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More "Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Krishna to have pity, declaring that there is none like him in charm, that he is endlessly fascinating and that in all of them he has aroused extremities of passionate love. But the night is empty, their cries go unanswered, and moaning for the Krishna they adore, they toss and writhe on the ground. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... with cinnamon, with almonds, and with musk, of raging liquors clouded with golden particles—mad drinks which spurred the guests in this womanless castle to frenzies of lechery and made them, at the end of the meal, writhe in monstrous dreams. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... back, I guess," she sighed ruefully, as a sharp twinge of pain recalled her to her surroundings and caused her to writhe in agony, "and a pair of legs to match. You are a sure-enough doctor, ain't you? Can't you mend me up again? The other doctors' ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... eyes on the clouds and then continued: "But there is probably another means, Friedrich. Look, friend, look! It was always your affair to look, to behold. Look, but see to it that you do not make me writhe before you like a worm in the dust! And when you have looked—wisdom needs only one spoken word for ten that are unspoken. This one word you will ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... looking over you? had not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine's looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock began to utter those ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fret until the mother would take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... some poor soul will stand and face its Creator with just this sort of cry;—some soul which has grievously sinned will bend, and writhe, and implore with hot, glassy eyes, to be heard. Jane felt this in all its varicolored meaning. Until now she had been speaking as the teacher, as the humanitarian. But with his torture-stricken eyes pouring their prayer into her own, with the storm bending his powerful ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... over your back and let it spread and spread and run down your legs." Friend Elephant did as he was ordered. Friend Mouse-deer then instructed the Elephant as follows: "As soon as I begin to lick up the molasses on your back, bellow as loud as you can and make believe to be hurt, and writhe and ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... have not practised at all times that grand self-denial. Who comes up to that teaching? Do you not wish for, nay, almost demand, instant pardon for any trespass that you may commit,—of temper, or manner, for instance? and are you always ready to forgive in that way yourself? Do you not writhe with indignation at being wrongly judged by others who condemn you without knowing your actions or the causes of them; and do you never judge others after ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... but was driven back by a number of arrows, rapidly discharged into his head and mouth. Again he advanced, but Gushtasp dodged round him, and continued driving arrows into him to the extent of forty, which subdued his strength, and made him writhe in agony. He then fixed the dagger, which was armed at right angles with knives, upon his spear, and going nearer, thrust it down ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could have called it ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... much resistance as a log. He could not tell how far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... that Lance could have throttled his dad. It was like Tom to do it. Lance could not doubt that he had done it. He could picture the whole wretchedly cheap retaliation for the slight which Mary Hope had given them, and the picture tormented him, made him writhe mentally. But he could picture also Mary Hope's prim disapproval of them all, her deliberate omission of the Lorrigans from her list of invited guests, and toward that picture ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... light of innocence, the light of a beautiful soul, the light that never was on land or sea, shone out of the still features. A feeling which had never touched his nature before took fierce possession of him, and shook him as a tiger shakes his prey. He had to writhe in silence, to beat his head with his hands, to stifle words of rage and hate and despair. At last exhausted he resigned himself, he took the boy's hand in his, remembering that this innocent heart loved him, and fell into a ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... a faithful spirit concealeth the matter." How often do we hear, "I wouldn't, for the world, tell any one but you, but—;" and then follows a string of repeated confidences which the friend under discussion would writhe to hear; yet the speaker would be most indignant at being considered dishonourable, because "it was only said to So-and-so, which is so different from saying it to any one else"! The Son of Sirach made no exception ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Durham was left alone. Bracing his muscles, he strained at the cords which bound him, trying to writhe himself free. The chair creaked. In a moment the man with the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... responsible. And he realized that this latter reason was the force which now prevented his breaking his engagement with Mrs. Cricklander. He had behaved with supreme selfishness in the beginning, and afterwards with a weakness which would always make him writhe ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... to see them writhe, Bellow like calves, fall dead like flies; Such bonny sights, and sounds so blithe, With rapture fill our eats ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a stout udal-man, I know, Has cause to wish my head laid low; And many an angry udal knife Would gladly drink of Eina's life. But ere they lay Earl Einar low,— Ere this stout heart betrays its cause, Full many a heart will writhe, we know, In the wolf's fangs, or ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... smarting under wrongs, and deprived, by deceit and force, of their lands, hunting-grounds, and the graves of their fathers, may have found them otherwise: and no wonder; the worm that is trodden on will writhe; and man, unrestrained by Divine grace, when treated with injustice and cruelty, will ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... the case of cruelty before referred to. In 1820 or 21, while the public works were going forward on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, a contractor, engaged on the works, beat one of his slaves so severely that the poor creature had no longer power to writhe under his suffering: he then took out his knife, and began to cut his flesh in strips, from his hips down. At this moment, the gentleman referred to, who was also a contractor, shocked at such inhumanity, stepped forward, between the wretch and his victim, and exclaimed, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... stop to let them do it. He understood wherein our Sikh prayer differs from that of Islam. Yet he refused to believe I am no polygamist. But that is nothing. Since then I have fought in a trench beside Englishmen who spoke of me as a savage; and I have seen wounded Germans writhe and scream because their officers had told them we Sikhs would eat them alive. Yes, sahib; ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was the body ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to be congratulated." Kamimura Goemon sniffed. He was a long man; with long face, long nose, long thin arms, long thin legs; a malicious man, who longed to give advice to his fellows which they much disliked to hear, and liked to see them writhe under the infliction. In fact this epitome of length rarely spoke in good faith or temper—"The Go Inkyo[u] is to be congratulated? Escaping the troubles of this world, perhaps he has fallen into worse troubles in the next." ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... go." Anthony shook the Panamannikin loose, then ran forward across the street until he brought up at the end of the slack and felt the hose behind him writhe and swell as Allan released his hold. The next instant the negro was at his side, and the two found themselves half blistered by the heat that rolled out upon them. But the newly ignited roof was within range, and the stream they played upon it made ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of friendly natives, and in order to test the question, one of them was to bare his back (for a shilling) and an officer applied to it, with all his strength, a horsewhip. I saw the black man's body writhe for an instant as he puckered his mouth; but it was only for an instant—then he smiled and asked for another stroke for another shilling. This seemed to indicate to the officers that there was something more than fanaticism in the Soudanese. Their warriors were tall, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... a mother's hope when all other pleasures are gone! Are you some day to be torn from me, and, like myself, sent to writhe under the coarse hand of a slave-dealer, to be stung with shame enforced while asking God's forgiveness? Sometimes I think it cannot be so; I think it must all be a dream. But it is so, and we might as well submit, say as little ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the extreme. One of the concomitants of consciousness is that it is private consciousness. And when this isn't true, when someone, even a loved one, can creep into your mind and know what you think, your insides writhe. Caterpillars course around under your skin. And you resent. Sooner or later you will hate. I ran away from home because I couldn't stand Mother in my mind, and couldn't bear the thought ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... dare you!" cried the girl, starting up with her face aflame. "Never, never!" Then she threw herself down on the sofa and hid her face. Some memory came over her that made her writhe with shame. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... I'm sorry they let me go down to the brook, I'm sorry they gave me the line and the hook, And I wish I had stayed at home with my book. I'm sure 'twas no pleasure to see That poor, little, harmless, suffering thing, Silently writhe at the end of the string; Or to hold the pole, while I felt him swing In torture, and ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... now, as I had always meant to serve you some day. Ey, yes, I think I always meant to give you back to Perion as a free gift. Meanwhile to see, and to writhe in seeing your perfection, has meant so much to me that daily I have delayed such a transfiguration of myself until to-morrow." The man grimaced. "My son Orestes, who will presently succeed me, has been summoned. I will order that he ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... to know? You'd rather continue to writhe on the gridiron than to turn over and fall into the fire and end ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... hands clench, and he laughed in grim amusement. It pleased him to see his enemy writhe and squirm before him; the grimness came because of a mental picture, in his mind at this minute, of Trevison confiding in the girl. He looked up, the smile freezing on his lips, for within a foot of his chest was the muzzle of Trevison's pistol. He saw the trigger ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... creep into holes, and under benches and chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony, suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and piercing outcries. The attention of the families in which they held their meetings was called to their extraordinary condition and proceedings; and the whole neighborhood and surrounding ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... something disagreeable in the flashing thought that he might kill them from where he stood. He would not fire from the dark. He wanted to experience the exquisite sensation of that one first moment when they would writhe back from him, and see in him the presence of death. He would give them that one moment of life—just that ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody was following, and nobody ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... concentrating the fire within a zone of twenty-five yards, and it was fire so murderous that, before the cowboys could get out of range, ten were dead or wounded, while two of the sheepmen were killed outright and a third was disabled and rolled out into the sun to writhe in agony until his pal ran from cover and dragged ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... severe application, to the fools who think time given to be so wasted. Roses grow for me to gather: rivers roll for me to lave in. Let the slave dig the mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the performance of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and smiled as the men went out of the door. "You will find they are a success, to surprise yourself," he called out: "her most bosom friends will writhe ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and sleepily drew aside the curtain. The moon traced a broad path of light straight to the ship. Under its rays the band around his chest gleamed brighter and brighter; shot forth little rays; seemed to writhe. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... the piles. The attempt was desperate, but it seemed to be the only chance for escaping torture and death, and it suited the reckless daring of the man's character. Waiting to the last moment, in order that the stern of the scow might fairly rub against the platform, he began to writhe again, as if in intolerable suffering, execrating all Indians in general, and the Hurons in particular, and then he suddenly and rapidly rolled over and over, taking the direction of the stern of the scow. Unfortunately, Hurry's ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... accusing angel of such men, prayed for and adored her husband as if he had been the best and tenderest of gentlemen. Providence has its mysteries; but if there be one that taxes faith and staggers patience more than another, it is the long misery that makes a good woman cringe and writhe and agonize in silence under the utter rule and life-long sovereignty of a bad man. Perhaps such women do not suffer as we fancy; for after much trial every woman learns that it is possible to love where neither respect nor admiration can find foothold,—that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... natural sons, they, "men professing meekness, took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy; but not being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... him from occupying himself with his true happiness; from even dreaming of ameliorating his institutions, of improving his laws, of advancing the progress of science, of perfectioning his morals. Vain and gloomy ideas have absorbed his attention: he consents to groan under fanatical tyranny—to writhe under political inflictions—to live in error—to languish in misfortune—in the hope, when he shall be no more, of being one day happier; in the firm confidence, that after he has disappeared, his calamities, his patience, will conduct him to a never-ending ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... equally by, both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... hundreds of us are uttering may be ignored. The squandering may go on, the vulgar bacchanalia may be prolonged, the poor may have to writhe under the iron heel of the iron lord—the dance of death may go on until society's E string snaps, and then the Vesuvius of the underworld will belch forth its lava of death and destruction."—Hearst's ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... mad and fighting dogs as these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yet still able to writhe upward and deal death to any other that might approach. They were at a deadlock, yet each feared to make the first overtures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer even an English or a German nation. It was an orgy of ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... fashion, beneath her chin. Under her arm she carried another tiny spaniel, the creature's black morsel of a head peeping out quaintly from among the forms of the embroidered dragons, which last appeared to writhe, as in the heat of deadly conflict, as their wearer moved. Her face was in shadow owing to the breadth of the brim of her hat. Otherwise the sunshine embraced her whole figure, conferring on it a glittering yet singularly unsubstantial effect, as though a column of pale windswept ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... you can!" Tom shouted back. "But be careful. Don't get shocked! Wow! I got a touch of it myself that time!" and he could be seen to writhe in his seat. ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... the Lord's flesh, and all his blood gushed out—it was shed to save him; and he raised his eyes, lifted his clasped hands, turned his whole face up towards heaven, saying, "Jack loves, loves, very loves good Jesus Christ!" When another violent pang made him start and writhe a little, he recovered in a moment, nodded his head, and said, "Good pain, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... great snake had lain somnolently, but now, as the sun began to warm its body, Jack saw the brilliantly colored folds begin to writhe and move. It suddenly appeared to become aware of him and raised its flat, spade-shaped ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the poor, of the wretched, of the outcast, of the proscribed,—they are the gods who respect not persons nor palaces,—who stay with the exile and flee from the king,—who leave the tyrant of a world to writhe in torment, and call a smile beautiful as the morning on the face of a beggar child,—who turn from the purple beds where wealth and lust and brutal power lie, and fill with purest visions the darkest hours of the loneliest nights, for genius and youth,—they are the gods of consolation and of compensation,—the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... I lose all patience—and execrate the injustice of the world—folly! ignorance!—I should rather call it; but, shut up from a free circulation of thought, and always pondering on the same griefs, I writhe under the torturing apprehensions, which ought to excite only honest indignation, or active compassion; and would, could I view them as the natural consequence of things. But, born a woman—and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more acutely ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... from the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the cliff, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... my love of the hope of the second birth! Could he clear my vision to see the sword creeping out of the sheath Inch by inch as we writhe in the toils of our living death! Could he but strengthen my heart to know that we cannot fail; For alas, I am lonely here—helpless and feeble and frail; I am e'en as the poor of the earth, e'en they that are now alive; And where is their might and their cunning with the mighty of men ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... "he suffers horribly when he moves, and I tried to persuade him to have his dinner sent into the parlor, but in honor of your presence he will come, and he doesn't want us to see him wince and writhe under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant thing of all the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... she gives herself a little concentric and harmonious twist, which makes her supple or dangerous slenderness writhe under the stuff, as a snake does under the green gauze of trembling grass. Is it to an angel or a devil that she owes the graceful undulation which plays under her long black silk cape, stirs its lace frill, sheds an airy balm, and what I should like to call the breeze of a Parisienne? You may ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... observed. "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and wriggle ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself and settled slowly into ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight;—she will be dashed dead in a second:—close to us is the great struggle; a heap of the mothers, entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords; one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp, and clasped to her breast with the grip of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the attempt to get their heads into the centre of the tangled mass which, all in motion, heaved and sank and rolled from side to side, the lower portions of the serpents' bodies and their tails being free to lash and writhe about in the air, while at a second glance the spectators began to realise the fact that all around, gliding in and out amongst the stones, were hundreds upon hundreds more of the reptiles, apparently urged on by some savage instinct ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... either side my face, like green moss of a withered waterfall: you think you will bestow a little serpent of a gift from my stolen treasures to comfort me. You will comfort me with a lock of Camillo's hair, that I may have it on my breast to-night, and dream, and wail, and writhe, and curse the air I breathe, and clasp the abominable emptiness like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... toil of a City, worn unto death! Alas for my father's worship before the citadel, The flocks that bled and the tumult of their breath! But no help from them came To save Troy Towers from falling as they fell!... And I on the earth shall writhe, my ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... beset yours—doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical activity, and a "mounting spirit" of indomitable enjoyment that buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality, and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to live, in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... spawned In magic broth To coil and wriggle, Writhe and twist; Till their froth Becomes a mist, Till the mist An egg shall form— Charm that ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... which makes the joyless, taciturn American speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different angles and attitudes of awkwardness, trying ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of a gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife—timid, and all too gentle—could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Helen's arm from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain—while her eyes flashed with the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... hospitality. Yonder from Point Levi the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... a chest several volumes covered with dust, and began to quote the "Apology" of Justin Martyr, the "Legation" of Athenagoras, the "Apology" of Tertullian and Lactantius, whose very name caused him to writhe with philological loathing. And he told Domenico that it was the opinion of these holy but ill-educated persons that daemons assumed the name and attributes of Jupiter, of Venus, of Apollo and Bacchus, lurking in temples, instituting festivals and sacrifices, and were often allowed ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... novel's newly printed page We find a maudlin eulogy of sin, And read of ways that harlots wander in, And of sick souls that writhe in helpless rage; Or when Romance, bespectacled and sage, Taps on her desk and bids the class begin To con the problems that have always been Perplexed mankind's ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... had her feet in the window and her head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid was quartered in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... am beginning to enjoy it," she said, "but enough for to-day. I am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes. I take a cruel joy in seeing you tremble and writhe beneath my whip, and in hearing your groans and wails; I want to go on whipping without pity until you beg for mercy, until you lose your senses. You have awakened dangerous elements in my being. But now ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... a surprise. With a quick writhe the Netop broke loose, and bolted headlong, fairly into Captain Church himself, among the baggage and the horses. This was a surprise for the captain, too. He grabbed him but could not keep him, because he was a naked Indian and ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... for as soon as it was on the floor it began to writhe and roll and bite itself, with all its fur on end, like a mad cat. Then it flew to the door and tried to get out, and again began to spit furiously. I thought that it would awaken the King, and ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Susan writhe with pain under these harsh words. But she merely heaved a sigh, and let fall a tear on the babe, which she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... like ice on flame. Jack swore a muffled oath and turned away. There was no one in the world who possessed the power to humble him as did Dick, who with a few scorching words could make him writhe in impotent fury. For there was no gainsaying Dick. He was always unassailable in his justice, since in a fashion inexplicable but tacitly acknowledged by both he occupied a higher plane altogether. Ignore it as he might, deep in his inner soul Jack knew this man to be his master. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... fight openly and fairly, I will not hate him. If I wanted to touch an adder with my hand I would not catch him by the tail so that it could curl around and sting my hand; I would catch it just behind the head. It might writhe and wriggle, but I should know that it could not bite me. That is how I want to treat the Tresidders. You despise me," I went on; "you see me now a thing that has to hide like a rabbit in burrow. Well, perhaps it is ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... parched mouth and throat craved no more perpetually for the cooling drinks that had not allayed their misery. Light could be borne without any grave discomfort, and the agonizing abdominal pains, which had made the victim writhe and almost desire death, had entirely subsided. From the face, too, the dreadful hue which had even struck those who had only seen Nigel casually had nearly departed. Though still very thin and pale, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk of mankind, may be plunged in misery—who or what cares? Man is surrounded by indifference as ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... his sorrows to himself, but the recollection of them will make him "yerk," i.e., writhe, or start with pain—applied in ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... years ago, when I was sick in bed; in a fever or delirium I conceived the idea that there was a coffin under my bed. The thought took hold of me, somehow, like an octopus, and I used to writhe under it, and get into fearful perspirations. I never went near a bed that I didn't think of this thing with the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... colleague's discomfort. He was known to go into Blake's office on a short winter's afternoon, and, standing with his back to the fire in a free and easy attitude as though perfectly at home, to say, 'Well, mon cher collegue' (here Blake would visibly writhe, to the equally apparent delight of the intruder), 'I have called for you to come for a walk with me.' 'My good sir,' Blake would tartly reply, 'I have work here that will keep me for the next two hours.' 'But it will be dark then,' objected ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... now as the light went out and the sensitive fingers closed on the knob of the dial, the perpetrator—the Gray Seal. It would afford excellent food for the violent editorial diatribes under which the police again would writhe ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hands, be dancing to God, your Guide, And peal my pipes, and riot my feet, and writhe to His Heat, my tripes. So fair! With Rum-te-te-Tum te Tum, And Rum and Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, te Tum. So fair! This freehold for seraphs free! That flame! those skies! and Blest is Her Name, and blest are ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... universe be damned!" herself included. She is "marvelously deep," but thanks the good devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that she may take her happiness when it comes. Her soul seeks but blindly, for nothing answers. How her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine, dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love and light ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... you have lost it—and speak plain words," Clorinda commanded. Anne tried to writhe away, but could not again, and burst into ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... head, and Frederic Kaye opened to admit the boy, who would have retreated when he saw the stranger, had not his arm been caught and held so firmly he could not writhe himself free. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... overrun Scotland, and to receive intelligence of the measures they had already taken. Here, then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... I would wish for no better revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then see thee writhe in despair. Knew I more than I know, can the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... of pain come on his face, saw him wince, saw him writhe, saw him rise on his toes. Then, with a sudden squatting heave, Banion cast him full length in front of him, upon his back! Before he had time to move he was upon him, pinning him down. A growl came from ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... thou, false infidel! shalt writhe Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe; And from its torment 'scape alone To wander round lost Eblis' throne; And fire unquenched, unquenchable, Around, within thy heart shall dwell; Nor ear can hear, nor tongue can tell The tortures ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... spear should be 2 feet long, with a blade 3 inches wide, and extremely sharp. There should be a short cross-bar about 22 inches from the point, to prevent the spear from running completely through an animal, which could then writhe up the handle, and attack. The socket should be large and long, to admit a very thick male bamboo, as the mistake is too frequently made that the spear is strong, but the handle is too weak. It is very important that a trustworthy attendant should be thus armed, as a dying animal can ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... as well as the other meals. And then there were eggs—eggs hard boiled, eggs soft boiled, eggs medium, eggs poached—until, at the end of the season, the mere mention of eggs caused Joel's stomach to writhe in disgust. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... must her lifeblood feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see hell yield ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... was natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect itself; making it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... It was evident the disintegrator rays were useless here. When they struck into the horde of crescent-shaped things coming so hungrily toward us, the things changed from red to a sickly, yellowish pink, and seemed to writhe, as though in some discomfort, ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... of the Louvre announced the departure of the king, and then a movement, similar to that of trees in a stormy wind that bend and writhe with agitated tops, ran though the multitude, which was compressed behind the immovable muskets of the guard. At last the king appeared with the queen in a gilded chariot. Ten other carriages followed, containing the ladies of honor, the officers of the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... what were they? Your Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams, Lies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood And agony: such tortures as we scarce Dream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench Of slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones— Yes, even the Papal throne—draw me not back With longing toward it. Rich that time might be If one were Michael Angelo; but how If one were ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... manhood out of him, as it did at night before burrowing its way ten million miles below the floor of Hell with him, and immuring him in a molten incandescent tomb where he could not even scream or writhe. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... troubled by my own grave shortcomings nor by Chichester's excellence of character. I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not always over my own demon. I began to writhe now under the thought of Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul. All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the world for a time no doubt ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... witness a murder, he cannot imagine the shock and dreadfulness of seeing one man shot down, writhe, gasp, grow pale and cease struggling. To picture ten men murdered simply stuns the mind. An effort to realize hundreds, thousands, millions of men mangled, wounded, bayoneted, crushed, blown to atoms by shells and mine—all this ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust that filled her little body at that moment, she should have been large, imperious, goddess-like, and commanding. But God is at times ironical with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... when a sudden lull in the noise gave a bald-headed old gentleman near the head of the table an opportunity of drinking the health of a red-faced old gentleman near the foot, upon whom he bestowed an amount of flattery perfectly bewildering; and after making the unfortunate red-faced gentleman writhe for half an hour in a fever of modesty, sat down amid thunders of applause. Whether the applause, by the way, was intended for the speaker or the speakee, I do not know; but being quite indifferent, I clapped my hands with the rest. The red-faced gentleman, now purple with excitement, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... of abstruse professional problems, between the short and hasty visits of Dutch and English engineers. Quagmire and quicksand, stagnant pool and sluggish stream, succeed in weary iteration. Bleached skeletons of dead trees writhe in weird contortions against the dark background of jungle, as though some wizard's curse had blighted life and growth amid the rank vegetation rising from this dismal Slough of Despond. The brooding melancholy of atmosphere and scenery penetrates mind and soul, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... myself as mere shameless indulgence. More is known against you than this—things which have gone farther and fared worse. You are not young and you are facing years of life in prison. Your head will be shaved—your hands worn and blackened and your nails broken with the picking of oakum. You will writhe in hopeless degradation until you are done for. You will have time, in the night blackness if of your cell, to remember—to see faces—to hear cries. Women such as you should learn what hell on earth means. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... laughing in the shop-fronts of the innumerable curio-shops; in the grotesque figures, the playthings, the idols, cruel, suspicious, mad; it is even found in the buildings: in the friezes of the religious porticoes, in the roofs of the thousand pagodas, of which the angles and cable-ends writhe and twist like the yet dangerous remains of ancient and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... He would writhe and scream, babble and plead and sob. Perhaps there have been men who have endured torture with dignity, but Jimmie was not one of these. Jimmie was abject, Jimmie was frantic; he did anything, everything he could ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... came to his side, gave himself a writhe, and said with a grin, "Baal mine ride horse ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... to me from whom all is taken?—husband, sons, wealth, land, renown, power,—power which I loved, wretch that I was, as well as husband and as sons? Ah God! the girl is right. Better to rot in the convent, than writhe in the world. Better never to have had, than to have ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... can see and kiss her brow, the smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of her skin; which enables me almost to feel, to play with the black masses of her curling hair?—Could you see me when I leap with hope—when I writhe under the myriad darts of despair—when I tramp through the mire of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? I have fits of collapse comparable to those of a consumptive patient, moods of wild hilarity, terrors as of a murderer who meets a sergeant of police. ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Sophist and sage, from no Athenian grove, But cogitation in his watery shades, Arose, with locks not oozy, and began, 170 In murmurs, which his first-endeavouring tongue Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands. "O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung, Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies! Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears, My voice is not a bellows unto ire. Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof How ye, perforce, must be content to ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... of a practice which is well known to our readers through the so-called Bulgarian atrocities. A sharpened pole was forced into the body of the victim, and the other end was then driven into the earth, the unfortunate man, woman, or child being left to writhe in agony until relieved ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession. The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the head of affairs—that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe under the heel of the same—had alone animated them, so far as he could see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other considerations were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... me? Could I have done more?" And with a laugh he sauntered on, leaving Lionel to writhe there with the torment of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... night set in, came hail and snow, And the air grew sharp and chill, And the warning roar of a terrible blow Was heard on the distant hill; And the norther,—see, on the mountain peak, In his breath, how the old trees writhe and shriek! He shouts along o'er the plain, ho, ho! He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow, And growls with ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... he said, "what matters to a dead man the manner of his killing? Indeed it is a merciful way. Such as Bhowanee herself decreed—in a second it is over. But with the spear, or the sword—ah! I have seen men writhe in agony and die ten times ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... But the circumstances which contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows:—Fox thought himself inspired, and consequently was of opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. Inspiration ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... appeared, travelling after the first. As it came, the earlier one veered to the north, and began to cross the Canyon, losing some of its serenity and calmness of manner as it did so; for now, either as the result of conflict from within, or silent influence from without, it began to writhe and change its shape. Ugly angles were thrust out from its hitherto smooth sides, and sent waving and tossing aloft. While this was occurring, the second cloud veered, and when I gazed again, after withdrawing my attention ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... his tongue. Then faith gave him, unsought, ability to revenge himself on the Brunetti. She had despised him as a mere genius toddling after the frou-frou of her skirts, but she began to prize him when she saw him casting interested looks in another direction. Now it was her turn to writhe with jealousy, and to writhe in vain. Her storms and tirades had more effect upon him than his pleas had had upon her. But whereas she had formerly been insouciante and amused at his pain, her pain ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... ran back and jumped into the boat and pushed it clear of the roof. And none too soon, for as the fire burned deeper into the heart, the monster felt the burn of it and began to writhe and twist. Then he gave a great cough that sent the waters surging back out of his body and into the sea again in a ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... easy job. The pig did writhe and twist, while the frantic mother danced up and down in the pen behind, and drove the surgeon nearly crazy with her noise. But he toiled bravely on, and when at last the operation was done, the heart of Romeo Augustus was knit unto that small pig ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... which her child had dropped from him as he came out of his sickness,—her eyes wild with misery, without tears; her feverish mouth open, but no cry in it. The sword of the angel had gone through and through her. She did not even writhe upon it, but lay motionless, cut down, dumb with anguish. The father had turned round again and leaned his head upon the wall. All was over,—all over! The love and the hope of a dozen lovely years, the little sweet companion, the daily joy, the future trust—all—over—as if a child ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... one day he encircled all the earth, and held his own tail fast in his mouth. And sometimes he grew angry to think that he, the son of a god, had thus been cast out; and at those times he would writhe with his huge body and lash his tail till the sea spouted up to the sky. And when that happened the men of the North said that a great tempest was raging. But it was only the Serpent-son of Loki writhing ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... reason why he did not breathe a word to her of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him—the dread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he had learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against her weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening of the tension ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... powerful lever of progress, it might convert this earth into a paradise, whereas it is the weapon which the strong, in their egoism, use to crush the feeble, a terrible weapon which either creates or intensifies all the evils under which the people writhe in despair. Once it becomes the instrument of a regenerate humanity, that is to say, when men have become compassionate, loving, and devoted, then the social question will cease to exist, and the old instrument of torture will become a ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... his mother's smile No more shall welcome his return. Ah! little did she think the while, Her fate through life would be to mourn! And his stern sire; how will he brook The tale that tells his child is low! How will the haughty tyrant look, And writhe beneath the hopeless blow! While conscience, with his vengeance sure, Shall grant no peace, and feel no cure. Aye, weep! for thee, no pitying eye Shall shed the sympathizing tear; Hopeless and childless shalt thou die, And none shall mourn above thy bier. Thy race extinct; no more thy ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... control-banks as though they were the keyboards of a great organ, and he felt his insides writhe as he slipped the hurtling ship back into E-Space, then back to R-level again. He played the tiny craft between levels as though it were a stone skipping across water, and altered course with each Transition with no ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden
... I said; "the charms work ill before so many. Now behold!" and, gazing at the twain, I cast my wand upon the marble and murmured a spell. For a moment it was still, and then, as I muttered, the rod slowly began to writhe. It bent itself, it stood on end, and moved of its own motion. Next it put on scales, and behold it was a serpent that ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of his teachers were not there to writhe under his lightheartedness. As it was now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at Carnegie Hall, he decided that he would not go home to supper. When he reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open and, as it was chilly outside, he decided to go up into ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... and I will leave you so maimed and so disfigured that you can woo no woman to ruin again and jest at her shame and agony with no man—for none can bear to look at you without a shudder—and you will lie and writhe to be given the coup de grace." He lifted the hilt of his sword and kissed it. "That I swear," he said, "by this first dawning ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and earth case-harden us to live; The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, Plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... marble breast, the gash upon the brow, You raised us on the bloody planks with wild and wrathful vow! High in the air you lifted us, that every writhe of pain Might be an endless curse to him, at whose word we were slain; That he might see us in the gloom, or in the daylight's shine, Whether he turns his Bible's leaf, or quaffs his foaming wine; That the dread memory on his soul should evermore be burned, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... hardly come within a few hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... skins are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree; the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to escape underground. Not one succeeds. They are scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them and destroys them ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... when the cruel anguish Dying on the shameful tree, All abandoned by Thy Father, Thuo didst writhe in agony. Jesus! Jesus! By these three long hours of sorrow Thou ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... such an effect on me before. Either the pipe, or the creature on it, exercised some singular fascination. I seemed, without an instant's warning, to be passing into some land of dreams. I saw the beast, which was perched upon the bowl, writhe and twist. I saw it lift itself bodily ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... explained. "Cabinet Ministers, Secretaries of State, the whole machinery of government shall writhe under the barbed shafts of my mockery. Ridicule is the power of the age. Ridicule in my hands shall be as bayonets to NAPOLEON, as poison to a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison. The philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind as potent as it was peculiar; for, not only is it a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... probably recurred frequently. In the course of time, however, this malady is said to have undergone a modification, such as it exhibits at the present day. Women whom it has attacked will suddenly fall down, toss their arms about, writhe their bodies into various shapes, move their heads suddenly from side to side, and with eyes fixed and staring, utter the most dismal cries. If the fit happen on any occasion of pubic diversion, they will, as soon as it has ceased, mix with their companions ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but paint a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... tragedy, to witness and sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... he had been subject to an unpleasant phenomenon that arises now and then out of the fumes of liquor. At the festive board, even as he raised the glass to his lips, the face of Crawley would often be seen to writhe with a sort of horror, and his eyes to become fixed on unseen objects, and perspiration to gather on his brow. Then such as were not in the secret would jump up and say, "What on earth is the matter?" and look fearfully round, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... you to do, damn you—anything you please. I'm accusing nobody, but I'm getting somebody. I've got somebody right now for this old man's murder. My man's going to writhe and burn in the chair, confession or no confession. Now get out of this room since you're so anxious, and ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... began to toss and writhe and moan pitifully. Her suffering mounted to a paroxysm at last; then silence fell for a minute or two—absolute stillness; and in this hush the table took life, rose, and slid away toward us as if shoved by a ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the long grass, where the bare-footed mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes,—more rarely into houses,—and on one memorable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... a big switch his father had cut, and his father was very strong. It would hurt, hurt even through Frank's long hair, hurt terribly. Frank would writhe on the ground, Frank's cries would fill the air. He watched his father's face as Earle came toward him. It was serious and grim, so serious that it almost hurt. Maybe his father didn't want to whip Frank; maybe ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last, by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr Lawley, too much tired to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... of the mind When all its elements convulsed combined, Lie dark and jarring with perturbed force, And gnashing with impenitent remorse. That juggling fiend who never spake before, But cries, "I warn'd thee," when the deed is o'er; Vain voice, the spirit burning, but unbent, May writhe, rebel—the weak ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... kind man, who hated any injustice, but when his wife awoke he said many unpleasant things to her, opening his mouth with difficulty, and he complained that he was left alone, like a jackal, to groan and writhe for pain. His wife met the undeserved reproaches patiently, for she knew that they came not from an angry heart—and she brought him numerous good remedies: rats' litter to be applied to his cheek, some strong ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... a blow, the second must take the head by the top-knot, and, pressing it down, cut it off. Should he take bad aim and cut the shoulder by mistake, and should the principal rise and cry out, before he has time to writhe, he should hold him down and stab him to death, and then cut off his head, or the assistant seconds, who are sitting behind, should come forward and hold him down, while the chief second cuts off his head. It may be necessary for the second, after he has cut off ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... plane. It would be unable to wrap him in its awful coils and crush and crush the soul and life and manhood out of him, as it did at night before burrowing its way ten million miles below the floor of Hell with him, and immuring him in a molten incandescent tomb where he could not even scream or writhe. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... A strange dread took possession of me, he looked so agitated, so little like himself. His hand trembled so that it dropped the ruler, that powerful hand, in whose strong grasp I had seen the pale delinquent writhe in terror. I hardly know what I dreaded, but the air seemed thick and oppressive, and I longed to escape into the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... whole diplomatic education, except that he found rich veins of jealousy running between every chief and his staff. His social education was more barren still, and more trying to his vanity. His little mistakes in etiquette or address made him writhe with torture. He never forgot the first two or three social functions he attended: one an afternoon at Miss Burdett Coutts's in Stratton Place, where he hid himself in the embrasure of a window and hoped that no one noticed ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... writhe under this wrong, let them turn their eyes to the history of Catholic countries, and remember that, while the Catholic Church was stripped of her endowments and doomed to political degradation by Protestant persecutors in Ireland, the Protestant ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... summons gave, Grew black, as tho' the shadows of the grave Compast him round and ere he could repeat His message thro', fell lifeless at her feet! Shuddering she went—a soul-felt pang of fear A presage that her own dark doom was near, Roused every feeling and brought Reason back Once more to writhe her last upon the rack. All round seemed tranquil even the foe had ceased As if aware of that demoniac feast His fiery bolts; and tho' the heavens looked red, 'Twas but some distant conflagration's spread. But hark—she stops—she listens—dreadful tone! 'Tis ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... deep," but thanks the good devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that she may take her happiness when it comes. Her soul seeks but blindly, for nothing answers. How her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine, dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love and light ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... cultivators of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the fury of a mountain torrent, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... side, to the mystic rites and symbolism which cloaked the fierce primitive impulses of the natural man. The burden of these first poems is chiefly the bitter sweetness of love, the sighs and transports of those who writhe in the embrace of the dread goddess, known by many names in all lands, or the glory of man's brief springtide, when the veins are hot, soon to be cooled and covered by frost and fallen leaves. In the clear ringing stanzas of the 'Triumph of Time,' who sweeps away the brief ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... hatred of pleasure. The first fork is disentanglement from the sweetness of the world. The second fork is power over those who still writhe in the nets of illusion. The third fork is the healthy glow of one ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Reggie and his devotion to good form sufficiently well to enable him to appreciate the other's horror at having spoken to a fellow to whom he had never been introduced; but necessity forbade any other course. However Reggie's soul might writhe and however sleepless Reggie's nights might become as a result of this encounter, he was prepared to fight it out on those lines if it took all summer. And, anyway, it was darned good for Reggie to get a jolt like that every once in ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... clash and boom; We saw them plunge and writhe and rise, And toss great flakes of ashen spume High toward ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... The monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. They speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they say that 'qua absolute' it is ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... "So, let him writhe! How long Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now! What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but paint a ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... corpses of the oaks, ever clinging with naked, dead feet to the sliding beach, lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep; their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to writhe,—like ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... a shudder will run along his spine, he'll do a few steps of our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... instinctively that something extraordinary had happened. For a moment all was silence; then inquiries arose from all sides, as to what was the matter. The engine seemed to be in a great state of commotion; and the vessel began to writhe with a heavy, laborious movement, as if attempting to free herself from the grasp of some monster. We dressed hastily, and went into the cabin, where we found a good many of the passengers, and learned that the vessel had struck on a coral-reef. We put on life-preservers, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... exhale, inhale. resplandor m. light, radiance, brightness, glow. responder respond, reply, answer. respuesta f. reply, answer. resucitar return to life. resuelto, -a resolved, determined. retumbar tremble. retorcer twist; —se writhe, be wrung. retrato m. portrait, picture. retumbar resound, recho. reunir unite, gather. reventar burst forth. revs m. reverse; al —— contrariwise. revestir clothe, robe. revuelto, -a agitated, restless, disordered, topsy-turvy, winding, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have still one foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself, so that a sunset ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... moment chuckling, with both hands thrust deep in his pockets. "We'll go to that trial—it's over an affair of his, and he's fair in the wrong. We'll go and watch his discomfiture—and we'll see him writhe. We'll see him carry things his own way—the only way he can ever see—and then we'll watch him—man, we'll watch him—Oh, my boy, my boy! I doubt it's wrong for me to exult over his chagrin, but that's what I'm going for now. It was the other way ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... of native pride and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse! Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave! Yet fatal strength they boast to steel Their minds to bear the wounds they feel, Even while they writhe beneath the smart Of civil conflict in the heart. For soon Lord Marmion raised his head, And, smiling, to Fitz-Eustace said - "Is it not strange, that, as ye sung, Seemed in mine ear a death-peal rung, Such as in nunneries they toll For some ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... hunter brought his rifle to his shoulder, and fired before the captain had time to say anything more. The python began to writhe and wriggle in the bush, and Felix fired again. Then he dropped off into the water. The rest of the company had been aft with the ladies, but they all rushed forward at the report of the rifle. The captain ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... curl of the lip is responsible for my being here; it kept sending me constant telegrams; but what I want to know is, do I come for the pleasure of the thing or for the pain? Do I like your disdain, Alice, or does it make me writhe? Am I here to beg you to do it again, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Fielding's and De Foe's. But once I saw him throw a volume in the fire, which he had been fidgeting over for a while. I was just finishing a sum I had brought across to him to help me with. I looked up, and saw the volume in the fire. The heat made it writhe open, and I saw the author's name, and that was Sterne. He had bought it at a book-stall as he came home. He sat awhile, and then got up and took down his Bible, and began reading a chapter in the New Testament, as if for an antidote to the book ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... her cheek colouring. Dr. Knowles could see them going to the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of Margret's first day at the mill, knowing how her father and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard the old man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... swoons. The Lord Oro motions with his hand to the guard. They lift their death-rods. Fire leaps from them. The Prince and his companions, all save those who were afraid and would have sworn the oath, twist and writhe. They turn black; they die. The Lord Oro commands those who are left to enter their flying ships and bear to the Nations of the Earth tidings of what befalls those who dare to defy and insult him; to warn them also to eat ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... words which our author uses well, we will quote as an example all the passages in which writhe occurs. The transitive verb which is perhaps in danger of neglect is very valuable, and it is well employed. These passages will also fully exhibit the general ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... Thorpe, his lips twitching with the pain he was trying to defy; "I have not been able to laugh at the futility of pain. Ah!" It was almost a scream that issued from between his stretched lips. He began to writhe.... ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... peculiar colors. A closer inspection of one of the marvelous tapestries showed that it also was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Woven of many different metals, of vivid but harmonious colors in a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light; which, pouring from concealed sources, was reflected by the highly-polished metal and innumerable jewels of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of grief in sculpture that it may writhe but it must not scream. Lord Haldane has not even writhed. When a member of the House of Lords asked him what he proposed doing with the two sacks crammed full of abusive letters addressed to him there by correspondents who thus obeyed a vulgar editor's ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... it was the balustrade which broke. Wogan heard it crack. He had just time to loose his hands and step back, and the railing and the man poised on the rail fell outwards into the courtyard. Wogan stepped forward and peered downwards. The soldier had not broken his neck, for Wogan saw him writhe upon the ground. He bent his head to see the better; he heard a report behind him, and a bullet passed through the crown of his hat. He swung round and saw the leader of the four with one of his own ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... has not risen uppermost in my thoughts," Petrescu answered. "I owe the Englishman an apology for the attack which was made upon him directly he succeeded in wounding me. He is a gentleman and a gallant swordsman, and I writhe under the fear that he believes that attack was of ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... shook the Panamannikin loose, then ran forward across the street until he brought up at the end of the slack and felt the hose behind him writhe and swell as Allan released his hold. The next instant the negro was at his side, and the two found themselves half blistered by the heat that rolled out upon them. But the newly ignited roof was within range, and the stream they played upon it made ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of anacondas,—four,—which the showman took, one by one, from a large box, under some blankets, and hung round his shoulders. They seemed almost torpid when first taken out, but gradually began to assume life, to stretch, to contract, twine and writhe about his neck and person, thrusting out their tongues and erecting their heads. Their weight was as much as he could bear, and they hung down almost to the ground when not contorted,—as big round as a thigh, almost,—spotted and richly variegated. Then he put ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... withered waterfall: you think you will bestow a little serpent of a gift from my stolen treasures to comfort me. You will comfort me with a lock of Camillo's hair, that I may have it on my breast to-night, and dream, and wail, and writhe, and curse the air I breathe, and clasp the abominable emptiness like a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... adored her husband as if he had been the best and tenderest of gentlemen. Providence has its mysteries; but if there be one that taxes faith and staggers patience more than another, it is the long misery that makes a good woman cringe and writhe and agonize in silence under the utter rule and life-long sovereignty of a bad man. Perhaps such women do not suffer as we fancy; for after much trial every woman learns that it is possible to love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... will say to your grandchildren: 'Once I lit a cigar with a thousand-dollar check.' The oldest inhabitant will be silenced forever; it may become history. And then, too, if there are spirits, as Scripture says there are, your uncle's will writhe at the performance. I trust that you will forgive me my part in the matter. I have taken a fancy to you, and if you will accept my friendship I shall be happy to accept yours. Your uncle's revenge will not be a marker to the restitution his son ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... themselves to one of The Master's deputies and have a little longer time of sanity. The poor devils that are left—well—they'll be camaradas, peons, laborers, without the intelligence to know what they can do. They'll wait patiently for their masters to come back. And presently their hands will writhe.... And the town ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... such a combination of fearful and harrowing pains that he almost prayed that he might die, and be relieved from them. He had not the power left in his limbs to move one inch, and yet he felt as though he could roll and writhe all over the boat. The fact was that while exertion was necessary to preserve him from drowning, his instinct and mental faculties combined to support him, and enable the sufferer still to make an effort to preserve his life, but now that ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... quiet, his muscles stiffened and relaxed—he was no longer conscious. A few more convulsive quivers, as a serpent might writhe and jerk, then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... a fly, "ha! brother Charles, this stroke is intended for you. Really, there lies the fly writhing, as the generalissimo did, on the floor. But he has a tougher life than the fly; for the fly will writhe until it is dead, but the generalissimo always revives; and when he has no fits, he is a very brave and illustrious man, before whom his emperor must humbly stand aside. I cannot take the fly-flap and strike his writhing limbs as I do this miserable fly, the little Archduke Charles, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife—timid, and all too gentle—could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory criticisms on the whole of her sex, one man finding in her a ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... prefer a cavern On some rocky sea-girt isle, Where the constant intonations Of the waves as they recoil With their soughing and deep moaning For a momentary rest, Tell of liquid matter only That bespeaks itself distressed, Than to live where human bodies Bend and writhe for freedom's air, Till the heart breaks in deep sorrow, And the soul sinks ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... ran down the stairs and out into the grey-blue streets, where the lamps were blooming into primrose color. He had a confused feeling that he had made a fool of himself, which made him writhe with helpless anger. He walked with long strides through the streets of the Rive Gauche full of people going home from work, towards the little wine shop on the Quai de ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... it had pleased God to place him; next he had to show how well he could bear pain. In all his trials he had been cheerful, forcible, natural, and straightforward. In this deep one he preserved the same character. Forced to throw himself down and writhe upon the floor in his paroxysms of pain, he rose up, livid with exhaustion, and with the sweat of anguish on his ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... charms work ill before so many. Now behold!" and, gazing at the twain, I cast my wand upon the marble and murmured a spell. For a moment it was still, and then, as I muttered, the rod slowly began to writhe. It bent itself, it stood on end, and moved of its own motion. Next it put on scales, and behold it was a serpent ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Hicks, I after engaging the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents, scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down to the bar and gambling room. The drink of whiskey he got made even his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to join a group of calm and plainly-armed ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... great ship glided on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... strings upon his forehead. His face was flushed and his green-gray eyes gleamed like a mad dog's. At intervals a jeer or a grunt of gratified appetite ripped from his mouth or nose. Like a great lean spider he lay hid in the center of that vast net of electric wires, watching his prey writhe helpless. Pauline, made uneasy by his long isolation, opened his door and looked—glanced, rather. As she closed it, in haste to shut from view that spectacle of a hungry monster at its banquet of living flesh, Culver saw her face. Such an expression ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn and writhe!