"Stab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men needed the foolish idealists, too. And maybe for a time here on Mars their kind of men and his kind of fools could make one more stab at the ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... to eat; so he called for an apple and a knife; for it was his custom formerly to pare the apple himself, and soon afterwards to cut it, and eat it. When he had got the knife, he looked about, and had a mind to stab himself with it; and he had done it, had not his first cousin, Achiabus, prevented him, and held his hand, and cried out loudly. Whereupon a woeful lamentation echoed through the palace, and a great tumult was made, as ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... late. For one instant the face of the first wife looked up at her, smiling, fat, fatuous, from the heart of the glowing coals, then, with a stab of the poker, wielded by a remorseless ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... sane counsel, he telephoned to John Merkle. Bob was too deeply agitated to more than note the banker's statement that Mr. and Mrs. Hannibal Wharton were in the city, but, recalling it later, he experienced a stab of regret that his mother was not here to comfort Lorelei in the first great crisis of her womanhood. It had been Lorelei's wish that her own mother be kept in ignorance of the truth, and now, therefore, the girl had no one to lean upon except an unpractical stage-woman—and a drunken husband. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... stab my honour under his eye: There is a rose that's ready; Though I bleed to the death, I shall let out the lie: There's a rose that's ready ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cold, unrecognizing eyes and rigid mouth, as they passed each other in the silence of the Cathedral, had power to cause so deep a stab of pain, how was he to brace himself in the future to what must come?—the alienation of friend after friend, the condemnation of the good, the tumult, the poisoned feeling, the abuse, public ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... carefully lifted into the saloon, where, on removing his clothes, it was discovered that Moody's stab, although inflicting a dangerous cut across the chest, had touched no vital part, the sufferer's exhaustion proceeding more from loss of blood than from any imminent risk. He was therefore placed in his own cot and the wound strapped up, after which he sank into a feverish ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... grappled with the other hand'] "so that neither could fire without shooting his fellow-soldier. Here he held them until one of them drew Lieut. Fitzgibbon's sword, and held it up over his head, of course intending to stab him forthwith. The woman of the house saw the position, and rushed out and seized the sword, and got it from the soldier's hand. Fitzgibbon then tripped up one of the soldiers and felled the other with a blow, then took them both ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... obnoxious to every sense of propriety that any vigorous attack upon it would command the approval of many honest and pious people. The central heresy of hierarchical religion was likewise embodied in it, so that a stab there, if logically followed up, would necessarily reach the very heart of the oppressive monster. And Providence arranged that there the conflict ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... dread enemy the shark, and if cool and collected, generally comes off victorious in the contest. The South Sea Islanders have a thorough knowledge of the habits of this salt-water pirate, and know that by keeping underneath him, they cannot be touched, and they will fearlessly stab the intruder with their knives, and avail themselves of his momentary departure to regain the boat. I have known one instance of a native jumping into the water to distract the attention of a shark ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... at your call— With musket, pike, or knife; He wields the deadliest blade of all Who lightest holds his life. The arm that drives its unbought blows With all a patriot's scorn, Might brain a tyrant with a rose, Or stab him ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... animal is worked into an uncontrollable frenzy, the horsemen withdraw, and the matadores —literally murderers—enter, armed with knives having blades twelve or eighteen inches long, and sharp. The trick is to dodge an attack from the animal and stab him to the heart as he passes. If these efforts fail the bull is finally lassoed, held fast and killed by driving a knife blade into the spinal column just back of the horns. He is then dragged out by horses or ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... of view, doubts may be suggested whether this naive impressibility to religious influences, this simple, whole-hearted abandonment to their expression, had any real practical value. The fact that any or all of the actors might before night rob or stab or lie quite as freely as if it has not occurred may well give reason for such a question. Be this as it may, the phenomenon is not confined to Italy or the religion of the Middle Ages, but exhibits itself in many a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... to Bath!" answered Jack, making another stab at the ink-pot with his pen. "I want to finish ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... bring him to consciousness upon this unwelcome subject. If any one of us, for the remainder of our days, should be given over to that ordinary indifference towards sin with which we walk these streets, and transact business, and enjoy life; if God's truth should never again in this world stab the conscience, and God's Spirit should never again make us anxious; is it not infallibly certain that the future would be as the past, and that we should go through this "accepted time and day of ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... The mighty Rustum never had a son.' And with a failing voice Sohrab replied: 'Ah yes, he had! and that lost son am I, Surely the news will one day reach his ear, Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries long, Somewhere, I know not where, but far from here; And pierce him like a stab, and make him leap To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee. Fierce man, bethink thee, for an only son! What will that grief, what will that vengeance be? O could I live, till I that grief had seen! Yet him I pity not so much, but her, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... philosophical soul; he had not, I found, wounded me in a very tender point, the wound was so soon and so radically healed, leaving only a sense of contempt for the treacherous fashion in which it had been inflicted, and a lasting mistrust of the hand which I had detected attempting to stab in the dark. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... him? You?' she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if it only wanted a weapon to stab the object ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... have been accessory to such vile work as to stab an unarmed and unsuspecting man, yet often as I thought of Alessandro's satyr leer, and the loathing bravely coupled with defiance which I had seen leap in answer to it in the face of his child Duchess, I thanked God that Lorenzino had no ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... ogres will stab about and kill not only strangers, but they will outrage, murder, and chop up ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... distinctly enunciated, cold and hard, a little pause separating the two syllables so that each cut like a stab. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... wardrobe is in a sorry state. At the same time, these things do not REALLY matter and I would bid you not despair about them. Send me, however, another half-rouble if you can (though that half-rouble will stab me to the heart—stab me with the thought that it is not I who am helping you, but YOU who are helping ME). Thedora has done well to get those fifteen roubles for you. At the moment, fool of an old man that I am, I have no hope of acquiring any more ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and peas he had nothing to eat. He was caught in the morning, shivering and grey-bearded, in a ditch; two days later, he was on his way from Ringwood to London, his coach guarded by strong bodies of troops, and sitting opposite him in the coach an officer whose orders were to stab him if there was an attempt at rescue. So they rode into Guildford on a Saturday afternoon, and that night the terrified prisoner lay under the roof of Abbot's Hospital. Perhaps he slept; perhaps he could only stride about the room feverishly scribbling letters of abject ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... till they had gone ten miles on their way that the regret came, sudden and painful as the stab of ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Edith, and the closing of the door after her, Colonel Colleton, with all his storms, approached to the attack. The expression of scorn upon his face had given way to one of anger wholly. His glance seemed meant to penetrate the bosom of the youth with a mortal stab—it was hate, rather than anger, that he looked. Yet it was evident that he made an effort to subdue his wrath—its full utterance at least—but he could not chase the terrible ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... p'omises, they do it." It seemed to come to her over the wire in a baby's voice and to strike against her heart. This mother of a little son stood suddenly self-convicted of a crime—the crime of faithlessness. It was not, she realized with a sharp stab of pain, faith in her the little child at the other end of the line was exercising, but faith in the Promise. He would keep on "She-promising" till he fell asleep in ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... to the door together, and in the brighter light of the hall Elise saw for the first time that he was considerably thinner, and that his brow was like marble. She felt a little stab of pity for him, forgetting his own lack of sympathy towards herself; she caught a faint realisation of what he must have endured for it to have marked him ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... all the bursting shells rolled up in a thick veil, hiding those mining lads who stared toward the illuminations above the black vapors and at the flashes which seemed to stab great rents in the pall of smoke. "It was a jumpy moment," said the colonel of the Durhams, and the moment ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... am anxious about her." There was not a trace now of any of the jollity which had marked him at supper. His face was gray and worn—his voice decidedly husky. That huskiness in her father's voice went like a stab to Effie's heart. She shut the door and went and stood ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... he must appear before me and tell his name.' He gave the order that if the knight who caught the apple, should go away again they should pursue him, and if he would not come back willingly, they were to cut him down and stab him. ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... aloud, "am I denied the privilege that is extended to the vilest of his species? Will you condemn me unheard? Accuse me in my absence—keep me in ignorance of my charge—and stab me in the dark?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... immemorial guardians of treasure, they could not have any right in it, but were most inconveniently likely to wake if any noise were made. The others were three to one—too heavy odds by daylight. But if he sat down by them till night came he could stab them one by one while they were asleep, and perhaps breakfast on the kardouon—said to be quite good meat. And he went to sleep himself. And this is the history of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... enjoying the blessings of liberty, peace and plenty, while her kindred and friends lie in chains on the opposite side of the Atlantic, or while the infamous flag of the despot who oppresses them, and who but recently sought to stab her to the heart, floats in triumph on her very borders. Both heaven and humanity demand something more at her hands; and if actuated by no higher motive than that of mere self-preservation, or of providing against ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... about these recent biological experiments of Dr. Carrel, of the Rockefeller Institute: they seem to prove that the life of a man is not merely the sum of the life of the myriad cells of his body. Stab the man to death, and the cells of his body still live and will continue to live if grafted upon another live man. Probably every part of the body would continue to live and grow indefinitely, in the proper medium. That the cell life should continue ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... The police of Brooklyn have another | |murder mystery to unravel through the | |finding early today of the body of Peter | |Barilla on Lincoln road, near Nostrand | |avenue, Flatbush. There were two bullet | |wounds in the body and four stab wounds | |in ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the two nearly upset the Hattie S. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... his reverse to bite me, and passed under him, out to better light. I knew I had but a second or two to fight. I seized his tail quickly, and as he swept around to free himself I had time to draw the knife from my pareu and stab him. He passed over me again, and this time his teeth entered my shoulder, here—" He opened his shirt and showed me a long, livid scar, serrated, the hall-mark of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Ah! How many a stab one gives in childhood to one's parents' tenderest feelings! I did not mean to be ungrateful, and I had no measure of the pain my father felt at this hint of the insufficiency of all he did for my comfort and pleasure at home. Mr. Andrewes ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sideways with his right thrust forward. The wound was a mere scratch, as soldiers count wounds, and though the young blood had followed quickly, it had now ceased to flow. It was the fall that had hurt him, not the stab. The carpet had slipped from under his feet, and he had fallen backwards to his full length, as a man falls on ice, and his head had struck the marble floor so violently that he had lain half an hour almost in a swoon, like ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... betwixt them, and with huge merriment; but scarce were we out of the cove and hard beside Bartlemy's tree than I started to the vicious prick of a knife, and whirling about despite the fierce hands that sought to hold me, I saw Smiling Sam about to stab me again. But now, as I strove with my reeling captors, was a flicker of vicious steel as Tressady sprang and, whipping his hook beneath the great fellow's belt, whirled Smiling Sam from his feet despite his prodigious weight ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... he could exorcise the spirits. Going to the cave the bear climbed on to the cart to offer a sacrifice. As he sat there the barber caught hold of his tail and held on to it while the prince began to stab the bear with a knife. The bear howled and groaned but could not get away. The king of the jackals who was looking on was delighted, for he concluded that the bongas had taken possession of the bear who would learn who they were and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... and Haggerty trailed them in a taxi. They drove around town rather aimlessly for some time and then left the car and walked. Haggerty was afraid he would lose them in the crowd so he closed in on them. He doesn't know what happened except that he felt a sudden stab in his arm and everything went black. He recovered in the police station twenty minutes later but ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... further embarrassed by the course of his Secretary of War, Cameron, who, while laboring under the censure of Congress for the conduct of his office, had allowed Senator Winter to stab his chief in the back by recommending in his report that the slaves be armed by the Government and put into the ranks of the armies. Senator Winter, as the Radical leader, knew that to meet such an issue once raised the President must rebuke his Secretary and apologize to ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... they were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... Littlepage; we must have a little law, even when most bent on breaking it. A downright, straight-forward rascal, who openly sets law at defiance, is a wonder. Then we have a great talk of liberty when plotting to give it the deepest stab; and religion even gets to share in no small portion of our vices. Thus it is that the anti-renters have dragged in the law in aid of their designs. I understand one of the Rensselaers has been sued for money borrowed in a ferry-boat to help him ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... will stab him to the heart, with my own hand, though he be my father's brother's grandson, and the best warrior of our tribe; but no, no, Phadraig, the boy is young, and his blood is hot and fiery; and the charms of that witch might well move a colder spirit—but he is ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... a vicious stab with the needle, impaling one of her fingers, and continued her work. There was a long silence, faintly punctuated by the bark of a distant dog. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... cried, and he panted now—"a hundred candles to the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... me the appointment. And this is how I reward them. If I stay I do more harm. If I go away I leave them surrounded by enemies, and not enemies who fight fair, but damned thieves and scoundrels, who stab at women and who fight in the dark. I wouldn't have had it happen, old man, for my right arm! They—they have been so kind to me, and I have been so happy here—and now!" The boy bowed his face in his hands and sat breathing brokenly while Clay turned his ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... laughing, vaunting young idiots, juggle or snatch their dances away from them, and seize on the girl himself. He had not for so long a time been impelled by such agreeable folly that he had sometimes felt the stab of the thought that he was past it. That it should rise in him again made him feel young. There was nothing which so irritated him against Mount Dunstan as his own rebelling recognition of the man's youth, the strength of his fine body, his high-held head ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... insensibility which nature shows for our catastrophes. Though the duke was an excellent man he would no doubt play whist with Monsieur after the king had retired. As for the duchess, she had long ago given her daughter the first stab by writing to her ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death. So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, Wherein with blinded and unhearing face My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look And listen for thy coming,—all this life Is ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Varano, whom the Borgia strangled. On their discourse a tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's boldness—Camerino's Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart charms. And more will follow, when that lady's brother, furious Francesco Maria della Rovere, shall stab the bravo in torch-litten palace rooms with twenty poignard strokes twixt waist and throat, and their Pandarus shall be sent down to his account by a varlet's coltellata through the midriff. Imagination shifts the scene, and shows in that same loggia Rome's warlike Pope, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... peace. Neither of the white men paid any heed to the slight phenomenon. To them it meant nothing. For all their experience with the desert, they had never happened to hear just that thing. The Arab, however, felt a stab of profound anxiety. His lips moved in ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... wife, that let him do, whether plebeian or noble—that's my morality; but when an ugly old patrician finds fair words will not win fair looks, and carries me off a dame on the back of a German boar, with a stab in the side for comfort to the spouse,—then, I say, he is a wicked ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... yokels in good earnest, and while their comrades dragged them away, and, propping them against the parapet opposite, called for water to bathe their wounds, I became unpleasantly sensible of my own hurts. The stab in my upper arm, though it bled little, kept burning as though the pitchfork had been dipped in poison; and from the less painful scratch on the ribs I was losing blood; I could feel it welling ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... hair-lipped, putty-brained country Jake! Did you see him sidestep that?" demanded the aggrieved Bickford, forgetting, in his pique, his stricken father. "What you want to do to him is to sandbag him, give him knockout drops, stab him under the fifth rib! He's too elusive—the devil-sent——" He was proceeding to further particulars when Mitchell ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... her looks continually wandered as though in search of some lurking enemy; for in truth no woman, nor man either, could easily forget the suggestion which had recently been brought to her knowledge, that an assassin might "lurk in her gallery and stab her with his dagger, or if she should walk in her garden, he might shoot her with his dagg, or if she should walk abroad to take the air, he might assault her with his arming sword and make sure work." Even though the enemies were safe in prison, she knew not but that dagger, dagg, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of misdoings, and I have often heard people declare that in their opinion every leader-writer should be forced to sign his name. As I once heard it picturesquely expressed, "The mask should be torn from the villain's face. Why should a man be allowed to stab his neighbour in the dark!" As a matter of fact, I am convinced that anonymity makes, not for irresponsibility but for responsibility, and that there are many men who, though truculent, offensive, and personal when they write with the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... He is a ruffian of the first stamp; bloody and treacherous, without honor or honesty; such at least is the character he bears upon the prairie. Yet in his case all the standard rules of character fail, for though he will stab a man in his sleep, he will also perform most desperate acts of daring; such, for instance, as the following: While he was in the Crow village, a Blackfoot war party, between thirty and forty in number came stealing through the country, killing stragglers and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Rock is a defence in another way. If a hard-pressed fugitive is brought to a stand and can set his back against a rock, he can front his assailants, secure that no unseen foe shall creep up behind and deal a stealthy stab and that he will not be surrounded unawares. 'The God of Israel shall be your rearward,' and he who has 'made the Most High his habitation' is sheltered from 'the pestilence that walketh in darkness,' as well as from 'the destruction that wasteth at ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it was a cry to stab the heart. He dropped the brush and looked up at her. She was pale, and her eyes were very big. "Well, what is the matter now," he ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... game," he told himself after a few days. "That is, Lady Sherwood and Gerald are—poor old Sir Charles can't make much of a stab at it. The game is to make me think they are awfully glad to have me, when in reality there's something about me, or something I do, that gets them on ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... thought she addressed herself more often; and, for one thing, she was now greatly wrapped up in Miss Katharine. You would think the change was agreeable to Mr. Henry; no such matter! To the contrary, every circumstance of alteration was a stab to him; he read in each the avowal of her truant fancies. That constancy to the Master of which she was proud while she supposed him dead, she had to blush for now she knew he was alive, and these blushes were the hated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lieutenant, after pausing for a few moments, after giving his subordinate this unkindly stab and, so to speak, beginning to wriggle his verbal weapon in the wound, "it is you who have to meet the captain when you go back after being relieved, not I. That I am thankful to say. But I fail to see, Mr Roberts, what is the good of setting you ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... body of the young man. It was found near the bureau, and just to the left of it, as marked upon that chart. The stab was on the right side of the neck and from behind forward, so that it is almost impossible that it could have ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in a voice husky with rage, while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury, "scoundrel! impostor! accursed villain! you shall not—you shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I stab you where you stand!"—and I broke my way from the ball-room into a small ante-chamber adjoining—dragging him unresistingly with me as ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to plunge it into his belly, when, to his surprise, the blade turned. Thinking that the dirk must be a bad one, he took up an iron mortar for grinding medicines and tried it upon that, and the point entered and transfixed the mortar. He was about to stab himself a second time, when his followers, who had missed him, and had been searching for him everywhere, came up, and seeing their master about to kill himself, stayed his hand, and took away the dirk by force. Then they set him upon ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... nature, did not leave Alencon on this occasion without changing the orange-blossoms of the bride to rue. She was the first to declare that Madame du Bousquier would never be anything but Mademoiselle Cormon. With one stab of her tongue she revenged poor Athanase ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... lover had embarked. It was well. All was well! And the black sand spun round her in the moonlight, as she heard the hiss of her father's breath behind her. She wavered. With a bound the man threw himself forward. One stab, and the keen blade sank through the flesh below the shoulder, driving her forward, and she fell face downwards on ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Royalist, but who was in truth destitute of all religious and of all political principle. Porter's friends could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his amours, and that he had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at the playhouse. His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one of a gang of clippers; that he sometimes ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain, First give another stab to make your search secure, Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad-pieces and lockets, The tokens of the wanton, the plunder ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... knife-like contrivance which fits on the end of your rifle. The Government issues it to stab Germans with. Tommy ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... life of deception she had imposed upon him; but in respect of his manhood, it was mean. For good is what men are, when they are doing good. It cannot be the good itself, which, though it profit many, may be so done as to stab and wound the secret enemy of the man's own heart. The good such a man does the whole world is but the knife in his hand wherewith to hurt the one. But Bosio hurt only himself, and little, at that, for he was almost past hurting; and Matilde never knew what ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the dacoits would have murdered them had they awoke while they were plundering was plain. Two holes had been cut in the mosquito curtain near to where Mr. and Mrs. Boardman and their one-year-old child lay, and by these holes dacoits had evidently stood, knife in hand, ready to stab the sleepers if they awoke. It was a great shock to Mrs. Boardman, who was in bad health, but soon she was joining her husband in thanking God ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... great blessedness of being alone. She put out the light and threw herself, as she was, face downwards on the bed. There she lay for long moments, suffering; and this was one of the few times in her life when she was forced to feel that human pain which is like a stab in the heart. For she was one of those wise creatures who give themselves long spaces of silence, and so heal them quickly of their wounds, like the sage little animals that slip away from combat, to cure their hurt with leaves. Presently, a great sense of rest enfolded her, a rest ineffably ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Major Yancey; and so do you and Fitz, and the jedge and the major here. We all know it. Do you suppose, suh, for one instant, that I am cowardly enough to stab a man in the back this way and give him no chance of defendin' himself? It is monst'ous, suh! Why, suh, it's no better than insultin' a deaf man, and then tryin' to escape because he did not hear you. I tell you, suh, ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... something must be done—that, in short, it was necessary to force this exhausting drama to its fit conclusion. Of course William Edgerton was my object. As yet, how to bring about the issue, was a problem which my mind was not prepared to solve. Whether I was to stab or shoot him; whether we were to go through the tedious processes of the duel; to undergo the fatigue of preliminaries, or to shorten them by sudden rencounter; these were topics which filled my thoughts ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... cannot be: For what is done, is done: and what is dead Is dead for ever: the fire cannot warm him: The winter cannot hurt him with its snows; Something has gone from him; if you call him now, He will not answer; if you mock him now, He will not laugh; and if you stab him now He will not bleed. I would that I could wake him! O God, put back the sun a little space, And from the roll of time blot out to-night, And bid it not have been! Put back the sun, And make me what I was ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... thousand troops in the Colonies, while Carleton had only ten thousand with which to hold Canada that year and act as ordered next year, all went for nothing when Germain found a chance to give a good stab in ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... meant to give him his answer without delay; it were kinder. But she found it impossible; the negative stuck stubbornly in her throat. She knew it would stab him deep. He wasn't the man to take love lightly; his emotions were anything but on the surface; their wounds would be ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and he—now think of it—he a free, strong man, she a chained and helpless girl—he drew his dagger and flung himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back. Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the inspiration of her spirit. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she cried, shuddering, and lifting her eyes to his in a fleeting upward glance. "I hope I shall soon forget those few awful seconds. I knew he meant to stab you, and I wanted to scream, but could not. He seemed to be the leader of the party, and he flew into such a rage when the wheel gave way that I really believe he was ready to kill me out of spite. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... monstrous an impossibility to seem to him to be an outlet at all. What was the real meaning of all this? Then suddenly an in-rushing suspicion flashed across his mind like a blasting lightning brand, bringing with it a sharp pang, as of a dagger stab in the heart. What was the meaning of all these protestations of admiration and affection, coupled with a denial of all that his passion drove him there in search of? Did it perchance mean that this woman, so terrible in the power of her beauty, so dangerously irresistible, would ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... limbs, and flew at her in return. The conflict at first was brief, for the powerful strength of the elder female soon told. Sarah, however, quickly disengaged herself, and seizing an old knife which lay on a shell that served as a dresser, she made a stab at the very heart of her step-mother, panting as she did it with an exulting vehemence of vengeance that resembled the growlings which a savage beast makes when springing on ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... graciously awakened sinner, is doubtless for the subduing of sin; but yet he looketh that the chief help against it doth lie in the pardon of it. Suppose a man should stab his neighbour with his knife, and afterwards burn his knife to nothing in the fire, would this give him help against his murder? No verily, notwithstanding this, his neck is obnoxious to the halter, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... made a tangle of brown above which the gaunt, white, black-smeared arms of dead trees flung agonized branches to the sky.—"The short-cut trail to Chaumiere Noire"—"Shall I forever have no better revenge but to stab one paper doll?" Her ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... was the kind that the world sells cheap,—it's best kind. He lives the dream and believes his shadows; it was always so. It will be so until the end. Life will stab him ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... of Pablo and those of his breed. And Pablo, on that fateful day, did not disappoint his master's expectations. Old he was, and stiff and creaky of joint, but what he lacked in physical prowess he possessed in guile. Forbidden to follow his natural inclination, which was to stab the potato baron frequently and fatally with a businesslike dirk which was never absent from his person except when he slept, Pablo had recourse to another artifice of his peculiar calling—to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... King of Spain, the Emperor, and the great Catholics of France, was to make a crusade against the Church. Garnier, the Jesuit, preached from his pulpit that "to strike a blow in the Cleve enterprise was no less a sin than to inflict a stab in the body of our Lord." The Parliament of Paris having ordered the famous treatise of the Jesuit Mariana—justifying the killing of excommunicated kings by their subjects—to be publicly burned before Notre Dame, the Bishop opposed the execution of the decree. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a voice, even in a whisper, startling his ear-he ventured forth with a stealing step toward the slumbering group. Like his brave ancestor, Gaul, the son of Morni, "he disdained to stab a sleeping foe!" He must pass them to reach the private stairs. He paused and listened. Silence still reigned; not even a hand moved, so deeply were they sunk in the fumes of wine. He took courage, and flew with the lightness of air to the secret door. As he laid his hand on it, it opened from without, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... honourable position for the great Sandeman to occupy. There came to Lowes-Parlby a sudden abrupt misgiving. What sort of wife would this be to him when they were not just fooling? He immediately dismissed the curious, furtive little stab of doubt. The splendid proportions of the room calmed his senses. A huge bowl of dark red roses quickened his perceptions. His career.... The door opened. But it was not La Toccata. It was one of the household flunkies. Lowes-Parlby ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... England is full, interposes for the first fact, which in such a case is denominated manslaughter. Yet there is a particular kind of manslaughter which, by the first of King James, is made felony without benefit of clergy, and that is, where a person shall stab or thrust any person or persons that have not any weapon drawn (or that have not first struck the party which shall so stab or thrust), so that the person or persons so stabbed or thrust shall die within six months next following, though ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... dark eyes that shut him out from her. "You are sincere, I see; but you are not true to yourself or to God": that was all she said. She would have said the same, if he had gone with her brother. It was a sudden stab, but he forgave her: how could she know that God Himself had laid this blood-work on him, or the deathly fight his soul had waged against it? She did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... bell on the home-going cow is his breakfast bell, and sunset the signal for him to leave his roost. Then beware! little fishes and lizards—those red eyes are glowing for you! That long spear-shaped beak is ready to stab you to death! Froggy 'who would a-wooing go,' return quickly to your mother, without making any impertinent remarks about 'gammon and spinach' on the way, or something much more savage than the 'lily-while duck' will ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... said one, 'but I cannot make a move. I fought under him at Nehauend; and though I took the amnesty, I have half a mind now to seize my sword and stab ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... of attention on the wrong man was, of course, rather favourable to the designs of Kateegoose, so that, when the party passed the summer-house, he was enabled to spring upon his enemy, unobserved for the first moment, with knife upraised. But the stab from which the Sioux chief could not have escaped was rendered harmless by the prompt action of Okematan, who threw up his left arm, turned the blow aside, and received a slight wound in ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and oil engines frequently pass over the exhaust pipe. When the machine is at rest, you can stab a small hole in the fuel line and plug the hole with wax. As the engine runs and the exhaust tube becomes hot, the wax will be melted; fuel will drip onto the exhaust and ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... in my arms? She'd stab me, there's that much of the devil in her. Don't grin at me and keep chuckling like an utter ass. What's ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... to become an oborot, let him seek in the forest a hewn-down tree; let him stab it with a small copper knife, and walk round the tree, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... ten yards per day, and was still at work without pause or intermission, had begun to cut it just twenty days previous. A reverend anti-geologist takes up Sir Charles;[44] and, after denouncing the calculation as "a stab at the Christian religion," seeing it involves the assertion that the "Falls were actually at Queenston four thousand years before the creation of the world according to Moses," he brings certain facts, adduced both by other writers and Sir Charles himself, to bear on the calculation, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... few words at the door, he had become the thing personified. In the darkness of her own room she clenched her fists and glared about. Going to a cloth bag that hung on a nail by the wall she took out a long pair of sewing scissors and held them in her hand like a dagger. "I will stab him," she said aloud. "He has chosen to be the voice of evil and I will kill him. When I have killed him something will snap within myself and I will die also. It will be a release for ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... would hold their tongues and let one enjoy this exquisite place without diverting one's attention to what might be done or to how it all came about. They don't seem to feel how beautiful it all is." And he concentrated himself on contemplation of the landscape, his delight brought home by a stab ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... stab at bein' sociable was kind of feeble. In front of the desk is a group of three gents, one of 'em not over fifty or so; but when I edges up close enough to hear what the debate is about, I finds it has something to do with a scheme ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... old woman, "this, Brigaut: they want to open the body of my child and cut into her head, and stab her heart after her death as they did ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... thy hand! The gods behold thee, horrible assassin! Restrain the blow; it were a stab to Heav'n; All nature shudders at it!—Will no friend Arm in a cause like this a father's hand? Strike at this bosom rather. Lo! Evander Prostrate and groveling on the earth before thee! He begs to die:—exhaust the scanty drops That lag about his ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... up. Paganel, Robert, Wilson and Olbinett left the wagon, and Lady Helena gave up her compartment to poor Mulrady. The Major removed the poor fellow's flannel shirt, which was dripping with blood and rain. He soon found the wound; it was a stab in the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... deeply, gave a glance at herself in an opposite mirror, and smoothed down a bow pensively, as the prima donna at the grand opera generally does when her lover is getting ready to stab himself. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... He stab'd the knight the standard bore, He stabb'd him cruelly; Then caught the standard by the neuk, And ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... stab for Adam's wounded senses, and with a heavy heart and step Eve took her way back to him, while Reuben and Joan continued to thread the streets which took them by a circuitous road home ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... daughter had remarked, seemed wonderfully recovered from the phle-back-omy which had been administered,—"why should you be shocked at stabbing me in the back? Have I not wherewithal in my hand to stab me a thousand times in the heart? Look at these letters, all of which I have read! You had, indeed, reason to leave me in Galway; but I will submit to it no longer. Mr Rainscourt, I insist ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... free election, re-established, them in power. At this very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... worked well for me," Radley promptly answered, and we all knew he meant it as a second stab for Fillet. ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave—every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The scribblers who had of late shewn their petulance were not always obscure. Such scurrilous but humorous pieces as Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... cauldron; and Hansel and Gretel had crept safely out of the dwarf Vinslev's den, across the sewer-grating, and had reached the pancake-house, which, marvelously enough, had also a grating in front of the door, through which one could thrust a stick or a cabbage- stalk, in order to stab the witch. Sticks of wood and cabbage-stalks were to be found in plenty in the dustbins near the pancake-house, and they knew very well who the witch was! Now and again she would pop up out of the cellar ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... addressed to the district attorney. It was a confession, complete in every detail, of every crime the four together had committed, implicating Stangeist as fully and unreservedly as it did the other three. It required no commentary! If anything happened to Stangeist, a stab in the dark, for instance, a bullet from some dark alleyway, a blackjack deftly wielded, as only Australian Ike, The Mope or Clarie Deane knew how to wield it—the document automatically became a DEATH SENTENCE for Australian Ike, The ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab—first warning that there had been underhand play. The deed always preceded ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... still removed now hither and now thither, weeping. Moreover, there being not a breath of wind, the flies and gads flocked thither in swarms and settling upon her cracked flesh, stung her so cruelly that each prick seemed to her a pike-stab; wherefore she stinted not to fling her hands about, still cursing herself, her life, her ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the first time, while viewing in all its depth and width the gulf which separated us, I was not hardened; I was not cast back upon myself. Her gentleness, her pity, her humility softened me, while they convicted me. My God, how, after this, could I do that which I had come to do? How could I stab her in the tenderest part, how could I inflict on her that rending pang, how could I meet her eyes, and stand before her, a Caliban, a Judas, the vilest, lowest ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... savages are nomadic, and could not settle down. The land is either burnt up or inundated, so they do not plant, but live only by the chase. So bold and daring are they that a man, armed only with a lance, will attack a savage jaguar; or, diving under an alligator, he will stab it with a sharpened bone. The same man will run in abject terror if he thinks he ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... not Rome," said Luigi, the butcher. "Let's wait till they come to our gates again—we know how to receive them. Though, for the matter of that, I think we have had enough fighting—my two poor brothers had each a stab too much for them. Why won't the Tribune, if he be a great man, let us have peace? All we want now ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a long silence. Brother William's gray head sagged on his shoulder, and the hymn-book slipped from his gnarled old hands. The knitting sisters began, one after another, to stab their needles into their balls of gray yarn and roll their work up ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... day I arrived at the mission of Aranas at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked a quarrel with one of his comrades—and a bad lot they are!—and this quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge of the wound, and that is ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... honours, and large fame After your worthy acts, and height of name, Destroy'd you in the end? The envious Fates, Easy to further your aspiring States, Us'd them to quell you too; pride, and excess. In ev'ry act did make you thrive the less. Few kings are guilty of grey hairs, or die Without a stab, a draught, or treachery. And yet to see him, that but yesterday Saw letters first, how he will scrape, and pray; And all her feast-time tire Minerva's ears For fame, for eloquence, and store of years To thrive and live in; ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... I charm thee from all. Thy freedom's complete As a Blade of the Huff, To be cheated and cheat, To be cuff'd and to cuff; To stride, swear, and swagger, To drink till you stagger, To stare and to stab, And to brandish your dagger In the cause of your drab; To walk wool-ward in winter, Drink brandy, and smoke, And go fresco in summer For want of a cloak; To eke out your living By the wag of your elbow, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... believe it; so should I, Like one of these penurious quack-salvers, But set the bills up to mine own disgrace, And try experiments upon myself; Lend scorn and envy opportunity To stab my reputation and good name— Enter Master ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... possibly have delighted Redell more. Whenever Cappy stabbed him, forthwith he set about to stab Cappy in return, and thus had developed a joyous business feud. These best of friends spent an hour and a half daily, at luncheon, "picking" on each other, telling tales on each other, eternally "joshing" for the edification of a coterie of their ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... fierce and fain, The troopers rode the reeking flight: The very stones remember still The end of them that stab by night. ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... feeling that it was part of the contract that she was to be warded off if any attempt of the kind were made likely to endanger his prospects of becoming Hamilton's heir. His indifference made her venomously malignant, and she sent him a last stab that would at least give him a troubled mind, even though it should not cause him to recall her; she would then pursue her revenge by ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... first of the chapter of accidents came. A man sang out, "Look out for a drop o' water!" and a black mountain smashed over the Esperanza in an instant after. Joe saw the third hand slip, and the next second the man was whisked overboard. The Esperanza was still smothered, and a stab of pity went through Joe's heart as he saw his shipmate wallowing. But he had no time for sentiment; he grabbed the reef-earring with his left hand, and clutched at the man with his right. When the vessel shook herself, both ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... generally of Polish Majesty's and Polish Republic's multifarious contumacies; and, in fine, cruelest of all, that she has troops on the frontier; that Courland is not the only place where she has troops. What a stab to the poor old man! "Contumacies?" Has not he been Russia's patient stepping-stone, all along; his anarchic Poland and he accordant in that, if in nothing else? "Let us to Saxony," decides he passionately, "and leave all this." In Saxony his poor old ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... attempt it alone, ignorant of French as they are. But this is their generous way of making us feel indispensable! They tell us we are needed to "see them through"; that without our help and advice they would be lost. Every word of kindness is a new stab for me. Shall I grow callous as time goes on, and accept everything as though I really were what they call me—their "daughter"? Or—I begin to think of another alternative. I'll turn to ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... least an equal right to bring the same charge against you, but I should disdain to harbour such a thought about you. There are many ways in which you may be cruel to a woman, Paul, and be forgiven, but you must not wound her pride in that way. That is the cruellest stab of all. The blade is poisoned, dear, and the wound ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... a head, d-me! 'Tis well known that I have drawn blood more than once, and lost some too; but what does that signify?" The player begged this champion to employ him as his second the next time he intended to kill, for he wanted to see a man die of a stab, that he might know how to act such an art the more naturally on the stage. "Die!" replied the hero: "No, by G—! I know better things than to incur the verdict of a Middlesex jury—I should look upon my fencing-master to be an ignorant son of a b—h, if he had not taught ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... her marked hesitation in coming forward, were both significant, and Buck felt a sudden little stab of anger. Was she afraid of him? he wondered; and tried to imagine what beastly lies Lynch must have told her to bring about such an ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... shouted the mischievous third mate, whose love of fun could not be controled by fear of consequences; "he tried to stab the captain with ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... ane feared o' being struck. Even when I daured to look, my arm was shaking so that I could see Rob both above it and below it. He was on the edge, crouching to leap. I didna see wha had haud o' the other end o' the rope. I heard the minister cry, 'No, Dow, no!' and it gae through me as quick as a stab that if Rob jumped he would knock them both into the water. But he did jump, and you ken how it was that ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... he said to his two attendants; "shoot him or stab him without mercy, should he attempt to break forth; if he offers an escape, by Heaven ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... ha, Now who saw e'er such another as Esau? By my truth, I will not lie to thee, Ragan, Since I was born, I never see any man So greedily eat rice out of a pot or pan. He would not have a dish, but take the pot and sup. Ye never saw hungry dog so stab[263] potage up. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... three months ago," said Mrs. Carey easily, giving Henry Lord, Ph.D., her first stab, and a look of amusement on her own behalf. "Ralph Thurston, the present principal, is ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it, Ernani shall be prepared to take his own life. Charles's magnanimity frustrates the conspiracy, and Silva, defeated alike in love and ambition, claims the fulfilment of Ernani's oath, despite the prayers of Elvira, who is condemned to see her lover stab himself in her presence. Hugo's melodrama suited Verdi's blood-and-thunder style exactly. 'Ernani' is crude and sensational, but its rough vigour never descends to weakness, though it often comes dangerously near to vulgarity. 'Ernani' ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... windows and doors in the old house shook and rattled. In fact, it was just such weather as he loved. His plan of action was this. He was to make his way quietly to Washington Otis's room, gibber at him from the foot of the bed, and stab himself three times in the throat to the sound of slow music. He bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood- stain, by means of Pinkerton's Paragon Detergent. Having ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... Those small banditti, the mosquitoes, as bloody-minded as the Malatesta, began to sing and to stab. The assassin owls made mournful cadences in keeping with the scene and its half-tragic human purposes, while the whippoorwills voiced the one element of brightness ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... Europe to win freedom for its peoples from their kings, England stood coldly apart. To men frenzied with a passionate enthusiasm, and frenzied yet more with a sudden terror at the dangers they were encountering, such an attitude of neutrality in such a quarter seemed like a stab ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... "Stab me, if I understand," cried Creagh. "Balmerino did not kidnap you here, did he? Devil take me if it's at all clear ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... pardoning a recreant subject, and suffered him to draw her again, but with more gentleness, into his embrace. She put up her lips to meet his—I looked on like a man in a dream! I saw them cling together—each kiss they exchanged was a fresh stab to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli |
