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Spectacular   /spɛktˈækjələr/   Listen
Spectacular

adjective
1.
Sensational in appearance or thrilling in effect.  Synonyms: dramatic, striking.  "A dramatic pause" , "A spectacular display of northern lights" , "It was a spectacular play" , "His striking good looks always created a sensation"
2.
Characteristic of spectacles or drama.
3.
Having a quality that thrusts itself into attention.  Synonyms: outstanding, prominent, salient, striking.  "A new theory is the most prominent feature of the book" , "Salient traits" , "A spectacular rise in prices" , "A striking thing about Picadilly Circus is the statue of Eros in the center" , "A striking resemblance between parent and child"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spectacular" Quotes from Famous Books



... college, where the latter had been prominent both because of the brilliance of his wardrobe and the reputed size of his father's steadily accumulating resources. Since that time seven-figure fortunes such as the younger Allison had inherited, had become too general to be any longer spectacular. But Dexter Allison's garments had always retained their insistent note. Hunter himself had sold Allison the ground upon which the stucco house stood; he had heartily agreed that it was an ideal spot for a loafing place—and the fishing was good, too! Now whenever Caleb ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... raw materials and fuels. Self-sufficient in rice, Japan must import about 50% of its requirements of other grain and fodder crops. Japan maintains one of the world's largest fishing fleets and accounts for nearly 15% of the global catch. Overall economic growth has been spectacular: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s and 1980s. Economic growth slowed markedly in 1992 largely because of contractionary domestic policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. At the same time, the stronger ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... at the cadet from under the most spectacular pair of eyebrows in the Service. "Cadet Grayson," he ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth

... which never fails. A priest with a good stand on the shore of the Ganges is much better off than the sweeper of the best crossing in London. A good stand is worth a world of money. The holy proprietor of it sits under his grand spectacular umbrella and blesses people all his life, and collects his commission, and grows fat and rich; and the stand passes from father to son, down and down and down through the ages, and remains a permanent and lucrative estate in the family. As Mr. Parker suggests, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... anxious as to how things were going; to plan ways of making a million dollars and not have the plans seem fantastic—all these made it interesting to overwork, and hypnotized Carl into a feeling of responsibility which was less spectacular than flying before thousands, but more in accordance with the spirit of the ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... me another fly?" asked the Chemist. The Very Young Man hastened to do so. "The second demonstration, gentlemen," said the Chemist, "is less spectacular, but far more pertinent than the one you have just witnessed." He took the fly by the wings, and prepared another lump of sugar, sprinkling a crushed pill from ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... mate. Two years before, Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North

... now I pray your particular attention, Sir JOHN, as this is the best thing in my play—it is a spectacular effect called ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... and then he sat down to his work again; and when he was tired with writing, his wife took the pen and wrote from his dictation. As they wrought on, they lost the sense, if they ever had it, of a fellow creature inside of the figure of a spectacular defaulter which grew from their hands; and they enjoyed the impersonality which enables us to judge and sentence one another in this world, and to do justice, as we say. It is true that Pinney, having seen Northwick's home, and faced his elderly, invalid daughter, was moved to use him ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... can prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity—for a nativity; With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... interest of the spiritual aspects of her work submerged the afflictions of her body was seen when the first baptismal service and communion at Use took place. With her dread of the spectacular she did not make the event known, but the little native church was crowded, men and women squatting on the floor, and the mothers with babies on the verandah. Mr. Cruickshank conducted the service. Mary took a "creepie" stool—her mother's footstool of old—and sat down by the young communicants ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... through the able work of her generals, and she forgave Potemkin a thousand insults and unblushing robberies in view of his successful statesmanship. Potemkin possessed, in addition to his ability as a statesman, the faculty of a spectacular artist, and arranged a show for the empress which stands unrivalled amid the triumphs of the stage. It is the tale of this spectacle ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... both on account of the circumstances that preceded it and the events which speedily followed, and threw a light upon it that gave it a spectacular importance. The city journals made a feature of it. They summoned their best artists to illustrate it, and illuminate it in pen-and-ink, half-tones, startling colors, and photographic reproductions, sketches theatrical, humorous, and poetic, caricatures, pictures ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a flotilla of armored aeroplanes provided with machine guns has been organized to attack the German aeroplanes that fly over Paris. Spectacular sights are thus in ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they divorce ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... fewer than eight in number and the crowd was with them. Waters's face was dark and calm and his movements had the deliberate quiet of purpose. Another instant and Nikolaieff would have been gladdened and scandalized by something much more spectacular than a pogrom. The leading istvostchik, still pointing and bellowing, was inviting disaster; when from behind him, ploughing through the onlookers', came the overdue ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... paled into insignificance compared with the spectacular debut of the minister's wife as a writer and embellisher of Christmas cards, two at least having been seen at the local milliner's store. How many she had composed, and how many of them (said Mrs. Popham) might have been rejected, nobody ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... entertaining yarns, he must restrain their too ambitious experience, must protect them from their own foolhardiness. He must have the charity to forbear deriding their stupidity. He must be as courageous and resourceful as the old-time guides, though his trials may not be so spectacular. A guide soon plumbs a man's character and fathoms ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... amended. "And it won't be spectacular, if we can help it. Besides, this east-end affair is only a preliminary. A little later on, if our tackle doesn't break, we shall land the really big fish for which this is ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... electricity than Dufay had been able to do with the rubbed tube, and so equipped, the two German professors were able to generate electric sparks and jets of fire in a most startling manner. Bose in particular had a love for the spectacular, which he turned to account with his new electrical machine upon many occasions. On one of these occasions he prepared an elaborate dinner, to which a large number of distinguished guests were invited. Before the arrival of the company, however, Bose insulated the great banquet-table ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... lordly in a disordered bed, smoked his calabash pipe beside a disordered breakfast tray, fetched him by the Wilbur twin, and luxuriated in the merely Sunday—and not Sabbath—edition of a city paper shrieking with black headlines and spectacular with coloured pictures; a pleasing record of crimes and disasters and secrets of the boudoir, the festal diversions of the opulent, the minor secrets of astronomy, woman's attire, baseball, high art, and facial creams. As a high priest of the most liberal of all arts, Dave scanned ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... supernatural change of nature, but to turn round, abandon all that hindered, and go in the right direction—go home—was the repentance which he required. Probably it was not unique teaching: it is very hard to obey, and it makes no spectacular demands. Its only claim to acceptance is its truth. It did not conquer the world. Nor did Jesus—the Jesus of history—think that it would do so. "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto Life, and few there ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... The most spectacular romance of English history—the story of beautiful, proud, ill-fated Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth. "There is no moment when the long, thrilling tale, well constructed, well characterized, crammed with rapid ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... attended the Ulster Convention of 1892 were persuaded that no political meeting could ever be more inspiring; but many of them lived to acknowledge that it was far surpassed at Craigavon in 1911. The Craigavon meeting, though in some respects as important as any of the series, was, from a spectacular point of view, much less imposing than the assemblage which listened to Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... should be carried out quietly without fuss, feathers or publicity. Shun the spectacular and remember it is the morality of the boy and girl that is in question. Keep away from muck-raking, be constructive and pure and business-like in the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander

... to complain. Slaves have no relations. Accordingly the Soudanese were shipped off to Vera Cruz, and there fought for the French. When the war came to an end the remaining Africans were brought back to Paris to grace Napoleon's spectacular effort to get out of his failure. Just as Napoleon gilded the dome of the Invalides when he came home from Russia in order to keep people's tongues off Borodino, so Napoleon III showed a sample of his black contingent on the Boulevards, and awarded Gifoon, the leading black hero, a medal given ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... Perhaps it is for that reason, that it is obscure and dull; basic work is apt to be so. The spectacular success of an individual in any walk of life is often but the crowning of the unrecognized, and often ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... and Jim Cronin was one of the most spectacular and thrilling events Freeman's Falls had ever witnessed. That two such notorious criminals should have been captured through the efforts of a young boy was almost inconceivable to the police, especially to the State detectives whom ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... than condemned him to live a lie to the end of his days. No doubt she regarded it as a momentary act of expiation. That's the way her romances taught her to look at loveless marriage—as something spectacular, transitory, instead of the enduring, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... deserters. Later accounts of our American soldiers who were ambushed and captured, together with statements that appeared in Bolshevik newspapers placed the losses very high. The old Russian general massed up in all over seven thousand men in this spectacular and well-nigh successful thrust. And his losses from killed in action, wounded, missing and frost-bitten were admitted by the Bolshevik reports ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... buildings," and, with these before him as models, he lined the river with rows of beautiful edifices,—evidently, from the description given, much resembling those lying along the Golden Horn at Constantinople; if not in quality, at least in general spectacular arrangement. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... built the first play-house in London, until 1642, when the theatres were formally closed by act of Parliament, the drama dealt with stately speeches and with high astounding terms. It was played upon a platform, and had to appeal more to the ears of the audience than to their eyes. Spectacular elements it had to some extent,—gaudy, though inappropriate, costumes, and stately processions across the stage; but no careful imitation of the actual facts of life, no illusion of reality in the representment, could possibly ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the overcoat, and invested the proceeds in a five-day's spree, in the closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high, spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweller's show-window in an attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers, the other he projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to soothe him. The victim of Beasley's charity and the officer were then borne ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... John Jones opened in New York, in June, 1765, and the Vauxhall Gardens, opened by Mr. Samuel Francis, in June, 1769, were planned more or less after their English prototypes. Out-of-doors concerts were their chief musical features, fireworks their spectacular, while the serving of refreshments was relied on as the principal source of profit. Richmond Hill had in its palmy days been the villa home of Aaron Burr, and its fortunes followed the descending scale like those of its once illustrious master. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... His downfall was spectacular. In his enthusiasm for the part he played, he had erred to the extent of delivering a blow in Doggott's face more forcible, probably, than he had intended it to be. Promptly he landed sprawling on the station platform and, in the sight of a multitude of natives, but the moment gone ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... costume, much of which the student regards as superfluous and inappropriate. An accepted tradition of the modern stage ordains that every revival of a Shakespearean play at a leading theatre shall base some part of its claim to public favour on its spectacular magnificence. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... the packing litter and the tall Irishman in the center of it wearily mopping his forehead. It was impossible to locate the crags he must have leaped to reach his spectacular decision. They ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... down on their neighbors with Grecian scorn. The ego was less prominently developed; the necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught. Their records display less of brilliancy, but more of patient persistency, than those of Greece, less of spectacular individualism, more of truly patriotic self-suppression. In Rome, even more than in Sparta, the "State" was everything. During the early days men found their highest glory in making their city glorious; their proudest boast was to be "citizens ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... Kingsland Court, that same sultry, oppressive midsummer night a little third-rate theater on the Surrey side of London was crowded to overflowing. There was a grand spectacular drama, full of transformation scenes, fairies, demons, spirits of air, fire, and water; a brazen orchestra blowing forth, and steam, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... much more spectacular disease to be cited, —a relatively infrequent but well-understood condition called myxoedema, which occurs mainly in women and is also due to a deficiency in the thyroid secretion. As a result the patient, who may have been a bright, capable, energetic person, full of the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... than to ours perhaps, the probability being slight that we should deem it desirable to adopt many of their methods. Nor will the eating and drinking of the nations be so variously illustrated as in the cordon of restaurants that so largely contributed to the spectacular effect at Paris. The French genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... machine guns at Gravelotte." The Cavalry of the world, famous everywhere for an esprit-du-corps which looks haughtily down on all other arms of the service, were too deeply absorbed in the merits of saber vs. revolver, and in the proper length of their spectacular plumes, to give a second thought to this new, untried, and therefore worthless weapon. The world's Infantry, resting upon the assumption that it is the backbone of all armies, and the only real, reliable fighting body under all conditions, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... suggestion with a delight that drowned Lorelei's frightened protest; then, as the idea grew in his mind, he joyously appropriated it as his own. A mere proposal of marriage and an acceptance were more or less hackneyed; the event contained no elements of the spectacular; but to follow it promptly with a midnight ceremony impressed him as a grandiose achievement and one calculated to shed luster upon his adventurous career. "That's my idea of romance—that's the way I like to do things," he declared. "We'll be married ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... the world, is shrinking. This was strikingly brought home that afternoon. A few short hours of shifting panorama, a varying foreground of valley that narrowed or widened like the flow of the stream that had made it, peaks that opened and shut on one another like the changing flies in some spectacular play, and we had compassed two days' worth of old-time travel when a man made every foot of ground his own, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... it might have been. But Meyerbeer and Scribe care nothing for that; such is not the effect either felt by the audience or intended by the poet. The latter had nothing higher in his mind than a grand spectacular effect, which may be omitted without the rest of the drama being any the worse, and the result is in the worst sense theatrical, but ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... Sisters" pursued its spectacular course; Ione Burke, Polly Marshall, and Mrs. Vining were in the cast; tableau succeeded tableau; "I wish I were in Dixie," was sung, and the popular burlesque ended in the celebrated scene, "The Birth of the Butterfly in the Bower of Ferns," with the entire company kissing their finger-tips ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... fortune there,—why should not he have the same good luck? He had unbounded confidence in his own ability, and what increased his hopes of a Parisian success, was that he had already completed two acts of a grand historic opera, "Rienzi," based on Bulwer's novel, and written in the sensational and spectacular style of Meyerbeer. He supposed that all he had to do was to go to Paris, finish this opera, get it accepted through the influence of his countryman and colleague, Meyerbeer, and—wake up some morning famous and wealthy. He was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... no part, in power and reach. From the first clinch, when Dempsey began that series of terrible body jabs that broke down the Frenchman's energy and speed, the goose was cooked. There was nothing poetic or glamorous about those jabs; they were not spectacular, not particularly swift; but they were terribly definite. Half a dozen of them altered the scene strangely. The smiling face became ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... his attention. It dawned upon him that the little play was being overheard, whether by spies or conspirators he knew not. Resentment sprang up in his breast and gave birth to a daring that was as spectacular as it was confounding. With long, noiseless strides, he reached the door before Beverly could interpose. She half started from her chair, her eyes wide with dismay, her lips parted, but his hand was already clutching the curtain. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... De Stancy party had vanished. As a non-participant in its profits and losses, fevers and frenzies, it had that stage effect upon his imagination which is usually exercised over those who behold Chance presented to them with spectacular piquancy without advancing far enough in its acquaintance to suffer from its ghastly reprisals and impish tricks. He beheld a hundred diametrically opposed wishes issuing from the murky intelligences around a table, and spreading down across each other upon the figured diagram in their ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... maltreatment; when she has done hundreds of other things—who counts her love? She is guilty of crime; she is granted to have had a motive; and she is punished. Has enough been done when the jury acquits a jealous murderess, or a thrower of vitriol? Such cases are spectacular, but no attention is paid to the love of the woman in the millions of little cases where love, and love only, was the impulse, and the statute sentencing her to so and so ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... the letter she herself had written offering herself and her love and faith for his taking. At first these things had hurt her. But these gifts of his were beginning to make her understand his silence. Selfish and spectacular all his life at his death Alan Massey had been surpassingly generous and simple. He had chosen to bequeath his love to her not as an obsession and a bondage but as an elemental thing ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... these nothings which, as Mr Powell told us when we first met him, shore people are so prone to start a row about, and nurse into hatred from an idle sense of wrong, from perverted ambition, for spectacular reasons too. There are on earth no actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... also did not take these things very seriously. A new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off with a certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... people into direct subjection to the Throne, and to establish the Imperial right of ownership in all the land throughout the empire. What these changes signified and with what tact and wisdom the reformers proceeded, will be clearly understood as the story unfolds itself. Spectacular effect was enlisted as the first ally. A coronation ceremony of unprecedented magnificence took place. High officials, girt with golden quivers, stood on either side of the dais forming the throne, and all the great functionaries—omi, muraji, and miyatsuko—together ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and glimmerings of the same to many a community. But I pass to less spectacular matters, continuing to ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... forcibly to mind when we view the turf activities of an earlier generation as compared with those more modern, because nowadays the game is played differently all around and doesn't look the same from the viewpoint of one who loved the spectacular and quaint figures that so distinguished what we might call the Victorian Era ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... A spectacular show occurred when the offensive began and the enemy observation balloons, hitherto practically unmolested, were attacked by our airmen with some new incendiary device with the result that nine were brought down in a few minutes in flames and the others were quickly ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... and by education; and although military service in Mexico was little more than a form of banditry, nevertheless Longorio had developed a certain genius for leadership, nor was there any doubt as to his spectacular courage. In some ways he was a second Cid—another ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... The most remunerative spectacular representation is what the most celebrated colonial impresario, Mr. R S. Smythe, calls a 'one-man show.' Mr. Archibald Forbes and Mr. R. A. Proctor both made fabulous sums out of their trip to the colonies; and ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... Charley, but without success. Either direct sale or horse-trade proved useless. Charley liked Denver too well to put up with less interesting owners so Charley always came back, and nearly always accompanied by profanity and threats. Charley was spectacular, and a monstrous care but Denver ended by becoming fond of the nuisance. He would miss the radiant, stupid and embarrassingly ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen

... impressively. Part of this training may be obtained at schools of dramatic expression which are often connected with conservatories of music. The people of the stage work harder than the average trained or untrained worker. Their hours are longer and they endure more discomforts. There are few spectacular successes, and still fewer genuine reputations for genius in dramatic interpretation. Seasonal unemployment is prevalent in this occupation. Salaries seem to be large, but very few are large in reality. If we reckon the number of weeks ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy

... woman consumer because he is attempting to satisfy a dealer's demand for "flashy" rather than practical selling points and, therefore, loses sight of the value to him of a perfect functioning of his device. Exclusive points of design that can be used for a spectacular demonstration have been up to this time perhaps the strongest of selling aids; but manufacturers and dealers alike are beginning to realize that they have an element of danger. Thus, the confetti test for vacuum cleaners was an unfortunate ...
— The Consumer Viewpoint • Mildred Maddocks

... with a sense of the irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He was still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in life. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre. "I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting? What ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, Monsieur, but surely you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... out of sight. "We'll git there, an' when we does we'll mak' one fair show down," and thereupon Jefferson restrained his steed to a long swinging run which told off the miles without making him turn a hair until Kilton Hall was in sight. Then the dusky actor and his mount prepared to make their spectacular entre. Pulling up at the roadside Jefferson threw his cap upon the ground, twisted his tie awry, and let fly the belt of his riding blouse, then dismounting, he caught up a few handfuls of dust and promptly transformed big bay Jumbo into as disreputable looking a horse as dust rubbed upon his ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... Jesus was born as other human beings are born, and looked just like a human child. No one seeing him could have guessed that a unique birth had ruptured the continuity of nature and brought a divine Man into the world. There was no glory streaming from his person, and no spectacular display of pageantry and pomp such as attended the birth of a Caesar. The Son of Man did not come with observation, but stole into the world silently and unseen. If we could have gazed upon the Christ-child ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... was in some respects the most important, certainly the most pleasantly exciting, in Mark Twain's life. It was the year in which he entered fully into the publishing business and launched one of the most spectacular of all publishing adventures, The Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant. Clemens had not intended to do general publishing when he arranged with Webster to become sales-agent for the Mississippi book, and later general agent for Huck Finn's adventures; he had intended only to handle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and that I tried to reproduce what I saw.' But in the play itself this intention comes and goes; and, while some of it reminds one of Salammbo in its attempt to treat remote ages realistically, other parts are given up wholly to the exposition of theories, and yet others to a kind of spectacular romance, after the cheap method of George Ebers and the German writers of historical fiction. The satire is more serious, the criticism of ideas more fundamental than anything in The League of Youth; but, as in almost the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... [cheers,] and the new armies, which have lately been under the critical scrutiny of skilled observers, are fast realizing all our most sanguine hopes. A war carried on upon this gigantic scale and under conditions for which there is no example in history is not always or every day a picturesque or spectacular affair. Its operations are of necessity in appearance slow and dragging. Without entering into strategic details, I can assure the committee that with all the knowledge and experience which we have now ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Spectacular charities lured her from the Plaza to Sherry's, from Sherry's to the St. Regis; church work beguiled her; women's suffrage, led daintily in a series of circles by Fashion and Wealth, enlisted her passive ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... was the inventor of a new school of detection of crime. The system came in with him, and it may go out with him for lack of a man of his genius to perpetuate it. He insisted that there was nothing spectacular or romantic in the pursuit of the criminal, or, at least, that there should be nothing of the sort. And he was especially disgusted when anyone referred to him as "a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... the beginning of that brilliantly spectacular series of events destined so soon to make Paris the Mecca of the world, there sat at table, in a little, obscure cabaret of the gay city, a group of persons who seemed to have chosen that spot for purposes ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... own way. She learned the adjuncts of black coffee and hard crackers. She even learned to criticise a claret, and once, with Harlson, she tested a pousse cafe, but only once. He didn't approve of it, he said, for ladies. And, besides, a pousse cafe was not of merit in itself. It was but a thing spectacular. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... close relation between the accent of the verse and the music. Gluck was one of the most fervent disciples of this system, but Orphee, as we know, was derived from Orfeo. The question was whether he could even think of suppressing this spectacular chorus with its amazing strength which was one of the principal reasons for the work's success. Unfortunately the music of the chorus was moulded on the Italian text, and each verse ended with the accent on the antepenult, which occurs frequently in German and Italian, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... story of Gaston de Blondeville is tedious, the characters are shadowy and unreal, and we become, as the Ettric Shepherd remarked, in Noctes Ambrosianae, "somewhat too hand and glove with his ghostship"; yet, regarded simply as a spectacular effect, it is not without indications of skill and power. Miss Mitford based a drama on it, but it never attained the popularity of Mrs. Radcliffe's other novels. It was published when her reputation ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... Americans would not be permitted to start a hospital of their own in Archangel. The Russian sisters who owned the building were interested observers as to the outcome of this clash in authority. It was settled one morning about ten o'clock in a spectacular manner much to the satisfaction of the Americans and Russians. Captain Wynn of the American Red Cross came to the assistance of Captain Hall, supplying the American flag and helping raise it over the building and dared the British to take it down. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... we have true sympathy and not just sentiment. It is not so difficult to find out. We can test ourselves quickly enough by examining our giving. Do we give only when we are asked? Do we yield to spectacular appeals or only to those that we have examined and found good? Do we put the spiritual interests of humanity first? Is there any appreciable amount of quiet spontaneous giving which is known to no one? Do we prefer to ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... place it to his own satisfaction. It might be because of Bolton's reputation as a woodsman; it might be because of Dick Herron's spectacular service to Haukemah in the instance of the bear; it might be that careful talk had not had its due effect in convincing the Indians that the journey looked merely to the establishment of new winter posts; Sam was not disinclined to attribute it to pernicious activity on the part of the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... the writer's very limited knowledge of the limitations of the photoplay stage; an intense desire to be original; and the fact that, having seen in the pictures themselves so many evidences that the manufacturers do not let the question of expense stand in the way of attaining spectacular and realistic effects, they go blindly ahead and introduce scenes to take which would so enormously run up the cost of producing the picture that the expense involved would be out of all proportion to the value of the scene as a part of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... the People Act of 1867.*—After a decade of spectacular propaganda Chartism collapsed, without having attained tangible results. None the less, the day was not long postponed when the forces of reform, sobered and led by practical statesmen, were enabled to realize one after another of their fundamental purposes. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... San Francisco for weeks so as not to miss the scheduled sailing-date. They departed on the Energon on June 15; and while they were on the sea, on the way to Palgrave Island, Goliah performed another spectacular feat. Germany and France were preparing to fly at each other's throats. Goliah commanded peace. They ignored the command, tacitly agreeing to fight it out on land where it seemed safer for the belligerently inclined. Goliah set the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... for celebrating his emancipation in some spectacular manner; but I sent him away alone to explode his emotions, and went to bed to sleep off mine. As I undressed I began to wonder what their after-taste would be—so many of the finest don't keep! Still, I wasn't sorry, and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... I would go up at once and inquire at the Grand Union. I chose this hotel because, though it lacked the fine flower of the more ancient respectability and the legendary charm of the States, it was so spectacular that it would be in itself a perpetual excitement for those ladies, and would form an effect of society which, with some help from us, might very well deceive them. This was what I said to myself, though in my heart I knew ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her—to herself quite spectacular—deposition from the command of The Hard and its household. She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now as a milder and more refined ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... From a spectacular point of view the "Personal Charms" were certainly an unusually attractive spectacle, but as regards popularity with the "field," they fell far behind the rival team. The "Moral Worths" allowed a judicious time to elapse after the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the only dull and commonplace spot on earth was that where we lived. Everywhere else life was a grand spectacular drama, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... he was relieving cried out that never had there been such peace as since he came, not only because the children could appeal to him for decisions instead of running to their mothers, but because, the spectacular character in every game belonging to him as "company," there were no more quarrels between Mike and Pierre about the leadership. J.M. could not seem to find his old formal personality for weeks after Mike's baseball had ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... on it, as deer fall upon a wounded comrade. The men who made up the crowd were most of them kind and trustworthy in their private relations, and in matters that they understood were not unreasonable or inconsiderate. But aerial navigation was a new thing, and their attitude to it was wholly spectacular. They came to see it because they craved excitement, and under the influence of that cruel passion they were capable of the worst excesses of the Roman populace at ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... they dragged him down the stairs—he was in an upper tier, understand—with his head bumping against every step. They threw him into a dark cell, and left him there." There he had leisure to recover from his "nuttiness." It was nothing much out of the usual, only the incident happened to offer spectacular features which served to keep the memory of it fresh. But does the Department of ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... passions, the humor, of the present time. The brilliant success of the few good plays that have been written out of the rich life which we now live—the most varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive—ought to rid us forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular curiosity. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... shown by the "Perfume Saint" are spectacular but spiritually useless. Having little purpose beyond entertainment, they are digressions from a serious ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... little book is to present the essential facts of electrical science in a popular and interesting way, as befits the scheme of the series to which it belongs. Electrical phenomena have been observed since the first man viewed one of the most spectacular and magnificent of them all in the thunderstorm, but the services of electricity which we enjoy are the product solely of scientific achievement in the nineteenth century. It is to these services that the main part of the following discussion is devoted. The introductory ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... the shade of the old trees, over coffee and cigars, comfortably watching these doings, one might easily be deluded into thinking that the drama taking place at the front was nothing but a jolly spectacular play. From this point of view the whole war showed up like a life-giving stream that washes orchestras ashore, brings wealth and gaiety to the people, is navigated by promenading officers, and directed by portly, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... of the grounds and buildings showed the marvelous progress achieved in electric lighting, and the expertness in obtaining brilliant spectacular effects. The electric launches on the lagoons manifested the usage ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... next President Cleveland's intervention in the Venezuelan boundary dispute. Here surely was a clear and spectacular vindication of the Monroe Doctrine which no one can discount. Let us briefly examine the facts. Some 30,000 square miles of territory on the border of Venezuela and British Guiana were in dispute. Venezuela, ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... him for five long years. Then, phoenix-like, he was reborn in fire, emerging in the raw border country of Texas. His rebirth was spectacular. No longer the lone phantom fighter of past days, he led a gang of coldhearted thieves and killers that became the scourge ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... place, and under his hand the seemingly static disks—which were actually spinning at forty thousand revolutions per minute—turned obediently and without any appearance of the spectacular. Then Haney worked the controls. And Mike put ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... up at the busy black workers, little dreamed of the vital and spectacular part both he and they were to play later in the struggle for existence on the Island ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... Collinson's Mill! There's nothing gaudy and spectacular about that, boys, eh? No, sir! it's a square, honest beacon that a man can steer by. We'll be there in twenty minutes." He was pointing into the darkness below the already descending trail. Only a pioneer's eye could have detected the few pin-pricks ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... to the wall. A ruby-hilted kris cut across the manager's wrist as he strove to arrest the splendid rout. Still the miraculous cornucopia deluged the ground, with its pattering, ringing, bumping, crinkling, rolling, fluttering produce until, like the final tableau of some spectacular ballet, it ended with a golden rain that masked the details of the heap beneath a glittering veil ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

... Secure in her own safe place of favor she felt a great wave of generous pity for the helpless self-deception of her sister-woman. Fired by this and by the sudden perception of an opening for an act of spectacular magnanimity—would it be any the less magnanimous because it would cost her nothing in the end?—she reached for the mantle of the beau role and cast it about her shoulders. "Why, Molly dear!" she cried, and her quick sympathies had never been more genuinely aroused, "Molly dear, ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... armored motor-cars rushed on, drawing closer and closer to the solid ranks of the enemy. Not expecting trouble from within their own lines, the Germans were not on the lookout for this spectacular dash, ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... my entrance was spectacular—if not dramatic. The three attendants regularly in charge naturally jumped to the conclusion that, in me, a troublesome patient had been foisted upon them. They noted my arrival with an unpleasant curiosity, which ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... landscape seen from a hill, a scene of woods and waters, of fields and hamlets—everything seems peaceful and idyllic there. He wants the wings of a dove, to flee away and be at rest. It is the same feeling which makes people wish to travel. When you travel, the new land is a spectacular thing—it is all a picture. It is not that you crave to live in a foreign land: you merely want the luxury of seeing life without living life. No ordinary person goes to live in Italy because he has studied the political constitution and organisation of Italy, and prefers it to that ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... move that although generous it was not football. Still the finest things in human life are often the 'foolish' things. At any rate, it enriched the history of the game with one of the most dashing and spectacular plays ever made. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... more spectacular attractions of Sinn Fein, the Nationalists' only hope of recovering their lost popularity is to kick up the dust of St. Stephen's. Accordingly Mr. REDMOND gave notice of yet another Vote of Censure on the Irish Executive, but whether for its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various

... wanted it; and Blum, it is alleged, annexed $50,000 of the New England money as a forfeited first payment on his property. A steamship company, it was said, got $75,000 of money on a forfeit. So the good New England savings merrily disappeared, in one of the most spectacular farces ever known in Alaska; which latter is too good and valid and valuable a national possession to permit to be Reynoldsized, as it has been. Reynolds, in the belief of one who knew him well, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... lie like a gentleman. He lies, of course, like all of us, and perhaps more often than most of us on the other side, but he does it, not to protect sinners from the moral law, but to make their punishment under the moral law more certain, swift, facile and spectacular. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... "It's just a spectacular show," said he; "no plot or anything of that sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it we can go. We'll have a little supper at Auriccio's afterward, if you'll be so kind. It's only a ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... Malmantile Racquistato, and Carlo Gozzi drew on it for his curious fiabe, the earliest dramatizations of fairy tales, which, in our day, after amusing the nursery, have again become the vehicles of spectacular dramas. Although there is no proof that Mlle. Lheritier and Perrault took their stories from Straparola and the Pentamerone, there is little doubt that the French translation of the former, which was very popular (Jannet mentions fourteen editions between 1560 and 1726) awakened an ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... outline against the turquoise sky. The broken lands would be a formidable barrier for any foot travelers: there were no easy roads through that series of sharp lifts and narrow valleys. And the one stream they followed for a short space descended from the heights in spectacular falls. Twice they skimmed thick growths of trees, so tightly packed that from the air they resembled a matted carpet of green-blue. And to cut through such a forest would be ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, both as a book and as ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... coronation festivities and the professions of loyalty of the ambassadors from the various Italian Powers must be read to see to what extremes flattery was carried in those days. It is difficult for us to imagine how imposing was the entrance of this brilliant pope upon the spectacular stage of Rome at the time when the papacy was at the zenith of its power—a height it had attained, not through love of the Church, nor by devotion to religion, which had long been debased, but by dazzling the luxury-loving people of the age and by modern politics; in addition to this, the Church ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... means offered to meet the intellectual and social desires—club-houses, lecture halls, conservatories, museums, picture galleries, libraries, reading rooms, observatories, kindergartens, manual training and trade schools, besides games and sports, spectacular and dramatic exhibitions of a high order, and many other things, designed to compete with attractions of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... forward to a still more spectacular scene in that strange drama, one which proved that the Spaniards had truly at length reached the "land of gold." The Inca was not long a prisoner before he discovered the besetting passion of the Spaniards, their thirst for gold. A party was sent to pillage ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... physical nature,—such as the stilling of the tempest and the feeding of the five thousand. The significant thing about them is their uniform beneficence of purpose and simplicity of method. Nothing of the spectacular attached itself to them. Jesus repeatedly refused to the critical Pharisees a sign from heaven. This was not because he disregarded the importance of signs for his generation,—witness his appeal to his works in the reply to John (Matt. xi. 4-6); but he ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... is sufficient to say that out of Bulwer Lytton's novel Rienzi he took material to weave a libretto that would afford opportunities for a great spectacular opera; and set to work and wrote two acts of the music. Finally he took ship from Pillau to London, bringing with him his wife and dog, with the intention of reaching Paris ultimately. And on that journey I must leave him for the present, pausing a little to consider the music he had ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... a great leader who is in no sense an "accident" (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a spectacular growth on an exotic stem. They have, rather, a quintessential Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of his countrymen ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... was spectacular, melodramatic; and he knew it. It was his life, and he was living it at the top of his bent. Among his fellows he was a great man, an Arctic hero. He was proud of the fact, and it was a high moment for ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... was spectacular, with fantastic shapes and colors. Then, as they went deeper, the colors gradually faded to a uniform green. Rick knew from underwater flash photographs that the appearance was deceptive. The colors remained, but the ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin

... went on puffing, having gained our consent. He curled a leg comfortably about the railings of a low bridge connecting a house that sprang out of a rock, with the rampart. Below, there was a clean drop of a few hundred feet, more or less. In spite of the glories of a spectacular sunset, yielding ceaseless changes and transformations of cloud and sea tones, the words of Madame Poulard alone had power to possess our companion. She had uttered her protest against the pilgrimage, as she had swept the Parisian's pousse-cafe from his elbow. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... which are founded upon history, we cannot say so much; they are dramatic only in form: some of them are spectacular, like Sardanapalus, which is still presented upon the stage on account of its scenic effects. In Manfred we have a rare insight into his nature, and Cain is the vehicle for his peculiar, dark sentiments ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... Every inch of space in the galleries was crowded with brilliantly dressed men and women, army officers in gorgeous uniforms, and the pomp and splendour of the ministers of every foreign court of the world. In spectacular grandeur no such scene was ever before witnessed in the annals ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... lapped by the blue waves of Runswick Bay, is one of the finest and most spectacular spots to be found on the rocky coast-line of Yorkshire. You look northwards across the sunlit sea to the rocky heights hiding Port Mulgrave and Staithes, and on the further side of the bay you see tiny Runswick's red roofs, one above the other, on the face of the cliff. Here it is ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... producing life, is extremely fanciful. Where had they both been during all the geologic ages? I do not suppose they had been any where. How life arose is, of course, one of the great mysteries. But do we not know enough to see that it did not originate in this sudden spectacular way?—that it began ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... said President Thompson, at the Dock Board meeting of February 26, 1919, reviewing the development of the canal plans, "was inspired by vicious and spectacular attacks of certain private interests hostile to the canal project and to the port of New Orleans." Railroads, whose right of way crossed the Canal, were the principal propagandists. They realized that the Dock Board could not be required to ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney

... the day of his spectacular introduction to her, Miss Satterly displayed absolutely no interest in the eccentricities of Glory. Slowly it began to dawn upon Weary that she did not intend to thaw that evening. He glanced at her sidelong, and his eyes had a certain gleam that was not there five minutes ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... attracted little attention. There were fewer attempts at high altitude soaring, although the world's record in this department of aviation was bettered several times. In place of these high flights, the aviators devoted more attention to speed, duration and spectacular manoeuvres, which appeared to satisfy the spectators. The prize money won during 1911 exceeded $1,000,000, but owing to the increased number of aviators the individual winnings were not as ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... stage an array of Matrons and Girls in festal robes, as worn in the rites of the Furies, now called Eumenides or 'Gentle Goddesses' [thus spectacular effect with which Aeschylus loved to conclude]. They, with Athene, chanting the Ritual hymn, file down into the Orchestra, and so lead the Chorus out in the direction of ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... like conspirators as they were, of course in the nick of time, to hear that Miss Vaughan was appointed as the grand-priestess of Lucifer, at which moment there was a fresh burst of circumambient flame and the young lady was transported by her divinity to take part in a grand spectacular drama, divided into two acts.—I. Appearance of Asmodeus with fourteen legions. Exchange of endearing expressions between this personage and Diana. Manifestation of the signature of Baal-Zeboub, generalissimo of the armies of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... was born in a great emergency. A spectacular deliverance was needed to implant their trust in the Lord. They found no witness in the quiet daily providence; the unobtrusive miracle of daily mercy did not awake their song. They dwelt upon the "special" blessing, when all the time the really special blessing was ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... the coronation as if it were a spectacular play. Every one, from the principal actors to the most insignificant assistants, studied his part most conscientiously; the Masters of Ceremonies were to act as prompters to those who might forget. The Imperial carriages and those of the Princes and Princesses one morning ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... the spectacular warrior of the town. Cy was no longer the weedy boy who had sat in the loft speculating about Carol's egotism and the mysteries of generation. He was nineteen now, tall, broad, busy, the "town sport," famous for his ability to drink beer, ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... day of soft sweetness, not too brightly summery, but warm and still under the trees. Until ten o'clock the mountain and the tops of the redwoods were tangled in scarfs of white fog, then the mellow sunlight pierced it with sudden spectacular ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... temper and belief, they were formed to find their element in such a decent and whiggish convulsion, spectacular in its course, moderate in its ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a relative sent Lincoln a Bull-terrier, and the new combination was a fresh source of spectacular interest for the boy, and of tribulation for the Coyote. It all emphasized for her that old idea to "lay low"—that is, to be quiet, unobtrusive, and hide when danger is in sight. The grown-ups of the household at length forbade these persecutions, and the ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... unflinchingly to the issue. In this ultimate sense, most of human life is tragic; because it involves a continual warfare with circumstances, which the majority of people carry on with a silent heroism. Originally, only the glorious and spectacular conflicts of great personalities were deemed worthy of representation in art; but with the growth of sympathy the range of tragic portrayal has gradually been extended over almost the whole of human life. The ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... dia tes opseos theamasi}. See Hartman, "An. Xen. Nova," p. 246. {theamasi} "spectacular effects," is perhaps a gloss on "all objects apprehensible through vision." Holden (crit. app.) would rather omit ...
— Hiero • Xenophon

... and houses and manners. A woman, too, who had an intense love for the great outdoors. Not the shallow, pretentious love that would call forth gushing rhapsodies about moonlight or sunsets or the spectacular alone in nature, but a sincere, deep-rooted love that shone in her eyes as she stooped to see more plainly the tracery of veins in a fallen leaf and moved her to gentle speech to the birds, butterflies and woodland creatures as though ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... place in summer; not rowdy, however, after the fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference between the two. The upper classes in both towns are of course irreproachable in externals—it is their uniformity of behaviour throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting from a spectacular point of view. A place does not receive its tone from them (save possibly Bournemouth) but from their inferiors; and here, in this matter of public decorum, the comparison is to the credit of Italy. It is beside the point to say that the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the United States Supreme Court, and some twenty-eight members of both houses of Congress. Earl D. Babst, '93, the general chairman of the committee in charge, acted as toastmaster of this gathering, the spectacular character of which was emphasized, not only in the speeches, songs, and college yells, but also by a huge painting of the University Campus filling a good part of the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... stately. The city won its moving grandeur from the throng of people astir on its pavements, or the streams of vehicles solidifying or liquefying in its streets. The august groups of Westminster and Parliament did not seem in themselves spectacular; they needed the desertedness of night, and the pour of the moon into the comparative emptiness of the neighborhood, to fill them out to the proportions of their keeping in the memory. Is Trafalgar Square as imposing as it has the chance ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... Then for minutes a spectacular battle raged. The twisting, turning, leaping airship, small as she was agile, kept on eluding the explosive projectiles of the fishes, and her screens neutralized and re-radiated the full power of the attacking beams. More—since Costigan did not need to think of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... Smoke poured out in thickening clouds. Points of light, fast changing to lines of flame, warned the skipper that he must retreat. It was not, however, until heat and smoke and the certain prospect of collapse compelled him, that he joined the crew. He was not a spectacular hero; when common sense dictated return, he obeyed without delay, and without maudlin complaint. Without a word he took the wheel from Billy Topsail's hands, and without a word he kept the schooner on her course. There was no need of ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... far and near, riding in bancas or on ponies, often spending several nights upon the way. The great church at the morning mass is crowded; women faint; and, as the heat increases, it becomes a steaming oven. It is more spectacular at vespers, with the women kneeling among the goats and dogs; the men, uncovered, standing in the shadows of the gallery; the altar sparkling with a hundred candles; and the dying sunlight filtering through mediaeval windows. As the resinous incense odor ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... daily in good weather, but on this crisp January morning her outing had an objective other than the spectacular. When the clean-limbed Kentuckian had measured the length of Main Street, he was sent on across the railroad tracks into the industrial half of the town, and was finally halted in front of the Raymer ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... I describe these two spectacular effects out of many others merely to suggest the splendors which inspired me, and which, as I imagined, enriched the daily walk of the forest guard. "To get into my story some part of this glory, my hero must be something ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... receive visitors in his room. Still he ate little and every day grew more wan and thin. All the chiefs were so low-spirited that great efforts were made to cheer them. A very popular actress was then playing at the Charleston theater, and knowing the Indian's love of whatever is gay and spectacular, the authorities at the fort decided to take the chiefs to the theater on the ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... had beaten him to the job that evening by at least twenty minutes. Had the old detective stumbled upon something which Dundee, for all his spectacular thoroughness, had overlooked or had been unable to turn up because ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... say you have heard about that run, for it occurred in the last three minutes of play, and is famous in football annals to this day, so I'm told. It was a spectacular performance, apparently devised by fate to make more difficult the labors of old Henry and me. Every living soul on those high-banked bleachers was on his feet at the finish, a senseless, screaming demon. I saw Alicia straining forward, her ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... pantomime, which was originally an adumbration of human life, has become degraded. Symbolism has departed from the boards, and burlesque reigns in its stead. The Lord Mavor's Show, the last remnant of the antique spectacular taste, does not move us now; it is held a public nuisance; it provokes the rude "chaff" of the streets. Our very mobs have become critical. Gog and Magog are dethroned. The knight feels the satiric comments ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... bottoms, would begin to whirl in livid eddies, dashing against the coasts and the projecting rocks, which would disappear and then emerge again in the white foam. Vessels would struggle valiantly against the swift undertow and the spectacular, roaring waters between the islands of Espalmador and Los Ahorcados, where lies the pathway of the great ships. Vessels from Iviza and Formentera must spread all their canvas, and sail under shelter of the barren islands. The sinuosities of this labyrinth of channels permit navigators from the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the spectacular in my make-up. I have no belief in the value of martyrs and martyrdom. Causes are not won—and in my humble opinion never have been won—in the graveyards. Alive and afoot and armed, and true to my cause, I am the dreaded menace to systematic and respectable robbery. What possible ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... "I think we'll stand a much better chance if we show them a big, spectacular exhibition; something really impressive. We'll point out all the advantages and uses of the apparatus. Then we'll show them complete plans for ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Whaling signed, but not ratified: Geography - note: known as "The Nature Island of the Caribbean" due to its spectacular, lush, and varied flora and fauna, which are protected by an extensive natural park system; the most mountainous of the Lesser Antilles, its volcanic peaks are cones of lava craters and include Boiling Lake, the second-largest, thermally active lake ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... not, then, too spectacular, too violent?" she wondered, returning her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion. "Not too much like ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland



Words linked to "Spectacular" :   performance, spectacle, public presentation, salient, dramatic, outstanding, conspicuous, impressive, prominent



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