"Strangles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thin eyebrows; him they call Messer Alessandro. Castracane is tied like a netted calf—his hands behind him, and them to his neck. What's the good of his strength? He is as strong as the town bull; but if he writhes his hands he strangles, and if he thrusts his neck he ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... bird with an equal chance of getting them; and whose legs are his only means of locomotion? That old philosophic enemy, matter, the inherently and essentially evil, still hangs about the neck of the poor and strangles him: but to the rich, matter is immaterial; the elaborate organisation of his extra-corporeal ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... handiwork of nature, this exhibition of "April's loveliest coronets." Now and again large trees are seen on the line of the road withering in the cruel coils of a parasitic vine, which winds itself about the trunk like a two-inch hawser, and slowly strangles the stout, columnar tree. Finally the original trunk will die and fall to the ground, leaving the once small vine to grow and fatten upon its decay until it shall rival in size the trunk it has displaced. This is a sight common in tropical regions, and ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... cooled off, put the money they had stolen from our people in a black caarpet-bag, and escaped. Such pi'acies, suh, are not only cruel but vulgaar. Mr. Klutchem's robries are quite in line with these men. He takes you by the throat in another way, but he strangles you all ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... but eminent people to see sights, and that none but eminent people take our bore), and you never saw a man so affected in your life as Blumb was. He cried like a child! And then our bore begins his description in detail - for all this is introductory - and strangles his hearers with the folds ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... threaten, men may warn him; Babies cry and women coax; But he cares not one iota, For he calmly smokes and smokes. Oh, he cares not whom he strangles, Vexes, puts to flight, provokes; And although they squirm and fidget, He just smokes and smokes ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... cried Haynerd at length. "Here I waste my evenings in learned philosophical discussions with you people, and meantime, while we're figuring out that there is no evil, that monster, Ames, stretches out a tentacle and strangles me! Fine practical discussions we've been having, ain't they? I tell you, I'm through with 'em!" He brought his fist down upon ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... following day I botanized in the neighbourhood, with but poor success. An oblique-leaved fig climbs the other trees, and generally strangles them: two epiphytal Orchideae also occur on the latter, Vanda Roxburghii and an Oberonia. Dodders (Cuscuta) of two species, and Cassytha, swarm over and conceal the bushes with ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... given signal a ring is formed by the relations and friends, the entire settlement looking on from the background. The executioner (usually the victim's son or brother) then steps forward, and placing his right foot behind the back of the condemned, slowly strangles him to death with a walrus thong. A kamitok took place during the latter part of our stay." The Chukchi are nominally Christians, but sacrifice animals to the spirits of the rivers and mountains, and also practise Shamanism. In personal habits the people are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... mad endeavors to accumulate vast means of living, we shall have time to pick ourselves up, compose ourselves to some tranquillity and some humility, and actually, with what small means we have, begin to live. Panic strangles life, and the money-making fever always tends to panic. Panic is the great evil now, and panic needs a panacea. What better one can we invent than music? It were the very madness of economy to cut off that. Some margin every life must have, around this everlasting sameness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Charlotte lavished on this puppet half the wealth of her imagination. She flings phrase after perfect phrase to him to cover himself with—some of her best things have been given to Louis Moore to utter; but they do not make him live. Again, she strangles him in his own rhetoric. The courtship of Louis Moore and Shirley will not compare with that of Jane and Rochester. There is no nightingale ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... war on labor, we declare unhesitatingly that the two are everlasting foes, and that whenever War lays hands on Labor's throat, it strangles her. This is part of the inevitable program of war, for note that it is on the laboring men that the dreadful claims of war must fall. Mark its course. A bugle sounds the call to arms. From workshop, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... write. The varying shades and currents of emotion may indeed be put into words by those specially skilled that way; they often are, at considerable length. But the sheer, crude article itself—the strong, live thing that leaps up inside you and swells and strangles you, the dizziness of revulsion that takes the breath like cold water—who shall depict this and live? All I knew was that I would have died then and there, cheerfully, for the funny man; that I longed for red Indians to spring out from the hedge on the dog-cart, just to show what ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... flinging them out to the world that their fullest development is possible. The man who tries to keep his education, his superior advantages for himself, who is always looking out for the main chance, only shrivels, and strangles the very faculties ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... continued a full half hour. I once or twice took them up on a piece of straw, but the ant never let go its hold on the fly, and paid no attention to me. At last, the fly was exhausted, and ceased to flap its tiny wings. The sanguinary ant strangled the poor silly fly, as some sharper strangles or ruins his poor dupe. After death, the ant seemed busy at sucking its blood. Satiated with this, the ant attempted to convey the fly away, dead as it was, but thinking better of the matter, the carcase was abandoned. I observed that the combat went on in the midst of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... when he has succeeded in capturing it, either in open fight or by cunning and treachery; the climbing plant strangles the tree, the desert-sand chokes the meadows, stars fall from heaven, and earthquakes swallow up cities. You believe in the gods—and so do I after my own fashion—and if they have so ordered the course of this life in every class of existence that the strong triumph over the weak, why should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... statement[28] that God "charged His angels with folly" applies to all angels. In Daniel the princes or guardian angels of the heathen nations oppose Michael the guardian angel of Judah. But in Tobit we find Asmodaeus the evil demon, [Greek: to poneros daimonion], who strangles Sarah's husbands, and also a general reference to "a devil or evil spirit," [Greek: pneuma].[29] The Fall of the Angels is not properly a scriptural doctrine, though it is based on Gen. vi. 2, as interpreted by the Book of Enoch. It is true that the bn[e] ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... laws of good and evil. A cat who strangles another will not be more culpable than a man who kills his fellow men. My dear Cat, the great Hobbes never reasoned more clearly than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... that it hits them; but he is quite right, for man is the only animal which causes pain to others without any further purpose than just to cause it. Other animals never do it except to satisfy their hunger, or in the rage of combat. If it is said against the tiger that he kills more than eats, he strangles his prey only for the purpose of eating it; and if he cannot eat it, the only explanation is, as the French phrase has it, that ses yeux sont plus grands que son estomac. No animal ever torments another for ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Danesbury caught me in the very act. Poor old dear, she cried when she complained of me, but duty is Danesbury's motto; she would go to the stake for it, and I respect her immensely. I have got my twenty lines of that horrible French poetry to learn—the very thought almost strangles me, and I foresee plainly that I shall do something terribly naughty within the next few hours; I must, my love—I really must. I have just come here to shake hands with Miss Thornton, and then I must away to my penance. Ah, how little I shall learn, and how hard I shall ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... fetches it bound to the open jaws; he thrusts aside with an uncompromising air the arms of friends, wives and mothers, the outstretched hands of suppliants begging for lives;[31143] he suddenly throttles the struggling victims[31144] and, for fear that they might escape, he strangles them in time. Near the end, this is no longer enough; the brute must have grander quarries, and, accordingly, a pack of hounds, beaters-up, and, willingly or not, it is Robespierre who equips, directs and urges them on, at Orange, at Paris,[31145] ordering ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... game? To crush and kill for the mere sake of doing it, as a sheep-killing dog strangles fifty lambs in a night for the fun of hearing them bleat? Isn't there a bigger game? a game of mutual joys and hopes, of sunlight ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... Hush! I go about in search of love; and I find it in unmeasured stores in the bosoms of others. But when I try to ask for it, this horrible shyness strangles me; and I stand dumb, or worse than dumb, saying meaningless things—foolish lies. And I see the affection I am longing for given to dogs and cats and pet birds, because they come and ask for it. (Almost whispering.) It must be asked for: it is like a ghost: it cannot speak unless it is first spoken ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... by Raspopov, who accuses her of poisoning him, strangles the old man in a moment of cold anger, under the very eyes of Evsey. Thanks to Dorimedonte, this crime goes unpunished. Evsey, having become the lodger of the two lovers, now enters the Okhrana, at the advice of his new master. After a while, Raissa, haunted by remorse, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... News has just come that Ti Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they call the lavrette-pouff,—a form of the disease which strangles its victim within a ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... executioner is Diet. Feasting asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public confession of so many crimes, such numerous convulsions, apoplexies, head-aches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has occasioned, that his executioner Diet in a rage stops his mouth, puts the cord about his neck, and strangles him. Supper is only condemned to load his hands with a certain quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many dishes on table: he is also bound over to remain at the distance of six hours' walking from Dinner upon pain of death. Supper ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I sees a man in a velvet cloak. It 's him that swings yer to a gibbet. It 's him that strangles yer till yer eyes is poppin'. That man ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... that they were not wakened by the gleam of lanterns and the entry of some dozens of men, who fell upon the gentry as wall spiders, called mowers, upon drowsy flies; scarcely does one of them have time to buzz before the grim master encircles it around with long legs and strangles it. The sleep of the gentry was still sounder than the sleep of flies: not a one buzzed; all lay as if lifeless, though they were seized by strong arms, and thrown about like straw when ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... one Dillon, of a great family, was, after much endeavours to have saved him, hanged with a silken halter this Sessions, (of his own preparing,) not for honour only, but it being soft and sleek it do slip close and kills, that is, strangles presently: whereas, a stiff one do not come so close together, and so the party may live the longer before killed. But all the Doctors at table conclude, that there is no pain at all in hanging, for ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... starving children, and it is by the convenient aid of her neck that he is enabled to reach the purse, or; and, indeed, such is his eagerness to catch it and the coronet, that he does not seem to care much whether he strangles her or not. On the leaden coronet, is the motto, alluding to the head which ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... away from the Firmest Resolve. For how long will Schoolboys endure the hideous enormities of a Gnawbit before they come to the Supreme Revolt of a Barring-out! And for how long will a People suffer the mad tyranny of a Ruler, who outrages their Laws, who strangles their Liberties, who fleeces and squeezes and tramples upon them, before they take Heart of Grace, and up Pike and Musket, and down-derry-down with your Ruler, who is ordinarily the basest of Poltroons, and runs away in a fright so soon as the first ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations, and worn out dogmas that for far too long have strangles our politics. ...
— Inaugural Presidential Address - Contributed Transcripts • Barack Hussein Obama
... The lightning's arrow and the thunder-balls The day affright, As from the horizon round, Burst with earthquake sound, In mighty torrents the electric fountains;— 30 Clouds quench the sun, and thunder-smoke Strangles the air, and fire eclipses Heaven. Philosophy, thou canst not even Compel their causes underneath thy yoke: From yonder clouds even to the waves below 35 The fragments of a single ruin choke Imagination's flight; For, on flakes of surge, like feathers light, The ashes of the desolation, cast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... tree" of Malaya, being a species of banyan that begins life as a vine twining on another tree, which it finally strangles, using the dead trunk as a support until it is able to stand alone. When old it often covers a large space with gnarled and twisted trunks of varied shapes and sizes, thus presenting a weird and grotesque appearance. This tree was held in reverent awe by the primitive Filipinos, who believed ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... metaphysics, middlings, movables, mumps, nuptials, optics, phonics, phonetics, physics,[146] pneumatics, poetics, politics, riches, rickets, settlings, shatters, skimmings, spherics, staggers, statics, statistics, stays, strangles, sundries, sweepings, tactics, thanks, tidings, trappings, vives, vitals, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... three weeks later, as they sat in the restaurant of their Paris hotel, "in a country where the coffee pretty near strangles you, even when it's got cream and sugar in it, y'understand, the cooking has got to be good, because in a two-dollar-a-day American plan hotel the management figures that no matter how rotten the food is, the guests ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... our weaving, the Huguenots who gave new ideas to our commerce, the Germans who brought us scientific method have all been amongst the makers of England. Exclusiveness is a constricting cord that strangles progress. Exchange of commodities is, we know, the life of trade, and exchange of men and ideas is the life of ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... and his Four Ministers." There is another but wholly different Tamil romance entitled the "Alakesa Katha," in which a king's daughter becomes a disembodied evil spirit, haunting during the night a particular choultry (or serai) for travellers, and if they do not answer aright to her cries she strangles them and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... pressed firmly down upon its head; but the scorpion's tail was curled up to sting him in the right heel. Ophiuchus, the Serpent-holder, the man treading on the Scorpion, derives his name from the Serpent which he holds in his hands and strangles; the Serpent that, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, marked the autumnal colure. The head of Ophiuchus reached nearly to the zenith, and there close to it was the head of another hero, so close that to ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... a mighty weight is rolled away From off my soul, and I can breathe again! Her glance doth shrivel up my very heart, And all that bitter hate, hid deep within My bosom, well nigh strangles me to death! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... "He strangles me! Fiend—have—have mercy! Wilt thou not? Oh, mercy, mercy, Heaven!" His senses, though evidently bewildered, resumed their functions. With a glare of intense anguish he appeared as though ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... well,' Krishna answers, 'You be the wolf and the cowherd boys the rams.' They start to play and the demon rounds up all the children and keeps them in a cave. Then, assuming true wolf's form he pounces on Krishna. Krishna, however, is quite prepared and seizing the wolf by the throat, strangles it ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... with him when he's selected a victim that a-way, an' while he's bickerin' with him up to the killin' p'int, to invite said sacrifice to take a drink. When they're ag'inst the bar, this yere Fowler we-all strangles would pour out a glass of whiskey an' chuck it in the eyes of that onfortunate he's out to down. Of course, while this party's blind with the nose-paint, he's easy; an' Fowler tharupon e'llects his skelp in manner, form an' time to suit his tastes. Now ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ghost is doing the mischief. When he has ascertained the culprit, he is furnished by the patient's relatives with a little pig, which he is to sacrifice to the ghost as a substitute for the sick man. Provided with this vicarious victim he repairs to the haunt of the ghost, strangles the animal, and burns it whole in a fire along with grated yam, coco-nut, and fish. As he does so, he calls out the names of all the ghosts of his family, his ancestors, and all who are deceased, down even to children ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer |
