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Literary notes about Terrible (AI summary)

Writers employ "terrible" in a richly varied manner to heighten the emotional, moral, and physical intensity of their narratives. In some works, the word conveys deep sorrow, fear, or even awe—capturing moments of profound inner turmoil or foreboding, as seen when characters face imminent death or overwhelming emotion [1] [2] [3]. In other texts, it intensifies descriptions of warfare, natural disasters, and monstrous beings, lending a visceral quality to scenes of battle and supernatural dread [4] [5] [6]. Additionally, "terrible" is often used to underscore the weight of responsibility, injustice, or moral consequence, transforming ordinary statements into dramatic declarations that resonate with power and urgency [7] [8]. This flexible usage allows authors to evoke a strong, multifaceted response from their readers.
  1. “Well, it’s all terrible sad; but we’ve all got to go, one time or another.
    — from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  2. I cannot describe the profound, poignant, terrible emotion which stirred my childish heart.
    — from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant
  3. God knows that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place!
    — from Dracula by Bram Stoker
  4. Together with Túshin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.
    — from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy
  5. And Rakshasa hurled at Rama a terrible javelin looking like Indra’s thunderbolt and resembling a Brahmana’s curse on the point of utterance.
    — from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1
  6. The storm raged over the town of Skjagen; there had not been such a terrible tempest within the memory of the inhabitants, nor such a rough sea.
    — from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen
  7. Remember, you have been given absolute power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.
    — from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  8. Nothing, he thought, could be so terrible as to make him afraid that it would daunt his stout heart by its opposition.
    — from The Danish History, Books I-IX by Grammaticus Saxo

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