"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now that you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart surpass and exceed in pain the thorn ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... three doors away, was a thorn in his side. Three nights in the week a brazen comet struck into a set of lancers, drowning the metallic thud of the piano and compelling his ear to follow the latest popular ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... how frightened she was! But the lion seemed in such pain that she was sorry for him, and drew nearer and nearer till she saw he had a large thorn in one foot. She pulled out the thorn and bound up the place, and the lion was grateful, and licked her hand by way of thanks with his ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... in the crisis of matters, so far as this session of Congress is concerned, in relation to the Telegraph, which absorbs all my time. Perfect enthusiasm seems to pervade all classes in regard to it, but there is still the thorn in the flesh which is permitted by a wise Father to keep me humble, doubtless. May his strength be sufficient for me and I shall fear nothing, and will bear it till He sees fit to remove it. Pray for me, as I do for you, that, if prosperity ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... the poet, son of Etain, what could he do. "It is not hard to say that," said Carpre. "I will make a satire on them at sunrise, and the wind from the north, and I on a hill-top and my back to a thorn-tree, and a stone and a thorn in my hand. And with that satire," he said, "I will put shame on them and enchantment, the way they will not be able to stand against ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the Earl of Oxford for a hundred men-at-arms and as many hobblers, that you may ride round the mound yonder, and so fall upon them unseen. Let all that are left of the archers gather on each side, shoot away their arrows, and then fight as best they may. Wait till they are past yonder thorn-bush and then, Walter, bear my banner straight against that of the King of France. Fair sirs, may God and the thought of your ladies hold ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stars, A mist of blue in the beds, a blaze Of red in the celadon jars: And velvety bees in convolvulus bells, And roses of bountiful Spring. But I said—"Though roses and bees have spells, They have thorn, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... companion is Pilgrim Joyful. These flowers came from the garden of Patient Endurance, which is situated on Mount Calm. The flowers are free to all pilgrims; but the road to the garden is a very rough road, and thorn-bushes fringe it for a considerable distance. Some pilgrims once organized a band to clear out the thorns; but the bushes have such a tough bark that no knife was able to cut through them. So they stand there ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... lustre shines, An' hangs her golden ear, An' nature's voice fra every bush Is singing sweet and clear, 'Neath some white thorn to song unknown, To mortal never seen, 'Tis there with thee I fain wad be, Mi ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... battlefield, and that nothing so tormented them as to die idly in their beds." "No wonder," says Sammes, "that they conquered many nations; distressed the Romans themselves, and were a constant thorn in the side of the Gauls" ("Antiquities ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... thin like the moon in the daylight; but it grew brighter and brighter, until it hurt one's eyes to look at it, as though it had been the blessed sun itself. Angel Gabriel's hand was as white as silver, and in it he held a green bough with blossoms, like those that grow on the thorn bush. As for his robe, it was all of one piece, and finer than the Father Abbot's linen, and shone beside like the sunlight on pure snow. So I knew from all these things that it was the blessed ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... of praying, I looked up and saw standing beside me One, thorn-crowned and with wounded side, Whose features were the features of a man, but Whose face ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... forth for evil, To do it diligently. The prince asketh and the judge is ready for reward, And the great man, he uttereth the evil of his soul; Thus they weave it together. The best of them is as a brier; The most upright is worse than a thorn hedge. A man's enemies are the men ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... year's at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... sometimes on foot, Lewis wandered with his flock over the low hills. When the rains had been kind and the wilderness was a riot of leaf and bloom above long reaches of verdant young grass, his journeys were short. But when the grass was dry, the endless thorn-trees leafless, and the whole earth, stripped of Nature's awnings, weltered under a brazen sky, the hardy goats carried him far in their ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... of the consular staff in China were as follows: Mr. G. T. Lay was consul at Canton, Captain George Balfour at Shanghai (where, however, he was soon succeeded by Sir Rutherford Alcock), Mr. Henry Gribble at Ainoy, and Mr. Robert Thorn at Ningpo. Among the interpreters were the future Sir Thomas Wade and Sir Harry Parkes. Various difficulties presented themselves with regard to the foreign settlements, and the island of Kulangsu at Amoy ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... hermitage, magnanimous and unswerving, and looking like an embodiment of pious works piled together, and glorified him by reciting his deeds. The deities said, 'Thou wert formerly the refuge of the gods when they were oppressed by Nahusha. Thorn of the world that he was, he was thrown down from his throne of heaven—from the celestial regions. Vindhya, the foremost of all mountains, suddenly began to increase his height, from a wrathful competition with the sun (i. e., to rival him in altitude). ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... pleasure, or honor, or the like. Therefore, why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why yet it is but like the thorn or brier, which prick and scratch because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then, let a man take heed the revenge be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that knew me in the park Among strange faces; while my little girl Leaped with the squirrels, chirruped with the birds And with the sunlight glowed. She was so dear, So beautiful, so sweet; and for the time The rose of love, shorn of its thorn of shame, Bloomed in my heart. Then suddenly you passed. I sat alone upon the public bench; You, with your lawful husband, rode in state; And when your eyes fell on me and my child, They were not eyes, but ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... want to tell you a fable too, to match yours about Melanion. Once there was a certain man called Timon,[447] a tough customer, and a whimsical, a true son of the Furies, with a face that seemed to glare out of a thorn-bush. He withdrew from the world because he couldn't abide bad men, after vomiting a thousand curses at 'em. He had a holy horror of ill-conditioned fellows, but he was mighty tender ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... when June had lured her rose To mask the sharpness of its thorn; Knocked yet again, heard only yet Thee singing ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the end of the e-text. In the primary text (Cursory Observations), the text was left as printed except when an error was unambiguous. In quoted verses, the use of y for (thorn) and z for [gh] ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... "Leguminous" plants, all of them having flowers like butterflies, seeds in (frequently pendent) pods, —"laetum siliqua quassante legumen"—smooth and tender leaves, divided into many minor ones; strange adjuncts of tendril, for climbing (and sometimes of thorn); exquisitely sweet, yet pure scents of blossom, and almost always harmless, if not serviceable seeds. It is of all tribes of plants the most definite, its blossoms being entirely limited in their parts, and not passing into other forms. It is also the most usefully ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... looked at the speaker as though he could hardly believe his ears. No doubt his experience with boys had been along quite a different line. He evidently fancied that they were only made to prove a thorn in the flesh of every circus owner, stealing under the canvas of the big round-top, annoying the animals, and throwing decayed vegetables at the clown when he was trying his best to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... a single building. Inside the four-foot-high thorn hedge that surrounded the two-acre area, there were a dozen buildings of hard, irridescent plastic shining in the sun. They all looked soft and pleasant and comfortable. Even the thorn hedge, filled as it was by the lacy leaves that concealed the hard, sharp thorns, looked ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... cling to the thorn, Shrivelled and red; The limbs long dead Clutch at a leaf long torn— It taps all day on the spikes As the spume ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... frozen attention as I lay in a sort of spell. I saw with apathy the mountains, extraordinary in the crystal prism of the air, and soon after the strangest scene I have ever looked on by the light of day. For as we went along the driver would give a cry, and when an answering cry came from the thorn-bush we stopped, and a naked Indian would appear, running, to receive a little parcel of salt or sugar or tobacco he had yesterday given the driver some humble coin to buy for him in Thomas. With changeless pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain, and a grunt when his ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... small fields, and then a bit of open ground scattered with gorse and thorn bushes, and much broken by ups and downs. There, one afternoon on a big stone was seated Steadfast Kenton, a boy of fourteen, sturdy, perhaps loutish, with an honest ruddy face under his leathern cap, a coarse smock frock and stout gaiters. He was watching the fifteen sheep and lambs, the old ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in runlets back Till the surge drove them furiously in, Shaking with thunderous bass the cloven granite! Yet to the earth-line of the tumbled cliffs The wild grass crept; the sweet-leafed bayberry Scented the briny air; the fern, the sumach, The prostrate juniper, the flowering thorn, The blueberry, the clinging blackberry, Tangled the fragrant sod; and in their midst The red rose bloomed, wet with the drifted spray. From the main shore cut off, and isolated By the invading, the circumfluent ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... long standing we know that other elements may be injected into that system so as to change it, or that one system may be destroyed and another system built up to take its place. This is the secret of cures of this nature—of mental troubles—the irritating factor, the thorn in the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... glorious old timber massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among these, we got at last into a picturesque dingle; the grey rocks peeped from among the ferns and wild flowers, and the steps of soft sward along its sides were dark in the shadows of silver-stemmed birch, and russet thorn, and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Erl-king and his daughter might glide on ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... prompt, direct, and steel the heart to fear! Oh, not to such the voice of peace shall speak, Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek; Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye, But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh; Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be, Wealth but a thorn, and power a fruitless tree; And, as they near the tomb, with panting breast, Shrink from the dread ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... ignorance in which his countrymen were at present buried, and said that his friend the Governor and himself were endeavouring to establish a school in the vicinity, and that they had made application to the Government for the use of an empty convent called the Espinhero, or thorn-tree, at about a league's distance, and that they had little doubt of their request being complied with. I had before told him who I was; and now, after expressing my joy at the plan which he had in contemplation, I urged him in the most pressing manner ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... through the crown of the former as neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Professor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on one of those small CALTHROPS our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass when there were Indians about,—iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a half long,—stick through moccasins into feet,—cripple 'em on the spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a day ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... swimmer. He has a handsome coat, and gets a new one two, three, four, or five times in a season, if his growth require it. When the new coat is quite hard and fit for use under the old, he strips the old one off among the thorn-bushes. He and his lady hybernate. The lady leaves her sixteen or twenty eggs, all glued together, for the sun to vivify. The snake's tongue, as we have said, is forked, the jaws dilatable; he prefers frogs for his dinner, but is satisfied with mice, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and a gathering blackness in his eyes as he listened while Katy, rousing partially from her lethargy, talked of the days when she was a little girl, and Morris had built the playhouse for her by the brook, where the thorn apples grew and the waters fell ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... swan swim down the Lea, Singing a sad farewell unto the vale, While fishes leapt to hear her melody, And on each thorn a gentle nightingale And many other birds forbore their notes, Leaping from tree to tree, as she along The panting bosom of the current floats, Rapt with the music of her dying song: When from a thick and all-entangled spring ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Frost dwells. But I love best the land where the nightingale lives and tells me of his love. One night when he was singing and telling me that my perfume was the sweetest in the garden and my damask cheek the softest, a Thorn Bush which grew near and had tried many times to win him from me began to tell how sweet were his notes ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... poor, anxieties about work and wages, clothes and food, wife and children, become the thorn plants, harmless in appearance at first, which in the end may choke the seed of grace in your heart. If you are rich, the pleasure which wealth may purchase, or love of the wealth itself, may become the bitter root, which in its maturity may overpower all spiritual life within you, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Miss him? If Dr. King had known what even three days without David would mean to her, he would not have wasted his breath in suggesting that she should give him up! Yet the possibility of such a thing had the allurement of terror; she played with the thought, as a child, wincing, presses a thorn into its flesh to see how long it can bear the smart. Suppose, instead of this three days' trip with Dr. Lavendar, David was going away to stay? The mere question made her catch him in her arms as if to assure herself ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... dominant classes—the slave class and the master class—instantly, as it were, the lamb and the lion were commanded to lie down together. The master class, fresh from the fields of a bloody war, with his musket strapped to his shoulder and the sharp thorn of ignominious defeat penetrating his breast; the master class, educated for two hundred years to dominate in his home, in the councils of municipal, state and Federal government; the master class, who had been taught that slavery was a divine institution ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... {115c} Lit. "thorn bushes." For an illustration of the advantage which the natives would derive from their woods and thickets in times of war, the reader is referred to a story told of Caradoc in the Iolo MSS. pp. 185, 597. ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... and shall we fear The cross with all its scorn? Or love a faithless, evil world That wreathed his brow with thorn? ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... full moon yonder, and not the man in it? why, methinks 'tis too-too evident: I see his dog very plain, and look you, just under his tail is a thorn-bush ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... me this declare:— If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... thought I was home, ill, and my mother, that I was at school, deeply immersed in study. However, with these and other delinquencies not uncommon among boys, I learned at McNanly's school, and a little later, under a pedagogue named Thorn, a smattering of geography and history, and explored the mysteries of Pike's Arithmetic and Bullions' English Grammar, about as far as I could be carried up to the age of fourteen. This was all the education then bestowed upon me, and this—with the exception ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... at the spring And the day's at the morn; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing: The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven: All's well with ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... in the village was over she walked toward the cliff. She had some idea that it would be pleasant to go up to the church town, but just where the trees and underwood came near to the shingle a little bird singing on a May-thorn beguiled her to listen. Then the songster went on and on, as if it called her, and Denas followed its music; until, by and by, she came to where the shingle was but a narrow strip, and the verdure retreated, and the rocks grew larger and higher; ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... grub that is found in old manure heaps, straw stacks and hog lots carries eggs containing embryos of the Thorn-headed Worm. The white grub is eaten by the hog. The larvae of the Thorn-headed Worm is liberated by the process of digestion and becomes a parasite in the intestines of the hogs, where it develops into a fully matured worm. Large numbers of hogs quickly become infested with this ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... Voluptuous soul of the amorous South! Oh! whence the wind, the rain, the drouth; The dews of eve; the mists of morn; The bloom of rose; the thistle's thorn; Whence light of love; whence dark of scorn; Whence joy; whence grief; Death, born of wrong— Ah! whence is life ten-thousand passions throng?— Thence is ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... hour—not a minute—not an instant, or—for ever! Young sir, you have already stayed too long, if you stay not always. Leave me to dream of you, and to die. The thorn is in my heart; it may kill me gradually. Go. Why, sir, have you looked upon me as man never before looked? Why, why have you mingled your false tears with mine, that were so true—and, oh, so loving! But what am I, who thus speak so proudly to a being ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... But, under provocation even, Nature must be true. So true is she, indeed, that every violation of her dignities illustrates the meaning of that sovereign utterance, VENGEANCE IS MINE. She will not bring a thorn-tree from an acorn. Pray, day and night, and see if she will let you gather figs of thistles. Prayer has its conditions, and faith is not the sum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... were torn of stone and thorn, Full slow He moved on roads forlorn, But joyous hearts accompanied Him; Alas, my feet are softly shod, And on the road that leads to God, They have not sought to ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself. Now, it is true that any positive creed, true or false, would tend to be independent of itself. It might be Roman Catholicism or Mahomedanism or Materialism; but, if strongly held, it would be a thorn in the side of the Servile State. The Moslem thinks all men immortal: the Materialist thinks all men mortal. But the Moslem does not think the rich Sinbad will live forever; but the poor Sinbad will die on his deathbed. The Materialist does ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... her father, and sister. They are en route for the city of Natchez, the port of departure for their journey south-westward into Texas; just starting away from their old long-loved dwelling, whose gates they have left ajar, its walls desolate behind thorn. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn; Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright With tangled gossamer that fell by night, Pearling his ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... which runs round the summit of the apse is another beautiful feature of the exterior of the eastern part of the church. It seems to be formed of stalks from a thorn tree intertwining in such a way as to form triangular openings. This parapet or coronet is as much like lacework as it is possible for stonework to be, and gives to the building a ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... her being found is for somebody to come up when we're not expecting them and see her," said the Terror. "So I'm going to block the path with thorn-bushes; and any one who comes up it will shout to us. But there's no need to do that yet; nobody will think about us for a ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... flesh, And foam his life out in dark froth of blood Vain as a wind's waif of the loud-mouthed sea Torn from the wave's edge whitening. Tell him this; Though thrice his might were mustered for our scathe 730 And thicker set with fence of thorn-edged spears Than sands are whirled about the wintering beach When storms have swoln the rivers, and their blasts Have breached the broad sea-banks with stress of sea, That waves of inland and the main make war As men that mix and grapple; though his ranks Were more to number than all ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sweets combine, Of these a grove of balmy sort shall rise, And, with its fragrant blossoms, scent the skies! Then round this little favour'd isle, I'll bring, With gentle windings, yonder silver spring; While eglantine and thorn shall interpose Their hedge, a rampart 'gainst invading foes— Lest sheep and rambling goats the place annoy, And spoil the promise of our future joy. Oh then approach, ye favour'd of the loves! Come and dwell here ye gentle ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... despatch ten men from the senate in recognition of the apparently absolute subjugation of the Gauls[52] and that the people were so slated by consequent hopes as to vote him large sums of money was a thorn in Pompey's side. He attempted to persuade the consuls not to read Caesar's letters but conceal the facts for a very long time until the glory of his deeds should of its own motion spread itself abroad, and further ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... might be added to the list of guests, the Duke had gone alone into his library. There a pile of letters reached him, among which he found one marked "Private," and addressed in a hand which he did not recognise. This he opened suddenly,—with a conviction that it would contain a thorn,—and, turning over the page, found the signature to it was "Francis Tregear." The man's name was wormwood to him. He at once felt that he would wish to have his dinner, his fragment of a dinner, brought to him in that ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... powers of endurance; no spoilt dinners, scorched linen, dirtied carpets, torn sofa-covers, squealing brats, cross husbands, would ever discompose either of you. You ought never to marry a good-tempered man, it would be mingling honey with sugar, like sticking white roses upon a black-thorn cudgel. With this very picturesque metaphor I close my letter. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... was an Old Lady whose folly Induced her to sit in a holly; Whereon, by a thorn her dress being torn, ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... Aside.] Oh, oh! It is that thorn in my eye, the king's brother-in-law. Alas! the danger is great. Poor woman! My coming hither proves as fruitless as the sowing of a handful of seeds on salty soil. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... tale has advanced some way, then. It was not a glance and a passing word, and a thorn left in the heart to hurt terribly at times. That was ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... of seed advanced still farther. It rooted and grew. But the soil had other occupants. It was full of seeds of weeds and thorns (not thorn bushes). So the two crops ran a race, and as ill weeds grow apace, the worse beat, and stifled the green blades of the springing corn, which, hemmed in and shut out from light and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons through the flowering thorn; Thou minds me o' departed ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... brier and thorn, The barley and the wheat shall spring, And valleys standing thick with corn (Praise God, my heart!), shall laugh ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... crushed. Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was stifled, and, with injunctions that we should hover protectingly near him, he was sent forth, a thorn in our sides. In half an hour he was accidentally remembered, and was found to be nowhere within view; so we pursued our way, well pleased. He had dropped quietly off, at the first canter, into a miry slough, and had returned sobbingly, covered with mortification and mud, to the arms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... evidently another thorn pricking. Let us have it out, and then I'll kiss the place to make it well as I used to do when I took the splinters from the fingers you are pricking so unmercifully," said the doctor, anxious to relieve his pet patient ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... that of elongation of the epithelial processes into the connective tissue, until the rete Malpighii gives one the impression that it has hanging to its underneath surface and into the corium a number of thorn-like processes. These extend all round the front of the foot, and even in great part behind. Accompanying this elongation of the processes is a condensation of the epithelial cells immediately above the rete Malpighii, with a partial or total loss of their nuclei. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... many a flower distilling fragrant dew From brightly coloured petals. Almond trees Give snowy promise of sweet leaves and fruit; Here all the scented tangle of the South Covers the boulders, calcined by the sun To pearly whiteness; thorn or asphodel Sprout from each cranny of the topmost ledge To nod against the deep blue sky, or peer Into the verdure-clad ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... I was drawn—[13] A realm of pleasance, many a mound, And many a shadow-chequer'd lawn Full of the city's stilly sound, [14] And deep myrrh-thickets blowing round The stately cedar, tamarisks, Thick rosaries [15] of scented thorn, Tall orient shrubs, and obelisks Graven with emblems of the time, In honour of the golden prime ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... through the quiet night. The young man felt a distinct pain for the Christ by his side, like the pressing of a thorn into the brow. He seemed to know the prick himself. For these were some of ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... it was Beatrice Cenci going to torture. Now it was Mary Magdalene going to the cross. At almost every house she felt a kindness speak for her, except mankind; a recollection of nursing, comforting, praying with some one, but all forgotten now. "Via Crucia, Via Crucia," her thorn-torn feet seemed to patter in the echoes of her ears and mind, and there arose upon her spirit the sternest curse of women, direful with God's own rage, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a very small one; but he found it almost too big for him. His dignity and peace of mind, large good-will of ministry and strong Christian sense of magistracy, all were sadly pricked and wounded by a very small thorn in the flesh ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... near the road. So he put her up on his horse and bade her follow. The rain had ceased for the time being, though evidently the storm was not yet over. The tracks led up a wash to a wide flat where mesquite, prickly pear, and thorn-bush grew so thickly that Jennie could not ride into it. Duane was thoroughly concerned. He must have her horse. Time was flying. It would soon be night. He could not expect her to scramble quickly through that brake on foot. Therefore he decided to risk leaving her at the edge of ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... past. You need not murmur, though you are sorry.' MURISON. 'But St Paul says, "I have learnt, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." 'JOHNSON. 'Sir, that relates to riches and poverty; for we see St Paul, when he had a thorn in the flesh, prayed earnestly to have it removed; and then he could not be content.' Murison, thus refuted, tried to be smart, and drank to Dr Johnson, 'Long may you lecture!' Dr Johnson afterwards, speaking of his not drinking wine, said, 'The Doctor spoke of lecturing' (looking to him). ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of the negro, that the very perplexity of the question is a proof that he is altogether a distinct variety. So long as it is generally considered that the negro and the white man are to be governed by the same laws and guided by the same management, so long will the former remain a thorn in the side of every community to which he may unhappily belong. When the horse and the ass shall be found to match in double harness, the white man and the African black will pull together under the same regime. It is the grand error of equalizing that which is unequal, that has ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of verdigris-green or lemon-yellow—first harbingers of autumn. Into the open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven. Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A desolate spot, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... fighting his way downwards, in the direction of the brook. His progress was impeded by a thick undergrowth of brier, and other matted vegetation, as well as by the entanglements thrown in his way by the taller bushes of thorn and hazel, the entwined and elastic branches of which, in their recoil, galled and fretted him, by inflicting smart blows on his face and hands. This was a hardship he usually little regarded. But, upon the present ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thorn in her heart was that, changed as he was from the dissolute, engaging youth that she had dreamed of reforming, she still knew him for himself. He was, as he said, her husband. And, for all that she shrank from him and his criminality with horror, she was obliged to acknowledge—oh, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Paradise out here, and, when it was nearly finished, had suddenly repented of his whim and refused to spend another farthing. The thousands upon thousands of mighty trees were bounded by long, irregular walls of hard earth, at the top of which were stuck distraught thorn bushes. These walls gave the rough, penurious aspect which was in such sharp contrast to the exotic mystery they guarded. Yet in the fierce blaze of the sun their meanness was not disagreeable. Domini even liked it. It seemed to her as if the desert had thrown ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... phrase: a panic terror. To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death: this it is to be afraid of Pan. Highly respectable citizens who flee life's pleasures and responsibilities and keep, with upright hat, upon the midway of custom, avoiding the right hand and the left, the ecstasies and the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... What the first impression Of his primary thinking; What became his clothing; Who carried on a disguise, Owing to the wiles of the country, In the beginning? Wherefore should a stone be hard; Why should a thorn be sharp-pointed; Who is hard like a flint; Who is salt like brine; Who sweet like honey; Who rides ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... presented was one of great splendour; for "the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII., who was then styled by his loving subjects 'the rose without a thorn,' witnessed a remarkable revival of magnificence in personal decoration. So brilliant were the dresses of both sexes at the grand entertainment over which the King and Queen presided at Richmond, that it is difficult to convey an adequate idea of their splendour. But in the first half of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Another thorn that wounded our Polly in her first attempt to make her way through the thicket that always bars a woman's progress, was the discovery that working for a living shuts a good many doors in one's face even in democratic America. As Fanny's guest she had been, in spite of poverty, kindly ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... was a log hut, where Colonel Wheeler used to shelter his corn. It sat in a lot behind a rail fence and thorn bushes, near the sweetest of springs. There was an entrance where a door once was, and within, a massive rickety fireplace; great chinks between the logs served as windows. Furniture was scarce. A pale blackboard crouched ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Woman's Republican League was formed which vied in size with the organization of 1894. Mrs. Stanley M. Casper, a most efficient member of the Equal Suffrage Club in the campaign of 1893, was president; Mrs. A. L. Welch, vice-president and Miss Mary H. Thorn, secretary. They organized every district in the city of Denver, appointing women to look after the registration, secure speakers and get out the vote. It was through this league that U. S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge came to the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Ajetas, I had noticed a small wound on the forefinger of my right hand, which I attributed to having been accidentally scratched by a branch or a thorn, while we were endeavouring to make our escape with such precipitation from the arrows which the savages let fly at us. The first night I spent at Manilla, I felt in the place where the wound was such extreme pain that I fell down twice totally senseless. The agony increased every instant, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... antiquity—having begun no doubt with Adam—or its modes of production; as, when created grandly by the whistling gale, or exasperatingly by the locomotive, or gushingly by the lark, or sweetly by the little birds that "warble in the flowering thorn." ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... due in sad array, Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay 115 Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... been awakened—shall I sleep? The World's at war with tyrants—shall I crouch? The harvest's ripe—and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is in my Couch; Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear, Its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... in the depths of the forest, and she no longer knew whither she should go; then there stood a thorn-bush; there was neither leaf nor flower on it, it was also in the cold winter season, and ice-flakes hung on ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... he strode away from the place later. "So that pair of boobs are going to try for the Army. Oh, I daresay they'll get in. But so will I—and in the same company with them. I wouldn't have missed this for anything. I'll be the thorn in Hal Overton's side the little while that he'll be in the service! I've more than to-day's business to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... railway passed through this, separating the last jagged ledge from the higher portion of the hill, which rises almost precipitously. Running back several hundred yards at the base of this line was a dip full of thorn trees. This deep winds round the rear of the hill, and here there was a ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... mankind had made joyful the breast of Abraham, kinsman of Loth, when he gave him back his son, Isaac, alive. Then 2925 the holy hero looked about over his shoulder, and there not far from him the brother of Aron beheld a ram standing alone, caught fast in the thorn-bushes. Abra- ham took this and laid it on the pyre with great zeal, 2930 in place of his own son, brandished the sword, and dec- orated the burnt-offering, the smoking altar, with the blood of the ram, offered that oblation ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... marriage fortunately turned out satisfactorily, at any rate for the old man and for her family. The Vavasors were relieved from all further trouble, and were as much surprised as gratified when they heard that she did her duty well in her new position. Arabella had long been a thorn in their side, never having really done anything which they could pronounce to be absolutely wrong, but always giving them cause for fear. Now they feared no longer. Her husband was a retired merchant, very rich, not very strong in health, and devoted to his bride. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... isolated, walking with bent back and thorn-crowned head well-nigh bowed to the dust, came ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fine wefts, has got into my head; not "bee-bonneted," but bird-bonneted, I go. Yes, this day shall be given to the king, as our country-folk say, when they go a-pleasuring. I am off with the little wool-gatherers, to see what thorn and brier and fern-stalk and willow-catkin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... where a little wooded island holds a small lagoon in the centre, just wide enough for the wherry to turn round. The entrance lies between two hornbeam trees, which stand close to the brink, spreading over it their thorn-like branches and their shining leaves. Within there is perfect shelter; the island forms a high circular bank, like a coral reef, and shuts out the wind and the passing boats; the surface is paved with leaves of lily and pond-weed, and the boughs above are full of song. No matter what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... who under the harsh family rule of those times had known nothing of a father's, and but too little of a mother's, love? He rode away northward through the Bruneswald, over the higher land of Lincolnshire, through primeval glades of mighty oak and ash, holly and thorn, swarming with game, which was as highly preserved then as now, under Canute's severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... been noted, also, that the same thing is related of the brave but unfortunate Admiral Kempenfeldt, who went down in the Royal George off Portsmouth. During his proprietary of Lady Place, he and his brother planted two thorn trees. But one day, on coming home, the brother noted that the tree planted by the Admiral had completely withered away. Astonished at this unexpected sight, he felt some apprehensions as to Admiral Kempenfeldt's safety, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... sweetest spots that I have seen in Africa, was a little hamlet of three houses, standing apart from the four large towns above-mentioned, and surrounded by an impervious hedge of thorn-bushes, with two palisaded entrances. Forcing our way through one of these narrow portals, we beheld a grassy area of about fifty yards across, overshadowed by a tree of very dense foliage, which had its massive ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Belllounds, your son was in the cabin gamblin' with the rustlers when I cornered them.... I offered to keep Jack's secret if he'd swear to give Collie up. He swore on his knees, beggin' in her name!... An' he comes back to bully her, an' worse.... Buster Jack!... He's the thorn in your heart, Belllounds. He's the rustler who stole your cattle!... Your pet son—a ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of vegetables. Though there are many crooked and crabbled specimens of humanity among them, run all to thorn and rind, and crowded out of shape by adverse circumstances, like the third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will fail or waver in them; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they furnish ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... he could not endure to see the mess that things were in, and partly because they told him he would have to make a speech that night, and he had to spend two of his hardearned dollars for the hire of a dress-suit. Here, as always, the scarcity of dollars was like a thorn in his flesh. He had been obliged to leave Corydon heart-broken at home, because he had not been able to lay by enough to bring her; he had to stay at a cheap hotel—cheaper even than any of the actors; and when Miss Lewis and Mr. Tapping went ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the papers. Now I knew our current fate, and felt as if I heard again the gas gong going continuously. I had the feeling in April, unknown to any snail on the thorn, that the park was deafening with the clangour of pallid, tense, and contending lunatics. The Serpentine had receded from this tumult. Its tranquil shimmering was now fatuous and unbelievable. It was but half seen; its glittering ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... in which his countrymen existed at present. He said that his friend the governor and himself were endeavouring to establish a school in the vicinity, and that they had made application to the government for the use of an empty convent, called the Espinheiro, or thorn tree, at about a league's distance, and that they had little doubt of their request being complied with. I had before told him who I was, and after expressing joy at the plan which he had in contemplation, I now urged ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Braes o' bonnie Doon, How can ye bloom (so fresh) so fair? Ye little Birds how can ye sing, And I so (weary) full of care! Thou'lt break my heart, thou little Bird, That sings (singest so) upon the Thorn: Thou minds me of departed days That never shall return (Departed ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... decorative fringes, were thin and unbroken lines of forest. Between these two lines of forest lay the open valley of soft and undulating meadow, dotted with its purplish bosks of buffalo willow and mountain sage, its green coppices of wild-rose and thorn, and its clumps of trees. In the hollow of the valley ran ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... agreed to let Cadell have the new work,[291] edition 1500, he paying all charges, and paying also L500—two hundred and fifty at Lammas, to pay J. Gibson money advanced on the passage of young Walter, my nephew, to India. It is like a thorn in one's eye this sort of debt, and Gibson is young in business, and somewhat involved in my affairs besides. Our plan is, that this same Miscellany or Chronicle shall be committed quietly to the public, and we hope it will attract attention. If it does not, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... silent shades of night withdrew, The ruddy morn disclosed at once to view The face of nature in a rich disguise, And brightened every object to my eyes. For every shrub, and every blade of grass, And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass, In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show, While through the ice the crimson berries glow. The thick-sprung reeds the watery marshes yield, Seem polished lances in a hostile field. The stag in limpid currents with surprise, Sees crystal branches on his forehead ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... painted butterflies of our desires and fall down the dark precipice? And if He sees and hears the wavering, calamitous life of all creatures, and especially of the most beautiful and the most helpless, does He ever sigh and weep, as we do when we see a dead child or a moth's wing impaled on a thorn? ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... missed his firstborn. Whatever annoyed him in his wife or any of her children, fed the desire for Richard. Arthur did not please him. He had no way distinguished himself—and some men are annoyed when their sons prove only a little better than themselves. Percy was a poisoned thorn in his side: he was even worse than his father. All his ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... his dear spouse was stolen, he was very angry indeed. He determined to get her back, by hook or by crook. So he got a long sharp thorn, and tied it at his waist by a thread; and on his head he put the half of a walnut-shell for a helmet, and the skin of a dead frog served for body-armour. Then he made a little kettle-drum out of the ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... from the islet and got over to the mainland, and slept in a hooked-thorn copse, with a species of black pepper plant, which we found near the top of Mount Zomba, in the Manganja country,[6] in our vicinity; ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... into its sacred forests. On one of these trips he saw a magnificent elk with antlers such as he had never dreamed were carried by any living animal. He could not forget that deer. Its memory was a thorn that pricked him wherever else he hunted. Finally he determined to have it, even if Mongolian law and the Lama Church ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... more to cross the cup of the volcanic plain, and another half-hour or so to climb the edge on the farther side. Once there, however, the view was a very fine one. Before us was a long steep slope of grassy plain, broken here and there by clumps of trees mostly of the thorn tribe. At the bottom of this gentle slope, some nine or ten miles away, we could make out a dim sea of marsh, over which the foul vapours hung like smoke about a city. It was easy going for the bearers down the slopes, and by midday we had reached ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... were then among the people, comparable in their pretense to sheep, and in their reality to ravening wolves. These were to be recognized by their works and the results thereof, even as a tree to be judged as good or bad according to its fruit. A thorn bush does not produce grapes, nor can thistles bear figs. Conversely, it is as truly impossible for a good tree to produce evil fruit as for a useless and corrupt tree to bring ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... depth had the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed a convention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, in return for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses, including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest of the untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, and Colberg ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the motley wanderers seek, Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn, Mocking and mock'd; with plague and hunger weak, And haggard faces bleach'd as those who mourn, And footsteps redden'd with the trodden thorn; Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... fettered, imprisoned, and made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to church in a rich fool's pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the scum of Nature-stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred and fifty, or two hundred hours over each ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... moved, there was a shadow behind the blind, and suddenly the window was thrown up widely, and a pale figure—a woman's figure—stood in the opening. Rachel, no doubt! Delane slipped behind a thorn growing on the bare hill-side. His heart thumped. Instinctively his hand groped for something in his pocket. If she had guessed that he was there—within twenty yards ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... would he haunt, and there alone, as thus, To woods and hills pour forth his artless strains. "Cruel Alexis, heed you naught my songs? Have you no pity? you'll drive me to my death. Now even the cattle court the cooling shade And the green lizard hides him in the thorn: Now for tired mowers, with the fierce heat spent, Pounds Thestilis her mess of savoury herbs, Wild thyme and garlic. I, with none beside, Save hoarse cicalas shrilling through the brake, Still track your ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... possum hunts an' the rabbits we caught in gums. I remember killin' birds at night with thorn brush. When bird blindin' we hunt 'em at night with lights from big splinters. We went to grass patches, briars, and vines along the creeks an' low groun's where they roosted, an' blinded 'em an' killed 'em when they come out. We cooked 'em on coals, and I remember making a stew and having dumplings ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... a little fellow, had she not extracted many a thorn and bound up many a cut finger? and now he was a man, would she be less helpful to him when he wanted ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... because his eyes were fixed on the tamarind fruit, but after she had gone a long way he caught sight of her and came down as fast as he could and, gathering up his weapons, went in pursuit. But Chandaini Rani had got a long start, and as she hurried along she passed a thorn tree standing by the side of the road and she called to it "Thorn tree, Bosomunda is coming after me, do your best to detain him for a little." As she spoke it seemed as if a weight descended on the tree and swayed it to and fro so that its branches swept the ground, and it answered her ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... Haight and Wife Micah Palmer and Wife Andrew White and Wife Stephen Hicks and Wife Daniel Tobias and Wife Ezekiel Hoag and Wife William Haight Joseph Reynolds Obadiah Griffin Solomon Haight Benjam White John Hallock David Arnold Nathan Bull Hannah Thorn Hannah Tripp Margaret Allen Rose Barton Sarah Collins Bersheba Southerlin Sarah Jacocks ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... had reached the thicket of roses. The lovely Fanny, who seemed to be the queen of the day, was obstinately bent on plucking a rose-branch for herself, and in the attempt pricked her finger with a thorn. The crimson stream, as if flowing from the dark-tinted rose, tinged her fair hand with the purple current. This circumstance set the whole company in commotion; and court- plaster was called for. A quiet, elderly man, tall, and meagre- looking, who was one of ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... thou wast bonnie, my Marion, And lovesome thy rising breast-bane; The dew sat in gems ower thy ringlets, By the thorn when we were alane. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... far, and got lost. The sky was dotted with little fleecy clouds, the wind was shaking the tiny bells of the oats; a stream was purling along through a meadow—and then, all at once, an infectious odour made them halt, and they saw on the pebbles between the thorn trees the putrid carcass of ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... The thorn of Mrs. Hardy's distress, revealed as it was in those last contemptuous words, struck Dave as so ridiculous that he laughed outright. It was the second occasion upon which his sense of humour had suffered an ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... to the bridge across which the Yorkers must pass. Sheriff Ten Eyck spurred forward with his personal staff to meet them. With him came the infamous John Munro who, as a justice of the peace under commission from New York, was such a thorn in the flesh of the settlers. The sheriff was a very pompous Dutchman who believed without question in the validity of New York's jurisdiction over the Grants, and who, despite his bombastic manner, was personally ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... there grows a painful thorn the floweret's stalk upon: Behind each cupboard's gilded doors there lurks a Skeleton: The crumpled roseleaf mocks repose, beneath the bed of down: In proof of which attend the tale ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... cruel rocks Beneath the pleasant moss I seemed to tread. But soon my ears grew weary of that din, My eyes grew tired of all that flesh and stone; And, as a snail that crawls on a smooth stalk, Will reach the end and find a sharpened thorn— So did I reach the cruel end at last. I saw the starving mother and her child, Who feared that Death would surely end its sleep, And cursed the wolf of Hunger with her moans. And yet, methought, ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... cry: "If Thou set'st store By feeble homage, Witness to the Truth, Thou art the King, crowned by thy witnessing!" I die in soul, and fall down worshipping. Art glories vanish, vapours of the morn. Never but Thee was there a man in sooth, Never a true crown but thy crown of thorn. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... at early morn, Those honeysuckle buds Have swelled to double growth; that thorn Hath put ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... untidy clothes, I was a thorn in the side of those ladies. Visibly turned up their noses when I came around. One day after a big row with my eldest brother I just walked off. I've been regularly up against it ever since. Just a year ago. Seems more like ten. I've ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... the parson, placing his hand to his head. "When will that man cease to be a thorn in the flesh? The Stickles are as honest as the sun, and Farrington knows it. This business must be stopped. Dan will you please bring out Midnight. We ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... was beautiful Beyond all dreams to restore, I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither, And knock ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... very close to the war, so close that no one knew anything about the war, therefore it was very dull inside the enclosure, with no news and no newspapers, and just quarrels and monotonous work. As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly thorn gave out or gave way, stout stakes and stout boarding took its place, thus making it a veritable prison wall to those confined within. There was but one recognized entrance, the big double gates with a sentry box beside them, at which box or within it, according to the ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte
... garrisoned it with troops; Catharine declared her dominion over the vast tract of land which lies between the Dwina and Borysthenes; and Frederick William marked down another sweep of Poland. to follow the fate of Dantzic and of Thorn, while watching the dark policy of Austria regarding its selecting portions of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... leaning her head against an old gnarled trunk in quiet content. A small-shaped head, with dark curly hair, and a pair of blue-grey eyes with black curved lashes, these were perhaps her chief characteristics; more I cannot say, for it is difficult to describe oneself, and it was I, Hilda Thorn, ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... that we require an interpreting mind to explain them. This is the reason why so many thoughtful men believe that the outburst of fire when Julian tried to rebuild the Jewish temple, and the wonder of the thorn in the history of Port Royal, were nothing more than natural wonders. If the final cause be considered to have been sufficient in these cases to warrant divine interposition, at least there was no interpreter to explain them, nor any revealed ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... his right, Eve sits on a stool in the shadow of a tree by the doorway, spinning flax. Her wheel, which she turns by hand, is a large disc of heavy wood, practically a flywheel. At the opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a passage through ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... piteously begged for a drink of water, and taking a desperate chance, when he saw in the darkness an open gate that led into a field, he guided the tired horse into it, and after Joe had closed the gate behind them he drove ahead until a thick thorn hedge stopped further progress. Here they lifted the wounded man out of the buggy and laid him upon the ground. He continued to plead most piteously for a cooling drink of water to appease his torturing fever thirst. "Joe," cautioned ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... wind—ind the nightingales were as vocal as in fine bright weather. I heard one in a narrow lane, and went towards it, treading softly, in order not to scare it away, until I got within eight or ten yards of it, as it sat on a dead projecting twig. This was a twig of a low thorn tree growing up from the hedge, projecting through the foliage, and the bird, perched near its end, sat only about five feet above the bare ground of the lane. Now, I owe my best thanks to this individual nightingale, for sharply calling to my mind a ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... happier is the rose distilled Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... went on Mr. Silk, nodding down admiration. "What a group to startle!—Cupid extracting a thorn from the hand of Venus—or (shall we say?) the Love god, having wounded his mother in sport, kisses the scratch to make it well. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... face at the back of a window indicated an interest in his affairs on the part of the fairer citizens of Seabridge. At the gate of the first of an ancient row of cottages, conveniently situated within hail of The Grapes, The Thorn, and The Swan, he paused, and walking up the trim-kept garden path, knocked ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... from Barnstable to Dr. Whitchcot." He had lately heard of a Scotchman who had been carried by fairies into France; but the purpose of his present letter is to communicate other sort of apparitions than the ghost of Barnstable. He had gone to Glastonbury, "to pick up a few berries from the holy thorn which flowered every Christmas day."[205] The original thorn had been cut down by a military saint in the civil wars; but the trade of the place was not damaged, for they had contrived not to have a single holy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... again, and just as I was saying to myself, "I've got it, I've got it!"—for it is a great pleasure to identify a friendly odour in the fields—I saw, near the bank of the brook, among ferns and raspberry bushes, a thorn-apple tree in full bloom. ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... such a strangely fair countenance. Also the garden is such as I have never before beheld it, which must needs be due to thy care. But wherefore didst thou not tell me of those fair palms that have grown where the thorn hedge was wont to be? I was but just stretching out my hand ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a place of considerable trade. A view of the town, as it was at the time of the birth of Copernicus, is here given. The walls, with their watch-towers, will be noted, and the strategic importance which the situation of Thorn gave to it in the fifteenth century still belongs thereto, so much so that the German Government recently constituted the town a ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... rose, And after that the thorn; An hour of dewy morn, And then the glamour goes. Ah, love in beauty born, A ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... rind, Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste: Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps Luxuriant; mean while murmuring waters fall Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, That to the fringed bank ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... century of years and dreary wastes of sea and land lay between 'em, but these cow-slip blows and daisies took them back to their youth and the sunny fields they wandered in with the young lover whose eyes wuz as blue as the English violets, while their own cheeks wuz as rosy as the thorn flowers. ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... absolute incapacity and infirmity," and to have walked out in the "fine Isaac Walton mornings, careless as a beggar, and walking, walking, and dying walking;" but he says, "the hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... difficulty to extricate him, as the water was at least four feet below the bank. But I reached Scutari fortunately before night, wet, bedraggled, and muddied from head to foot, my clothes in tatters from the tenacious wait-a-bit thorn hedges we had had to force our way through, and all my baggage soaked, more or less as the water had had time to penetrate to it. Not an inhabited house did we pass on the way, such had been the terror of the border warfare still not dissipated. But from Scutari south there were other ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Incarnate as his seed be born. Three queens has he—each lovely dame Like Beauty, Modesty, or Fame. Divide thyself in four, and be His offspring by these noble three. Man's nature take, and slay in fight Ravan who laughs at heavenly might— This common scourge, this rankling thorn Whom the three worlds too long have borne. For Ravan, in the senseless pride Of might unequalled, has defied The host of heaven, and plagues with woe Angel and bard and saint below, Crushing each spirit ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... powers to Desdemona, than from any desire for food. And so it fell out that, having slain the bunny, the hunter and his mate proceeded to amuse themselves in the vicinity, leaving the rabbit lying where it had received its coup de grace, at the foot of a stunted, wind-twisted thorn-bush. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... to Uterysdale, and long continued to use his power to protect the bold outlaws, and Robin Hood dwelt securely in the greenwood, doing good to the poor and worthy, but acting as a thorn in the sides ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... discovered a similar truth several decades ago and laid it up for future use. Even in my limited experience you ain't the first thorn-apple that I've seen pears grafted on to. In recognition of your friendly warning, allow me to say that I'm only one in ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... came from the direction of the rough stair of unhewn blocks, which led from the steep wall of the ravine down to the spring. A shudder of terror passed through the tender, and not yet fully developed limbs of the shepherdess; still she did not move; the grey birds which were now sitting on a thorn-bush near her flew up, but they had merely heard a noise, and could not distinguish who it was that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
