and bucked, tossed and twisted, all in mad effort. But the weight clung fast. He whirled again, and again leaped, leaped clear of the ground, returning to it this time on stiffened ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... know what one shot costs the king." In Breslau, the Counts von Thiele and Lindner made a terrible fracas, burned down the fine faubourgs, and blew up the powder-magazine, merely in order to veil the disgrace of a hasty capitulation, which enraged the soldiery to such a pitch that, shattering their muskets, they heaped imprecations on their dastard commanders, and, in revenge, plundered the royal stores. Brieg was ceded after a two days' siege, by the Baron von Cornerut. The defence of the strong fortress of Schweidnitz, of such celebrated ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... shivered across the darkness. The dead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, and in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and stood staring at each other, trembling, with ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... quick spring, Kid Wolf had his back against the green-shuttered door. For the first time, his Colts splattered red flame and smoke. There were three distinct reports, but they came so rapidly that they blended into one sullen, ear-shattering roar. He had aimed at the swinging lamps, and they went out so quickly that it seemed they had been extinguished by the force of one giant breath. Glass tinkled on the saloon floor, and all was wrapped ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... struggled, yelled for succor, but before any of us could interpose, the resolute and powerful man in whose hold he writhed and struggled vainly, with the gripe of a master, had thrust him through the opening, his heels, in their upward evolutions, shattering a dozen of the panes as he disappeared from sight below. We all concluded that he was killed. We were in an upper chamber, which I estimated to be twenty or thirty feet from the ground. I was too much shocked for speech, and rushed to the window, expecting to hehold ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... further questioning, no anxious probing, simply her love poured out in fullest measure upon the altar of friendship! And it moved Avery instantly and overwhelmingly, shattering her reserve, sweeping away the stony ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... here we were again miserably disappointed; for, in the succeeding month of May, our sufferings rose even to a much higher pitch than they had ever yet done, whether we consider the violence of the storms, the shattering of our sails and rigging, or the diminution and weakening of our crew by deaths and sickness, and the even threatening prospect of our utter destruction. All this will be sufficiently evident, from the following circumstantial ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... the second time, he heard them, Hogarth dashed the picture which he held to the ground, shattering glass and frame: which meant that, then and there, he washed his hands of the world and its wagging; meant also ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... exhausted, the regiment at last reached the Baltimore & Ohio station. The fight continued without pause. Volleys of stones were hurled into the cars, shattering windows and paneling. The troops were ordered to lie down on the floors and keep their heads below the line of the windows. Maddened men pressed to the car windows, cursing and yelling their defiance. For half a mile along the tracks the crowd struggled and shouted, piling the rails with new obstructions ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... our billet and had wrecked the beautiful mansion of the French mayor of the town. It also wounded some American soldiers in a nearby barracks. Another bomb landed between two buildings at Hexo Barracks, killing three of our boys and one French poilu, besides wounding many and shattering the buildings. Four horses were killed by pieces of shrapnel, and when looking over the scene of destruction the next morning I noticed a hole, clean cut, through a half-inch steel tire on a nearby cart. It had been cut by a piece of shrapnel about an inch long which had ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... damnable persecution? A voice within cried aloud: "Why suffer it all? Why bear the brunt of other men's adventure?" Five thousand pounds. Was it a fair price for breaking one's body against rocks, for shattering one's ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... upon the door jamb, shattering it to pieces. The whole guard flung themselves against the door, shoved it shut, ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... do not wed for love. What! you take advantage of my misfortune, the shattering of my dreams, to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... can ruin batteries in a number of undetectable ways: Take the valve cap off a cell, and drive a screw driver slantwise into the exposed water vent, shattering the plates of the cell; no damage will show when you put the cap back on. Iron or copper filings put into the cells i.e., dropped into the acid, will greatly shorten its life. Copper coins or a few pieces of iron will accomplish ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... shattering experience of the storm, Columbus, although he did not return to San Domingo, remained for some time on the coast of Espanola repairing his ships and resting his exhausted crews. There were threatenings of another storm ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... broken ground, where, unknown to our scouts, a party of rebels lay concealed. As soon as the flying rebel was in safety the Boers opened fire, shooting Peter Falla, the trooper, twice through the arm, one bullet entering a few inches below the shoulder, the other shattering the bone a little way above the elbow. The corporal got away safely, taking his wounded comrade with him. Our fellows rode out and swept the veldt for miles, but saw no more of the enemy. So ended what has grandiloquently been termed "an Australian engagement," which, I may add, is just the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... Jason, followed close behind him, greatly interested by this new turn of affairs. Ahead of them the other slaves scattered and from their midst burst another armed and armored figure. They churned towards each other at top speed and Jason hoped for a shattering crash when they met. However they slowed before they hit and began circling each ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... heads are cut when the bulk of the seed is brown or at least dark colored. The stalks are cut carefully, to avoid shattering the seed off. They are laid upon sheets of duck or canvas and threshed very lightly, at once, to remove only the ripest seed. Then the stalks are spread thinly on shutters or sheets in the sun for two days ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... the bow and its failure came a fraction of a second too late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, and the horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact, pain washing over him in a ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... ball through the head by ACCIDENT, which might have had the beneficial effect of ridding the traders from a spy. A boy was sitting upon the gunwale of one of the boats, when a bullet suddenly struck him in the head, shattering the skull to atoms. NO ONE HAD DONE IT. The body fell into the water, and the fragments of the skull were scattered ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... be reckoned with, of course, the possible shattering of all his plans by some unimagined misfortune. But the man who waits until he is secure against the unknown never discovers ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... None knows the secret, cherished, perilous, The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet, Heart-shattering secret of His ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... While having the damage repaired, I saw Lieutenant Immelmann make a pretty attack on an Englishman, who tried to fly away. I quickly went up to support Immelmann, but the enemy was gone by the time I got there. In the meantime, Immelmann had forced his opponent to land. He had wounded him, shattering his left arm—Immelmann had had good luck. Two days before I had flown with him in a Fokker; that is, I did the piloting and he was only learning. The day before was the first time he had made a flight alone, and was able to land only after a lot of trouble. He had never ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... image. To the casual observer, the large majority of the community, these three phases, at whose vagaries many laugh, and over whose consequences millions mourn, comprehend intoxication and its results, from the filling of the cup to its shattering fall from the nerveless hand, and this is the end of the matter. Would to God that it were! for at that it would be bad enough. But it is not, for wife, children and friends must suffer and drink the cup of trouble and sorrow to ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Milan they broke the journey once more. Herminia had never yet gone further afield from England than Paris; and this first glimpse of a wider world was intensely interesting to her. Who can help being pleased, indeed, with that wonderful St. Gothard—the crystal green Reuss shattering itself in white spray into emerald pools by the side of the railway; Wasen church perched high upon its solitary hilltop; the Biaschina ravine, the cleft rocks of Faido, the serpentine twists and turns of the ramping line as it mounts or descends its spiral zigzags? ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... overhang the waters, was broken by their incessant lashing for century upon century. The waves, like furious blue bulls, charged, frothing with anger, against the rock, wearing deep caverns, which were prolonged upward in the form of vertical cracks. This age-long battle was destroying the coast, shattering its stony armor, scale by scale. Colossal wall-like fragments loosened. They first separated by forming an imperceptible crevice which grew and grew with the passing of centuries. The natural wall leaned for years and years above the waves, which beat furiously at its ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the gray rock mightily he smites, Shattering it more than I can tell; the sword But grinds. It breaks not—nor receives a notch, And upward springs more dazzling in the air. When sees the Count Rolland his sword can never break, Softly within ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... evidently thought that he had crushed his adversary by this shattering blow; but it was not so, for instead of exhibiting any surprise, Mascarin's smile was as bland ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... walked, I learned some particulars of that terrible device the Lewis gun; how that it could spout bullets at the rate of six hundred per minute; how, by varying pressures of the trigger, it could be fired by single rounds or pour forth its entire magazine in a continuous, shattering volley and how it weighed no more ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... George lingered downstairs, waiting for a better opportunity to introduce his own subject, but when he heard dismaying sounds from the kitchen he gave up. There was a crash, then a shower of crashes; falling tin clamoured to be heard above the shattering of porcelain; and over all rose Fanny's wail of lamentation for the treasures saved from the sale, but now lost forever to the "kitchenette." Fanny was nervous indeed; so nervous that she could not ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... his finger accidentally pulled the trigger, and instantly there was a tremendous report, the noise being increased by the shattering of the window ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and suspended her anger. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... shown her and that she had only been able to protest against. The thought of Franklin came hardly at all, though the truths he had put before her lingered in a haunting sense of disappointment with herself; she had failed Franklin in deeper, more subtle ways than in the mere shattering of his hopes. ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... moved through their routine duties, waiting for the orders that would bring that well-known, sickening, savage tightening of their courage and send them, laden like beasts of burden, up once more to that hell of blood and mud, of nerve-shattering shell, of blinding glare and ear-bursting roar of gun fire, and, worse than all, to the place where, crouching in the farcical deceptive shelter of the sandbagged trench, their fingers gripping into the steel of their ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... at first almost staggering. It was as though the high gods had shot down a bolt from heaven, shattering his world, and leaving him alone in Chaos. They had taken him at his word—had registered on the instant his impious declaration. It WAS the end of everything. She was to quit.... He had said, the sooner the better.... Well—he ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... not approve of educated women then?" Miss Quincey was quite shaken by this cataclysmal outbreak, this overturning and shattering of the old beacons ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... set out to do and the result is peace and happiness. I was sentimentalizing, no doubt, for I have never been able to live in the country. But as I stood there, looking back, the spell was broken. I heard a roar of a horn, one of those ear-shattering inventions that paralyze one's faculties, a grinding of gears and a slither of rubber tyres, and then the yell of a human voice. As I turned to jump I was nearly blinded by two enormous headlights. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... rung hastily down, Mr. Laurance leaned from his box, and hurled upon the stage a large crown of white roses, which struck the shoulder of the prostrate figure, and shattering, scattered their snowy petals over the marble ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... fleets. It ignores the fundamental fact that battles are only the means of enabling you to do that which really brings wars to an end-that is, to exert pressure on the citizens and their collective life. "After shattering the hostile main army," says Von der Goltz, "we still have the forcing of a peace as a separate and, in certain circumstances, a more difficult task ... to make the enemy's country feel the burdens of war with such weight ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... shot, With unabating fury sent From battery to battlement; And thunder-like the pealing din Rose from each heated culverin; And here and there some crackling dome Was fired before the exploding bomb; And as the fabric sank beneath The shattering shell's volcanic breath, In red and wreathing columns flashed The flame, as loud the ruin crashed, Or into countless meteors driven, Its earth-stars melted into heaven— Whose clouds that day grew doubly dun, Impervious to the hidden sun, With volumed ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in the direction of the sound and disarm his assailant. That was the reason he had leaped into the street. But the second shot was better aimed and the bullet crashed into his upper arm and shoulder, shattering the bone and producing an exceedingly painful ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... cry, And back its echoes shake; And, shouting peals of laughter, The trumpet rushes after, And cries: Wild spirit awake! Amid them flute-tones fly, Like arrows, keen and numberless; And with bloodhound yell Pipes the onset swell; And violins and violoncellos, Creaking, clattering, Shrieking, shattering; And horns whence thunder bellows; To leave the victim slumberless, And drag forth prisoned madness, And cruelly murder all quiet and ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild screams of the ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... directions, took from his breast a miniature that hung round it; but, on examination, it proved that the bullet had passed directly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the woman's face it ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not need any advice from me (which, indeed, he would utterly disdain) as to the lethal weapons which should form his battery; but if the wayfarer be a humble performer who has never slain anything more formidable than a wary old stag, or more nerve-shattering than a meteoric cock pheasant rising clamorously from behind a turnip, he may not be too proud to learn that he will find an ordinary "fowling piece" the most useful weapon which he can take with him. If his gun is not choked, he should be provided ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... so elated with this shattering escapade that a week after—on the occasion of another row, in which I pointed out that he was the most selfish man in the world—I heard him whistling under my bedroom window at midnight. Afraid lest he should wake my parents, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... his parents for this, it is a shattering experience for him to find that the twofold support of his existence is no longer holding together. He wants and needs not his mother or his father, nor just his mother and his father, but his two parents love-linked together as the one source of steadiness in ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... on a clear day every object is plainly discerned. Here even better views of the Angel Plateau may be obtained than from Yavapai Point, and an excellent outlook over the narrow break in the great wall, where the shattering of the strata and the deposition of talus and vegetable matter made possible the building of the zigzag portion of the trail near the top. The faulting of the strata is clearly seen, and the observer will not fail to note that the strata of the left arm of El Tovar Amphitheatre ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... speculate upon whose dog that was, and whether that was a crow or a man in the dim moor,—we thought of other things. That voice, that face; those great, simple, living thoughts; those floods of resistless eloquence; that piercing, shattering ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... vibration, varying with their distance from the globe; our plane motor racing and actually in contact with the globe, can set up a tremendous vibration by its great motor speed. If we can vibrate the globe up to its shattering point ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... deafening shots. There was smoke, voices, people running in every direction. More gunfire. Glass shattering. Furniture ...
— The Observers • G. L. Vandenburg
... which the tardy builder knows nothing. As the lightning scorns the oak, as the fire triumphs over the venerable pile, as the swollen river scoffs at the P. W. D., while arch after arch tumbles into its gurgling whirlpools, so the Dhobie, dashing your cambric and fine linen against the stones, shattering a button, fraying a hem, or rending a seam at every stroke, feels a triumphant contempt for the miserable creature whose plodding needle and thread put the garment together. This feeling is the germ from which the Dhobie has ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... given above, and as will be shown in detail later, in the recital of the actual progress of the fighting. Important as was this movement, however, it was the least of the three elements in General von Moltke's plan for the shattering of the great defense ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... ending. It is only when we have realized all that her husband was to her that we can measure how fearful was the blow to her loving heart when he who was her pride and her constant companion was laid low. We may well feel what a shattering it brought to all that hitherto had enriched her life, and how very desolate her position became when she was left in loneliness on the throne, a widow separated by her queendom from many of those supports which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... and looked in the direction I was told. And there, rising suddenly out of the mist, shattering it, I saw great, gray ships—warships—British battleships and cruisers. There they were, some of the great ships that are the steel wall around Britain that holds her safe. My heart leaped with joy and pride at the sight of them, those great, gray guardians of the British ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... turmoil of shattering explosions, tossing air-currents and drifting, acrid smoke, he became conscious of a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... and half asleep in the May sunlight. He was walked up like a partridge, and he turned to do battle for his life. Bukta made no motion to raise his rifle, but kept his eyes on Chinn, who met the shattering roar of the charge with a single shot—it seemed to him hours as he sighted—which tore through the throat, smashing the backbone below the neck and between the shoulders. The brute couched, choked, and fell, and before Chinn knew well what had happened ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her Pisans—her Florentines,—receiving, resisting, and reigning over all: pillaging the Saracens of their marbles—binding the French bishops in silver chains;—shattering the towers of German tyranny into small pieces,—building with strange jewellery the belfry tower for newly- conceived Christianity;—and, in sacred picture, and sacred song, reaching the height, among nations, most passionate, and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin |
