"Contortion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't know what hard labor is if you have never been there. I had a spell once. There is neither air nor light; your blood boils in your veins from the fervent heat; you are never allowed to rest. You are put in every kind of contortion to get at it, your limbs twisted, and ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... ha'n't seen anything equal to it since the Worrld's Fairr." She spoke with a strong contortion of the Western r, and her sister hastened ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Fletcher, who was standing only a few numbers away, smiled at Peter's remark. The S.M. spotted him, and shouted, 'What are you grinning at—anything foonny?' Fletcher said, 'No, sir,' and straightened his face with a wry contortion. The S.M. shouted to the Orderly Sergeant: 'Take this man's name.' Fletcher was up before the C.O. in the evening and got three days for laughing in the ranks. I'm sure Peter'll get into trouble before long. He ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... o' the image o' the Almichty?" asked Tibbie, with a grotesque contortion of her mouth, and a roll of her veiled eyeballs. "I doobt, Thamas," she continued, "ye angert yersel' mair nor ye quaietit them wi' the thrashin'. The wrath o' man, ye ken, Thamas, worketh ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... school; he hates discipline. He has an undeniable literary gift, which has met—as it ought to—with glad recognition. He has strength, he has fervour, he has passion. But while his strength is sometimes the happy and graceful play of rippling muscles, it is often contortion. If Mr. De La Mare may seem too delicate, too restrained, Mr. Lawrence cares comparatively little for delicacy; and the word restraint is not in his bright lexicon. In other words, he is aggressively ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... dwarf awoke it was to find himself lying on the floor of the cave, but not alone, for by his side, twisted into a last and hideous contortion, lay the Snake god—dead! The upper part of the double knife had worked itself into its brain, and, with a dying effort, it sought the den where it had lived for centuries, dragging Otter with it, and there expired, how or when he knew not. But the dwarf had triumphed. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen in movies and on television. It didn't quite work that way. There seemed to be too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when they found a contortion that did not create interferences with limb or corner, it was a strain on the spine or a twist in the neck. After a few minutes of this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort to return to ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... ran along her frame. More horrid than all, the lips slowly contracted, and the white, sharp-edged teeth stood uncovered, giving an indescribable look of ferocity to the partially opened mouth. The car suddenly reeled as it dashed around a curve, swaying her almost off her feet, and, as a contortion shook her, she recovered herself, and rearing upward as high as the car permitted, plunged directly at me. I was expecting the movement, and dodged. Then followed exhibitions of pain which I pray God I may never see again. Time ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... was smiling, so the auctioneer prattled on, and the deformed creature upon the catasta wound his ill-shapen body into every kind of contortion, grinning from ear to ear, displaying the malformation of his spine, and the hideousness of his long hairy arms, whilst he uttered weird cries that were supposed to imitate those of wild animals in ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... blue withers. The second, third and fourth jumps were not far enough apart to be seen and judged separately; as well may one hope to decide whether a whirling wheel had straight or crooked spokes. The fifth jump, however, was a masterpiece of rapid-fire contortion, and it was important because it left Andy on the ground, gazing, with an extremely grieved expression, at the uninterrupted convolutions of the "dandy ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... once again was wrestling with something elemental in him that threatened to ruin every thing. He remembered the bowed stumbling figure that had gone before him in the Marylebone meadows. Then he had been its enemy; now by a queer contortion of the mind he thought of himself as the only protector of that cold clay under the bed—honoured in life, but in death a poor pawn in a rogue's cause. He stood a little apart from the others near ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... The facial contortion which served him for a laugh, and at the same time as a symbol of unfathomable reserve, was repeated, accompanied by a jocose manifestation, in the nature of a sharp and taunting cackle, which seemed to indicate a conviction that he was getting ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... boots, with trousers tightly drawn to display proportions of limbs that would have made Sim Tappertit green with envy; a black frock coat, buff waistcoat, coloured tie, a high collar, a wizened countenance, just now wrinkled with spasmodic contortion, kindly meant for an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... was enough to upset the equilibrium of any ordinary man, especially when the jerks were so sudden and unexpected that it was impossible for one to brace himself against them. After a scene of rather undignified contortion I was finally compelled to retire in defeat, but without the slightest evidence of any other force than that exerted by a strong, muscular young woman. I asked that the rod might be made to whirl in my hands in the manner which has been described, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... good will on the viands prepared (Pork chops were the principal portion), Then retiring to bed, with their dreams they were scared, And spent half the night in contortion; Then rose in their sleep and came down to this room, And, instead of a purposeless pawing, They painted these pictures, then fled in the gloom, And Furniss has touched up ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... was searching his pockets with much contortion; and it was some time before his hand flashed out triumphantly with a piece of dog-eared, yellow cardboard. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... from yourself, of course," she added with an aggrieved contortion of her features, "but as I was just telling Angela, I would not for worlds intrude upon ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... extremely well brought up, I regret to say that the only answer she chose to make to this appeal was that slight contortion of the features, which with a pretty girl is euphemised as a "moue," and with a plain one is called "making a face." When he saw it he knew that all hope of changing ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... resent it or join in the laugh too. There was something about the older woman, however, which aroused in girls a sense of camaraderie rather than reserve, though Juno had never quite been able to analyze it. She smiled, and by some form of contortion of which necessity and long practice had made her a passed mistress, contrived to get herself settled ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... seem, were sending messages mainly by means of the smoke issuing from their dusky lips. It was puffed forth, in every variety of manner, sometimes with little short jets, then with longer ones, then from one corner of the mouth and again from the other, all being accompanied by a contortion of the flexible lips which doubtless suggested some of the words in the minds of ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the beetle is unable to handle them. The caterpillars of the Sphinx moth and the Great Peacock moth, for example, would fall an easy prey to the beetle were it not that at the first bite of the assailant the intended victim, by a contortion of its powerful flanks, sends the former flying. After several attacks, all of which end by the beetle being flung back to some considerable distance, the insect regretfully abandons his prey. I have kept two strong and lively caterpillars for a fortnight in the cage of my golden beetles, and ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... no contortion, to mark the moment of dissolution. The face only grew more serene and less death-like, as the soul passed ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... attempt to say "Am I not a man and a brother?" that his three scholars burst out into a second edition of shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and thus succeeded in waking Robin, who, after a great contortion, sat up on the grass, and, rubbing his eyes, demanded in an injured ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the most signal of these instances, almost to create anew. It is exceedingly striking to observe how the contracted, rigid soul seems to soften, and grow warm, and expand, and quiver with life. With the new energy infused, it painfully struggles to work itself into freedom, from the wretched contortion in which it has so long been fixed as by the impressed spell of some infernal magic. It is seen filled with a distressed and indignant emotion at its own ignorance; actuated with a restless earnestness to be informed; acquiring an unwonted pliancy of its faculties to thought; attaining a ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... to examine the fetters, learning, as I had anticipated, that they fastened with a lock. I sat gazing at the steel bracelets in the light of the lamp which swung over my head, and it became apparent to me that I had gained little by my contortion. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... yards, I looked back, and saw them all standing quite still, looking after me, like a great school of boys; till suddenly one turned round, and with a loud whoop, rushed into the midst of the others. In an instant, the whole was one writhing and tumbling heap of contortion, reminding me of the live pyramids of intertwined snakes of which travellers make report. As soon as one was worked out of the mass, he bounded off a few paces, and then, with a somersault and a run, threw himself gyrating into the air, and descended with all his ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... quid in his cheek, and shook his head slowly from side to side, while he remarked that every one had to die once, an' when the time came no one couldn't escape and that was all about it! Poor Larry O'Hale could not thus calm his mercurial spirit. He twisted his hard features into every possible contortion, apostrophised his luck, and his grandmother, and ould Ireland in the most pathetic manner, bewailed his fate, and used improper language in reference to savages in general, and those of the South Seas in particular, while, at intervals, he leaped up ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... groaned the poor boy, making the wryest face a boy ever made, and twisting himself into a contortion of body which none but an India-rubber youth like himself could ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... shoulders an inch or two higher, and turned the palms of his hands outwards with a glance indescribably comical)—"crackers with paper prodigies, crackers with sweetmeats—such sweetmeats!" He smacked his lips with a grotesque contortion, and looked at Master McGreedy, who choked himself with his last raisin, and ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the same—a weaver of fairy nothings could write a delicious thesis on the question; is Lackaday's smile a grin or is his grin a smile? Anyhow, whatever may be the definition of the special ear-to-ear white-teeth-revealing contortion of his visage, it had in it something wistful, irresistible. You will find it in the face of a tickled baby six months old. He touched ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... this time in the room where he had his lessons, waiting for his tutor. He was biting his nails to the quick, and twisting his little face into every kind of contortion. Geoff was now ten, and he had grown a great deal during the year,—if not so very much in stature, yet a great deal in experience. A little, a very little, and yet enough to swear by, of the wholesome discipline of neglect had fallen to Geoff's ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... there was an indescribable flavor about it, only to be explained on the supposition that the ice had been frozen dish-water. Ben's taste had not been educated up to that point which would enable him to relish it. He laid it down with an involuntary contortion of ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... coherent perhaps, but none the less satisfying. Miss Felicity Quackenboss's portrait of Saint Vitus is perhaps the most arresting contribution to the exhibition, and portrays the Saint intoxicated with the exuberance of his own agility. It is a very carnival of contortion. Mr. Widgery Pimble transcribes very searchingly the post-prandial lethargy of a boa-constrictor, the process of deglutition being indicated with great dignity and delicacy, as might be expected from so austere a realist. From one angle the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... me, sir?' said James Hornett. He had always smiled, and was smiling even now. The smile was no more than a contortion of the muscles of the face, which made a long mirthless crease on either cheek, and left the eyes untouched by the least light of sympathy. It gave him a propitiatory dog-like look, and there was a hint of fawning in his attitude which matched it perfectly and carried out the likeness. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... adagios or allegros. The audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... curious desire to compare her with the phantom that had dispossessed her in his fancy. Unconsciously when he saw her, he transferred the shame that devoured him, from him to her, and gazed coldly at the face that could twist to that despicable contortion. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a female named Sutchnimia, and she had been introduced to my notice as infallible, her character as usual being well supported by her mahout; but no sooner did this heroic beast descry the tiger, than she twisted herself into every possible contortion, throwing herself about in the most aimless attitudes, with a vigour that threatened the safety of the howdah and severely taxed ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... especially in those places where the surface is most uneven. Thus its outcrop at Lydney is very imperfectly defined, and at Oakwood Mill the vein is rendered worthless by a fault, whilst on each side of the Lydbrook valley there is a contortion, by which it is thrown down in one instance seventy yards, and in ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... boys, the circus acrobats always—always, remember—rubbed young children with snake-oil and walloped them with a rawhide to educate them in tumbling and contortion? Well, if I could get the snake-oil for the joints and a curly young wig, I'd like to get back at five hundred of those books and devour ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... It grew cold and clammy. At its thicker end Gwendolyn saw that the Piper was supporting a head—a head with small, fiery eyes and a tongue flame-like in its color and swift darting. Next, "Hiss-s-s-s-s!" And with one hideous contortion, the huge black body wrung itself ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... followed him, his doctrines of sobriety and simplicity made no impression whatever. Their tastes lay in an entirely different direction. For now, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, there set in, with an extreme and sudden violence, a fashion for every kind of literary contortion, affectation and trick. The value of a poet was measured by his capacity for turning a somersault in verse—for constructing ingenious word-puzzles with which to express exaggerated sentiments; and no prose-writer was worth looking at who could not drag a complicated, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... "and most conclusive." He passed the objects on to the foreman, and there was an interval of silence while the jury examined them with breathless interest and much facial contortion. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... noble head of the house of Russell himself helped his guest to a glass of this choice wine, and de Grammont, on tasting it, declared it to be excellent. The Duke of Bedford, anxious to judge of its quality, poured out a glass, which no sooner approached his lips than, with a horrible contortion, he exclaimed: 'Why, what on earth is this?' The butler approached, took the bottle and applied it to his nostrils, and, to the dismay of his master, pronounced it to be castor-oil. The Duc de Grammont had swallowed this horrid ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... also some funny parts, according to the Algerian idea. They are played by a jet black Somauli woman who joins in the dance and a jet black Somauli boy in the orchestra who has a face of India rubber and a gift for "facial contortion" that would make the fortune ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Chawlie," she replied, "does you s'pose one po' nigga kin tell a big lie? No, sah! But w'en de whole people tell w'at ain' so—if dey know it, aw if dey don' know it—den dat is a big lie!" And she laughed to contortion. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of form.] Distortion — N. distortion, detortion^, contortion; twist, crookedness &c (obliquity) 217; grimace; deformity; malformation, malconformation^; harelip; monstrosity, misproportion^, want of symmetry, anamorphosis^; ugliness &c 846; talipes^; teratology. asymmetry; irregularity. V. distort, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... until I cry in my sleep when I dream about a muffin! I thought at first that getting out of bed before my eyes are fairly open and turning myself into a circus actor by doing every kind of overhand, foot, arm and leg contortion that the mind of cruel man could invent to torture a human being with, would kill me before I had been at it a week, but when I read on page sixteen that as soon as all that horror was over I must jump right into the ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... are always forgetting the so obvious fact that the kind of metaphor or descriptive epithet of this sort or that, which would make a certain effect on the listener of the tenth century, will make a very different effect on the reader of to-day. As Lady Gregory points out, the description of the contortion of Cuchulain in his fight with Ferdiad seems very unheroic to us, and is therefore best left out of the translation, or, if retained, conveyed in terms that will make an effect on us similar to ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... exquisite figure hunched with despair, her cold, white, pointed fingers pressed tight upon those glorious temples, her little palms hiding the misery of that striking face, her knees convulsively closed, that shining foot tucked beneath the other in the contortion of grief. We will leave her there on the ladder, learning that sorry lesson which Great Love only will set its favourites when they have gone a-whoring after false gods ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... in groups of four, at little tables placed about the room; and the gentlemen, as had been arranged, were helped first to each course. Happening to raise my eyes to address the youth upon my right hand, I saw his countenance suddenly distorted by a contortion expressive of any thing but pleasure. Turning involuntarily to my left-hand neighbor, who happened to be Mr. Winston, I saw a grimace, almost similar, pass over his face, followed by a look ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... dinner—Alfred had been placed upon a diet of squab broth, none of the flesh, just the broth—Alfred quietly arose and, with the aid of the big looking glass, (mirrors had not been discovered as yet, in Brownsville), and a contortion feat such as he had never attempted previously, he scanned the bruised parts. Lin's worst fears seemed confirmed; all his person reflected in the looking glass was black as ink, as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... collective wisdom. Yet now that his protegee had been accepted by others, he questioned that judgment and became her critic. It struck him that her sudden outburst was strained; it seemed to him that in this mere contortion of passion the sibyl's robe had become rudely disarranged. He spoke to Hamlin, and even approached the ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... will avail him little in his attempt to conceal the defect; because, in order to hide it, he must contract the skin, bring down the upper feathers and shove in the lower ones, which would throw all the surrounding parts into contortion. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... most inexplicable contortion. His little rat eyes focused on the ranchero, and he drew back in a sort of fear. Convoy her whom people called Jacqueline through the lawless Huasteca, at the bidding of this man! "No, no, no!" ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... spasm seemed to run through him, a horrible boneless contortion of limbs and body, a slippery, twitching movement, a repulsive though almost inaudible clicking of rehabilitated ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... producing a most barbarous noise, accompanied by a baba, or rattle, loud shouts, palaver, songs, and violent gesticulations, forming a system of confused uproar, unmusical, and ungraceful. Their motions are irregular, sometimes in violent contortion, and at others voluptuous and slow. Nothing can be done without a palaver; and at the change of every dance, he from whom the proposition originates, makes a solemn harangue over the musical instruments, which is generally descriptive of some warlike action ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... reddened, pictorically and scientifically speaking, six whole tints and a half, if not a full octave above his natural colour:—any man, Madam, but my uncle Toby, who had observed this, together with the violent knitting of my father's brows, and the extravagant contortion of his body during the whole affair,—would have concluded my father in a rage; and taking that for granted,—had he been a lover of such kind of concord as arises from two such instruments being put in exact tune,—he would instantly have skrew'd up his, to the same ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... some mishap that befell a vessel, wherein the officer in charge showed the happy blending of composure and ignorance we sometimes find; a condition concerning which a sufferer once said of himself, "I never open my mouth but I put my foot in it;" a confusion of metaphor, and suggestion of physical contortion, not often so neatly combined in a dozen words. The boatswain commented: "He didn't mind. He didn't know what to do, but there he stood, looking all the time as happy as a duck barefooted." A duck shod, and the consequent expression of its countenance, presents to my mind infinite entertainment. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... it stood him in the stead of courage, of brains, of invention; his flaccid muscles were suddenly again under control; he wreathed his features with his smug artificial smile, that was like a grimace in its best estate, and now hardly seemed more than a contortion. But beauty in any sense was not what the observer was prepared to expect in Nehemiah, and the moonshiner seemed to accept the smile at its face value, and to ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... row, the buttons of their foils aligned and resting on the hardwood floor. In graceful unison they removed their masks; three flushed and unusually pretty faces regarded the author of their being attentively—more attentively still when that round and ruddy gentleman, executing a facial contortion, screwed his monocle into an angry left ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself. 'Would you be so good as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... give a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none in reality incompatible with any. If you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it were the direction in which one moves by analysis or by synthesis, if you go down for example from ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... and almost black, and were bent into a semicircular, or rather elliptical form, above the junction of the eyebrows. I had heard such a look described in an old tale of DIABLERIE, which it was my chance to be entertained with not long since; when this deep and gloomy contortion of the frontal muscles was not unaptly described as forming the representation ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... over the beautiful corpse, as it lay placidly extended, disfigured by no contortion, but on the contrary, a heavenly repose in the features—a sad mockery of worldly vanity. Death had arrayed himself in the last imported ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of wistful contortion passed over Mom Wallis's hopeless countenance, as if she saw before her in all its possibility of perfection the life that she herself had lost. Perhaps it was no longer possible for her features to show tenderness, but a glow of something like it burned in her eyes, though she ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... chance is like believing in miracles. Both theories suppose that God does not know the future. What is a casualty? A happening which absolutely nobody knows beforehand. What is a miracle? A contradiction, a contortion of the laws of nature. Lack of foresight and contradiction in the All Knowing, who directs the machinery of the world, are two ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... across the ledge toward the wall that shut in about the sanctuary, just as, a half-year before, on our "Rockport" fighting ground, I strove to drag him through the bushes toward Cliff Street, while he tried to fling me off the projecting rock. And so we locked limb and limb in the horrible contortion of this savage strife. Every muscle had been so wrenched, no pain or wound reported itself fairly to the congested brain. I had nearly reached the wall, and I was making a frantic effort to fling the Indian against it. I had his shoulder almost upon the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and the silk did wind Her fair cold form; Little availed the shining shroud, Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm. A watcher looked upon her low, and said— She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead. But in that sleeps contortion showed The terror of the vision there— A silent vision unavowed, Revealing earth's foundation bare, And Gorgon in her hidden place. It was a thing of fear to see So foul a dream upon so fair a face, And the dreamer lying in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... they sat there, now dozing by the stove, and anon starting up as some unusually weird contortion on the part of the boat gave them the impression that the end had come, and they were about to be tossed into ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... wetness of his legs; and while he heard the clamour of the soldiers, the cries, the rumbling of the drums, he pulled with all his might; all the muscles and sinews of his body were seen in strain; and what was more, the contortion of his mouth showed what agony of haste he suffered, and how his whole frame laboured to the toe-tips. Then there were drummers and men with flying garments, who ran stark naked toward the fray. Strange postures too: this fellow upright, that man ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... his gun as a boy throws a ball underhand—a draw his father had taught him. He pulled twice, his shots almost as one. Bain's big Colt boomed while it was pointed downward and he was falling. His bullet scattered dust and gravel at Duane's feet. He fell loosely, without contortion. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... motion that is not natural, or has any thing of stiffness, constraint, or affectation, is instinctively perceived by the spectator. The body must constantly preserve its proper position, without the least contortion, well adjusted to the steps; while the motion of the arms, must be agreeable to that of the legs, and the head to be in ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... simulated a shudder—a painful contortion, such as any one might suffer if rudely jerked out ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... of toilet in displaying them both, because studs are hardly visible when one wears a scarf, unless the scarf is kept out of the perpendicular by stuffing one end of it into the sleeve of a jacket; which requires constant attention and a good deal of bodily contortion. ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... the princess, trying to correct the unfortunate tendency of the kiss, put out her hands to keep her off the page; so that, along with the kiss, he received, on the other cheek, a slap with the huge black toad, which she poked right into his eye. He tried to laugh, too, but it resulted in a very odd contortion of countenance, which showed that there was no danger of his pluming himself on the kiss. Indeed it is not safe to be kissed by princesses. As for the king, his dignity was greatly hurt, and he did not speak to the page for ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... contortion had been completed in Cuchulain, then it was that the hero of valour sprang into his scythed war-chariot, with its iron sickles, its thin blades, its hooks and its hard spikes, with its hero's fore-prongs, with its opening fixtures, with its stinging nails that ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... stronger men, leave also no mark on our poet. The elaborate thought, the metrical harshness of the first, could find no counterpart in Herrick; whilst Marvell, beyond him in imaginative power, though twisting it too often into contortion and excess, appears to have been little known as a lyrist then:—as, indeed, his great merits have never reached anything like due popular recognition. Yet Marvell's natural description is nearer Herrick's ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... For a few moments he stood irresolute, and then, with an extraordinary contortion of visage, dropped into his chair again and sat gazing ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... By a careful contortion of the manacled hands, which seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars put into John Gavitt's hands, and the twenty he had ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... toe or stubbing it, as the case may be. But that was in the days of the old-fashioned square dance, which was the fat man's friend among dances, and also of the old-fashioned two-step, and not in these times when dancing is a cross between a wrestling match, a contortion act and a trip on a roller-coaster, and is either named for an animal, like the Bunny Hug and the Tarantula Glide, or for a town, like the Mobile Mop-Up, and the Far Rockaway Rock and the South Bend Bend. His friends would interfere—or the authorities would. He can go in swimming, ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... on the Acropolis itself picture wings in just this way; or it may be Athena's aegis, the fleece of a sheep or the earth's surface that is so represented. On the body of the Triton and the Echidna of the pediments no attempt is made to indicate movement and contortion by the position of the scales; it is everywhere the lifeless conventionality of archaic vase-drawing. In sculptured representations the scale device is dropped, and with it the rigid regularity in the ordering of the pinions. Further, in drawing the scales of ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... a fresh quid of tobacco from the plug he carried in his pocket, and there was a brief pause before he answered. Then, as he carefully wiped the blade of his knife on the leg of his blue jean overalls, he looked up with a curious facial contortion. ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... struggled to deliver himself from the creature's grasp, but in vain. Sylvan kept hold of his prize, compressed his sinewy arms, and abode by his purpose of not quitting his hold of the philosopher's throat till he had breathed his last. Two more bitter yells, accompanied each with a desperate contortion of the countenance, and squeeze of the hands, concluded, in less than five minutes, the dreadful strife. Agelastes lay dead upon the ground, and his assassin Sylvan, springing from the body as if terrified ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... one thing in the case which had made the deepest impression both upon the servants and the police. This was the contortion of the Colonel's face. It had set, according to their account, into the most dreadful expression of fear and horror which a human countenance is capable of assuming. More than one person fainted at the mere sight ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... swollen to an unnatural size by some awful disease, by the mysterious action of an unknown poison. He lifted his head, saw the two before him waiting, opened his mouth with an extraordinary, sneering contortion of his puffed face—to speak to them, I suppose—and then a thought seemed to strike him. His thick, purplish lips came together without a sound, he went off in a resolute waddle to the gharry and began to jerk at the door-handle with ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... struggle had been a grievous one. On his rigid face there stood an expression of horror, and as it seemed to me, of hatred, such as I have never seen upon human features. This malignant and terrible contortion, combined with the low forehead, blunt nose, and prognathous jaw gave the dead man a singularly simious and ape-like appearance, which was increased by his writhing, unnatural posture. I have seen death in many forms, but ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seclusion with the lower rotundities of her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its intended geniality upward to the exasperated eyes and ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... rather than a definite consciousness of self-betrayal, that sent the old man's drifting mind back to its moorings. "Jes' listenin' ter that beautiful readin'," he grinned, his long yellow tobacco-stained teeth all bare in a facial contortion that essayed a smile, his distended lips almost failing of articulation. "Them was fine clothes ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... conversation in which he takes no interest, his countenance shows no indication whatever of intellectual superiority of any kind. But as soon as he is interested, and opens his eyes upon you, the change is like magic. There is a flash in his glance, a violent contortion in his frown, an exquisite humour in his sneer, and a sweetness and brilliancy in his smile, beyond anything that ever I witnessed. A person who had seen him in only one state would not know him if he saw him in another. For he has not, like Brougham, marked ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... begins to build a home, which is nothing more than a calcareous tube, superficially resembling a corpulent worm, instantaneously petrified while in the act of a more or less elaborate wriggle or fantastic contortion. In this complicated tunnel the creature resides, presenting a lovely circular disc of glowing pink as its front door. A few inches beneath the water this operculum or lid is not unlike a pearl, but as you gaze upon it, it slips on one side, and five animated red rays appear, waving like ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... by two or three sobbing children and the girl whom Miss Featherstone had already seen. "My dear mees," he said, never stopping until he reached the governess, "see this leetle enfant, this cher petit Henri. He has already one contortion—spasm—what you call it?—and I fear he goes to have one other. Ma chere mademoiselle, have you some experience? Is it that you know what ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... on his lips and smiled, and then slapped the young officer who spoke first with his glove. "Never mind, boys, I have come to help you here—you will need help before long;—but how is—?" Here he made a comical contortion of his face, and drew his ungloved hand across his throat. The young officers laughed, and pointed to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... had done, nor ever could do any thing to entitle him to claim distinction of any sort. The young Coxcomb who next entered, was a direct contrast to the last applicant, both in person and manner. Approaching with a fashionable contortion, he stretched out his lady-like hand, and in the most languid and affected tone imaginable, inquired for The Idler. "That, Sir," said Margin, "is amongst the works we have unhappily lost, but you will be sure to meet with it at ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... its selection. The tall bay horses had been flicked at least a hundred times to make them stand out and show themselves, in the form London coachmen think so imposing to passers-by. The footman had yawned as often, expressing with each contortion an excessive longing for beer. Many street boys had lavished their criticisms, favourable and otherwise, on the wheels, the panels, the varnish, the driver's wig, and that dignitary's legs, whom they had the presumption to address as "John." Diverse ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood. She noticed, and enjoyed, ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... express canoe, Kate—the express canoe," said Mr. Kennedy, with a contortion of the left side of his head that was intended for a wink; "you know they got leave to come by ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... position on the veranda, "why do you not disengage yourself from the veranda of our friend? And why, in the name of Heaven, do you attach to yourself so much of this thing, and make to yourself such unnecessary contortion? Ah," he continued, suddenly withdrawing one of his own feet from the veranda with an evident effort, "I am myself attached! Surely it ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... verse. The clusters of rhymes are clusters only to the eye and not to the ear. The necessity of rhyming leads Browning into inversions,—into expansions of sentences beyond the natural close of the form,—into every sort of contortion. The rhymes clog and distress ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... rid of Mr. Punch, and bowed the man of the Times politely out, Grandmama Fudge, in a strong Scotch brogue, said, 'Nu, luds, let us gang awa to the crumpets—bring 'um hither, mya bullies!' He drew a sort of simple contortion over his broad, hard face, and mouthed his lips, as if he would the amplest dough-nut be put on his plate. Palm, just as they were resuming their seats, insinuated that as the venerable old man was well gone in ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... up her hands. Out of the violet ovals beneath the upper tips of the Things spurted streams of blue flame. They fell upon Yuruk and splashed over him upon the heap of the slain. In the mound was a dreadful movement, a contortion; the bodies stiffened, seemed to try to rise, to push away—dead nerves and muscles responding to the blasting ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... then, Captain," said the fellow, with a contortion of visage which he intended to be a smile; "and I'll tell you now,—to show you that I have a conscience, as ye ca't, d-n me if I charge ye abune sixpence a day for the freedom o' the court, and ye may walk in't very near three hours a day, and play at ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... one of his stories, 'suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt.' Every actor, of course, uses the same dialect. A gay young gentleman tells us that he used to amuse his companions by giving them notice of his friends' oddities. 'Every man,' he says, 'has some habitual contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails to excite mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonition of these particularities, I secured our pleasantry.' The feminine characters, Flirtillas, and Cleoras, and Euphelias, and Penthesileas, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... which made him the dread of all candidates who appeared before the session desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... strength into play in order to give to the disc its highest force. The body is bent forward, the toes of one foot cling to the ground, the muscles of the torso are strained, the whole body is in an attitude of violent tension which can endure only for an instant. Yet the face is free from contortion, free from any trace of effort, calm and beautiful. This shows that Myron, intent as he was upon reproducing nature, could yet depart from his realistic formulae when the requirements of beautiful ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... embroideries; and of human life in general, from a green race-course, where to be defeated was at worst only to fall behind and recover breath, into a slippery pole, to be climbed with toil and contortion, and in clinging to which, each man's foot ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... rapidly, and a curious contortion puckered her mouth and chin. Karen thought that she was going to cry and her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... off, and instantly blew his red cap some height into the air, and we made up our minds it must be full, as it was before, of our guide's skull, and that he had now gone to that bourn from which no hunter, like no traveller, could ever return. We ran to his assistance. The gun by some contortion of the Norwegian's body, was twisted upside down, and instead of the muzzle being pointed downwards, had been elevated, point blank, towards his head. The poor Norwegian, breathing with great labour, closed eyes, and opened mouth, lay ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... her uneasily, behind some palms. She was a thin little woman with a maddening habit of drawing her tight veil down even closer by a contortion of her lower jaw, so that the rector found himself watching her chin rather ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the remotest psychological clairvoyance, he will be aware of a certain strain and tug, a certain mental jerk and contortion, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... in every attitude and contortion of the death agony, were some dozen prostrate forms of men, women, and children, all dead and still. It seemed as though they must have crawled forth from the houses when the terrible fever thirst was upon them, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green |
