"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sympathy, by the moonlight, by Heaven knows what that loosens the facile tongue of unreticence—then suddenly, without a moment's preparation, he began to pour forth his troubles into Charles's astonished and reluctant ears. It was vain to try to stop him, and, after the first moment of instinctive recoil, Charles was seized by a burning curiosity to know all where he already knew so much, to put an ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... living on prey, the Ammophila's for instance, when devouring its caterpillar. A hole is made in the victim's side; and the head and neck of the nursling dive deep into the wound, to root luxuriously among the entrails. There is never a withdrawal from the gnawed belly, never a recoil to interrupt the feast and to take breath awhile. The vivacious animal always goes forward, chewing, swallowing, digesting, until the caterpillar's skin is emptied of its contents. Once seated at table, it does not budge as long as the victuals last. To tease it with ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... sweeter than the fragrance of the woods pervaded his senses, and he felt her hair brush against his cheek. Then she stood released, having recovered herself with a swift impulse, like a wild creature that had felt in time the first touch of the snare. This elusiveness, this sudden recoil from his contact, sobered him. What he might have done, had she remained a moment longer in his arms, must be forever a matter of conjecture with him now; but the intoxication vanished like a vapor from his mind, leaving a keen vision of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... told that I have a grudge against you, that your confidence has been shaken. The Russians quit a frontier where they are necessary, to go to a point where your Majesty has only friends. Nevertheless I had to think also of my affairs, and consider my own position. The recoil of my preparations will lead your Majesty to increase yours; and what you do, re-echoing here, will make me raise new levies, and all that for mere phantoms! It is a repetition of what I did in 1807 in Prussia, and in 1809 in Austria. As for me, I shall remain your ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... for bombing Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... that you begin to appreciate some of the points of my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's still pretty ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... continued, crossing his arms, and yet restraining with an effort his own emotion; "you do not recoil before this resolution, which would appear a revolt to any other men! Do you not think that I have abused the powers you have vested in me? I have carried matters very far; but there are times when kings would be served, as it were in spite of themselves. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... plain people's play, where the spectators groan and hiss the villain. It is a wholesome sort of clearing house where one may be freed from pent-up emotion under cover of other people's tears and smiles; the smiles triumphing at the end, which always winds up with a sudden recoil, leaving the nerves in a healthy thrill. I believe that I can only comprehend the primal emotions and what is called in intellectual jargon mental dissipation, and the problem play, in its many phases, appeals to me even less than ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... virtues of democratic government, some of its weaknesses, which in the presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive governmental action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of heart, his disposition always to respect the feelings of others, frequently made him recoil from anything like severity, even when severity was urgently called for. But many of his radical critics have since then revised their judgment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the whole, the wisest and safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has sometimes ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... movement was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short intermission, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... now. Let me try to make you understand how different it really is. I am no Jephthah's daughter,—he wants no sacrifice, and I make none. Duty, the hardest word to learn, is not leading me. You heard my father's words; but not holding him as I do, his face could not recoil upon your ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... given Etta no sign of recognition, but the horror in his once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of faintness. In his effort to recover himself, to resist what might be coming, he struggled as one for breath, but from him ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... kill them!" he screamed, as he rushed across the intervening space, and the bravos, heartened by his frenzy of fight, streamed after him, flinging themselves desperately against the piled-up hay, only to meet again the irresistible weapons of the friends, and again to recoil before them. Nevers held his own on one side; Lagardere held his own on the other. Nevers delivered his thrust at AEsop, and for the second time that day the hunchback felt the prick of steel between ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to band themselves together. According to Froude, it was on the 18th September, 1795, that a peace was formally signed at Portadown between the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the Defenders, and the hatchet was apparently buried. But the incongruous elements were drawn together only for a more violent recoil. The very same day Mr. Atkinson, a Protestant, one of the Defender subscribers, was shot at. The following day a party of Protestants were waylaid and beaten. On the 21st both parties collected in force, and at a village in Tyrone, from which the event took the name by which it is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... ye sages, who can weigh the cause, And trace the secret springs of Nature's laws; Say why the wave, of bitter brine erewhile, Should be the bosom of the deep recoil, Robbed of its salt, and from the cloud distil, Sweet as the waters of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... is the position of very many. They are hovering between the idea of extinction and that of torment. They try to believe in torment; they have been inoculated with that idea; they think, or are afraid, that it is Scriptural; but they recoil from any hearty reception of it. They have not got the length as yet of the idea of final salvation. But some day that truth may flash upon their souls like a gleam ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... unthinking and foolish creatures like themselves. And supposing these to be born in tens of millions, like ants or flies, they will not carry on the real purpose of man's existence to anything more than that stoppage and recoil which is called Death, but which in reality is only a turning back of the wheels of time when the right road has been lost and it becomes imperative to begin the journey ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... calls our attention is that they are less exuberantly prosperous than they were at the corresponding period of the last year. The severe shock so extensively sustained by the commercial and manufacturing interests in Great Britain has not been without a perceptible recoil upon ourselves. A reduced importation from abroad is necessarily succeeded by a reduced return to the Treasury at home. The net revenue of the present year will not equal that of the last, and the receipts of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... harp was heard; And when the morning's blushes shed On hill, or tow'r, their varying red, Oh! then the harp was heard to cheer, With earliest sound, th' enraptur'd ear; Then many a lady fair was known, With snowy hand, to wake its tone; And infant fingers press'd the string, And back recoil'd, to hear it sing. Sweet instrument! such was thy pow'r, 'Twas thine to gladden ev'ry hour; The young and old then honour'd thee, And smil'd to hear ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... balance between one form of change and another on this world. If we were as many as we once were, then against us these invaders could not move at all. But we are three only and also—do we have the right to evoke disaster which will strike not only the enemy but perhaps recoil upon the innocent? There has been enough death here already. And those who are our servants shall no longer be asked to face battle to keep an empty shell inviolate. We would see with our own eyes these invaders, probe what they would ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... and the other rifle. I had quite an experience—I saw a partridge just as I entered the woods budding in the top of an old birch tree. I leveled the gun up against an old ash tree and fired I had never before fired a gun, I held it rather loosely aginst my shoulder and the recoil lamed my arm and bloodeyed my pug noose. But this was soon forgotten when I saw I had plugged my meat. In haste I began to load to prepare for another bird—I seized The patch put mr ball on the patch took mr ramrod and rammed home the ball alas! just as I ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... and as brutally as possible. Her vanity was avenged—she could have her triumphs too. And instant with its gratification came the cold recoil of herself upon herself, a sense of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... of its dead for the benefit of the medical students of the town. That was a disgraceful business if you like! But public feeling was so bitter and retributive that the practice was speedily discontinued. So, again, there is nothing to make us recoil, here among the green shadows of the square, from the recollection of the Potter's Field. But there is always something fundamentally shocking in any place of public punishment. And,—alas!—there is that stain upon the fair history of this square of which ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... The recoil threw me against the side of the boat, where I lay, partially stunned and unable to move. I was conscious enough, however, to remember, and in silent, stupefied terror I awaited a second onslaught from the enraged animal. I seemed to feel the crunching ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... you would not have felt the recoil, which, even in a heavy, well-made gun, is equal to the fall of a weight fifty to sixty pounds from a height of one foot, and in overloaded or defective guns, exceeds twice and even three times that. It is a wonder that your shoulder was not broken, and a still ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... in our hands, nor accommodation for the mere existence of ours, who are now languishing in your prison-ships, it becomes my duty, Sir, to state these pointed facts to you, that the imputations may recoil where they are deserved, and to report to those, under whose authority I have the honor to act, that such measures as they ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... in us is lonely and unique creates of necessity a perpetual series of shocks and jars. The unruffled nerves of the lower animals become enviable, and we fall into moods of malicious reaction and vindictive recoil. And yet,—for Nature makes use even of what is named evil to pursue her cherished ends—the very betrayal of our outraged feelings produces no unpleasant effect upon the minds of others. They know us better so, and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... To know them thoroughly. Words slipped at random Are confidants offended—therefore I Buried my secret in my breast, till time Should drag it forth to light. 'Tis dangerous To render certain services to kings. They are the bolts, which if they miss the mark, Recoil upon the archer! I could swear Upon the sacrament to what I saw. Yet one eye-witness—one word overheard— A scrap of paper—would weigh heavier far Than my most strong conviction! Cursed fate That we ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... died away on her white lips, and the sound died away in her throat. She saw him recoil from her with a look of white, frozen horror on his face which gave place to stern, bitter wrath. Slowly and sadly he put her clinging arms away from him, folding his arms across his breast with that terrible look upon his face such as a hero's face wears when he has heard, unflinchingly, ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... had grown accustomed to the glare, little white "butterflies" were seen circling in the upper air. Then the guns opened fire and white puffs, like tiny balls of cotton-wool, appeared among the butterflies. The earth trembled with the explosion of falling bombs and the recoil of anti-aircraft batteries. A little flicker of yellow light appeared in the circle of white. The guns increased in violence. The yellow light grew in size. It was falling. The burning ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... deep emotion was now visible to all, holding the recovered sword in his mouth, while with both hands he fought against the buffetting billows, which hurled him against the foot of the cliff, and as often by their recoil swept him back again; for the wave-worn crag offered no holdfast either for the foot or hand. 'He will perish still; he will be dashed to pieces against the rock,' cried ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... tortured at the stake. Nor this the worst! In order to augment Your gloomy sway you craftily have played Upon the zeal and frenzy of our tribes, And, in my absence, hatched a monstrous charge Of sorcery amongst them, which hath spared Nor feeble age nor sex. Such horrid deeds Recoil on us! Old Shataronra's grave Sends up its ghost, and Tetaboxti's hairs— White with sad years and counsel—singed by you! In dreams and nightmares, float on every breeze. Ambition's madness might stop short of this, And shall ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was posted, had the felloes of her wheels, which showed above the top of the bank, entirely cut away by Minie-bullets, so that when she jumped in the recoil her wheels smashed and let her down. This covered all old scores. The other guns had been cut down by shells or solid shot; but never before had one been gnawed down by musket-balls. From this time all through the campaign the Cat held ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... call it here; the dispositions; settling, in short, the bill of fare for the day, in compliance with the public palate. A facetious pantomime dances here on this day every week—admired by some, the Jews especially. To the more classic taste, many of his movements—his recoil, especially—are wanting in the true antique severity—might be called, perhaps, on the whole, indecent. Still the weary pilgrim must be amused. Let ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... established machine-gun nests at frequent intervals commanding the zone over which infantry was to advance and by skilful crossfire kept that terrain free from every living thing. The Germans preferred a machine gun, water cooled and of the barrel-recoil type. The English used a Vickers-Maxim and a Lewis gun, the latter the invention of an officer in the American army. The French preferred the Hotchkiss and the Saint-Etienne. The Americans standardized the Browning light and heavy machine ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... developed a temperature sufficiently high to bring about radioactive changes, the effect of which would be to expel helium and other disintegration products at cathode-ray velocity—(Kathoden-Strahlen-Fortpflanzung-Geschwindigkeit)—from the surface of the earth; and the recoil exerted by this expulsion would add itself to the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... evidence there was a short pause;—and then a shiver, that recoil and tremor which men feel at any exposition of the relics of the dead, ran through the court; for the next witness was mute—it was the skull of the Deceased! On the left side there was a fracture, that from the nature of it seemed as it could only have been made by ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coward that dies And dares not look in death's dim eyes Straight as the stars on seas and skies Whence moon and sun recoil and rise, He looked on life and death, and slept. And there with morning Merlin came, And on the tomb that told their fame He wrote by Balan's Balen's name, ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... onslaught, and used their war-clubs in the most gallant manner. Jimmy, too, seemed to be transformed into as brave a black warrior as ever fought; and it was the gallant resistance offered that checked the enemy and made them recoil. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... ever, allowed to deviate into satire or sarcasm, and the refinement, taste, and precision with which he clothed his ideas, whether in writing or in conversation. From the boisterous or extravagant he seemed instinctively to recoil, both in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... huge portcullis high up-drew, Which, but herself, not all the Stygian Powers Could once have moved; then in the key-hole turns Th' intricate wards, and every bolt and bar Of massy iron or solid rock with ease Unfastens. On a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. She opened; but to shut Excelled her power: the gates wide open stood, That with extended ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of the French, which can fire thirty shells per minute. The gun needs no relaying due to the recoil which throws the him back to its original position. The gun that knocked out "Jack Johnson," ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... and, other visitors being present, stood with one hand on the back of his chair, awaiting my greeting. So dignified was his manner, so reserved his expression, that I experienced an involuntary recoil, until I turned to him and saw his eyes suddenly brighten as I offered my hand; a barrier seemed to melt between us, and I felt that ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... it needed not to recoil before this superhuman task, planned with such amplitude and precision! Yet, aside from a few rare days of discouragement, Balzac did not feel that it was beyond his powers. After each brief period of weakening, his optimism always reappeared, and ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... in the rear ranks had heard indistinctly or not at all, and pressed on those in front to know the meaning of the sudden recoil,—for the men had instinctively given back,—and being told, buzzed it on to those behind them; and there began in the crowd a low, deep hum, growing louder, as muttering rose to curses,—growing fiercer, for there is nothing half so savage as despair that has been fooled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... with firmness; but wherever he turned his eyes, they were blasted with some object which made them recoil; he beheld his companions and his soldiers strewing the earth, and their triumphant adversaries mounting their dying bodies, as they hastened with loud huzzas to the destruction of Praga, whose gates were now burst open. His eyes grew dim at the sight, and at the very ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... a cavern On some rocky sea-girt isle, Where the constant intonations Of the waves as they recoil With their soughing and deep moaning For a momentary rest, Tell of liquid matter only That bespeaks itself distressed, Than to live where human bodies Bend and writhe for freedom's air, Till the heart breaks in deep sorrow, And the soul sinks ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... breath, Nelson raised the .45, sighted, and, remembering his former experience, fired at the enormous right eye. As in a dream, he felt the recoil. The monster neither slowed nor swerved in the least, though its great, saucer-like eye disintegrated horribly. Immediately Nelson swiftly sighted at the other eye and fired, just as the allosaurus' shadow filled ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... grace in him had not passed unnoted by her even at the time, but being herself so greatly in fault she had ascribed it to the recoil of a proud man from the dread of social humiliation. But it took another aspect under the strong light just thrown upon his early life by her discovery in the room below. Nothing but some act, unforgivable and unforgettable would account for that black mark drawn ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... meantime, observing the hesitation of his antagonist, who, far from advancing, seemed to recoil, and even struggle with his second, he guessed the situation of the painter's thoughts, and, collecting all the manhood that he possessed, seized the opportunity of profiting by his enemy's consternation. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... willing, then, wretched Dick—are you willing, false friend—that this glory should belong to another? Must I then be untrue to my past history; recoil before obstacles that are not serious; requite with cowardly hesitation what both the English Government and the Royal Society of London have ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... thick planks (called brackets or cheeks) laid on edge to support the trunnions, and resting, besides other transverse connections, on two axle-trees, which are borne on low solid wooden wheels called trucks, or sometimes, to diminish the recoil, on flat blocks called chocks. The hind axle-tree takes, with the intervention of various elevating arrangements, the preponderance of the breech. The second kind is adapted for field and siege work: the shallow brackets are raised in front on high wheels, but unite behind into a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the recoil of Orestes—the remonstrance of Pylades—the renewed passion of the avenger—the sudden recollection of her dream, which the murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm Orestes to its fulfilment, and he pursues and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... centre of Catholicity, there are men who insult the holy name of God by profane and blasphemous language. On all those who now hear me I lay this charge: publish everywhere that I have no hope for such men. They cast in the face of Heaven the stone which will, one day, recoil upon them and crush them. I would also most earnestly exhort you as regards the duty of fasting. Many fathers and mothers come to me in order to impart to me the sorrow which they experience in considering the melancholy fact which cannot escape their observation, that the demon ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... fireworks of every description, and the making of a great many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get anywhere. It was a convention, not a march. Lovely things were said, but when we got home we found the furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken advantage of the recoil from such a period, and they have promised "the good old times"—which usually means the bad old abuses—and because they are perfectly void of vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men." Their return ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... Ourcq, Coulommiers, and Montmirail, constitute the recoil from Paris, and at the same time they constitute the defeat of what was hereinbefore shown to be one of the four fundamentals of the great German campaign plan. With the situation thus cleared, so ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the dull barrenness of Casaubon than with the pregnant vivacity of Mrs. Poyser. In the study of the inward workings of the human mind, George Eliot is unsurpassed by any novelist. Thackeray alone can dispute her pre-eminence in this respect. However much the reader may recoil from the horror of Little Hetty's crime, he cannot deny that it follows as a natural consequence. Although Dorothea's marriages are extremely disappointing, the train of thought which led her to enter into them ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... carriage; this gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the two platforms, and the breeching. The tackle had given way, so that the cannon was no longer firm on its carriage. The stationary breeching, which prevents recoil, was not in use at this time. A heavy sea struck the port, the carronade, insecurely fastened, had recoiled and broken its chain, and began its terrible course over ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... his opinions, if not more indigenous at least far better acclimatised than hers, had yet reaped this advantage of a longer life, that he was better able to atone his dislike of certain opinions with personal regard for those who held them, and therefore did not, like Dorothy, recoil from the idea of obligation to one of a different creed—provided always that creed was catholicism and not puritanism. For to the church of England, the catholics, in the presence of her more rampant foes, appeared ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... be weak not to take advantage of it. He was not accustomed to yield to his weak inclinations, and he resolved not to do so now. He was sure that if he showed the least sign of wishing to push himself into Arabian's affairs the man would recoil at once, in spite of the drink which was slightly, but definitely, clouding his perceptions. So he took the contrary course. He forced himself to hold out his hand ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... intervals throughout the course of his prolonged wanderings, in the desert, on the mesa, deep in the canon, lost and forgotten on the flanks of unnamed mountains, alone under the stars and under the moon's white eye, these hours came to him, his grief recoiling upon him like the recoil of a vast and terrible engine. Then he must fight out the night, wrestling with his sorrow, praying sometimes, incoherent, hardly conscious, asking "Why" of the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... for the most part charging uphill. Never, even at Bussaco, did the French show greater ardour and elan in attack, and it was only after a series of bloody hand-to-hand combats on the summits and sides of the mountains that they were compelled to recoil and rolled backward down the ridge. Baffled in his attempt to relieve Pamplona, Soult turned westwards towards St. Sebastian, but was anticipated by Wellington, and faced by three divisions of Hill on his right. A second engagement ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... the C.I.V. Battery, we had taken out new weapons (presented by the City of London), in the shape of four 12-1/2-pounder Vickers-Maxim field guns, taking fixed ammunition, having practically no recoil, and with a much improved breech-mechanism. They turned out very good, but of course, being experimental, required practice in handling, which could not have been obtained in the few ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... it has been A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit, And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit More fair of outward hue than sweet within. Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil, There only, chastened by fatigue and toil, I knew what came the nearest to content. For there at least my troubled flesh was free From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so; Discord and Strife were what I used to know, Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy; By War transported far from ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... you have a better proveditor than the Venetian, another strategus sitting with an army standing by him; whereupon that which is marching, if there were any probability it should, would find as little possibility that it could recoil, as a foreign enemy to invade you. These things considered, a war will appear to be of a contrary nature to that of all other reckonings, inasmuch as of this you must never look to have a good account if you be strict in imposing checks. Let ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... friends, if we are not practical, we are nothing. Now, the one main fault in the Christian Church is separation, repulsion, recoil between the component particles of the Lord's body. I will not, I do not care to inquire who is more to blame than another in the evil fact. I only care to insist that it is the duty of every individual man to be innocent of the same. One main cause, perhaps I should say the one cause of this ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied; and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps in his recoil, he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion; but he, shaken by the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who, like most head constables, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the kind here indicated and others that might be quoted were not of the character of those performed by Christ, and such methods of making proselytes were very likely to recoil upon those that indulged in them. How the result of the introduction of European methods manifested itself in Japan will be indicated ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of studying for a barrister himself: not so much as a means of livelihood as to gain some idea of the code which makes and shows a nation's conscience: but Edward's details of the ways in which the letter so often baffles the spirit, made him recoil. With some anger against himself, for viewing the profession with disgust, because it was degraded by those who embraced it, instead of looking upon it as what might be ennobled and purified into a vast intelligence ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her task; takes heart again, Then feels immediately some hollow thought Hang like an interdict upon her hopes. 260 This is my lot; for either still I find Some imperfection in the chosen theme, Or see of absolute accomplishment Much wanting, so much wanting, in myself, That I recoil and droop, and seek repose 265 In listlessness from vain perplexity, Unprofitably travelling toward the grave, Like a false steward who hath much received And renders nothing back. Was it for this That one, the fairest of all ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... fitted her for the gay world: that she must not forget that she was a baptized child of the Church. If she looked doubtful, or was inclined to urge the matter, we would ask her if she wanted us to break our word to God—which, like any other conscientious child, she would recoil from. When in her sixteenth year, however, while at boarding-school in Mobile, she expressed a greater desire than ever before to take lessons in dancing. They were given in the school, and confined to the pupils; not at night, but in the afternoon, when she required ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with our blood. If any doubt arises, if the veil of our implicit confidence is drawn aside by any accident for a moment, the shock is too great, like that of a dislocated limb, and we recoil on our habitual impressions again. Let not that veil ever be rent entirely asunder, so that those images may be left bare of reverential awe, and lose their religion; for nothing can ever support the desolation ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... if taken undiluted; but in actual practice we buy it in such a very diluted form that comparatively little harm arises from using it. Still, very young children dislike all these violent stimulants, even in small quantities; they won't touch mustard, pepper, or vinegar, and they recoil at once from wine or spirits. It is only by slow degrees that we learn these unnatural tastes, as our nerves get blunted and our palates jaded; and we all know that the old Indian who can eat nothing but dry curries, devilled biscuits, anchovy ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... kinds, butterflies, bees, large flies of many species, and other insects of moderate size: such is the prey that we habitually find in the embrace of the murderous arms of the Mantis. But in my cages I have never known the audacious huntress to recoil before any other insect. Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Tweeleries so dear, O darling Pally Royl, Vas it to finish here That I did trouble and toyl? That all my plans should break in my ands, And should on me recoil? ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... its grossness." If there be a deep and ulcerated wound, we think the more "the richly-embroidered veil" is torn away the better. Such a deep social wound exists in France; we wish its cure, as we wish the health of all nations and of all men; so far indeed would we "recoil towards a state of nature." We believe that nature wills marriage and parentage to be kept sacred. The fact of their not being so is to us not a pleasant subject of jest; and we should really pity the first lady of England for injury here, though she be a queen; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... glance, the smile, the tone, and the blushes of Pepita. He walked on with new life. So abstracted was his mind in all kinds of delicious anticipations that he ran full against a man who was hurrying at full speed and in equal abstraction in the opposite direction. There was a recoil. Both fell. Both began to make ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... back against the wall; then with a bound he snatched a sword from the hand of one of the troopers, and before the officer had time to recoil or throw up his hands, he smote him with all his force across the face. With a terrible cry the officer fell back, and Harry, throwing down the sword, leaped through the open window into the garden and dashed into the shrubberies, as half a dozen balls ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... him, and he sat down. At that moment he remembered the morning in the pine wood at Constantine, and how she had looked at him then. He remembered, too, and clearly, his own recoil. Now he believed that she had been very treacherous in regard to him. Yet he felt happier with her, and even at this moment as he returned her look he thought, "Whatever she may have felt at Constantine, I believe I have won her over to my side now. I have power. She always felt ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... finding an inability to procure support from labour, and meeting with no assistance from the parish in which he had been resident for an age, he resigned the place with tears, in 1778, after an occupation of fifty six years, and was obliged to recoil upon his own parish, about twelve miles distant; to be farmed with the rest of the poor; and where, he afterwards assured me, "They were murdering him by inches." — But no complaint of this ungrateful kind lies against that people ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... so suddenly that Fred started back involuntarily. Then, angry with himself at the recoil, his lips curled scornfully, and he surveyed the other lad in the most haughty ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... majority of accidents, particularly in navigation; and such appreciation will touch its highest point under Socialist order. In numberless instances human life, or the safety of limb, is sacrificed to misplaced economy on the part of employers, who recoil before any outlay for protection; in many others the tired condition of the workman, or the hurry he must work in, is the cause. Human life is cheap; if one workingman goes to pieces, three others are at hand to take ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... as you will, Lucy, there's no disguising it, she would have it, and I could not help it, but she was neglected, and it killed her!' He brought his hand down on the table with a heavy thump, which together with the words made his sister recoil. 'Could Honor treat me the same after that? And she not my mother, either! Why had not my father the sense to have married her? Then I could go to her and get rid of this intolerable weight!' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is, there is liberty"; but such liberty may become a cloak of maliciousness. The fact is that St. Paul had himself trusted in "the Law," and it had led him into grievous error. As usually happens in such cases, his recoil from it was almost violent. He exalts the inner light into an absolute criterion of right and wrong, that no corner of the moral life may remain in bondage to Pharisaism. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and the stoning of Stephen were a crushing condemnation of legal and ceremonial ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... medical societies referred to under Example 2, like many similar actions in life, tends to recoil on its instigators. For instance, a medical woman in another northern town applied for and accepted a post which the local men had decided was unsatisfactory in some particulars, and for which therefore none of them had applied. They were loud in their denunciations of the woman ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... the tiny weapon, Jay reached into a pocket with his free hand and withdrew a red pencil. In a quick, practiced motion he drew the pencil over Barrent's cheeks and forehead. He was finished before Barrent had time to recoil. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... enemies which science has. They are often such excellent, respectable, orderly, well-meaning persons. They desire so sincerely that everyone should be wise: only not too wise. They are so utterly unaware of the mischief they are doing. They would recoil with horror if they were told they were so many Iscariots, betraying ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... "it is very unbecoming to talk in this manner of so sacred a profession. A hunting and card-playing clergyman ought to be stripped of his gown without hesitation. Any right-minded person would recoil with horror at such a character. It is a great disgrace to the profession; no clergyman ought to enter into any kind of improper dissipation. Your ideas are ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... The instinct of recoil came stronger now. He stepped back with folded arms, saying again, 'God help me! God forbid that I should be ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quarters, and in the spring only eight followers were alive to greet the ship which came with new colonists and supplies. It took a soul of iron to continue the project of nation-planting after such a tragic beginning; but Champlain was not the man to recoil from the task. More settlers were landed; women and children were brought along; land was broken for cultivation; and in due course a little village grew up about the fort. This was Quebec, the centre and soul of French hopes ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Beloved,—where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
... reaction; the rope, razor, bullet, or deadly drug, finishes the tragedy. Materialistic infidelity in California is the avowed belief of multitudes, and its subtle poison infects the minds and unconsciously the actions of thousands who recoil from the dark abyss that yawns at the feet of its adherents with its fascination of horror. Under some circumstances, suicide becomes logical to a man who has neither hope nor dread of a hereafter. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... fifty yards from the neck of ice, tearing through the water like a race-horse. In another moment she was up to it and struck it fair in the middle. The stout little vessel quivered to her keel under the shock, but she did not recoil. She split the mass into fragments, and, bearing down all before her, sailed like a conqueror ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... to tell you what I think of you, and I am going to do so. Davis has been reared like a gentleman, and it is but natural that he should recoil from contact with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... see their benign exultation in her powers of mischief, and the delight with which they exhibited the circumvolutory movement of the tower, the quick thrusting forth of the immense guns to deliver their ponderous missiles, and then the immediate recoil, and the security behind the closed port-holes. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible improvement in the science of war. Already we hear of vessels the armament of which is to act entirely beneath the surface of the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, 515 And shouted: Rustum deg.!—Sohrab heard that shout, deg.516 And shrank amazed; back he recoil'd one step, And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewilder'd; and he dropp'd His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. 520 He reel'd, and staggering back, sank to the ground; And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... your money, for your own needs always," Jerome returned, quickly, and with a sudden recoil as from a touch upon a raw surface, for the sensitiveness of a whole life cannot be hardened in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tears that freely fell were not of grief, but tears of yearning love, of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a life in its rounded completeness, such an example and testimony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what might of peril or loss, even ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Sheer wonder survived his instinctive recoil. It was the bolt, striking twice in the ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... off in hospitable feeling, and which, indeed, he rather appreciated so far as the reduced fare was concerned, reverse his judgment that he had fallen among kind-hearted folk. It had been a strain on them to maintain an appearance of gentility, and their recoil had been merely that of a stretched piece of elastic. He had lost his importance as a special person, and was now only just one of them. He understood that the family was exactly what it had to be, that its temperament and mode of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the end, behold her in the room that I described. Very likely and very naturally, in some fling of feverish misery or recoil of thwarted love, she has quarrelled with her old employers and the children are forbidden to see her or to speak to her; or at best she gets her rent paid and a little to herself, and now and then her late charges are sent up (with another ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hesitation or vacillation. She was as conscious of it as though her hand still tightened under his—and she was conscious, too, that nothing of his touch had offended; that there had arisen in her no tremor of instinctive recoil. For never before had she touched or suffered a touch from a man, even a gloved greeting, that had not in some measure subtly repelled her, nor, for that matter, a caress from a woman without a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... by the horror of the thing they had done, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun, took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a sudden stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they were in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Wood," she stammered, for, while the newcomers interested her, their slovenly appearance made her recoil from ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... she said, with a flash of her occasional repugnance to the man; and then after a pause, "Herr von Gondremark," she added, "I recoil ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see their foes, Until at weapon-point they close.— They close in clouds of smoke and dust, With sword-sway and with lance's thrust; And such a yell was there, Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth And fiends in upper air: O, life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair. Long looked the anxious squires; their eye Could in ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... compliment to the mother country, should submit to perish for thirst with water in their own wells. And these clear-sighted politicians saw plainly enough that such blows as the Government were aiming at America must in the end recoil upon Great Britain herself. They appreciated the injury that must be done to British commerce by even a temporary interruption of the intercourse between the two countries. But bad as the restrictive measures were ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... first shot was due to a gentleman of Shropshire, unused to this species of warfare, and who seemed to recoil from the reverberation of the report himself had made. 'One hundred guineas,' he exclaimed. Again a pause ensued; but anon the biddings rose rapidly to five hundred guineas. Hitherto, however, it was evident that the firing was but ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... become steady, with a pleasurable glow. For a moment she felt uneasy, as if she were being trapped by something sweetfully insidious. Slowly, almost cautiously, she withdrew her arm from his. He made no comment; it was doubtful if he really noticed her recoil. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... there on my steps the very personification of Ruin, a tumble-down, dilapidated wreck of manhood. He gave one the impression of having been dropped where he sat, all in a heap. My first instinctive feeling was not one of recoil or even of hostility, but rather a sudden desire to pick him up and put him where he belonged, the instinct, I should say, of the normal man who hangs his axe always on the same nail. When he saw me he gathered himself together with reluctance and stood fully revealed. It was a curious attitude ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... signal for close action was still hoisted. "Yes," said the officer. "Mind you keep it so," said Nelson. Nelson continued to tramp his quarter-deck, the thunder of the battle all about him, his ship reeling to the recoil of its own guns. The stump of his lost arm jerked angrily to and fro, a sure sign of excitement with him. "Leave off action!" he said to his lieutenant; "I'm hanged if I do." "You know, Foley," he said, turning to his captain, "I've only one ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... was not running when it turned out and it did not stop here in fright. The horse was entirely quiet here. The hoof marks would show any alarm in the animal, and, moreover, if it had stopped in fright there would have been an inevitable recoil which would have thrown the wheels of the vehicle backward out of their track. No moving animal, man included, stopped by fright fails to register this recoil. We always look for it in evidences of violent assault. Footprints invariably show it, and one learns ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... man looked again, and suddenly turning upon Mr. Clarkson, went through a pantomime of plunging the knife into his throat. At Mr. Clarkson's horrified recoil he laughed himself purple. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... homage of the heart and the obedience of the life, and who has power to enforce His rightful claims by the sanctions of reward and punishment, he will be sensible, in the first instance, of an instinctive disposition to recoil from the contemplation of his character, and a strong desire to deny, or at least to forget, His claims; and just in proportion as the idea of God becomes more vivid, or is more frequently presented to his mind, it will become the more intolerable, insomuch that he will be tempted ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... calling for its father. Its father, was he not a criminal? Yes! but was it for her to ruin him, to invoke the law, to send him to death, after having taken him to her heart, to deliver him to infamy which would recoil on her own head and her child's and on the infant which was yet unborn? If he had sinned before God, was it not for God to punish him? If against herself, ought she not rather to overwhelm him with contempt? But to invoke the help, of strangers ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; but the husband must hold ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... smash or disable Germany, however completely we may defeat her, because we can do that only by killing her women; and it is trifling to pretend that we are capable of any such villainy. Even to embarrass her financially by looting her would recoil on ourselves, as she is one of our commercial customers and one of our most frequently visited neighbors. We must, if we can, drive her from Belgium without compromise. France may drive her from Alsace and Lorraine. Russia may drive her from Poland. She knew when she opened fire that these were the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... central fires, as Lorraine says somebody in Boston used to say somebody said, from which we're fed. From what central fires is Temple nourished? I give it up; for, on the point, again and again, of desperately stopping him in the street to ask him, I recoil as often in terror. He may be only plotting to MAKE me do it—so that he may give me away in ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... a very modest income I can be sufficiently esteemed for myself to render that society more pleasant than ever. Ah, mon cher! why recoil? why so frightened? Do you think I am going to ask you for money? Have I ever done so since we parted; and did I ever do so before without repaying you? Bah! you roturiers are worse than the Bourbons. You never learn or ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Germany is involved in the slowly threatening war, she need not recoil before the numerical superiority of her enemies. But so far as human nature is able to tell, she can only rely on being successful if she is resolutely determined to break the superiority of her enemies by a victory over one or the other of them before their total strength can come into action, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... wrath, took up another bow, and addressing the son of Hridika, said, "Wait, Wait." Then, O monarch, Shikhandi sped at his foe ninety shafts of great impetuosity, all equipped with golden wings. Those shafts, however, all recoiled from Kritavarma's armour. Seeing those shafts recoil and scattered on the surface of the Earth, Shikhandi cut off Kritavarma's bow with a keen razor-headed arrow. Filled with wrath he struck the bowless son of Hridika, who then resembled a hornless bull, in the arms and the chest, with eighty arrows. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... The recoil of the Lee-Metford is so slight that any woman can manipulate the weapon with effect, provided she is not called upon to fire from a standing position, in which case the weight is liable to cause ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... As to call for a sentence severe as this!— And I said to myself, as I heard with a sigh The poor lone victim's stifled cry, "Well, I can't understand How any man's hand COULD wall up that hole in a Christian land! Why, a Mussulman Turk Would recoil from the work, And though, when his ladies run after the fellows, he Stands not on trifles, if madden'd by jealousy, Its objects, I'm sure, would declare, could they speak, In their Georgian, Circassian, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of confidence on the part of a person naturally or habitually reserved will often be followed by a phase of recoil. At breakfast next morning their overnight talk seemed to both Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau like something each had dreamt about the other, a quite impossible excess of intimacy. They discussed the weather, which seemed ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... national life we admire, Much we recoil from, or needs must dispute; Germany needs her baptism of fire, But you will find us the first to salute— (God speed the "Day" the awakening shall be) ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... on the ordinary footing of man and woman. What a ground to start from with a husband! The idea was hateful to her. She tried the argument that such a procedure arrogated merely a superiority in social standing, but it made her recoil from it the more. He was so immeasurably her superior that the poor little advantage on her side vanished like a candle in the sunlight, and she laughed herself to scorn. "Fancy," she laughed, "a midge, on the strength of having wings, condescending to offer marriage to a horse!" It would argue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... to me that the Pope, in his exasperation over the conquest of Rome—in order to make the accomplished revolution recoil also on the heads of the foreigners whom he perhaps suspected of sympathy with the new order of things—had closed the Vatican and all its collections. Rome was to me first and foremost Michael Angelo's Sistine Chapel, Raphael's Stanzas and Loggias, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... lady of honor, imploringly. "Your majesty looks so pale that I am afraid any excitement would injure your weak nerves. You need repose and ought not to be irritated; besides, what does your majesty care for the slanders of the populace? Such arrows recoil from the pure." ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... really at a great deal of peril, considering his situation, put his rough, grimed hand into Fred's—a dishonest hand it was, and that more than the other thing made Fred recoil a little as he touched it; but that clasp sealed the compact between these two boys. ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... but the slightest change induced in it by the action of different forces. So delicate was the apparatus that it analysed growth into a series of pulses, a sudden shooting out followed by a partial recoil. It showed how the growth of the plant was retarded by a mere touch, and the time it took the plant to recover from the effect of contact, and all these in course of a few seconds. The effect of ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... by a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of counterpoint, is capable ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness. When Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery: her lips ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... his imagination alight; his own recoil from the conjunction, overborne by immediate concern for Dyan. Unable to forget her—who could?—he had thrust the pain of remembering into the dark background of his mind; and there it remained—a hard knot of soreness and bitterness—as Aruna had said. And ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... him. Bodily separation from Owen had not killed her; it had become the very condition of her life; for there was a soul of soundness in her. Her blood, so vehement in its course, had the saving impetus of recoil. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... lack of self-consciousness had quite transformed the gaze they bent upon the stage. A veil had been swept aside, and the true soul shone forth; that soul which ever dwells apart, either from the dignity of its estate or, being wrought of fibre more delicate than air, because it fears recoil and hurt. There were Roxy and her husband, he too well content with life as it is, to be greatly moved by its counterfeit; she sparkling back some artless reply to the challenge of feeble romance and wingless ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... that the Spaniards have been mining there; but no coin or bullion except a little plate. One English captain is killed, and that captain is Walter Raleigh, his firstborn. He died leading them on, when some, 'more careful of valour and safety, began to recoil shamefully.' His last words were, 'Lord have mercy upon me and prosper our enterprise.' A Spanish captain, Erinetta, struck him down with the butt of a musket after he had received a bullet. John Plessington, his sergeant, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Countess of Salisbury, John had created, in 1351, by way of following suit, a brotherhood called Our Lady of the Noble House, or of the Star, the knights of which, to the number of five hundred, had to swear, that if they were forced to recoil in a battle they would never yield to the enemy more than four acres of ground, and would be slain rather than retreat. John was destined to find out before long that neither numbers nor bravery ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... back," she went on while he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth. It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth, together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it was to go much further. He ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... strophe, royal youth! I tell no more than the plain truth. Thy armed outfit from the strand Left many a keel-trace on the sand, And never did a king before SO many ships to any shore Lead on, as thou to Vindland's isle: The Vindland men in fright recoil." ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... was sweeping our horses along and grinding our knees together. Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse recoil and half rear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man screaming and the snarling menace from all about rising to a roar. But my head was over my shoulder as I called ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... remarked by a competent critic that "there have been Ministers who knew the springs of that public opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning, and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues. But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of invitations to social editors; and social editors have accordingly failed to discover ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... trucks or caissons. As a fort-wrecker this powerful piece of ordnance is most effective. Its total weight is nearly 100 tons. The gun proper is at the left and its Krupp sliding breech can be plainly seen at the side. In the center is the gun carriage, with its very powerful recoil apparatus. When the gun is in action these two sections are joined, being so constructed as to fit together readily. The bursting projectiles were called by the British soldiers "Jack Johnsons," "Black Marias" and "Coal-boxes," from the thick black smoke they produced. These epithets ignored ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... remember, before anything like a revival of literature and of public interest in literature took place. Thus, M. Zola launched his gigantic scheme under auspices which would have made many another man recoil. "The Fortune of the Rougons," and two or three subsequent volumes of his series, attracted but a moderate degree of attention, and it was only on the morrow of the publication of "L'Assommoir" that he awoke, like ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... prove to me That thou art he. So pitying thine estate, Most ill-starred Oedipus, I fain would know What is the suit ye urge on me and Athens, Thou and the helpless maiden at thy side. Declare it; dire indeed must be the tale Whereat I should recoil. I too was reared, Like thee, in exile, and in foreign lands Wrestled with many perils, no man more. Wherefore no alien in adversity Shall seek in vain my succor, nor shalt thou; I know myself a mortal, and my share In what the morrow brings no more ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... feared the toppling of the thrones, so threw this war into the ring to give the toilers opportunity for their heated passions, but this war will be like blood to a tiger, it will quicken up the fighting spirit of the animal, and on those who forced this war it will recoil with awful effect. They saw the labor storm approach and put off the evil day. It was like neglecting to physic the human body—the longer ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... suppose that proper respect for the great first principles of the British Constitution, that every man should do as he pleases, think what he likes, and see everything that can be seen for money, will make most of your readers recoil from my first principle of Museum arrangement,—that nothing should be let inside the doors that isn't good of its sort,—as from an attempt to restore the Papacy, revive the Inquisition, and away with everybody ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... to say about that. Having been placed on guard, and not yet relieved, he would permit no hand but his master's to touch anything in his charge. A frightful growl made the boy recoil and go ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... however, was made; we were then near a high rocky lee shore, on which a heavy surf was beating. The wind being on the beam, the canoes drifted fast to leeward; and, on rounding a point, the recoil of the sea from the rocks was so great that they were with difficulty kept from foundering. We looked in vain for a sheltered bay to land in; but, at length, being unable to weather another point, we were obliged to put ashore on the open beach, which fortunately was sandy at ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... the policeman's quest to his mood; he preferred it to the steam of dye-houses. The magistrates of the district must have dreaded him. They were slow, timid men; he liked both to frighten and to rouse them. He liked to force them to betray a certain fear, which made them alike falter in resolve and recoil in action—the fear, simply, of assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot. He ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the larger pieces of artillery; and the larger the gun, the greater was the effect it was expected to produce. Even in Constantinople there was some artillery too large to be of much use, as the land wall had not been constructed to admit of their recoil, and the ramparts were so weak as to be shaken by their concussion. Constantine had also only a moderate supply of gunpowder. The machines of a past epoch in military science, but to the use of which the Greeks adhered with their conservative prejudices, were brought from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson |
