"Heartstrings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... touched his very heartstrings, but he was too deeply moved to answer her for a moment. The renewal of this thought exalted his very soul. All that was noble and great in his nature seemed rising up ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... mean it, my dear. It's like tearing my heartstrings out to let you go, but you must. I know; you are thinking of me; but I shall be all right. You must do ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the sincere believer death would be an object of desire instead of dread, were it not for those ties—those heartstrings—by which we are attached to life. Nor, indeed, do I believe that it is natural to fear death, however generally it may be thought so. From my own feelings I have little right to judge; for, although habitually mindful that the hour cometh, and even now may be, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... on Father Fouchard to let him have a sack, although it wrung the old miser's heartstrings to part with it. He selected one that was full of holes, remarking that anything was good enough for a Prussian. Cabasse and Ducat had all the trouble in the world to get Goliah into it; it was too short and too narrow for the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... feel the snare Of Ishtar, lest ye tread upon the air; When ye her rosy chain of fragrance wear, When blindness strikes the eye, and deaf the ear Becomes, and heartstrings only lead you then, Till ye return to common sense again; Enthralled mayhap and captive led in chains, Ye then will leisure have to bear your pains; Or if perchance a joy hath come to thee, Through all thy joyous ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... minister is who undertakes a dangerous foreign mission. Men will stand mateless, and the ruins of the hymeneal altars everywhere crumble mournfully away, and be known to tradition only by their vanishing inscriptions: "To the unknown god." But it is ill jesting over that which tugs at every woman's heartstrings and which impinges upon the very life-centres of society. If women, on being made really free to choose, will not marry, then we must arraign men on the charge of having made the married state so irksome and distasteful to women that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... which somehow or other had survived the burden of his sordid days suddenly reasserted itself. He climbed the steps and passed through the portals with the beating heart of the explorer who climbs his last hill. It was his entrance, this, into the new world whose call was tearing at his heartstrings. He bought no catalogue, he asked no questions. From room to room he passed with untiring footsteps. His whole being was filled with the immeasurable relief, the almost passionate joy, of one who for ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was that setting her aside when he had to, served so to cut in two his life, so wrenched at his heartstrings, so burnt and bruised his spirit, that when, in his active fashion he had lived some of the hurt down, he could not bring himself easily to reopen the old subject—fresh wounds for him might still lurk in it—how could he tell? ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... association with each other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the sudden cross-roading of his life's highway. But I, too, was filled with the glamour of this girl's wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it would be fatal to any chance of his weighing ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... "Heartstrings," "The Deadly Nightshade," "Passion Flowers," &c. Though her poems breathe only of love, Miss B. has never been married. She is nearly six feet high; she loves waltzing beyond even poesy; and I think lobster-salad as much as either. She confesses to twenty-eight; in which case her first volume, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?—well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that in all that you do you are dealing with my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish that such division were possible. You say that I ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Kenyon knew it well, project so lifelike a copy of their mistresses out of their own imaginations, that it can pull at the heartstrings almost as perceptibly as the genuine original. No airy intimations are to be trusted; no evidences of responsive affection less positive than whispered and broken words, or tender pressures of the hand, allowed and half returned; or glances, that distil many passionate ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shown in every word and look to his mother. The good breeding and ease of manner Miss Betty had seen before; this other trait was something new; and perhaps she was conscious of a little pull it gave at her heartstrings. This was not the manner she had seen at home, where her father had treated her mother as a sort of queen-consort certainly,—co-regent of the house; but where they had lived upon terms of mutual diplomatic respect; and her brothers, if they cared much for anybody ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Karin Ingmarsson suddenly breaks through convention and publicly over the coffee cups declares herself betrothed. The book is a succession of these brilliantly portrayed situations that clutch at the heartstrings—the meetings in the mission house, the reconciliation scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man he felt on his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the "wild hunt," ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Dan Anderson's heartstrings, but his face did not show it. They were putting him in the balance against Heart's Desire, but his speech offered no evidence of it. They were making Constance Ellsworth the price of Heart's Desire, but Dan Anderson did not divulge it, as he ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... to take her and me with him, as I was now big enough to go to sea. My mother was too sensible a woman not to know that she must some day of necessity part from the Little Lady, and though it was like wrenching her very heartstrings, she, without hesitation, agreed to accompany her husband and take me with her. Our kind friends were, I know, very sorry to part with us. The old lady folded her arms round me, and kissed me on both cheeks, and on my forehead, and blessed me, and told me she hoped I should be ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... case," he replied still more firmly, "the shrieks of the little creatures when Philip gets 'em rend my heartstrings. I don't think the ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... towards Cannondale. Bob looked anxiously from Kate to me, and from me to Kate again. He expected another storm of emotion from her, and so did I; but I had decided upon my course, and was fully determined to carry it out, even if it broke the heartstrings of my fair passenger. I was sorry to be so ungallant as to resist the will of a young lady, but my conscience would not let me interfere with the domestic arrangements of Mrs. Loraine, without giving her ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... friends we must reflect a little for the answer which we might have given a few days ago—"You are our good friends as our blood relations"—alas! that answer no longer holds. That is over! God grant that in later days we may again be able to say it, but by a circumstance which has torn our very heartstrings it has been proved that blood is not thicker than water. But where then is the deep-lying reason for this friendship? Does it rest in the fact that we have so many Germans over there; that they have been received so cordially; that they have done so much for the building up of America, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... licked her rigid hands. She never looked be her: but sat motionless, till we turned a promontory of the coast and lost all sights and sounds astern. She seemed as one who, having experienced the sharpest of mortal pangs, was henceforth content to have all lesser heartstrings riven, one by one. To Hunilla, pain seemed so necessary, that pain in other beings, though by love and sympathy made her own, was unrepiningly to be borne. A heart of yearning in a frame of steel. A heart of earthly yearning, frozen by the frost which ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... fruit. All day long, as her husband went about his business, the remembrance of his lost Faith was tugging at his heartstrings. Catching sight of Vincent digging in the fields, he went to him and bade him take courage. "At the first opportunity," he said, "I will escape with ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... interest, neither he nor I have any doubt of his success. Now, my dear, comes the third, which, though perhaps it ought to give me the greatest joy, such is, I own, the weakness of my nature, it rends my very heartstrings asunder. I cannot mention it, for I know it will give you equal pain; though I know, on all proper occasions, you can exert a manly resolution. You will not, I am convinced, oppose it, whatever you must suffer in complying. O my dear ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... back into the shadow. He had never been of an envious disposition; he had always looked upon envy as a mean vice, unworthy of a gentleman; but for a moment something very like envy pulled at his heartstrings. Graciella worshipped the golden calf. He worshipped Graciella. But he had no money; he could not have taken her to the ball in a closed carriage, drawn by blooded horses and driven ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... his senses with the odours of Eternal sweets. Happy English poor! Ye are not scurfed with the vanities of the flesh! Under the affectionate discipline of the British Magi L.S.D.,—the "three kings" tasking human muscles, banqueting on human heartstrings,—ye are happily rescued from any visitation of those worldly comforts that hold the weakness of humanity to life! Hence, by the benevolence of those who have only solid acres, ye are permitted to have an unlimited portion of the sky; and banned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... I couldn't stay away any longer. All the way up the trail I had a feeling that you had hold of my heartstrings pulling me to you, and as if they would break if I didn't get to you faster. I can't describe it exactly, but it was as real as an ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and the streaming eyes of his fond mother, as she pressed his head with her cold hand upon her lap, alone distinguished her from death. The pains of hunger in myself were becoming insupportable; my teeth gnashed against each other, and worms seemed gnawing my heartstrings. At this moment, my dear wife looked me in the face, and, stretching her hand to me, said, 'Farewell, my love, in a few hours I and our dear child shall be at rest! Oh! hunger, hunger!' I could stand no more. Reason forsook me. I could have ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... to him, with a queer tug at the heartstrings, that Houck had once been a dimpled baby in a mother's arms, a chirruping little fat-legged fellow who tottered across the floor to her with outstretched fingers. Had that innocent child disappeared forever? Or in that other world to which Jake had so violently gone would ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... horse bolted and then settled into his stride until the gentle breeze in the rider's face became a rushing gale. But the pain which the animal had felt was nothing to the fear which tugged at the ranchman's heartstrings, as he reproached himself bitterly for having left only one man at the ranch, although at the time the thought of peril to the women had never occurred to him. With the start that Moran had, Wade reasoned that he stood small chance of arriving in time to do any good. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... overcome with contrition for the unworthiness with which I had stood before this girl who had so trusted to my magnanimity, appraising her like a sensualist when I should have been on my knees before her. A reaction of compunctious loyalty made my very heartstrings ache. I saw now how well it had been for a weak-minded fool like myself that she had not chanced to be beautiful or even pretty, for then I should have cheated myself of all that distinguished this solemn ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... exquisite. More—it was authoritative, masterly, soaring. It gripped the hearers' senses and heartstrings. The beauty and dreaminess of the Ave Maria flooded the air with loveliness. Brice listened, enthralled. Down Claire's cheek rolled a teardrop, of whose existence she was ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... until weeks later, when she'd had her snapshots of him developed and printed, and got to summin' up the details in this case of Victim B-23, that she discovers how a few of her own heartstrings has been strained. Somehow she couldn't seem to tear them three August days completely off the calendar; and when the other chappies come buzzin' around, and she had a chance to frame 'em up alongside of this fish island hero, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... with the tale of Arctic gold, and the lure of the North gripped the heartstrings of men, Carter Weatherbee threw up his snug clerkship, turned the half of his savings over to his wife, and with the remainder bought an outfit. There was no romance in his nature—the bondage of commerce had crushed all that; ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... approached it in its power over her imagination—but because of its expression of haunting melancholy,—a melancholy so settled and so evidently the result of long-continued sorrow that her interest had been reached and her heartstrings shaken as never before in her ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... us with his piteous eyes to save him; then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think how it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed his hand to hear more of it, and laugh at it. That ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... to your chair," she begged. "You've stilled the horrible, miserable little doubt that was tearing at my heartstrings. I just had it before, once or twice, and then—isn't it foolish!—your telling me about this little typewriter girl! I must go and see her. We must be kind ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her with more than a tinge of envy. She was aware that her own vivid charm was shadowed and eclipsed by the white flame of Jean's youth and innocence. "And he loves her," she thought with a tug of her heartstrings; "he loves her, and there'll never be anything like ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... quality, but Evan was not quarrelling because it was the voice of a woman instead of an angel. One thing she had beyond peradventure, temperament; her heart was in her singing, and so it played on his heartstrings as ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... sings the lorn and lonely nightingale, Sighing in sombre thicket all day long, Weaving its throbbing heartstrings into song For absent mate, with sorrowing unavail. And every warble seems to say—"Alone!" While every pause brings musical reply: Sad Philomel! Each sweet responsive sigh Is but the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the garden gate behind him—for when in sorrow we don't do things with a rush and a bang—when a whirring sound overhead caused him to start. Strong, hardened man though he was, his nerves were unstrung to-night in company with his heartstrings. It was the church clock preparing to strike twelve. The little doctor, Speck, who had left the house but a minute before, was standing at the churchyard fence close by, his arms leaning on the rails, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... I saw that, I felt a sort of throttling fright, as though one had caught hold of my heartstrings; and so many and such strange thoughts rose in me, that the blood went pounding round and round in my head, as it did once afterwards when I was fighting with the sea and near drowned. Surely to have in ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... said softly. "After all, Isobel is but a child. What cunning tune can she have played upon your heartstrings that you should espouse her cause with so much fervour? If she were a few years ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... floated in at the window on the fragrant morning sunbeams, in a voice of the most penetrating tenderness I had ever felt break against my heartstrings. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... through his introduction and into his theme he knew he was holding these thousands of breathless listeners in the hollow of his hand. He could feel their heartstrings quiver as he touched them with tenderness or struck them ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... had ever kept the dear child so long, but that I made sure you would be back to him from day to day? Oh he curls round my very heartstrings, but what is my title to him compared to thine? Confess now, thou hast had hard thoughts ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... scene—the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a parcel of unruly girls, with the graces of one so tugging at his heartstrings! His path might at least have been spared the thorn of having his fault denounced by the very voice that had done ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... to be tearing at his very heartstrings, until he felt that he could no longer lie on the miserable palliasse which in these squalid lodgings ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... is high time—but criticism has not died. Refined natures have heartstrings like the chords of Aeolian harps, sensitive to the faintest touch, responsive to the gentlest whisper of the evening breeze; such shrink in terror from the icy breath of the scoffer: the purpose is frozen dead within their souls. O criticism! what crimes have ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Lottie would listen to any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth, for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all the knots in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... His wonder that his wife's "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered assistance to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty of bringing a smile to the lips and a tear to the eye at the same time. From the first picture, which presents young Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and easily ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... the worn leather pouches. From one of them Blakely drew forth a flask, poured some brandy into its cup and held it to the soldier's lips. Carmody swallowed almost eagerly. He seemed to crave a little longer lease of life. There was something tugging at his heartstrings, and presently he turned slowly, painfully again. "Lieutenant," he gasped, "I'm not scared to die—this way anyhow. There's no one to care—but the boys—but there's one thing"—and now the stimulant seemed to reach the failing heart and give him faint, fluttering strength—"there's one thing ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... forecastle. "Although even some o' they should know better, for there's still a few was on Barbados with us, and are acquainted like me and you with Colonel Bishop. If ye're counting on pulling Bishop's heartstrings, ye're a bigger fool, Ogle, than I've always thought you was with anything but guns. There's no heaving to for such a matter as that unless you wants to make quite sure of our being sunk. Though we had a cargo of Bishop's nieces it wouldn't make him hold his hand. Why, as I was ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... great, and the wise of all ages. He has been selfish, mean and grasping, and the blessing of the poor and needy never fall as benedictions on his weary head; and in that beautiful home with disease and death clutching at his heartstrings, he has wealth that he cannot enjoy, luxuries that pall upon his taste, and magnificence that can never satisfy the restless craving of his soul. His life has been a wretched failure. He neglected his children to amass the ways of iniquity, and their ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... a brood have gone from the home nest, they pull hard on the heartstrings of the mother. Women, at the last, have more courage than ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... singing our song of triumph,[1] Which proclaimed us proud and free— While breaking away the heartstrings Of our nation's harmony. Sadly it floateth from us, Sighing o'er land and wave; Till, mute on the lips of the poet, It sleeps in his Southern grave. Spirit and song departed! Minstrel and minstrelsy! We mourn ye, heavy hearted,— But we will—we ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... England, indeed! Milton's England, Shelley's England; the England of the skylark, the dog-rose, the honeysuckle! Not love England, forsooth! Why, I love every flower, every blade of grass in it. Devonshire lane, close-cropped down, rich water-meadow, bickering brooklet: ah me, how they tug at one's heartstrings in Africa! No son of the soil can love England as those love her very stones who have come from newer lands over sea to her ivy-clad church-towers, her mouldering castles, her immemorial elms, the berries on her holly, the may in her hedgerows. Are not all these bound up in our ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... your kindness; and take good care of Regina for me. (Wipes a tear from his eye.) Poor Joanna's child—it is an extraordinary thing, but she seems to have grown into my life and to hold me by the heartstrings. That's how I feel about it, truly. ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... borrowed the Shaws' light cart whilst they were eating it. The Shaws were good farmer-folk, they sympathized most fully; and Jack was glad of a few words of pity from Phoebe. She said she had watched the pretty pets "many a score of times," which comforted more than one of Jack's heartstrings. Phoebe's mother paid respect to his sense and promptitude. He had acted exactly as she would ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... change it. And as the pain of loving his dead wife had never ceased throughout the years, so the new and more poignant pain of loving his daughter and knowing that she was in the wrong began tugging at his heartstrings. Well, he was the original culprit; he must see her through the game with flying colours. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... he then had died Died when the anguish of heartstrings torn, The sudden stilling of childish laughter, The awful vacance that fills the place Of the soft, warm touch, of the dear, dear face, Of the sweet dead child that the heart gropes after For God's own voice ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... men who have woven From passion and appetite chains To coil with a terrible tension Around their heartstrings ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... the unequal fight continued. It could not last much longer. Despair pulled at the German's heartstrings as he saw his observer topple for a moment in his seat, then pitch forward into space. The biplane tipped dangerously, righted itself and sped like a homing pigeon in the direction of the German lines. There was nothing left but to fly for it. The German dared not look behind; ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... In the letter last quoted, "Flens mihi meam famam commendasti." "Believe," he says, "that I cling to the doctrines which you yourself have taught me. They are fixed in my very heartstrings." ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... him dumbly, and something in her tear-stained face tugged irresistibly at his heartstrings. "Don't look like that," he said. "Let's forget all that has happened before. You don't mean you will turn ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... last bell! Clang! clang! In two minutes comes the horn, and then we are off. The gipsies are playing the saddest of sad songs, it seems as if one's heartstrings were being wrenched ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... spellbound by the low murmur of her voice. A sense of infinite leisure emanated from her—a subtle denial of the ordinary responsibilities—very relaxing and delightful to Tutt. But what twitched his very heartstrings was the dimple that came and went with that pathetic little twisted ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... continued hypocrisy, (although Lilias charitably hinted, that in some instances they were happily united,) and there fore she could not exactly trust the report of others against her own experience and observation. The thoughts of this orphan boy clung to her heartstrings with a fondness for which she herself was unable to account. He seemed to have been sent to her by Heaven, to fill up those intervals of languor and vacuity which deprived her of much enjoyment. Perhaps he was not less dear to her, because she well saw that he was ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... was under forty, tall and stately in person, and habited in deep black. She looked the widow of a hero; as one worthy of those Grecian mothers who gave their hair for bow-strings and their girdles for sword-belts, and, while their heartstrings were cracking, sent their husbands to fight and perish for their country. Perhaps it was she who led Marco Bozzaris from the wild guerilla warfare in which he had passed his early life, and fired him with the high and holy ambition ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... colonel had said, Mrs. Little had steeled herself to give her boy to her country and humanity. It cost her dear, but she set her teeth and placed her offering on the altar of what she had come to believe her duty, with a brave, patient smile in her eyes, in spite of the clutch at her heartstrings. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... then, twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag about our heartstrings; and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve, come weal or woe, we will, in life and in death, now and forever, stand by the Stars and Stripes. They have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains ...
— Standard Selections • Various |