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen to be in the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... unapproachable than he had ever been in the old days. His utter indifference to the cold courtesy accorded him was beyond all scorn. He simply did not see when men avoided him. He was supremely unaware of the coldness that made Tommy writhe in impotent rebellion. He had never mixed very freely with his fellows. Upon Tommy alone had he bestowed his actual friendship, and to Tommy alone did he now display any definite change of front. His demeanour towards the boy was curiously gentle. He never treated him ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... away, beyond which he had thought only the night to lie, and discern a thronging mass of faces crying for help, pressing upon him, urging, yet all without sound or word. He attempts in his diary to use phrases for all this—he speaks of a pit in which is no water, of shadows and forms that writhe and plead, of a light of glass mingled with fire; and yet of an inevitability, of a Justice which there is no questioning and a Force that there is no resisting. And, on the other side, there was this help given by men of flesh and blood like himself—using ceremonies ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... in, came hail and snow, And the air grew sharp and chill, And the warning roar of a terrible blow Was heard on the distant hill; And the norther,—see, on the mountain peak, In his breath, how the old trees writhe and shriek! He shouts along o'er the plain, ho, ho! He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow, And growls with a ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... would go to her, and if her cold, pale hands were laid upon my burning brow, if her voice, like a moist, refreshing wind, passed through the fiery furnace of my affliction, I should not die but live—I should weep at her feet, not writhe ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special bete noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... A great anguish had me in its grip. I might writhe and bite as I would, it was to be all in vain. Hideous plans arose to my ingenuity, born of this agony of terror and fear. I could murder Stagers, but what good would that do. As to File, he was safe from my hand. At last I became ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to make a signal of distress from afar. The oak tree beside the house, whose roots coiled warmly under the hearth-stones and whose boughs were outstretched across the roof, seemed to writhe and rock in its winter sleep with murmurings and tossings like a human dreamer trying to get rid of an unhappy dream. Imagination might have said that some darkest tragedy of forests long since gone still lived in this lone survivor—that it struggled to give up the grief and guilt ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... sounds of movement, of strange shiverings, swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the evil which ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... the arts of war: he wielded in his clasp the ruddy-flashing wood, and victoriously with noble stroke made their fallen captain writhe. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... scornful remarks after each of the first blows. But Somers had no intention to let him off too easily; each sneer was followed by a harder cut, and the remarks were very soon followed by a silent but significant wince. It was not until a writhe had been succeeded by a sob, and a sob by a howl, that ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... one of those sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... open. Over it was spread all my letters, and private papers, a diary I kept when twelve years old, and sundry tokens of dried roses, etc., which must have been very funny, they all being labeled with the donor's name, and the occasion. Fool! how I writhe when I think of all they saw; the invitations to buggy rides, concerts, "Compliments of," etc.—! Lilly's sewing-machine had disappeared; but as mother's was too heavy to move, they merely ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... listening eagerly to every word, when suddenly Dick Hunt ran a long pin deep into his leg. The pain made him start and almost cry out, but he suppressed the cry as he turned and gave Dick a savage pinch that made him writhe, as he exclaimed in a threatening tone, ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... can I crouch, and writhe my fawning tayle, To some great Patron for my best avayle. Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie, Or let it ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... muse and writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts," continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; "for you have much to ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... what she means. All that company has fallen asleep. The men lie back with open mouths, the goblets still in their hands. Golden cascades of wine fall glittering upon the marble. The women writhe in these pools of wine. But even in the intoxication of their dreams they try to guard their elaborate hair dress. The whole mad band, musicians and animals, lies there with limbs dissolved, panting for air, ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... say so? Well, I'll never guess a man's age by his looks Again.—Poor Master Waller! He must writhe To hear I think Sir William is so young. I'll turn his visit yet to more account.—[Aside.] A handsome ring, Sir William, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... flashing for a moment in the sunshine. A quick, sharp report rang out. The bullet, sent with true and steady aim, by the hand of Frank Merriwell, ploughed through the tiger's brain, and the beast flattened out convulsively, and began to kick and writhe ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... less would not be to love my brother:—that the soul capable of such deeds shall be compelled to know the nature of its deeds in the light of the absolute Truth—that the eternal fact shall flame out from the divine region of its own conscience until it writhe in the shame of being itself, loathe as absolute horror the deeds which it would now justify, and long for deliverance from that which it has made of itself. The moment the discipline begins to blossom, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... tones fell like ice on flame. Jack swore a muffled oath and turned away. There was no one in the world who possessed the power to humble him as did Dick, who with a few scorching words could make him writhe in impotent fury. For there was no gainsaying Dick. He was always unassailable in his justice, since in a fashion inexplicable but tacitly acknowledged by both he occupied a higher plane altogether. Ignore it as he might, deep ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... humanity common to, and shared equally by, both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... could beat the most skilful antagonist; but that day his thoughts were wandering, and I won the game twice following. Full of insolent delight, I jumped up and kissed his great handsome forehead, and cried 'The sublime God, the hero, under whose feet the strange nations writhe, to whom the priests and the people pray—is beaten by a girl!' He smiled gently, and answered 'The Lords of Heaven are often outdone by the Ladies, and Necheb, the lady of victory, is a woman. Then he grew graver, and said: 'You call me a God, my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have something to fill them. Something alive, lithe, curling, sinuous. These wavings and swayings, to this side and to that, seemed so meaningless and void—without some life to guide them. There was nothing for her to hold; nothing to tame and subdue; nothing to cling and writhe and give point to her movements. Oh! ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... he ran down the hill whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" from Faust, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of his teachers were not there to writhe under his lightheartedness. As it was now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at Carnegie Hall, he decided that he would not go home to supper. When he reached the concert hall the doors were not ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... flesh, and all his blood gushed out—it was shed to save him; and he raised his eyes, lifted his clasped hands, turned his whole face up towards heaven, saying, "Jack loves, loves, very loves good Jesus Christ!" When another violent pang made him start and writhe a little, he recovered in a moment, nodded his head, and said, "Good pain, make ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... woman, that is still worse; but to betray one's country!-to commit an act which shall place her at the mercy of her enemies! Ah, the ignoble deaths of the men who were guilty of this crime! And if men have souls, as we are told they have, how the souls of these men must writhe as they look into the minds of living men and behold the horror and contempt in which each ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... accusing stare at the speaker that made the fat boy writhe, for he knew what was passing in ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the intruder, but was driven back by a number of arrows, rapidly discharged into his head and mouth. Again he advanced, but Gushtasp dodged round him, and continued driving arrows into him to the extent of forty, which subdued his strength, and made him writhe in agony. He then fixed the dagger, which was armed at right angles with knives, upon his spear, and going nearer, thrust it down ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... came within his field of vision, which caused him to start, writhe in his ropes, and cry out to the utmost of his strength. For it was a ship in full sail crossing the Condor's track, and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... treated like a stranger, and it soon became apparent that the host himself was not in the habit of drinking that generous mixture every day. At the second glass he so far forgot himself as to utter the phrase "Eternal friendship," and, soon after, he began to writhe in his chair, and, at last, could no longer refrain himself, but told Henry that Miss Carden had been canvassing customers. She had just sent in six orders for sets of carving-tools, all for friends ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... this youth Would shine, if love could make him great, When caught and tortured for the truth Would only writhe and hesitate; While she, arranging for his days What centuries could not fulfill, Transmutes him with her faith and praise, And has him shining where ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... not seen her sunlight blithe As o'er their shells it dances, I've seen those winkles almost writhe Beneath her ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the sacred words the convulsions of the superior recommenced; but it seemed as if Duncan had more strength than his six predecessors together, for twist and writhe and struggle as she would, the superior's wrist remained none the less firmly clasped in Duncan's hand. At length she fell back on ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the delight and pleasure of both parties, is bent upon one subject. How fast doth this writhe and twist the Bands of Wedlock and love together! Certainly to be of one mind, may very well be said to be happily married, and ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... They will read of Cats' Homes, and Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and shuddering as the ghastly picture is daily unfolded before it, and they will see ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... was the "being used" that would be the question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... already found in a Gaboon factory, the excessive prevalence of petty pilfering. The Moleques or house-boys steal like magpies, even what is utterly useless to them; these young clerks of St. Nicholas will scream and writhe, and confess and beg pardon under the lash, and repeat the offence within the hour: as they are born serviles, we cannot explain ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... adapting his abuse to the "Dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English sailorman. And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a share in rescuing ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... log, and as powerless to move. The dense, black smoke hangs over her like a pall, but prostrate as she is, it cannot sink low enough to suffocate and end her agony. How the bared bosom heaves! how the tortured limbs writhe, and the blackening cuticle emits a nauseous steam! The black blood oozing from her nostrils proclaims how terrible the inward struggle. The whole frame bends and shrinks, and warps like a fragment of leather thrown into a furnace—the flame has reached her vitals—at last, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... a man will fight openly and fairly, I will not hate him. If I wanted to touch an adder with my hand I would not catch him by the tail so that it could curl around and sting my hand; I would catch it just behind the head. It might writhe and wriggle, but I should know that it could not bite me. That is how I want to treat the Tresidders. You despise me," I went on; "you see me now a thing that has to hide like a rabbit in burrow. Well, perhaps it is natural—you live with ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... of the cloud that crosses it; Shelley's Moon, in keeping with the ways of his more tender-hefted universe, merely broke its woof. So the gentle wife of James Lee sees in a vineyard "the vines writhe in rows each impaled ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... endless controversies which it raised—and some of his critics went so far as to affirm it was designed to be detrimental to revelation—that he burned the second part, which was ready for the press. Pope was observed to writhe with anguish in his chair on hearing mentioned the letter of Cibber, with other temporary attacks; and it is said of Montesquieu, that he was so much affected by the criticisms, true and false, which he daily experienced, that they contributed to hasten his death. Ritson's extreme irritability ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... cold-bloodedly efficient. The theatrical temperament must have emotion. An actor cruel and vicious enough to strike down two people as Miss Lamar and Werner were stricken, of sufficient dramatic make-up to conceive of the manner of their deaths, would want to see them writhe and suffer. He would select poisons equally rare and effective, but those more slow and painful in their operation. No, Walter, Shirley is not indicated by this method of reasoning. The arrangement of the scenes for the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... notice of his grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... broken; but the waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... alight, and he started to work in another direction. He left the baron after a few more words of warning, and enjoyed seeing the young man writhe ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... have been nothing but outward formality. Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse—that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscure influence of common forms of speech, some traditional or inherited feeling—a vague notion ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... have turned somebody away, because I felt out of sorts or because too many came, it wasn't a very great misfortune for him, because I was sure to call him back and give him twice as much. Oh, what does it all amount to? People dread the last hour when it threatens to come, writhe like a worm over it, and implore God to let them live, just as a servant implores his master to let him do something over again that he has done poorly, so that he may not come short in his wages ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... sweeping disbelief of everything not 'scientifically' true, Mr. Lushington was almost morbidly sensitive to the opinion of others. Criticism hurt him; indifference wounded him to the quick; ridicule made him writhe. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... not an easy job. The pig did writhe and twist, while the frantic mother danced up and down in the pen behind, and drove the surgeon nearly crazy with her noise. But he toiled bravely on, and when at last the operation was done, the heart of Romeo Augustus was ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the little white body which her child had dropped from him as he came out of his sickness,—her eyes wild with misery, without tears; her feverish mouth open, but no cry in it. The sword of the angel had gone through and through her. She did not even writhe upon it, but lay motionless, cut down, dumb with anguish. The father had turned round again and leaned his head upon the wall. All was over,—all over! The love and the hope of a dozen lovely years, the little sweet companion, the daily ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath the ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... axe to see them writhe, Bellow like calves, fall dead like flies; Such bonny sights, and sounds so blithe, With rapture fill our eats ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... across the sand. Tony Brewster lay on his back. High Chin touched him; felt of the limp arm, and gazed curiously at the blue-edged hole in his brother's chest. With awful labor that brought a clammy moisture to his face, he managed to drag himself close to his brother and writhe round to a position where he could sit up, braced against the other's body. He gazed out across the desert. It had been a fast fight. Waring was done for. High Chin wondered how long he would last. The sun was near the horizon. It seemed only a few minutes ago ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... not be imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault. Dominic's brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly like a ninepin—which was funny to see. But, once down, he would writhe on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage—which was pretty horrible to behold. And it also happened more than once that he would disappear completely- -which was startling to observe. This is the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... especially at the enactment, that the charge must be paid by senders. "Proprietors of journals," says the Quebec Chronicle, "find it hard enough at present to collect the simple subscription, without demanding postage in advance. People who writhe at present under the payment of their bare paper account, will find forwarding postage, in advance, an excruciating sacrifice." The 2 cents is no doubt primarily intended for soldiers' letters. The 3 cents pays the new single rate for postage; ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... words. She felt like a child about to receive corporal punishment. The vindictive force of the woman seemed to beat her down. Writhe and strain as she might, she was bound to suffer both the pain and the indignity to the uttermost limit; for she lacked the strength ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... him, would not prefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, a flight from world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than to be hurled into the living tomb which I have depicted, there to grovel and writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, until ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the dirt, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cataleptic condition. These symptoms lasted more than an hour, and probably recurred frequently. In the course of time, however, this malady is said to have undergone a modification, such as it exhibits at the present day. Women whom it has attacked will suddenly fall down, toss their arms about, writhe their bodies into various shapes, move their heads suddenly from side to side, and with eyes fixed and staring, utter the most dismal cries. If the fit happen on any occasion of pubic diversion, they will, as soon as it has ceased, mix with their companions and continue their amusement as if ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... cob-house on just proportions, nor keep the key through 'Yankee Doodle,' I long to insist upon his making a practical trial in such things before daring to make a criticism. Yet it is a fact that artistic people of every grade and type have to writhe under the criticisms of ignoramuses, who could not accomplish the piece of work they scathingly denounce if their lives depended upon it. I pick up a book and fling it aside with the comment, 'It's not worth reading!' or I look over a great ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... Luxury and Lust's exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of kings; When the low flattery of their reptile lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When eunuchs sing, and fools buffoonery make, 400 And dancers writhe their harlot-limbs in vain; Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts; Its hopes, its fears, its victories, its defeats, Insipid Royalty's keen condiment! 405 Therefore, uninjured and unprofited (Victims at once and executioners), The congregated ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... still hesitated a moment, glancing at her mother, and then stepped out of the summer-house. Chris saw that bitter smile writhe and die on the elder woman's face, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... laughing in the shop fronts of the innumerable curio-shops; in the grotesque figures, the playthings, the idols, cruel, suspicious mad;—it is even found in the buildings: in the friezes of the religious porticos, in the roofs of the thousand pagodas; of which the angles and gable-ends writhe and twist like the yet dangerous remains of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... conscientious to pass such bills without examination and he began to veto some of the worst of them. Each veto message explained the grounds for his dissent, sometimes patiently, sometimes with a sharp sarcasm that must have made the victim writhe. In one case where a widow sought a pension because of the death of her soldier husband it was discovered that he had been accidentally shot by a neighbor while hunting. Another claimant was one who had enlisted at the close of the war, served nine days, had been admitted to the hospital with measles ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... one given solely to the pleasure of staying at the Flying U while the boys completed their arrangements for leaving with him. He had done all that he had planned to do, and he was in a very good humor with the world, or he had been until the Little Doctor had made his pride writhe under her innocent belittlement of his vocation. To have her boy work in pictures would be a calamity in her eyes; in Luck's eyes it would be an honor, provided he did the right kind of work in the right ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a stretch of waltzing ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the latter went to the best makers, he never could get a peruke to sit naturally upon him and the unhappy epithet of Mr. Wiggins, applied to him on one occasion by the barber, stuck to him ever after in the club, and made him writhe when it was uttered. Each man would have quitted the "Kidneys" in disgust long since, but for the other—for each had an attraction in the place, and dared not leave the field in possession ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that streamlet, that a thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! What will have happened then? I may live five years—ten! What will have happened after the five? the ten? I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... hereafter? In the body here, Or in the soul hereafter do we writhe, Atoning for the malice of our lives? Of the uncounted millions that have died, Not one has slipped the napkin from his chin And loosed the jaw to tell us: even he, The intrepid Captain, who gave life to find A doubtful way through clanging worlds of ice,— A fine inquisitive spirit, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... rock his mangled carcase lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey; May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted gore the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... menage at present in New York and the members thereof. Finally public opinion finding that all this made very little impression outwardly, upon the regal disdain of Miss De Grammont in her carriage or in her Opera-stall, however she might writhe and chafe when safely ensconced within that rose and straw-colored boudoir, made up its mind that the secret of the whole three volume novel, the key to the entire mystery ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... nor the success of his play interested him any longer, for he was sorely worried by the knowledge that his play was entirely bad. He saw its defects ever more plainly and the knowledge that another one of his efforts had proved vain made him writhe with pain. With helpless rage he listened to the public applauding the rude and characteristically comic episodes which were merely the background upon which the souls of his Churls had to be outlined, while the theme and thesis ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... pack of mad and fighting dogs as these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yet still able to writhe upward and deal death to any other that might approach. They were at a deadlock, yet each feared to make the first overtures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer even an English or a German nation. It was an orgy ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... go of their victim the fingers of the half dead logger clung convulsively to the planking of the bridge. A business man stamped on them with a curse until the grip was broken. There was a swishing sound; then a sudden crunching jerk and the rope tied to the girder began to writhe and twist like a live thing. This lasted but a short time. The lynchers peered over the railing into the darkness. Then they slowly pulled up the dead body, attached a longer rope and repeated ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... person actually witness a murder, he cannot imagine the shock and dreadfulness of seeing one man shot down, writhe, gasp, grow pale and cease struggling. To picture ten men murdered simply stuns the mind. An effort to realize hundreds, thousands, millions of men mangled, wounded, bayoneted, crushed, blown to atoms by shells and mine—all ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the disintegrator rays were useless here. When they struck into the horde of crescent-shaped things coming so hungrily toward us, the things changed from red to a sickly, yellowish pink, and seemed to writhe, as though in some ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... remember how I cudgelled thee, and thou didst grin and nimbly writhe, and catch hold ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... speak. The old woman continued. "Algar lived on—yes, lived that he might suffer all the evils with which my curse loaded him, and died that he might be hurled into the abyss where traitors and cravens writhe and ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... good to explain this phenomenon, which is harder to me than any implied in the turning tables or involuntary writing. By the way, a lady whom I know here writes Greek without knowing or having ever known a single letter of it. The unbelievers writhe under it. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... occupying himself with his true happiness; from even dreaming of ameliorating his institutions, of improving his laws, of advancing the progress of science, of perfectioning his morals. Vain and gloomy ideas have absorbed his attention: he consents to groan under fanatical tyranny—to writhe under political inflictions—to live in error—to languish in misfortune—in the hope, when he shall be no more, of being one day happier; in the firm confidence, that after he has disappeared, his calamities, his patience, will conduct ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... a few hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... lianas swing in air: coiling roots overspread the ground. Bushes, shrubs, reeds and ferns of every size and height combine to make a woven thicket, filling up and even choking the spaces between trunk and trunk. Supple, snaky vines writhe amid the foliage, and bind ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... from your stings, and actresses have spent many a sleepless night under your malign influence. You have tortured Dukes on the peaks of gracious splendour where they sit enthroned as far above common mortals as they ought to be above the common feeling of envy; and you have caused even Queens to writhe because there happened to be a few stray ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... On the sharp rock his mangled carcass lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey! May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted gore ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... malconformation[obs3]; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion[obs3], want of symmetry, anamorphosis[obs3]; ugliness &c. 846; talipes[obs3]; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, contort, twist, warp, wrest, writhe, make faces, deform, misshape. Adj. distorted &c. v.; out of shape, irregular, asymmetric, unsymmetric[obs3], awry, wry, askew, crooked; not true, not straight; on one side, crump[obs3], deformed; harelipped; misshapen, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Greek chorus of friends to the tragedy, to witness and sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... your pages, shrunken through the scare Of that worst blow of all, a paper famine, Dispense exclusively Bellona's fare, And, failing battle tales, you simply cram in Facts about spies, commodities and prices, I writhe beneath this crisis. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... If my body bled at your feet you would stoop to me, but when my spirit lies in flames you cry 'Don't writhe! Don't be a spectacle!' ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... Cherokee, and Illinese, No more beneath his stalwort blow shall writhe: Peace spreads her reign wide o'er his inland ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and friendliness there, poor thing—she that had ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... bits of wild speculation.... From upstairs last night she had heard fragmentary outbursts from the "judge." "Irregular; no licence." Now Gloria meant to kill the snake outright, not to allow the scotched reptile to writhe free. She was married; she was going with her husband into the wilderness on the most romantic of all honeymoons. The papers were free to make ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... sweetmeats can delight My dainty appetite, For I, alas! must learn to drink, However I may writhe and shrink, Pure ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... duties into two classes, the devotions of the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans simply rock and writhe, while the humble ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... more quiet, his muscles stiffened and relaxed—he was no longer conscious. A few more convulsive quivers, as a serpent might writhe and jerk, then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was as nothing. Softly I eased him down, and composed his ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... me is one picture. Large trees are about us, and from their branches hang gray filaments of moss, while great creepers, like monstrous serpents, curl around the trunks and writhe in tangles through the air. And all about is the mud, soft mud, that bubbles forth gases, and that heaves and sighs with internal agitations. And in the midst of all this are a dozen of us. We are lean and wretched, and our bones show through our tight-stretched skins. We do not sing and chatter ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied her. These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled the Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death; and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he walked to town, bought them, and placed them in a foolish order about her grave. It was a puerile, crazy deed, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... barked from the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... will I strike My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all The ridges of thy power. And I will show This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman, A thing to make his proud heart of evil Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law, Easily as a boy goes on windy grass.— O marvel! that my little life of mind Can by mere thinking ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... hideous ornaments displayed were used in the time of Louis Quinze); the CORTILE, or hall, is Morisco-Italian. It is all over marble, maplewood, looking-glasses, arabesques, ormolu, and scagliola. Scrolls, ciphers, dragons, Cupids, polyanthuses, and other flowers writhe up the walls in every kind of cornucopiosity. Fancy every gentleman in Jullien's band playing with all his might, and each performing a different tune; the ornaments at our Club, the 'Sarcophagus,' so bewilder and affect me. Dazzled with emotions which I cannot describe, and which she ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for no better revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then see thee writhe in despair. Knew I more than I know, can the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and the disembodied spirit ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a man worth one ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... seemed to writhe. "Pardon me, ma'am," he spluttered, "but I must call your husband a scoundrel. I'm sorry to be impolite, but I must do it. If I had 'im 'ere, I don't know that I should be able to control myself—I don't indeed." Gyp made a movement of her gloved hands, which he seemed to interpret as sympathy, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the breakers clash and boom; We saw them plunge and writhe and rise, And toss great flakes of ashen spume High toward ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... poverty. Take what there is; young as you are, you may want it more now than hereafter. But hold it in trust for your brother as well as yourself. If he is harshly treated (and you will go and see him, and you will remember that he would writhe under what you might scarcely feel), or if they overtask him (he is so young to work), yet it may find him a home near you. God watch over and guard you both! You are orphans now. But HE has told even the orphans to ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... means. All that company has fallen asleep. The men lie back with open mouths, the goblets still in their hands. Golden cascades of wine fall glittering upon the marble. The women writhe in these pools of wine. But even in the intoxication of their dreams they try to guard their elaborate hair dress. The whole mad band, musicians and animals, lies there with limbs dissolved, panting for air, ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... South Wind watched them writhe and twist and try to throw each other to the ground. Then he said, softly, "You, O Maple, do not cause the sweet water to flow for man; nor do you, O Ash, make your wood to grow pliant ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... issue out of it, through blood and sacrifice. But they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... to desire less would not be to love my brother:—that the soul capable of such deeds shall be compelled to know the nature of its deeds in the light of the absolute Truth—that the eternal fact shall flame out from the divine region of its own conscience until it writhe in the shame of being itself, loathe as absolute horror the deeds which it would now justify, and long for deliverance from that which it has made of itself. The moment the discipline begins to blossom, the moment the man begins to thirst after ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... echo. respirar breathe, exhale, inhale. resplandor m. light, radiance, brightness, glow. responder respond, reply, answer. respuesta f. reply, answer. resucitar return to life. resuelto, -a resolved, determined. retumbar tremble. retorcer twist; —se writhe, be wrung. retrato m. portrait, picture. retumbar resound, recho. reunir unite, gather. reventar burst forth. revs m. reverse; al —— contrariwise. revestir clothe, robe. revuelto, -a ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... "there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough to ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... red, Flame round the bent brows of Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed. Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint of ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... felt his lips writhe back in a snarl. The wind tingled on his teeth. "I know now," he said. "I know about the minutes I lost. I know why they're after me. You'd better ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... When thou art present, he will speak sweetly, and will admire thy words: but at the last he will writhe his mouth, ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. The beautiful white limbed figures that supported the galleries reminded him once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemed to writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of the music that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floor was thick with dancing couples. "Look at them," said the little officer, "see how much they ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... his hand. So he entered into the cavern, all shamefast, and the brachet followeth after, that he deigned not to carry, and so cometh he to the place where the griffons were. So soon as they heard him coming they dress them on their feet, and then writhe along as serpents, then cast forth such fire, and so bright a flame amidst the rock, as that all the cavern is lighted up thereof, and they see by the brightness of light of their jaws the brachet coming. So soon as they have espied her, ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... not remember how I cudgelled thee, and thou didst grin and nimbly writhe, and catch ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... Dobson since yesterday evening; you, only since this afternoon; I, at close quarters; you, at a respectful distance. Your fetters have not galled you yet. MY wrists, MY ankles, are excoriated. The iron has entered into my soul. I droop. I stumble. Blood flows from me. I quiver and curse. I writhe. The sun mocks me. The moon titters in my face. I can stand it no longer. I will no more of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... me from whom all is taken?—husband, sons, wealth, land, renown, power,—power which I loved, wretch that I was, as well as husband and as sons? Ah God! the girl is right. Better to rot in the convent, than writhe in the world. Better never to have had, than ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... that taketh away sin. Behold the Supreme Sacrifice that makes us clean. Give up your pleasures; give up your wants; give up all to the weak and wretched of our people. Go down to Pharaoh and smite him in God's name. Go down to the South where we writhe. Strive—work—build—hew—lead—inspire! God calls. Will you hear? Come to Jesus. The harvest is waiting. Who will cry: 'Here am I, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... easy, simple action. Oh, Asia! I have read the Arabian Nights, here is their very essence: two flowers, and the question is settled. We clear the fourteen volumes of Clarissa Harlowe with a bouquet. I writhe before this letter, like a thread in the fire. To take, or not to take, my two camellias. Yes or No, kill or give life! At last a voice cries to me, "Test him!" ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... a novel's newly printed page We find a maudlin eulogy of sin, And read of ways that harlots wander in, And of sick souls that writhe in helpless rage; Or when Romance, bespectacled and sage, Taps on her desk and bids the class begin To con the problems that have always ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine's looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock began ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curls of vapour wriggled over the black river-surface. Our homeless, irrelevant, tiny steamer seemed to hang between two abysms. One became suddenly aware of the miles of dark water beneath. I found that under a prolonged gaze the face of the river began to writhe and eddy, as if from some horrible suppressed emotion. It seemed likely that something might appear. I reflected that if the river failed us, all hope was gone; and that anyhow this region was the abode of devils. I ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... Bell Has Fought through Tremendous Obstacles to Find and Kill The Master, Whose Diabolical Poison Makes Murder-mad Snakes of the Hands; and, as He Faces the Monster at Last—His Own Hands Start to Writhe! (Conclusion.) ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... and words were like a dash of icy water; Rivers moistened his lips and sank, mentally, into that position he loathed and yet could not escape. Someone was again getting control of him. He might writhe and strain, but he was caught once ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Clewer Brush-drill?" This time the question was answered sooner, and Brush-drill was dealt out for the space of five minutes by Stalky's watch. They could not even writhe in their bonds. No brush ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... teaching? Do you not wish for, nay, almost demand, instant pardon for any trespass that you may commit,—of temper, or manner, for instance? and are you always ready to forgive in that way yourself? Do you not writhe with indignation at being wrongly judged by others who condemn you without knowing your actions or the causes of them; and do you never judge others after ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... with a shudder. "I hate things that writhe, and squirm, and wriggle. Imagine being so near those hideous creatures! Why, if I once should see them I should never dare to go in bathing again. I'd rather not know ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... thing your life is woven round, Fall, drop by drop, until your heart is sieved! Go mad and writhe, and moan upon the ground, And curse, and die, and say that you have ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... attack is taken as personal. It is quite ridiculous to observe how some of the very best of the Americans are tickled when you praise their country and institutions; how they will wince at any qualification in your praise, and actually writhe under any positive disparagement. They will put questions, even if they anticipate an unfavourable answer; they cannot help it. What is the reason of this? Simply their better sense wrestling with the errors of education ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The first offender says, "I did it because I find fishing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... somber evenings when the sighing of the wind resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... railings, On each spear are serpents winding, On each rail are stinging adders; Lizards too adorn the bulwarks, Play their long tails in the sunlight, Hissing lizards, venomed serpents, Jump and writhe upon the rampart, Turn their horrid heads to meet thee; On the greensward lie the monsters, On the ground the things of evil, With their pliant tongues of venom, Hissing, striking, crawling, writhing; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... struggling in the nightmare's grip, Fears he has let Time's scanty forelock slip, And lost a great occasion Of self-advancement. How that mouth's a-writhe With hate, on platforms oft so blandly blithe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... hammer at the end of the long handle, and if at any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... low ideals of their father. They were tall and sturdy girls, clad in breezy calico dresses and with their hair down over their eyes; and as they gazed out from beneath their bangs a guilty smile contorted their lips, a smile that made Wilhelmina writhe. ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... the sinews of his neck drawn and knotted, his eyes starting from their sockets. Thorndyke felt the rubber tube quiver suddenly and writhe with the slow energy of a dying snake, and then from the quivering bell came a low, gurgling sound like a stream of water being forced ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... astonishing wonder is that none of the unhappy wretches suffered sun-stroke or went crazy while bound up in this manner, because the sun's heat intensely aggravated the agonies of thirst. But the sun-bath consummated Major Bach's greatest ambition. It caused the victim to writhe and twist more frantically, which in turn forced him to shriek and howl ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... rarely did, on a deliberately fantastic theme. Hear again with what savage joy his Moon "rips the womb" of the cloud that crosses it; Shelley's Moon, in keeping with the ways of his more tender-hefted universe, merely broke its woof. So the gentle wife of James Lee sees in a vineyard "the vines writhe in rows each ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... hundreds of snakes twined together as if they were all engaged in the attempt to get their heads into the centre of the tangled mass which, all in motion, heaved and sank and rolled from side to side, the lower portions of the serpents' bodies and their tails being free to lash and writhe about in the air, while at a second glance the spectators began to realise the fact that all around, gliding in and out amongst the stones, were hundreds upon hundreds more of the reptiles, apparently urged on by some savage instinct to form other knots, till the whole of the hollow in front seemed ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... even of that moment made him writhe on his bed years after; for a mental and bodily wound are alike in this, that after there is but the scar of either left, bad weather will revive the torture. His face fell. Kate saw it, and did him some injustice. They walked on in silence, in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... black, like a wall of ebony, from out of which continually there rushed into view coiling, curling, hoary-headed monsters, in the shape of roaring billows, which burst upon and over them, deluging the decks, and causing the timbers of the ship to writhe as if ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... Do you say so? Well, I'll never guess a man's age by his looks Again.—Poor Master Waller! He must writhe To hear I think Sir William is so young. I'll turn his visit yet to more account.—[Aside.] A handsome ring, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... snake had lain somnolently, but now, as the sun began to warm its body, Jack saw the brilliantly colored folds begin to writhe and move. It suddenly appeared to become aware of him and raised its flat, ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, there came the unearthly abhorrent scream of a rabbit in the fear of death. It made one immense writhe, tore his wrists and his sleeves in a final convulsion, all its belly flashed white in a whirlwind of paws, and then he had slung it round and had it under his arm, fast. It cowered and skulked. His face was gleaming ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I know, Has cause to wish my head laid low; And many an angry udal knife Would gladly drink of Eina's life. But ere they lay Earl Einar low,— Ere this stout heart betrays its cause, Full many a heart will writhe, we know, In the wolf's fangs, or ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... mantling in his delicate countenance—but what is he after all but a mouthful for the devil? All those torments, all those tortures, that I have told you of, will be his; there, look at him, he will burn and writhe in pain, and consume for ever, and ever, and ever, and never be destroyed, unless the original sin be washed out from him by the 'call,' unless he be made, hereafter, one of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... spoiled my appearance for the rest of my days!" cried Barbemouche. "May you writhe in the flames ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... abstracted, his eyes staring on a window that looked on the branches of the highest tree about the castle. He had been reading or praying with his master before the physician had come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived. There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in the eyes of M'Iver or myself. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... wires, and expected one rapid explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special bete noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond the stage ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dreadfully poor Aunt Charlotte suffered at sea, and travelling was a sad nuisance after all. And indeed it would have been impossible to move him, for his sufferings were occasionally very great. Sometimes he would writhe in strange agonies all night long, till they used to wonder how he would live through it; but when morning came he scarcely ever remembered anything at all, and in answer to enquiries always said that he ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... "the charms work ill before so many. Now behold!" and, gazing at the twain, I cast my wand upon the marble and murmured a spell. For a moment it was still, and then, as I muttered, the rod slowly began to writhe. It bent itself, it stood on end, and moved of its own motion. Next it put on scales, and behold it was a serpent ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... life and manhood out of him, as it did at night before burrowing its way ten million miles below the floor of Hell with him, and immuring him in a molten incandescent tomb where he could not even scream or writhe. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... marvelous tapestries showed that it also was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Woven of many different metals, of vivid but harmonious colors in a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light; which, pouring from concealed sources, was reflected by the highly-polished metal and innumerable jewels of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... bade Feshnavat, my father, fetch me one of my books of magic, and read in it of the discovery of the Identical by means of the Ring; and I took the Ring and hung it on a hair of my own head over the head of the Genie, and saw one of the thin lengths begin to twist and dart and writhe, and shift lustres as a creature in anguish. So I put the Ring on my forefinger, and turned the hair round and round it, and tugged. Lo, with a noise that stunned me, the hair came out! O my betrothed, what shrieks and roars were those: with which the Genie awoke, finding ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lying—but, no; they are perfectly disinterested, and they lie as though by some one's higher order; they lie in the fanatical conviction that falsehood is in no way different from the truth. Wretched actors, even incapable of a decent makeup, they writhe from morning till night on the boards of the stage, and, dying the most real death, suffering the most real sufferings, they bring into their deathly convulsions the cheap art of the harlequin. Even their crooks are not real; they only play the roles of crooks, while remaining ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... damned alike by Gods, and Men, and Columns. [lxxxii] Again, my Jeffrey—as that sound inspires, [54] How wakes my bosom to its wonted fires! 590 Fires, such as gentle Caledonians feel When Southrons writhe upon their critic wheel, Or mild Eclectics, [55] when some, worse than Turks, Would rob poor Faith to decorate "Good Works." Such are the genial feelings them canst claim— My Falcon flies not at ignoble game. Mightiest of all Dunedin's beasts ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect itself; making it ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... began to writhe about his limbs, but drew no sound to vie with their crackling. But there was weeping heard in the crowd. And suddenly from the unobservedly overcast heavens came a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder followed by a violent shower of rain. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sharp rock his mangled carcase lie, His entrails torn, to hungry birds a prey; May he convulsive writhe his bleeding side, And with his clotted ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... our various ties should be a motive, a hostage against sinning, and doubtless restrains many a one who would go headlong under evil impulses. But multitudes do slip off the paths of virtue, and helpless wives, and often helpless husbands and children, writhe from wounds made by those under sacred obligations to shield them. Upon the families of criminals, society visits a mildew of coldness and scorn that blights nearly all chance of good fruit. But society is very unjust in its discriminations, and some of the most heinous sins in God's sight are treated ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... thunder; in a minute, a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Bingo had fallen by his hand. But, oddly enough, that fact did not sear his conscience. He had been accused of drowning Lester Parmalee, and the thought of that accusation now made him shrink and writhe. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... drifting away, and nothing really hurt me except my shoulder. It was the body lying half across me that held me prone, and I struggled vainly to roll it to one side. But I had no strength, and the effort was vain. The pain made me writhe and moan, my face beaded with perspiration. A wounded man lifted his arm from out a tangled heap of dead, and fired a revolver up into the ceiling; I saw the bullet tear through the plaster, and the hand sink back nerveless, the fingers dropping the weapon. The sounds of battle were dying away ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... upon him. He was a human being plunged in the deepest abyss of fate, beneath the range of the starlight and the gaze of other worlds. He was trembling, stretching out his feeble hands in the blackness for guidance, sick with apprehension, betrayed, deluded. And now he began to writhe in the grasp of a new terror, for it seemed to the doctor that he, too, was conscious of the obstinate spirit that stood beside Cuckoo, and that he dreaded the approach of his doom in her slumber. He, too, murmured silently, "Will she sleep? Will ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... in battle to arouse This whirling shadow of invisible things, These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods? O Father, and O Mother of the gods, Is there some trouble in the heavenly house? We who are captained by its unseen kings Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies, What powers who ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... "These Shakespearean heroines are a bad lot. May I ask just why you want me to propose to you, my dear? Do you have to collect a certain number of scalps by this particular rare day in June? Or is it that you think you would enjoy the exquisite pleasure of seeing me writhe and ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... wonder came into the old face—then it began to writhe, and from each eye oozed scant tears, seeking a channel amid the seams and wrinkles ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... How dare you!" cried the girl, starting up with her face aflame. "Never, never!" Then she threw herself down on the sofa and hid her face. Some memory came over her that made her writhe with shame. Hugo ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shadows of the grave Compast him round and ere he could repeat His message thro', fell lifeless at her feet! Shuddering she went—a soul-felt pang of fear A presage that her own dark doom was near, Roused every feeling and brought Reason back Once more to writhe her last upon the rack. All round seemed tranquil even the foe had ceased As if aware of that demoniac feast His fiery bolts; and tho' the heavens looked red, 'Twas but some distant conflagration's spread. But ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism. Larger of bone and sinew it may be, but the wings are wanting. Talent sticks fast to earth, and its most perfect works have still one foot of clay. Genius claims kindred with the very workings of Nature herself, so that a sunset ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... from her with a violence that made her writhe with pain—while her eyes flashed with ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... considerations, and I regard their demonstrations of remorse with a broad smile of amusement. It is anything but a laughing matter from their own standpoint, however; the mudbake warns them forthwith that I have threatened to have them bastinadoed, and they fairly writhe and groan in an agony of apprehension. The khan, owing to his more sanguine temperament, and a lively conception that the heaviest burden of guilt and accompanying punishment would naturally fall on his own shoulders as the chief of my escort, removes his turban and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of some mild summer night. But, oh! his path leads o'er that awful stream, Across a dizzy arch 'mid sulphurous steam That covers all the grimy bridge with slime. He stands perplexed beside the waters grime, Which sluggish move adown the limbo black, With murky waves that writhe demoniac,— As ebon serpents curling through the gloom And hurl their inky crests, that silent come Toward the yawning gulf, a tide of hate; And sweep their dingy waters to ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... is given to move off, and the snake begins to writhe. Progress is steady, but not exhilarating. We have several battalions of the Division in front of us (which Bobby Little resents as a personal affront), but have been assured that we shall see all the fighting we want. The situation ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... cotton, stretching as far as can be seen. Great herds of cattle, rounded up by picturesque vaqueros with silver-garnished saddles and strange hats and whirling lassoes, paw the dusty ground, shortly to writhe beneath the hot imprint of the branding-iron. Long irrigation ditches, brimming with water from some distant river, and fringed with trees, wind away among the plantations; and white-clad peones, hoe in hand, tend the long furrows whose parallel lines are lost in perspective. Centre of the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... fly thence at times on the wings of our hopes and our thoughts. There may well be some few over whom Fate exerts a more tyrannous power, by virtue of instinct, heredity and other laws more relentless still, more profound and obscure; but even when we writhe beneath unmerited, crushing misfortune; even when fortune compels us to do the thing we should never have done, had our hands been free; even then, when the deed has been done, the misfortune has happened, it still rests with ourselves to deny her the least ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... bear, but who stood up firm and erect in their weakness, whose cross, instead of crushing them to the earth, seemed only to lift them up. We are told that Robert Hall, the great preacher, suffered much from disease. He was forced often to throw himself down and writhe on the ground in paroxysms of pain. From these he would rise with a smile, saying, "I suffered much, but I did not cry out, did ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... washed deeper down, and the roar of the pool thus formed spread into the night as the head and chief among other noises of the kind created by the deluging rain. The flowers so carefully planted by Fanny's repentant lover began to move and writhe in their bed. The winter-violets turned slowly upside down, and became a mere mat of mud. Soon the snowdrop and other bulbs danced in the boiling mass like ingredients in a cauldron. Plants of the tufted species were ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... present we have no means of ascertaining. The letters giving them the miss-in-baulk in no uncertain voice were only despatched yesterday. But it cannot affect us how they writhe beneath the blow. There is ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... And best of all, the empty chatter of the magpie Mrs. Hanway-Harley—who knows nothing, being a fool! It is that magpie chatter to be poison in the ears of the others! Oh, you should behold them, my San Reve! You should witness how they writhe and how they tremble in the presence of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the sand. Their brazen claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... and retired to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... in the mountains which makes the Malbaie valley. Not far from Malbaie, he saw the so-called "porpoises," or white whales, (beluga, French, marsouin) that still disport themselves in great numbers in these waters, come puffing to the surface and writhe their whole length into view like miniature sea-serpents. They have heads, Cartier says, with no very great accuracy, "of the style of a greyhound," they are of spotless white and are found, he was told (incorrectly) ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... luscious manner, all the while the inner folds of her tight fitting sheath kept me prisoner, and treated my Cock to the most delicious contractions and pressures, till I was so inflamed, Cupid's charger plunged on his mad career once more, making my dark beauty writhe and squirm in the excess of her ecstatic emotion; several times we seemed to stop by mutual consent, and lay for a while enjoying those heavenly sensations. After thus delaying the final crisis to the uttermost, the moment came when the life flood could no longer be ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... and half-way down the Coho Falls thunder everlastingly. When the logs reach the falls they are meat for the mills. Nothing can stop them then. One after another they rise on end to take the final plunge. Some twist and writhe as if in agony, as if conscious that the river and forest shall know them no more. Thousands have travelled the self-same way; not one has ever returned. The lower rapid of the Coho hardly deserves its name. Half a mile farther ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... But what hope was there of her? And he was jealous, detestably jealous, so jealous that in that direction he did not dare to let his mind go. He sawed at the bit and brought it back, or he would have had to writhe about the carriage. His thoughts ran furiously all over the place to avoid that pit. And now he found himself flashing at moments into wild and hopeless rebellion against the institution of marriage, of which ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... opportunity not to be missed. When you grow old you will say to your grandchildren: 'Once I lit a cigar with a thousand-dollar check.' The oldest inhabitant will be silenced forever; it may become history. And then, too, if there are spirits, as Scripture says there are, your uncle's will writhe at the performance. I trust that you will forgive me my part in the matter. I have taken a fancy to you, and if you will accept my friendship I shall be happy to accept yours. Your uncle's revenge will not be a marker to the restitution his ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... of the Revolution Book,—as specified in the other Letter: five hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about 2/7, and your Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland, shall it be Scotland, nay, shall ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... boon of dreamless sleep? Who bricks would make, sans straw or clay? "Call spirits from the vasty deep," Or weave a lofty, living lay? Let him be heartened, jocund, gay, Nor hopeless writhe on tenter-hooks,— They meet no barriers who essay The easy road of "How ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... under benches and chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony, suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and piercing outcries. The attention of the families in which they held their meetings was called to their extraordinary condition and proceedings; and the whole neighborhood and surrounding ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... chains, and then, when we writhe in our agony, you say we don't behave prettily!" These words, which did not lessen Ransom's wonderment, were the young lady's answer to his deprecatory speech. She saw that he was honestly bewildered and that in a moment more he would laugh at her, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... discreetly raise their lid, opening ever so little the shutters of their dwelling; on the level of the water, in the glades of the aquatic garden, the pond snails—Physa, Limnaea and Planorbis—take the air. Dark leeches writhe upon their prey, a chunk of earthworm; thousands of tiny, reddish grubs, future mosquitoes, go spinning around and twist and curve like so many ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... been nothing but outward formality. Remorse in the sense of gnawing shame and unavailing regret is only understandable to me when some wrong had been done to a fellow-creature. But why she, that girl who existed on sufferance, so to speak—why she should writhe inwardly with remorse because she had once thought of getting rid of a life which was nothing in every respect but a curse—that I could not understand. I thought it was very likely some obscure ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... helle, And serveth, as the bokes telle, To tempte a man of such a wise, Was redy there, and thilke emprise, Which he hath set upon delit, He vengeth thanne in such a plit, 5340 That he his necke hathe writhe atuo. This yonge wif was sory tho, Which wiste nothing what it mente; And natheles yit thus it wente Noght only of this ferste man, Bot after, riht as he began, Sexe othre of hire housebondes Asmod hath take into hise bondes, So ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... beyond that one flat statement, around the turn below you comes a Ford, rattling all its joints trying to make the hill on "high." The driver honks wildly at you to give him the road—you, Casey Ryan! Wouldn't you writhe and invent words and apply them viciously to all Fords and the man who invented them? But the driver comes at you honking, squawking,—and you ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... midst, a ghastly heap of mangled flesh and shattered limbs were scattered to right and left. Two unhappy lads were blown to unrecognisable fragments. No words can convey the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in your serene safety, if ever my ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... stand again Brother with brother, Strong to quell wrong and crime, All the world over! Heart pressed to heart once more, Nought could resist us, Earth cease to writhe ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... fierce, I am not in a rage. If I should meet the judge and jury who doomed my father to the gallows, I think I would serve them if they needed aid. But I am proud; I inherited my nature; I writhe, yes, mother, writhe under ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and cower and bring a shrine a forced and faithless faith Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death. For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt—no gods are mine that love a lie! Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells— ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... many a quiet laugh over his predicament. And, to add zest to the situation, I informed Singleton of what was going forward. He came over every night for supper, and to my delight the bluff Englishman was received in a fashion to make the doctor writhe and snort with mortification. Never in his life had he been so insignificant a person. And he, whose conversation was so sought after in the gay season in town, was thrown for companionship upon a scarce-grown boy whose talk ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that idea has not risen uppermost in my thoughts," Petrescu answered. "I owe the Englishman an apology for the attack which was made upon him directly he succeeded in wounding me. He is a gentleman and a gallant swordsman, and I writhe under the fear that he believes that attack was ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
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