"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the birthplace, a very green field, with two thorn bushes growing close together by a stone. The field is called 'Sean Straid'—the old street—for a few cottages had stood there. A man who lives close by told me he had dug up a blackened stone just there, and a stone into which a bar had been let, to hang a pot ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... self-disapproval which had been the awakening of a new life within her; it marked her off from the criminals whose only regret is failure in securing their evil wish. Deronda could not utter one word to diminish that sacred aversion to her worst self—that thorn-pressure which must come with the crowning of the sorrowful better, suffering because of the worse. All this mingled thought and feeling kept him silent; speech was too momentous to be ventured on rashly. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... is a thorn in the flesh to both of you. There is a great deal in it that I cannot praise; but, really when it comes to sounding an alarm, attacking, and pitching in, it is cleverer than your paper. The articles are witty; even when they are on the wrong side ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... down, "the plant of human destiny (perhaps the mandrake) is the remedy; it must be placed upon the tooth. The fruit of the yellow snakewort is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The roots of a thorn which does not see the sun when growing is another remedy for an aching tooth; it must be placed upon the tooth." Unfortunately it is still impossible to assign a precise signification to most of the drugs that are named, ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... doesn't like the rose,— Her thorn a sad affront is; And doesn't like mankind, Because its nose in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... could Love take the gold, and from what vein, To form those bright twin locks? What thorn could grow Those roses? And what mead that white bestow Of the fresh dews, which pulse and breath obtain? Whence came those pearls that modestly restrain Accents which courteous, sweet, and rare can flow? And whence those charms ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... graveyards, but also rattles window-shutters and throws down tiles from the roof. It is not safe to call to it; if it reaches out to any one three times that is taken as a sign that it is a good spirit from purgatory asking for help. For protection a thorn-stick is carried, with which the vampire is thrust through. The "Alp" (the nightmare) is an evil old maid who sits on the back or breast of sleepers, holds their hands and feet, and stops their mouth so that they cannot cry ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... was in these days a thorn in our hero's side; but Mr. Hart was a scourge of scorpions. Mr. Hart never ceased to talk of Mr. Walker, and of the determination of Walker and Bullbean to go before a magistrate if restitution were not made. Cousin George of course ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... shoulders, and the German long locks of fiery red, which he even dyed with woad to heighten the favorite color, and wore twisted into a war-knot upon the top of his head. Here the German's love of finery ceased. A simple tunic fastened at his throat with a thorn, while his other garments defined and gave full play to his limbs, completed his costume. The Gaul, on the contrary, was so fond of dress that the Romans divided his race respectively into long-haired, breeched, and gowned Gaul; (Gallia comata, braccata, togata). He was fond ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Huggins hitched on a tree is the next—then comes "the beast charging in Tom's rear;" his perturbed look and the saucy waggery of a round headed wight who has climbed into an adjoining tree are a good contrast; Huggins "sitting on a thorn" is another ludicrous picture of perturbation; the cit on the grass, with "cattle grazed here" on a tree, is the fifth; and Huggins being cleared of clay by two of Tom Roundhead's helpers, with mop and broom, completes the cuts and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... accessory to that mischief. So to give "honour to a fool." He hath given power to them and put them in a capacity to do evil, and set them on work again to perfect their designs against good men. Ver. 9. As a drunken man, with a thorn in his hand, can make no use of it, but to hurt himself and others, so wicked men's good speeches and fair professions commonly tend to some mischief. These but cover their evil designs and yet the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... singing to the rhythm of the milk as it streamed into the frothing pail, for Daisy refused to yield her milk without a musical accompaniment. Very soft and low was the girl's singing, but clear and sweet as that of the thrush on the thorn bush ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... arms and furious threats, like a group of Titans struck motionless in the midst of their rage. An atmosphere of gloom, a feverish languor, brooded over the pools, whose sheets of water were cut into flakes by the overshadowing thorn-trees. The lichens on their banks, where the wolves come to drink, are of the colour of sulphur, burnt, as it were, by the footprints of witches, and the incessant croaking of the frogs responds to the cawing of the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... was an Old Lady whose folly, Induced her to sit in a holly; Whereon by a thorn, Her dress being torn, She quickly ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... cling to the thorn, Shrivelled and red; The limbs long dead Clutch at a leaf long torn— It taps all day on the spikes As the ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... the heart of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... came to the neighbourhood of Selikatsnek. Unless one was well acquainted with the highways and byways of that part of the country, one was in constant danger of losing the way; it is a long stretch of bush, consisting of the well-known thorn-bushes of the Hoogeveld, for a distance of about ten miles deep. The principal passes of the Magalies Mountains were occupied by the enemy—Wonderboompoort, Hornsnek, Selikatsnek, Commandonek, Olifantsnek. General de la Rey had made up his mind to take Selikatsnek, and on July 11 he ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... stars 't I ain't got nothin' 'n me as craves to marry a man 's appears dead-set ag'in' the idea. I asked him 'f he did n't think 's comin' into property was always a agreeable feelin', 'n' he said, 'Yes, but not when with riches come a secret thorn in the flesh,' 'n' at that I clean give up, 'n' I hope it was n't to my discredit, for no one on the face of the earth could 'a' felt 't there 'd be any good in keepin' on. But it was no use, 'n' you know 's well as I do 't I never was give to wastin' my breath, so I out 'n' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... said Dr. Farelly, "and I'm not asking you to go beating thorn bushes in the hopes of catching one. But if this fellow, Theophilus Lovaway—did ever you hear such a name?—if he wants fairies he must hear about them. You'll have to get hold of a few people who go in for that sort of thing. Now what about Patsy Doolan's mother? ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... lads! wh-e-ew!" and followed by his setters, with his gun under his arm, away went Harry; and catching up our pieces likewise, we followed, nothing loth, Tim bringing up the rear with the two spaniels fretting in their couples, and a huge black thorn cudgel, which he had brought, as he informed me, "all t' ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... in coming to the Baptist position and passing beyond it. The Quakers found Rhode Island a safe asylum from persecution, whether Puritan or Dutch. More disorderly and mischievous characters, withal, quartered themselves, unwelcome guests, on the young commonwealth, a thorn in its side and a reproach to its principles. It became clear to Williams before his death that the declaration of individual rights and independence is not of itself a sufficient foundation for a state. The heterogeneous population ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... times. The driver turned in the saddle to see if there were any chance of capturing the revolver and ending the ride. Dick roused, struck him over the head with the butt, and stormed himself wide awake. Somebody hidden in a clump of camel-thorn shouted as the camel toiled up rising ground. A shot was fired, and the silence shut down again, bringing the desire to sleep. Dick could think no longer. He was too tired and stiff and cramped to do more than nod uneasily from time to time, waking with a start and punching the driver ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... budding, and there was a gold line of daffodils beside the tiny greenhouse. Beyond the sooty wall a birch flaunted its new tassels, and the jackdaws were circling about the steeple of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk. A blackbird whistled from a thorn-bush, and Mr. McCunn was inspired to follow its example. He began a tolerable version of "Roy's Wife ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... conviction of such a love dawned on the disordered mind, the man would live in spite of his imaginary foes, for he would pray against them as sure of being heard as St Paul when he prayed concerning the thorn from which he was not delivered, but against which he was sustained. And who can tell how often this may be the fact—how often the lunatic also lives by faith? Are not the forms of madness most frequently ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... fields could be heard almost continuously the call of the cuckoo—now here, now there, as the active creature plied her restless wing from one hedge-tree to another. There was a strong sweet perfume in the air like the scent of almonds, for the white thorn was now expanding its umbels of aromatic flowers, and there was just enough breeze to bear their fragrance throughout the whole atmosphere. The country, with its green hedgerows, its broad fields of young corn, its meadows enamelled with the golden ranunculus and the purple spring orchis both ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... to an old Barcelona tar, in ragged red breeches and dirty night-cap, cheeks trenched and bronzed, whiskers dense as thorn hedges. Seated between two sleepy-looking Africans, this mariner, like his younger shipmate, was employed upon some rigging—splicing a cable—the sleepy-looking blacks performing the inferior function of holding the outer parts of the ropes ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... thorn into it, by speaking of Captain Fenellan, and aside, as if sharing him with her. Nataly heard that Dartrey had been the guest of these Blathenoys. Even Dartrey was but ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be tolerated that merchants and lawyers, stock-jobbers, and even sugar-bakers and soap-boilers, should buy up the old houses; but the most grievous nuisance, and perpetual thorn in the old squire's side, is Abel Grundy, the son of an old wheelwright, who, by dint of his father's saving and his own sharpness, has grown into a man of substance under the squire's own nose. Abel began by buying odds and ends of lands and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... him, mounted his horse and continued his journey. He rode on and on until he came to another jungle, and there he saw a tiger who had a thorn in his foot, and was roaring ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... of discomfort was doubtless the presence of Medina Coeli. This was the perpetual thorn in his side, which no cunning could extract. A successor who would not and could not succeed him, yet who attended him as his shadow and his evil genius—a confidential colleague who betrayed his confidence, mocked his projects, derided his authority, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... taught Jean to regard everything from the point of view of her own death-bed. I mean to say, the child had to ask herself, 'How will this action look when I am on my death-bed?' Every cross word, every small disobedience, she was told, would be a 'thorn in her dying pillow.' I said, perhaps rather rudely, that Great-aunt Alison must have been a horrible old ghoul, but Jean defended her hotly. She seems to have had a great admiration for her aged relative, though she owned that her death was something ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you have not come out here on ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... because of you—for no other reason. I married because I'd been betrayed—and left. Now do you understand why it isn't for you to pick and choose—you who have been the plague-spot of my life, the thorn in my side ever since you first stirred there—a perpetual reminder of what I would have given my very soul to forget? Do you understand, I say? Do you understand? Or must I put it plainer still? You—the child of my shame—to dare to set ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... examined the animal's hoofs. A sharp thorn had run into his right fore-foot, and though Hector extracted it, the animal still remained as lame as before. We should not, under ordinary circumstances, have minded the delay, but knowing how ill Bracewell was we ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... confirmation of Paul's faith. Through "a thorn in the flesh" he learned that spiritual ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... so much they scarcely seemed to have time to feed. While approaching one that was singing by gently walking on the sward by the roadside, or where thick dust deadened the footsteps, suddenly another would commence in the low thorn hedge on a branch, so near that it could be touched with a walking-stick. Yet though so near the bird was not wholly visible—he was partly concealed behind a fork of the bough. This is a habit of the sedge-birds. Not in the least timid, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... lest the praise shall be divided. Finally, he is an enemy to God's favours, if they fall beside himself; the best nurse of ill-fame, a man of the worst diet, for he consumes himself, and delights in pining; a thorn-hedge covered with nettles, a peevish interpreter of good things, and no other than a lean and pale carcase quickened with ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... opposite influences of the forms of destruction of the group symbol upon the solidity of the group by reference to the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish temple by Titus. The hierarchal Jewish state was a thorn in the flesh of the Roman statecraft that aimed at the unity of the empire. The purpose of dissolving this state was accomplished, so far as a certain number of the Jews were concerned, by the destruction of the temple. Such was the effect with those who cared little, anyway, about ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of your sorrows, and tenderest comforter. Then on the bosom of your wedded Julia, you may lull your keen regret to slumbering; while virtuous love, with a cherub's hand, shall smooth the brow of upbraiding thought, and pluck the thorn from compunction. ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... when the flies tease him, or a wheel to rattle when a spoke is loose; but nature should not be the rule with Christians, or what is their religion worth? If a soldier fights no better than a plowboy, off with his red coat. We expect more fruit from an apple-tree than from a thorn, and we have a right to do so. The disciples of a patient Savior should be patient themselves. Grin and bear it is the old-fashioned advice, but sing and bear it is a great deal better. After all, we get very few cuts of the whip, considering what bad cattle we ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... she walked out by his side to a little cottage wherein a priest stood waiting to wed the two. Her happiness was very great, as may be guessed when I state that in each of her beautiful eyes a tear glimmered like you see a drop of rain glitter upon the thorn bush, when the storm has ended, and the sun shines. Her lover took her many miles up the Saskatchewan, where she said she would remain till Annette got "settled." A friend has lately been at her cottage, ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... it—sometimes you might see a piece of a field that had been ploughed, all overgrown with grass, because it had never been sowed or set with anything. The slaps were all broken down, or had only a piece of an ould beam, a thorn bush, or crazy car lying acrass, to keep the cattle out of them. His bit of corn was all eat away and cropped here and there by the cows, and his potatoes rooted up by the pigs.—The garden, indeed, had a few cabbages, and a ridge of early potatoes, but these were so choked with burtlocks ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... beautiful," said the alan. Not long after Gamayawan had a baby. Not long after she gave birth. "What are we going to do? I am about to give birth to a child," she said. "The best thing for us to do is for us to get a thorn and stick your little finger." So they truly stuck her finger, and the little baby popped out like popped corn. [273] "What are we going to name it?" they said. "The best name is Galinginayen, for it is the name of the ancestor of the people who live in Kadalayapan," said the alan. Gamayawan gave ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... with him in his thoughts along the turf by the wayside halfway and more to Chichester. He thought always of the two of them as being side by side. His imagination became childishly romantic. The open down about him with its scrub of thorn and yew became the wilderness of the world, and through it they went—in armour, weightless armour—and they wore long swords. There was a breeze blowing and larks were singing and something, something dark and tortuous dashed suddenly in headlong flight from before their feet. It was an ethical ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Merriman, in the course of a conversation one day. "The natives are a terrible thorn in our side. At best we are in Bengal on sufferance; we are a very small community—only a hundred or two Europeans in Calcutta: and since the Marathas overran the country some years ago we have felt as though sitting on the brink of a volcano. Alivirdi wants to keep us down; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... last ouk, for a' my keeping, (Wha can speak it without greeting?) A villain cam' when I was sleeping, Sta' my Ewie, horn, and a': I sought her sair upo' the morn, And down aneath a buss o' thorn I got my Ewie's crookit horn, But my Ewie was awa'; I got my Ewie's crookit ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... vine and rose; cypress and orange; thorn and olive—the plants in which the buried lovers of ballad romance live again and intertwine their limbs, vary with the clime and race; and just as the 'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad—'Wow but he was rough!'—plucks up the brier, and 'flings it in ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... That was of course the result of our necessity. It was a long thorn—first, a punch in the cloth and like as not a stab in the finger in the bargain, then a withdrawal of the crude needle and a careful threading of the hole with our coarse string, after the fashion of a clumsy shoemaker. Some sewing! ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... to you to join him at Warsaw. This letter has doubtless been lost. I am following Charles to Warsaw, tracing him step by step, and if he has fallen ill by the way, as so many have done, shall certainly find him. Barlasch returns to bring you to Thorn, if you elect to join Charles. I will await you at Thorn, and if Charles has proceeded, we will follow ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... is a man that he should not run with his brothers?" said Mowgli. "I was born in the jungle. I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle, and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Letters? Why I look at them as the dark-house to lodge all our errors in, and a feather-bed, where all, both errors and unknown sins may be lodg'd, therefore I pull out the Straws out of your bolster, that I may let light into the house, that you ma see you lodge in a thorn-bush instead of a feather-bed. But I find, (God [h]elp us both) that at all final errors are friends of the greater, that neither am I able by these letters to speak, nor you to understand me by Writing. Nay no man is by old Letters ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... and finally discovered, not far from the nest of the titmice, four of their children, all dead and each one impaled upon the thorn of a bush that grew close to the ground. Then I decided it was indeed the shrike, for he has a habit of doing just this thing; killing more than he can eat and sticking the rest of his murdered victims on thorns until he finds time to come back and ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... was streaming from under Bowers's hat as his eyes searched the surrounding country. Not a sign of either herder! A cactus thorn that had penetrated his shoe leather did not improve Bowers's temper. As he sat down to extract it, he considered whether it would be advisable to pound Dibert to a jelly when he found him or wait until they got a ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... wrecked and silent villages and through three of those strips of park timber which Continentals call forests, we presently drew up and halted and dismounted where a thick fringe of undergrowth, following the line of an old and straggly thorn hedge, met the road at right angles on the comb of a small ridge commanding a view of the tablelands to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... gentlemanly in his action at the last. He had some sense of the fitness of things. He could not find a place in the world without making other people uncomfortable, and causing trouble. If he had lived, he would always have added to the blight on his wife's career, and have been an arrow—not a thorn—in her side. Very likely he would have created a scandal for the good young girl who nursed him. He made the false step, and compelled society to reject him. It did not want to do so; it never does. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the high-road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was towards the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mute as yet, although his days of tuneful life were well nigh ended, rose cheerfully above the rippling murmurs of the waters, and the mysterious rustling of the herbage rejoicing to drink up the copious dew; and heard by fits and starts from the thick clumps of arbutus on the hills, or the thorn bushes on the water's brink, the liquid notes of the nightingale gushed out, charming the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... composure he stripped off the burden of skins that covered him until he stood forth in a single hide of wool, with a tumble of sheep pelts at his feet. In each one was a thorn preserved for use and with these he pinned them all together, scrambled out on the bank, emitting his startling cry at the sheep that obstructed his path. From above he shouted ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... in the fields. Oh, once I was thirsty; but now the dew is mine and the little springs. Once I traced my way painfully by forest paths through bog and brake and tangled brier. But now my pathways are in the bright, clear air, where never thorn can tear nor beast can follow. Farewell, dear ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... lay well content under a thorn bush above the Grannoch water. It was the second day of his sojourning in Galloway—the first of his breathing the heather scent on which the bees grew tipsy, and of listening to the grasshoppers CHIRRING ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... was born at the quaint old town of Thorn, in Poland, February Nineteen, Fourteen Hundred Seventy-three. The family name was Koppernigk, but Nicholas latinized it when he became of age, and seemingly separated from ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... took Love the yellow gold To form those tresses? from what thorn-bush tore Those roses sleek? and from what summit bore That stainless snow which seems ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... road without being obliged to wander along crooked, doubtful by-paths. However, you knew Adolphe; you appreciated his worth. I am loved, he is a father, I idolize our children. Adolphe is kindness itself to me; I admire and love him. But, my dear, in this complete happiness lurks a thorn. The roses upon which I recline have more than one fold. In the heart of a woman, folds speedily turn to wounds. These wounds soon bleed, the evil spreads, we suffer, the suffering awakens thoughts, the thoughts swell and change ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... then all I can say is that the noblest lives that ever were lived in the world have found their impulse in a falsehood or a dream; and that the richest clusters that ever have yielded wine for the cup have grown upon a thorn. If like produces like, you cannot account for Christ and Christianity by anything short of the belief in His Divine mission. Serpents' eggs do not hatch out into doves. This Man, when He claimed to be God's Son and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... from the river at sunset, and the scars on his body began to burn and tingle. The pain recalled his ritual to him, and he began to recite it as he walked along. He had cut a branch of thorn from the hedge and placed it next to his skin, pressing the spikes into the flesh with his hand till the warm blood ran down. He felt it was an exquisite and sweet observance for her sake; and then he thought of the secret ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... rigging bunks, and making things shipshape. They got to work in the shaft again after dinner, Done taking his first lesson in sinking. Within two hours they came upon the wash dirt, the sinking at Diamond Gully being very shallow. While they were busy Jack Thorn, the Geordie, came up from the creek and approached them, grinning broadly, and ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... a few i's, crossing the t's, and perhaps touching up some hidden letters with the requisite reagent, one can, however, get a not unfair or unshrewd criticism of the book out of this envelope. Telemaque, if it is not, as one of Thackeray's "thorn" correspondents suggested, superior to "Lovel Parsonage and Framley the Widower," has, or with some easy suppressions and a very few additions and developments might have, much more pure romance interest ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... neighborly hand to the silent man who was to live by himself in a little, gray, shingled house down on Lonely Lake Road. It was a supreme moment to Athalia. She had expected an intense parting from her husband when they left their own house; and she was ready to press into her soul the poignant thorn of grief, not only because it would make her FEEL, but because it would emphasize in her own mind the divine self-sacrifice which she wanted to believe she was making. But when the moment came to close the door of the ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... result of her outrageous conduct towards the village hero was totally unlooked for. Wallace became very much interested in this spunky Lindsay girl. She was different from the other girls, the one reproving thorn in a field of admiring roses. That alone made her rather refreshing. Then he did not like to have a nice girl angry with him. He was a warm-hearted, easy going lad, who disliked opposition and disfavour and would do much to please any one. He was genuinely sorry, too, that he had hurt Dolly, ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... done, he that was appointed to convey the goat, led it into the wilderness, and took away the scarlet wool, and put it upon a thorn bush, whose young sprouts, when we find them in the field, we are wont to eat: so the fruit of that thorn ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... time ago that you were painting a picture from 'The Thorn:' is it finished? I should like to see it; the poem is a favourite with me, and I shall love it the better for the honour you have done it. We shall be most happy to have the other drawing which you promised us some time ago. The dimensions ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... convulsively; I was in the presence of one of the primeval passions. But he grew calm immediately after. "You want Separation for reasons of your own. I don't ask what they are. No doubt you and your crony Macdonald and the rest of them will feather your own nests; I don't ask. But help me to be a thorn in their sides—just a little—just a little longer. What do I put in your way? Just what you want. Have your Jamaica joined to the United States. You'll be able to come back with your pockets full, and I'll be joyful—for the sake ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... deeper still beneath it all Lurk'd the keen jags of Anguish; The more the laurels clasp'd his brow, Their poison made it languish. Seem'd it that like the Nightingale Of his own mournful singing[32], The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... is full of waiting life which the very frost that threatens to kill instead protects. Last September I watched two larvae of the rather common moth, Protoparce sexta, the tomato sphinx. Great fat green fellows as large as one's thumb, they were, each with a spine-like thorn cocked jauntily on his rear segment. They had fattened on my tomato vines until they had reached their full growth and were ready to go into the cocoon stage, in winter quarters. They dropped from the vines and began to wander ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... me pain, Give me wine of life again! Death is night without a morn, Give the rose and give the thorn." ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and the Giraffe get up; and Zebra moved away to some little thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all stripy, and Giraffe moved off to some tallish trees where the ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... you know What it is you crave? Listen! As the flowers grow O'er the dismal grave, So, when sweetest sings the bird Thou would'st like to be, When in twilight's hour is heard The magic melody, Harshly comes the cruel thorn Against the songster's breast, And melting music thus is born Of pain and sad unrest (a) So if like Philomel thou'dst sing, And happiness impart, Thy breast must bear the cruel sting That ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... and his diminished force destroyed. So ended the war of the usurpers; and the last and most doubtful of all the usurpers, a wanderer from the Welsh marches, a knight from nowhere, found the crown of England under a bush of thorn. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... him a red jay; a tiny gold-crest perched on a thorn branch; a kingfisher gleaming with turquoise hues, poised ready for a dive upon a froth-lapped stone. He was no cultured critic, but he knew the ways of the wild creatures and saw that she had talent, for her representations of them ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... shags or cormorants at the island in great abundance, and another like a moor-hen. Fishes likewise of various kinds, as great numbers of small whales, great abundance of seals at the island, and with the sein we took many fishes like mullets as large as trouts, smelts, thorn-backs, and dogs; and plenty of limpets and muscles on the rocks. This place has a most wholesome air, and has plenty of water both to serve navigators, and for travellers in the country, as numerous small streams descend every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... time cursing, but instead leapt the shale wall and took to the fields. A little footpath lay among the trees at the meadow end and Anthony Barraclough made for it with all possible dispatch jumping a brook and forcing his way through a fringe of thorn and bramble. There had been no rain for some weeks and the going was dry, a circumstance he noted with satisfaction, for your average Cornish footpath is as much a waterway as a thoroughfare for pedestrians. It was half a mile to his destination, a spot where the path converged ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... to do, I loved to look down from the top of the tower at all times. But never more so than when there was snow on the ground, for then the City of Thorn lay apparent beneath me, all spread out like a painted picture, with its white and red roofs and white houses bright in the moonlight—so near that it seemed as though I could pat every child lying asleep in its little bed, and scrape away the snow with my fingers from every red tile off which ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the Puritans, who had almost from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, been a perpetual thorn in the Church's side, joining with the Scotch enthusiasts, in the time of King Charles the First, were the principal cause of the Irish rebellion and massacre, by distressing that Prince, and making it impossible for him ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... to death of doctor; such a terrible amount of brag and big talk, always about himself; always dread his calls; can never get so far as to return; a regular thorn in the flesh. ...
— Woman's Endurance • A.D.L.
... minute instructions for laying out or erecting each and every of the above departments, according to modern taste and the most approved plans; the Ornamental Planting of Pleasure Grounds, in the ancient and modern style; the cultivation of Thorn Quicks, and other plants suitable for Live Hedges, with the best methods of making them, &c. To which are annexed catalogues of Kitchen Garden Plants and Herbs; Aromatic, Pot, and Sweet Herbs; Medicinal Plants, and the most important Grapes, &c., used in ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... coolly. It will give the young men ambitious of rising opportunity for organizing on a new platform a party which, assisted by the government, can quiet forever the questions which have made the State of South Carolina a thorn in the side of the Union. These young men, many of whom have served in the army, take a practical view of their present condition that the old stay-at-homes cannot be brought to understand. Give them ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... and Valjean thinks to destroy the mementos of his past, and looks fearfully toward the door, bolted as it is, and gathers from a secret closet his old blue blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old haversack, and a great thorn stick, and incontinently flings them into the flames. Then, noticing the silver candlesticks, the bishop's gifts, "These, too, must be destroyed," he says, and takes them in his hands, and stirs the fire with one of the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... first circle without being respected in or out of it; indeed, there was amongst many of the party a good deal of satire. Mrs. Rose herself was a little formed of it, but her sweetness was allowed to blunt the force of her thorn, and made it even regarded as pleasing, whilst Mrs. Holly was disliked ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... known, in order better to lay bare a Court which did not scruple to receive such as she. She had once been beautiful and gay; but though not old, all her grace and beauty had vanished. The rose had become an ugly thorn. At the time I speak of she was a tall, fat creature, mightily brisk in her movements, with a complexion like milk-porridge; great, ugly, thick lips, and hair like tow, always sticking out and hanging down in disorder, like all the rest of her fittings out. Dirty, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... shall all their sweets combine, Of these a grove of balmy sort shall rise, And, with its fragrant blossoms, scent the skies! Then round this little favour'd isle, I'll bring, With gentle windings, yonder silver spring; While eglantine and thorn shall interpose Their hedge, a rampart 'gainst invading foes— Lest sheep and rambling goats the place annoy, And spoil the promise of our future joy. Oh then approach, ye favour'd of the loves! Come and dwell here ye gentle turtle doves! On yonder spreading branches, perch'd on high, ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... fear, my heart! I thought the clock I' the chapel struck as I was pushing through The ferns. And so I shall no more see rise My love-star! Oh, no matter for the past! So much the more delicious task to watch Mildred revive: to pluck out, thorn by thorn, All traces of the rough forbidden path My rash love lured her to! Each day must see Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed: Then there will be surprises, unforeseen Delights in store. I'll ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... car, where there was a goodly number of unoccupied seats, notwithstanding Rose's assertion to the contrary. As the train moved rapidly over the long, level meadow, and passed the Chicopee burying-ground, Mary looked out to catch a glimpse of the thorn-apple tree, which overshadowed the graves of her parents, and then, as she thought how cold and estranged was the only one left of all the home circle, she drew her veil over her ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... knew every time that she entered the room: he heard her exchange words with some of those present, applaud a song of Barnabas Tadd's, answer a question of Uncle Zebedee's, and, sharpest thorn of all, stand behind Jerrem's chair, talking to him while some of the roughest hits were being made at his own mistaken judgment in holding back those who were ready to have "sunk the Looe ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... must be a thorn in the flesh for the lord of the manor! The corn-patch was small; but it stretched out amid the turnip-fields like a long arm that could hold its own, and that would not brook encroachment. Rich fruitful soil it was, that scarcely needed the manure ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... steady income of from 300 l. to 400 l. per annum from volumes of any size. This will be admitted; but would it not have been better to draw the income without the toil? Doubtless it would always be more agreeable to have the rose without the thorn. But in the case before us, taken with all its circumstances, we deny that the toil is truly typified as a thorn; so far from being a thorn in Lamb's daily life, on the contrary, it was a second rose ingrafted ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Church of Rome, but the characteristic doctrines of that Church marked only for a time the limits of enquiry. The eternal Sonship of Christ, for example, as enunciated in the Athanasian Creed, perplexed me. The resurrection of the body was also a thorn in my mind, and here I remember that a passage in Blair's ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... gladly. I am Pilgrim Serene; my companion is Pilgrim Joyful. These flowers came from the garden of Patient Endurance, which is situated on Mount Calm. The flowers are free to all pilgrims; but the road to the garden is a very rough road, and thorn-bushes fringe it for a considerable distance. Some pilgrims once organized a band to clear out the thorns; but the bushes have such a tough bark that no knife was able to cut through them. So they ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... night we owned, with looks forlorn, "Too well the scholar knows There is no rose without a thorn "— But peace is made! we sing, this morn, "No thorn without a rose!" Our Latin lesson is complete: We've ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... of the canyon lifted, The gray hawk breathless hung, Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted Where furze and thorn-bush clung; ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... old gnarled trunk in quiet content. A small-shaped head, with dark curly hair, and a pair of blue-grey eyes with black curved lashes, these were perhaps her chief characteristics; more I cannot say, for it is difficult to describe oneself, and it was I, Hilda Thorn, who ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... delight to die on the battlefield, and that nothing so tormented them as to die idly in their beds." "No wonder," says Sammes, "that they conquered many nations; distressed the Romans themselves, and were a constant thorn in the side of the Gauls" ("Antiquities ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... thorn, What his attire? 'Lo! it was torn, Marred with the mire, And but the eyes ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... variety of helmets and body-armour, head-dresses, and ornaments and vases innumerable; and in the multitude of spectators is a woman holding the hand of a boy, who, having pierced his foot with a thorn, is showing it, weeping, to his mother, in a graceful and very lifelike manner. Andrea, as I may have pointed out elsewhere, had a good and beautiful idea in this scene, for, having set the plane on ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... (slender) maldika. Thine cia, via. Thing (matter) afero. Thing, some io. Thing, any io. Think pensi. Thinker pensulo. Think over pripensi. Thirst soifo. Thirsty, to be soifi. This tio cxi. This (demon, pron.) tiu cxi. Thistle kardo. Thong ledrimeno. Thorax brustkesto. Thorn dorno. Thorough plenega. Thoroughfare trairejo. Thou ci, vi. Though kvankam. Thought penso, pensado. Thoughtful pripensa. Thoughtless senpripensa. Thraldom servuto. Thrash drasxi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... in one of his Cornish stories exactly this conception. Rags were offered. "Just a rag tored off a petticoat or some such thing. They hanged 'em up around about on the thorn bushes, to shaw as they'd 'a' done more for the good saint if they'd ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Police, respectfully makes known to Parents and others, that of late, several children have very much injured themselves, by eating the seeds of Stramonium, or Thorn-Apple, commonly called Devil's Apple; who must inevitably have died, had they not been speedily relieved by Emetics, &c. As those bushes are in several parts of the town, it would be well, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... lack of all sense of humour. Having been rebuked by her mother for some trifling fault, she will persuade herself that her parents detest her, and desire her death. She will spend the next few days with her breast luxuriously against the thorn of her fancied sufferings. She will weave romances, in order to enjoy the delicious sensation of looking on as she withers under injustice into a premature coffin, and of watching her cruel parents as they water the grave of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... it were, robbed the dead, and bitterly betrayed himself to gain possession of a jewel which should have been his own, which he would have worn so proudly? Had not this man been his enemy from childhood; with his mother, the curse of his father's house? Ever in his way, a perpetual thorn in the flesh, could he not now dislodge him root and branch, and spit him upon an arrow, that should cease never ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... ACROSS THE CONTINENT," it will be recalled how Phil and his companion won new laurels in the sawdust arena, and how the former ran down and captured a bad man who had been a thorn in the side of the circus itself for many weeks through his efforts to avenge a fancied wrong. By this time the boys had become full-fledged circus performers, each playing an ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... first sight of the leading carriage, however, a signal was given—the music suddenly ceased—and the whole party below, with the exception of one individual, proceeded in great state towards an arch, composed of flowers and white thorn, which ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to be celebrated in the present. Susan was that thing. It was said of her that she had kept her husband, an elegant soft old gentleman, in Congress for a quarter of a century and up to the very day of his death by being a thorn in the side of the political life of the state. She kept scrapbooks in which she pasted dangerous and damaging information about politicians and prominent men generally. Whenever one of them became a candidate in opposition to ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... lighted off his horse, And tied him to a thorn: Carry me over the water, thou curtal friar, Or else thy ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... company passed through in great haste, all fired with a desire to be the first to drink of the fountain and win so marvellous a boon. Last of all came Ving. He had lingered behind to pluck a thorn from the foot of a beggar child he had met on the highway, and he had not heard the Warder's words. But when, eager, joyous, radiant, he set his foot on the rainbow, the stern, sorrowful Warder took him by the arm and drew ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hundred yards of the path when Holman pounced upon a strip of white bark that waved to us from the thorn of a lawyer-vine crossing the track. A few pencilled words covered the smooth side of the strip, and we absorbed ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... groaning. Long-forgotten smiles, The smiles of her sweet childhood's innocence, Stole o'er her happy face. The wilderness Rejoiced, and blossom'd as the rose. The curse, Which for six thousand years had sear'd the heart Of nature, was repeal'd. And where the thorn Perplex'd the glens, and prickly briers the hills, Now, for the Word so spake and it was done, The fir-tree rear'd its stately obelisk, The cedar waved its arms of peaceful shade, The vine embraced ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... and somebody else named Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspapers were printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring the high cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a thorn in the War Party's side. He inherited an animosity to Prussian militarism from his late father, Dr. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who with August Bebel founded the modern German Social Democratic Party. Four or five years before the war Liebknecht, a lawyer by profession, campaigned so fiercely ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... long been a thorn in my side, and has been threatening to start a line of boats in opposition to me, has decided, I happen to hear, to take immediate advantage of my misfortune. But ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... day of St. John, the longest in all the year, and they travelled far, till at last in the long afternoon they arrived in sight of a cluster of little homesteads, clay huts thatched with bracken and fenced about with bushes of poison-thorn, and of tilled crofts sloping down the hillside to a clear ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Thorwald, that instead of the thorn there came up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier there came ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... together a garden alley, between a row of quince-trees and a hedge of Christ's-thorn; at one end was a fountain in a great basin of porphyry, at the other a little temple, very old and built for the worship of Isis, now an oratory under the invocation of the Blessed Mary. The two young men made a singular contrast, for Basil, who was in his twenty-third year, had all ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... body of the Monacans. They had discovered a trail which led towards the north, and that two white men were with the party, they were from the first certain. That this was the case was confirmed by a slip of paper which had been found fastened to a tree by a thorn. It contained but a few words, signed by Gilbert; Vaughan eagerly took it. "We are both alive, but our captors glance at us unpleasantly. We will try to escape; follow if you can, and ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... fairies, it is said, are beings of a darker and more malignant breed than Shakspere's elves. Yet in Allingham's poem they stole little Bridget and kept her seven years, till she died of sorrow and lies asleep on the lake bottom; even as in Ferguson's weird ballad, "The Fairy Thorn," the good people carry off fair Anna Grace from the midst of her three companions, who "pined away and died within ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers |
