"Spasm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the face of the dying man, and looked at him with deep emotion. He smiled and closed his eyes; but after lying in a quiet slumber for about an hour, he awoke with a spasm; his head fell back, and the hapless victim died in the ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... did rush in, and of course where least expected. He seized one of our porters by the shoulder, his claws doing more damage than his teeth. I shot him by thrusting my rifle into his ear, and although that dropped him instantly his claws, in the dying spasm and by the weight of his fall, tore wounds in the man's arm ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... wished with this handsome young man. In a brave spasm (this girl was in great suffering), "I will tell the Principal," she said; trod heavily ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... gallant daring. Who can calculate the sum of misery in that hapless flight?.... And yet it was but one, and that one of the least known and most trivial, of the tragedies of that age of woe; one petty death-spasm among the unnumbered throes which were shaking to dissolution the Babylon of the West. Her time had come. Even as Saint John beheld her in his vision, by agony after agony, she was rotting to her well-earned doom. Tyrannising it luxuriously over ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Jim. "We paid seven cents, and a wonder we did as well. The receiver——" (methought a spasm seized him at the name of this official, and he broke off). "But it's all past and done with anyway; and what I want to get at is the facts about the wreck. I don't seem to understand it; appears to me like as there ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... who had cheapened himself. At length I came out upon a clearing where fifteen log houses marked the grant of the Federal government to Clark's regiment. Perched on a tree-dotted knoll above the last spasm of the waters in their two-mile race for peace, was a two-storied log house with a little, square porch in front of the door. As I rounded the corner of the house and came in sight of the porch I halted—by no ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... girls to alight Selwyn heard the nurse catch her breath with a spasm of pain. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a man standing on the lawn facing the sun, which was reaching the west with ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... in a spasm of activity, bells were ringing, doors slamming, and guests arriving. The group of loiterers who usually sat facing the fire, criticizing the daily proceedings of the legislature, now stood in a semicircle with their backs to it, watching the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... we felt something rising from our heels along our back, gripping us in a spasm, as we were cycling along; a needlelike pang, too, pierced our heart with a sharp thrill. What was it? We remembered feeling something nearly like it when our father died eighteen years ago; but at that time ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... fellow run for it too!" added Steve, as again they felt that terrible shudder pass through the wooden structure that had spanned the Evergreen Elver as far back as they could remember; and which somehow forcibly reminded Max of the spasm apt to run through the muscles of a stricken animal before giving ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... extraordinary in the fact of its discovery. In that respect, I fancied, she was typical of a large class of women—that class that thinks a doctor is a magician, or should be. But when Sarakoff said that the whole world was going to have the elixir, a spasm of anger shewed for a moment in her face. She lowered ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... of a Federal statute. Few renditions were attempted. Sometimes they were met by forcible resistance. An alleged fugitive, Jerry, was rescued by the populace in Syracuse. A negro, Shadrach, arrested as a fugitive in Boston in 1851, was set free and carried off by a mob. There was a spasm of excitement in Congress, but it was brief and resultless. Later, in 1854, when the anti-slavery tide was swiftly rising, came the rendition of Anthony Burns, who was taken through the streets of Boston under a strong guard of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... urethra.[198] It should be added that when once introduced the physiological mechanism of the bladder apparently causes the organ to tend to "swallow" the foreign object. Yet for every case in which the hair-pin disappears and is lost in the bladder, from carelessness or the oblivion of the sexual spasm, there must be a vast number of cases in which the instrument is used without any such unfortunate result. There is thus great significance in the frequency with which cases of hair-pin in the bladder are strewn through the medical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... just as if he heard the words and understood them, opened his sweet blue eyes, and looked her full in the face, and then he gave a faint smile and shut his eyes again, and she heard him breathing quickly, and the next moment a spasm crossed his little face. ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... nor reasoned, but clutching, with the blindness of instinct, the heavy, spiked, iron-headed mace that hung at the Earl's saddle-bow, he gave it one tremendous wrench that snapped the plaited leathern thongs that held it as though they were skeins of thread. Then, grinding his teeth as with a spasm, he struck as he had never struck before—once, twice, thrice full upon the front of the helmet. Crash! crash! And then, even as the Earl toppled sidelong, crash! And the iron plates split and crackled under the third blow. Myles ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... answered Elizabeth, conquering a sharp spasm of pain with the spirit of a martyr. "If human care, or human sacrifice can insure her welfare, I will ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the child, but he lay so still, so motionless, that the awe of death came over the father, and he stooped down to gaze more closely. At that moment, the upturned, filmy eyes rolled convulsively—a spasm passed along the body—and the lips, yet warm with kissing, quivered ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... soon found herself being snapped up by other partners and addressed familiarly by the waiters and their women. She could feel the moisture of their hands and smell the oil of their hair, and a feeling like a spasm of physical pain ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... sinks the writhing spasm, And, black through the foaming white, Downward gapes a yawning chasm— Bottomless, cloven to hell's wide night; And, sucked up, see the billows roaring Down through the whirling ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... stared at it again. Yes; it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold of it? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall or passage when the servant dropped it? When Hall handed him the paper and he first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of more fiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude common sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity with Van Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... causes affright. An aerial wave, the energy of which would not reach a minute fraction of that necessary to raise the thousandth of a grain through the thousandth of an inch, can throw the whole human frame into a powerful mechanical spasm, followed by violent respiration and palpitation. The eye of course, may be appealed to as well as the ear. Of this the lamented Lange gives the following ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... there came from the yard a wild screeching and cackling of the hens, followed by a trampling rush and agonized bleating. The old woman half rose from her chair, but sank back instantly, her face creased with a spasm of pain, for she was crippled by rheumatism. The girl dropped her big wooden spoon on the floor and rushed to the window that looked out upon the yard. Her pale face went paler with horror, then ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... I know all about it," said I, hastily, as I passed my handkerchief over my mouth to hide the spasm of pain ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... A spasm passed through Mam'selle Pauline's delicate frame. La Petite could feel the twitch of it in the wiry fingers that were intertwined with her own. Ma'ame Pelagie remained unchanged and motionless. No human eye could penetrate ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... she'd have made a philosopher bend. As the broken heart of a sunset that bleeds pure purple and gold In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west, Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth. The whole world, colourless, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... a leather mask to hide the man behind it, was now ablaze with the fire of zealotry; and, truly, in these his spasm-fits of supplication he stood for all that is most awe-inspiring and unnerving, asking but a little stretch of the imagination to figure him as one of those old iron-hard prophets of denunciation come back to earth to be the herald of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... regularly, very deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I touched the carriage. And against ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... conspicuous leader voted was the stillness broken. A score of men were keeping count, and halfway down the roll the fusionists tied their opponents. When, at last, the call closed with nine majority for Cornell, the result, save a spasm of throat-splitting yells, was received with little enthusiasm.[1646] On the motion to make the nomination unanimous George William Curtis voted ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... spontaneous, seem to have died out and left their manners with their wardrobes to narrow-breasted children, whom neither clothes nor courtesies will fit. So in every department we find the snail freezing in an oyster-shell. The judges do not know the meaning of justice. The preacher thinks religion is a spasm of desire and fear. A young man soon loses all respect for titles, wigs, and gowns, and looks for a muscular master-mind. Somebody wrote the laws, and set the example of noble behavior, and founded every religion. Only a man capable of originating can understand, sustain, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... which appears to be inseparable from modern civilization; but to Mr. Pulitzer even the sudden click of a spoon against a saucer, the gurgle of water poured into a glass, the striking of a match, produced a spasm of suffering. I have seen him turn pale, tremble, break into a cold perspiration at some sound which to most people ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... twelve; she had been asleep some little time very quietly. I was just going to lie down on the sofa, when I thought her face looked different, and stood watching. She woke, said she felt oppressed, and asked me to raise her pillows. While she was leaning against my arm, there was a spasm, a shiver, and she was gone! Yes, we must only think of her ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thanked him for the intended honor, which had been mentioned to me before, and gave him my card, not without a spasm of terror lest the entire police force ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... phase of character to the man of the world, who laughed aloud, and at the mention of Douglas' store started so quickly that a spasm of pain distorted his features, causing Maggie to ask if he were ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... most got to the final spasm, and it's about all over, when, as a last straw, some sort of disturbance breaks out in the front hall. First off I thought it must be Snick Butters throwin' a fit; but then I hears a voice that ain't his, and as I glances out I sees the Purdy-Pell ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... very great at what they deemed a victory over the Ministers. It is said that there will be 100 contests, and that Government will lose twenty or thirty members. The Queen was so ill on Friday evening that they expected she would die. She had a severe spasm.[1] ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... died in July, Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, and in April, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one, Mrs. Taylor and Mill were quietly married. The announcement of the marriage sent a spasm over literary England, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... when, at the climax of her narrative, Theresa—seized by a spasm of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising before her—choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking, Charles Verity's self-imposed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he mechanically locked up his papers, and pressed his hand to his heart for an instant, as if a spasm had shot ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... something in the attitude of the lad to give him cause for prudence; and he immediately drew up, throwing out both hands in a sudden spasm of alarm. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... than the Indian extracts from the bag of the cobar de capello,—a venom to which no antidote is known, which no test can detect. It corrupts the whole mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the brain; it rends the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion. But examine the dead, and how divine the effect of the cause! How go back to the records of the Borgias, and amidst all the scepticisms of times in which, happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he blindly probes the bottom with a six-feet length of fencing wire, the modern substitute for the black palm spear. Frequently he trifles thus with coy Fortune for hours, an inch or so separating each prod; and again, in a spasm of indignant impatience, he stabs determinedly into the mud at random. Non-success does not make shipwreck of his faith in the existence of the much-desired food in the black mud, for as far back as his own experience and the camp's traditions go, substantial reason for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... up under excitement, but sobs, groans and whispered petitions. Bless our pastor, Lord, an' save him ef it be Thy will," came from many lips, followed by "Amens" and "Do, Lord." Suddenly the church was thrown into a spasm of excitement that could not be suppressed, for while they were breathing prayers for his deliverance, the pastor, wet, footsore and tired, entered and strode slowly up the aisle. "Why did you, oh, why did you come ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... of sheer panic. Was he just stupid and bestial? The thought went clean through her. His yellow eyes watched her sardonically. It was the clean modelling of his dark, other-world face that decided her—for it sent the deep spasm across her. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... four assistants began to blow through the tubes with all their might. This increase of torture was so horrible, that, in spite of his self-control, Rodin gnashed his teeth, started convulsively, and so expanded his palpitating chest, that, after a violent spasm, there rose from his throat and lungs a scream of terrific pain—but it ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... up Dotty, very bravely, till a sudden spasm of recollection changed her tone, and she added, faintly, "If 'twasn't ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... speech, so full of apparent good will, brought a quick flush of contrition to Mary's cheeks. She experienced a swift spasm of regret for her bitter suspicion of Marjorie. Her tense face softened. Why not unburden herself to her chum now and find relief ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... there was silence in the room. Up from the bar, through the thin partition, came the sounds of oaths and laughter and drunken song. The doctor cursed them all below his breath and turned toward the door. A spasm of coughing brought him back to his patient's side. After the spasm had passed the sick man lay still, his eyes closed, and his breath becoming shorter every moment. Once again the eyes made their appeal, and the doctor hastened to seek their meaning. Listening intently, he heard ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... pillow again, while Ethie stood over him until the glimmer of the watchman's lamp passed down the hall a second time, and disappeared around the corner. The watchman had stopped at Richard's door to listen, and then Ethie had experienced a spasm of terror at the possibility of being discovered; but with the receding footsteps her fears left her, and she waited a half-hour longer, while Richard in his dreams talked of bygone days—speaking of Olney, and then of Daisy and herself. Dead, both of them, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... come to a standstill; he could not tell the hardware merchant, whose traffic in firearms and ammunition had fallen away; he could not explain to the proprietor of the Santa Fe cafe, or any of the other merchants of the town who had come to regret their one spasm of virtue, induced by fear, that he had not considered either their prosperity or their loss when he closed up the saloons and gambling-houses and drove the proscribed of the law away. They were squealing now, exactly as he had known they would squeal in spite of their assurance before the event. ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... it possible that you can speak like this of one who gets his living by smuggling?" and a spasm of positive agony passed over Reuben's face as he tried to realize the change of thought and feeling which could induce a calm defence of such iniquity. "What's the difference whether a man robs me or he robs the king? Isn't he stealing just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... these words the reverend gentleman had a severe spasm which forced him to lie back and draw his breath hard. Evans uttered something between a cry of dismay and a groan of despair, and stared down upon this audacious invalid with wonder and ire at his supernatural ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... moment; she half closed her eyes. An impulse of pain passed like a spasm across her ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blood!" said the grim Doctor, breaking his pipe-stem by some sudden spasm in his gripe of it. "Pooh! the devil take the pipe! A very strange story that! Pray how was it?" ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... last question he seemed as if seized by an inward spasm: the start which he gave, and his gaspings for breath, were visible to all present. Had he seen the spirit of the murdered man before him, his horror could not have been greater; for this ceremony had been considered a most decisive test in cases of suspicion of murder—an ordeal, indeed, to ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... A spasm of half-formed jealousy snatched at Mabel's heart. She had always wanted Dick to fall in love and marry some nice girl, yet the ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... white and her eyes were staring at nothing. She spoke with a horrible, stony calm which, crime-hardened as he was, sent a thrilling shiver through his nerves. A spasm of remorse shook him; then his self-control came back, and he offered her his arm in silence. He led her down to the saloon, and gave her into Jenny's charge. Then he went on deck again, lit a cigar, and proceeded to congratulate ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... remotest quarters. Wherever he has set down his solid foot, he has taken permanent possession of the country. The ancient religions of the primaeval East or the quaint beliefs of savage tribes make no particular impression upon him, except a passing spasm of disgust at anybody having different superstitions from his own; and, being in the main a good-natured animal in a stolid way of his own, he is able to make use even of popish priests if they will help to found a new market for his commerce. The portrait is not the less effective because ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... due to the bacillus tetani, in which there is a state of more or less persistent tonic spasm of some of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... A spasm of grief or unavailing regret crossed the judge's face as his head sank back again against the high back ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... thought of these miserable men. HARCOURT made his speech; GORST demonstrated that Motion was indefensible, being both too late and too soon; the Mouse came and went amid a spasm of thrilled interest; GLADSTONE delivered oration in dinner-hour; PARNELL fired up at midnight; House divided, and SPEAKER left the Chair. Then was heard the rattling of keys in the door by OLD MORALITY's room; two limp warriors were led ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... sufferers:—those that suffer from overflowing vitality, who need Dionysian art and require a tragic insight into, and a tragic outlook upon, the phenomenon life,—and there are those who suffer from reduced vitality, and who crave for repose, quietness, calm seas, or else the intoxication, the spasm, the bewilderment which art and philosophy provide. Revenge upon life itself—this is the most voluptuous form of intoxication for such indigent souls!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Now Wagner responds quite as ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... eyes, the grimed face turned bony, Oped mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony! O sudden spasm, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... palpitating; in a perspiration more profuse; with a greater uncertainty of sense and will; with a more confused memory; in an intenser agony of body and horror of hopelessness. Every nerve in the entire frame now suddenly awakes with such a spasm of revivification that no parallel agony to that of the opium-eater at this stage can be adduced, unless it be that of the drowned person resuscitated by artificial means. Nor does this parallel fully represent the suffering, for the man resuscitated ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... spoke, and brushing off the dust, bit it in half cheerfully. Then Bo, who was watching him, saw a strange thing take place. The half orange flew out of the Bear's mouth as from a popgun, and his face became so distorted that the boy thought his friend was having a spasm. Suddenly he whirled, and making a rush at the fallen oranges, began to kick them in every direction, coughing and spitting every second. The two dogs looking over the hedge stopped barking to enjoy the fun. One of the oranges rolled to Bo's feet. He picked it up and smelled it. Then rubbing ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony. If you protest, my friend, wait till you arrive there yourself! To believe in the carnivorous reptiles of geologic times is hard for our imagination—they seem too much like mere museum specimens. Yet there is no tooth in any one of those museum-skulls that did not daily through ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... hand. Ere this goes out, I hope to see your expressive, but surely not benignant countenance! Adieu, O culler of offensive expressions—'and a' to be a posy to your ain dear May!'—Fanny seems a little revived again after her spasm of work. Our books and furniture keep slowly draining up the road, in a sad state of scatterment and disrepair; I wish the devil had had K. by his red beard before he had packed my library. Odd leaves and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that lay open for enjoyment—the scents, the sun, the intoxicating dewiness, the splendor of the heavens. He seemed to scent it all, sniffing like a dog or a deer, and while his upturned face bore an expression of unfettered, smiling satisfaction, his arms, hanging by his side, trembled as in a spasm. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... like a sharp spasm; but the evil they foreshadowed was not yet close upon her, and as she entered her home again, her most pressing anxiety was the possibility that she had lost sight for a long while ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... 1888 plans were filed for the demolition of the block. It took four years to get a report of what it would cost to tear it down. About once in two months during all that time the authorities had to be prodded into a spasm of activity, or we would probably have been yet where we were then. Once, when I appealed to the corporation counsel to give a good reason for the delay, I got the truth out of ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... and vivacity, having inherited much of the careless joyousness of his father's temperament; and although he was the light and joy of his home, yet his mother sometimes felt as if her heart was contracting with a spasm of agony, when she remembered that it was through that same geniality of disposition and wonderful fascination of manner, the tempter had woven his meshes for her husband, and that the qualities that made him so desirable at home, made him equally so to his jovial, careless, inexperienced companions. ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's quivering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall at such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry click, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... to sting him, and the spasm of pain that for a moment convulsed his countenance, checked my indignation. "Happy are dreamers," he continued, "so that they be not awakened! Would I could dream! but 'broad and garish day' is the element in which I live; ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... did know it, at any rate her bosom and neck grew red and a spasm passed across her face which even the falling hair did ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... where the mighty sword Which slew its master righteously? the years Have lost their ancient leader, and no word Breaks from the voiceless tripod on our ears: While as a ruined mother in some spasm Bears a base child and loathes it, so our ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter of ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... never relinquished her soul, never fell into confidence, so in a sense we always remained strangers, for it is when lovers tell their illusions and lonelinesses that they know each other, the fiercest spasm tells us little, and it is forgotten, whereas the moment when a woman sighs and breaks into a simple confidence is remembered years afterwards, and brings her before us though she be underground or a thousand miles away. These intimacies she had not, but there was something true ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Mrs. Neifkins, who was picking at a French knot in a spasm of nervousness lest Kate betray the fact ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... released his hold on the log and gone under water, that crudely fashioned piece of wood might, have broken his skull. He saw only too clearly the paddle raised in both hands as an ugly weapon, and Thorvald's face, convulsed in a spasm of rage which made it as inhuman as ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... kneeling at the bedside; he still pressed her offered hand. His Sister-in-law stood, with the Doctor, at the foot of the bed, and laid warm pillows on his feet, which were growing cold. There now darted, as it were, an electrical spasm over all his countenance; the head sank back; the profoundest repose transfigured his face. His features were as those of one softly sleeping,'—wrapt in hard-won Victory and ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... only animal capable of persuading himself that his hardships are medicine to the soul, of flattering himself into a conviction that some mortal spasm was a fortifying discipline. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... if they felt and answered the dumb agony that is struggling for utterance below. Just such flashes of eager sympathetic fire break continually from the cloudy volumes of Rousseau, the result at once and the warning of that convulsion of which Paris was to be the crater and all Europe to feel the spasm. There are symptoms enough elsewhere of that want of faith in the existing order which made the Revolution inevitable,—even so shallow an observer as Horace Walpole could forebode it so early as 1765,—but ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... irresolutely by the body of the dead Indian. He lay stretched upon his back, naked to the breech clout, the red stream flowing from the lance wound in his side. His limbs quivered, but it was in the last spasm of departing life. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks;—with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below:— And the beard and the ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... pieces of ballast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained, carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, into a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five minutes, and even when this, in a measure, ceased, I could catch my breath only at long intervals, and in a gasping manner—bleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears, and even slightly at the eyes. The pigeons appeared distressed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried in obscure conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted on this, as on so many other occasions, by a mere spasm of suspicious jealousy, for which he could have ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... back in alarm. The telegram fluttered to the floor. Harvey was standing in front of her, shaking his fist under her nose, his face contorted by a spasm ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... the child, with a last effort, throwing her arms about his neck. In a moment they dropped again; and, as St. Clare raised his head, he saw a spasm of mortal agony pass over the face,—she struggled for breath, and ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unusual speed by the heartrending sounds that came from below. When she returned, Grandmother seemed to be in a final spasm, and even Matilda was frightened, though she would not have ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... myself in the carryall staring at the felt hat of the driver an inch or two before my nose, and Miss Hurribattle established by my side. It occurred to me that it was my place to resume the conversation, and, in a sudden spasm of originality, I changed a remark respecting the beauty of the day into an observation on the steepness of the hill we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... like the Benedick far better than I should ever have dreamed possible; and his wife is charming. And I want to say, too," he added, "that I have a thousand times thanked you for taking that vial before I went to be married. I'm in a spasm of virtuousness just now, and it is pleasant to remember that I did not ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... uttered the two last lines, Mihalevitch all but shed tears; a slight spasm—the sign of deep emotion—passed over his wide mouth, his ugly face lighted up. Lavretsky listened, and listened to him—and the spirit of antagonism was aroused in him; he was irritated by the ever-ready enthusiasm of the Moscow ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... then he couldn't be his pupil. Suppose she should tell! that would be mean, though. Perhaps he didn't intend it, after all. He seemed nice in some ways, though he was so queer. Very likely it was only a sort of spasm—an electric, magnetic thing—she had heard of something of the sort. Yes, and she had felt funny herself that evening—a numb, quivery, prickly kind of sensation: it may have been the thunder-storm! ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... sick, he could see himself there, in the future, following her about with his eyes, and thanking her, and doing all she told him, just as he'd used to do. He couldn't die without her to help him through. The very idea of her being taken first, roused in him a kind of spasm—a fierceness, a clenching of the hands. But all the same, in this poaching matter, he must have, his way, and she must just ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curiously (the spasm was over for the present), cut the Major short by a question ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... across the seat, and Jimmie, who had to sit next to him, caught him in his arms and held him. He was quivering, with awful motions like a spasm. He made no sound, and Jimmie was terrified, thinking that he was dying. Before long Jimmie felt a hot wetness stealing over his hands, first slimy, then turning sticky. He had to sit there, almost fainting with horror; he dared not say anything, for maybe the policeman would strike him ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Mrs. Wentworth gazed upon this last momento of long past happiness, and a spasm of grief contracted her features. It passed away, however, in an instant, and she laid the dress across the dead body of her child. Drawing a chair to the bedside, she took from her pocket a spool of thread, ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... frost wet his face, lifted the smothering off his lungs. His eyes grew clear, as his full sense returned after a while: seeing only at first, it so happened, the fire in its square frame; and thinking only of that, as the mind always drowsily absorbs the nearest trifle after a spasm of pain. A bed of pale red coals now, furred over with white and pearl-colored ashes. It was a long time since he had seen any open fire,—years, he believed. Where was it that there had been a fire just like that, with the ashes like moss over the heat,—and on a night in winter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... was too drunken with glee to trouble itself with precautions now; yet he stopped long enough to repeat the refrain, with a hideous spasm of laughter: "And now—ha, ha!—the wind is come, and the fire, and the punishment." Then he wrapped his gown closer about his form bending to meet the gale, and went leisurely down the street, intending to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... boy—" said the Revd. Howel, again taking him in his arms in a renewed spasm of affection. "I heard you were wounded and very ill in the camp hospital at Colesberg. It was a nursing sister, I think, who sent me the information. I wrote several times to the War Office, my letters were acknowledged, that was all. Then Sam Gardner wrote to me from Margate ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... had been left a widow with five helpless little ones to support, had been the Union Poor's-house; and now want, starvation, and the Union seemed staring her in the face. It was pitiful to see the spasm of positive pain which crossed her face as I put a trifle into her hand on leaving. She murmured a few words of thanks; but I heard her say with a deep sigh, as I left the room, 'I'm nothing better than a beggar now, living upon ...
— Catharine's Peril, or The Little Russian Girl Lost in a Forest - And Other Stories • M. E. Bewsher
... spasm will be worth nothing. There have got to be real efforts, real hard work, the expenditure of money for future and not merely immediate profits, a cheerful readiness to discard old and cherished methods, a new adaptability, a new painstaking attention to details. There ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... third shot of McGurk fly wide and Pierre fired from the floor and saw a spasm of pain contract the face ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... streets, on all the houses, and on all the temples, there was a single shout; sometimes it paused, to be again renewed; the buildings shook with it; Carthage was convulsed, as it were, in the spasm of Titanic ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... scope outside the System but what's left of it isn't cracking, Rhoda." Working himself into a spasm of righteous rage, he stalked out into the garden and tried to convince himself he was calmly studying the rose bushes' growth. But Sheila and Tony Williams came down the lane that skirted the garden and, as their eyes moved haughtily past him, his ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... sum which he thinks is adequate to avenge his wrongs and losses; Lamachus can propose a smaller sum and try to persuade the court that it is entirely proper. Each side must act warily. Athenian jurors are fickle folk. The very men who have just howled down Lamachus may, in a spasm of repentance, vote for absurdly low damages. Again, Lamachus must not propose anything obviously inadequate, otherwise the jurors who have just voted against him may feel insulted, and accept Ariston's estimate.[*] Ariston therefore says that he deserves ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... they hover along the gusty flue, "Thin, sable veils, wherein a restless spark Yet trembled." But the description is at its best when the subjects are unpleasant, or even grisly. There are a few capital lines in this key on the last spasm of the battle before alluded to. Surely nothing could be better, in its own way, than the fish in "The Last Cruise of the Arrogant," "the shadowy, side-faced, silent things," that come butting and staring with lidless eyes at the sunken steam-engine. And although, in yet another, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their part. See the one playing dead. Well, we shall wait long enough to see his imposture exposed. He is sinking fast in the quagmire. His head is almost under now." She had scarce ceased, when the redskin gave a convulsive start, resembling a dying spasm, and got once more ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Elliots and Marochettis dined with us. There was a frost, and torches on the Serpentine. Mrs. F. Elliot drove round to see it, and went home and died in the night [of a spasm of the heart. The news reached Reeve by a note from Mr. Elliot, dated ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... side. This is the so-called "reflex paralysis." Very commonly the irritation of a nerve will give rise to an impulse which will travel up the nerve to a motor-centre, and so excite it that it shall send in turn an impulse down a second nerve to a distant muscle, and a spasm result. Sometimes, however, the impulse which travels to the nerve-centre is of such a character that, instead of exciting it to action, it deprives it of the power of action. In the former instance reflex motion, in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... must have been times when the pistols had spoken in the silence of the night, when some hapless traveller had died upon the roadside. Surely there was blood upon the hands of the man she loved! The thought bowed her head, and her hands clasped as if a spasm of sudden pain had seized her. No repentance in the long years to come, not all the good that might be done in them, could wipe out the past. And then she tried to find excuses for that past, some reason that could justify the life he had chosen. Some ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... Maria!" the man went on to say, with some eagerness. "We 'most all around here air in them picters; ya-as'm! Ye wouldn't think I was an actor, would ye?" And he went off into another spasm of chuckles. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... he could not trust himself to move. Her shoulders, which he had always admired for their line and wonderful whiteness, rose in quick jerks and subsided with a quiver; she shook with the abandonment of a bird in its death-spasm. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... division in that land, supported at its expense, but also relied on its maritime resources.[265] The proposal was at once set aside at Paris. Napoleon's decision to drag the Batavian Republic into the war arose, however, from no spasm of the war fever; it was calmly stated in the secret instructions issued to General Decaen in the preceding January. "It is now considered impossible that we could have war with England, without dragging Holland into it." Holland was accordingly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... herself, by a sort of spasm, sur son seant, as they say in France,—up on end, as we have it in New England. She looked first to the left, then to the right, then straight before her, apparently without seeing anything, and at last slowly settled down, with her two eyes, blank of any particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... reeled back from the balcony, and sank almost in a swoon into the arms of the Duchess de Polignac, who was behind her. Her eyes were closed, and a convulsive spasm ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... to put their heels through the dasher, or to address the driver rudely, but feeling, to use a familiar word, frisky. This, I think, is the physiological condition of the young person, John. I noticed, however, what I should call a palpebral spasm, affecting the eyelid and muscles of one side, which, if it were intended for the facial gesture called a wink, might lead me to suspect a disposition to be satirical on ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... grow crimson, purple, maroon. My wife was looking at me as though I were some peculiar insect. The squeak of Ouija boards and the murmur of conversation rose louder and louder, and then I felt my face twitch in the spasm of that idiotic grin. I tried to straighten my wretched features into their usual semblance of humanity, I ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... cast a haggard eye at the speaker, and then at the ring, over which his hand closed with a convulsive spasm. And at that dread instant the man prevailed over the King; and far away from people and monk, from adjuration and duty, fled his heart on the wings of the storm—fled to the cold wife he distrusted: and the pledge that should assure him of life, seemed as a love-token ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lashmar felt a spasm in his breast. The expression of his features was so very significant that Mrs. Toplady's smile threatened ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... hour arrived—the last slight spasm of death was over, and her spotless soul passed into heaven from the bereaved arms of her hopeless and distracted father, who was reduced by the depth and wildness of despair to a state of agony which might ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... invariably arrange themselves so as to face her with eyes and antennae, and to walk backwards before her. It is a token of respect, or of solicitude, that, unlikely as it may seem, is nevertheless constant and general. But to return to the queen. During the slight spasm that visibly accompanies the emission of an egg, one of her daughters will often throw her arms round her and appear to be whispering to her, brow pressed to brow and mouth to mouth. But the queen, in no ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck |
