1 He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon.
2 Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContext Highlight In CHAPTER 81. The Pequod Meets The Virgin. 3 As the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle.
4 "Oh," she sighed, pegged down on a chair arm, like a captive balloon, by a myriad of hair-thin ties into domesticity.
5 A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start.
6 Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down.
7 The balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being constructed by the Emperor's desire.
8 The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon.
9 We have vanquished the hydra, and it is called the locomotive; we are on the point of vanquishing the griffin, we already grasp it, and it is called the balloon.
Les Misérables 5 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 1: CHAPTER V—THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT O... 10 Lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully through, making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points, which looked like little balloons.
11 He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of images in the dark chamber, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons.
Les Misérables 3 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 4: CHAPTER I—A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC 12 All the windows of the boarding house were open and the lace curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath the raised sashes.