"Twist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... swung clear, the propeller to which Bob had given a twist began anew to revolve, the plane taxied in a circle, then rose ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... faces. Atoms combine to form molecules, and molecules arrange themselves in certain definite geometric forms such as cubes, tetrahedra, hexagonal prisms and stellate forms, with properties emphasized on certain faces or ends. Thus quartz will twist a ray of light in one direction or the other, depending upon the arrangement which may be known by the external form of the crystal. Calc spar will break up a ray of light into two parts if the light be sent through it in certain directions, ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... horse and pointed to the right stirrup. "Spurs would scratch like that if you jerk your foot, maybe. You're a good rider, Mr Hunter, you can tell. That's a right stirrup, ain't it? Fred Thurman, he's got his left foot twist around, all broke from jerking in his stirrup. Left foot in right stirrup——" He pushed back his hat and rumpled his yellow hair, looking up into Brit's face inquiringly. "Left foot in right stirrup is riding backwards. That's a damn good rider ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... around the limb and place a cork or a smooth stone, just above your fingers on the artery. When this is placed, put a stick about a foot long under the handkerchief at the outer side of the limb and twist the stick so that the handkerchief gets tight enough to keep the stone or cork pressing on the artery just as your fingers did at first. Tie the stick in position so ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... better let you down first. You will be tied quite securely, and there will be no risk whatever, as you know, of the rope giving way. I should advise you to keep your eyes shut, till you get to the bottom, for the rope will certainly twist round and round; but keep your arms well in front of you, and whenever you feel the rock, open your eyes, and send yourself off with your arms and legs. I don't think you will touch, for at this point it seemed to me, as I looked ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... stopped, put down his kit, and hunted about in his rags where the pocket places might be; but all he drew forth were his two empty hands. He looked down the stretch of road they had come with an odd twist to his mouth, then he ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... else.... I was still thinking of it when I looked at the Eclipse again. It would have been hard to find a craft of more delicate, graceful lines. They often said he had a flair for ships and women. A shifting current, some freak of the wind and tide, was making her twist and pull at her anchor, and for a moment the sun struck clean on her broadside. A gaping hole between decks had connected two of her ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... had that twist in his brain for a long time—that he has tried out a dozen girls or more—drops them after a few weeks or months. He has a regular system about it—runs away abroad, stops the pay after a month ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... bronze-colored guards stood holding him, Mr. Pike rapidly took stock of his accomplishments, and formulated a program. With a sudden twist he cleared himself, sprang away from the two, and jumped behind a tree. One soldier started to the right of the tree and the other to the left, so as to close in upon him and retake him. This was ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... her cry that I am making strange faces again. It is my contemptible weakness that if I say a character smiled vacuously, I must smile vacuously; if he frowns or leers, I frown or leer; if he is a coward or given to contortions, I cringe, or twist my legs until I have to stop writing to undo the knot. I bow with him, eat with him, and gnaw my moustache with him. If the character be a lady with an exquisite laugh, I suddenly terrify you by laughing exquisitely. One reads of the astounding ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... last loved by them rather further on. It was simply perhaps that the weather was hot and the mountains drowsing in that iridescent haze that I have seen nearer home than at Chambery. But the vegetation, assuredly, had an all but Transalpine twist and curl, and the classic wayside tangle of corn and vines left nothing to be desired in the line of careless grace. Chambery as a town, however, constitutes no foretaste of the monumental cities. There is shabbiness and shabbiness, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... impalpable yet terribly real menace of authority overshadowing them both now made it imperative that all the facts should be faced. All the facts—but what were they? It was the question he asked himself again and again as he strove to twist out of the black fantasy of that horrible night some tangible shred of truth which might help them both. His own incredible share in it was forever being re-enacted in his mind, and haunted his dreams. In the night, at early ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... A cable tie, esp. the sawtoothed, self-locking plastic kind that you can remove only by cutting (as opposed to a random twist of wire or a twist tie or one of those humongous metal clip frobs). Small cable ties are ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... slaughtered babes, and so honest of "Matthew" to quote just so much of the "prophecy" as served his purpose, leaving out that which altered its whole meaning. After these specimens, we are not surprised to find that—unable to find a prophecy fit to twist to suit his object—our evangelist quietly invents one, and (verse 23) uses a prophecy which has no existence in what was "spoken by the prophets." It is needless to go through all the other passages known as Messianic prophecies, for they may all be dealt with as above; the guiding ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... survived, though we still remember his contemporary townsman, Titian. Strictly, he is not entitled to the immortality of an originator. That belongs to the unknown savage who, in the miocene era probably, first gave a twist to the feather of his arrow, thereby communicating to it a revolving motion at right angles to the line of flight, and making it an "arm of precision." But pre-historic artillery we may dismiss or leave to Milton. The blind bard omits to inform us whether the guns used in the great pounding-match ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Hood, enhancing the distinction which his rough corduroys never wholly obscured. He surveyed Deering critically, gave a twist to his tie, and said it was time to be off. As they drove slowly through the country he discussed the various houses they passed, speculating as to the entertainment they offered. He finally ordered Cassowary to stop at the entrance to ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... the wide hat, the blue eyes seemed to leap out and stab him; they lingered, turning the knife, while their owner appeared to be waiting for him to speak; and then with a final twist, they were pulled away, and Queed found himself ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... vacantly for a while. His spirits simultaneously were swept away; his countenance changed colour; and clinging to old lady Chia, he readily wriggled her about, just as one would twist the sugar (to make sweetmeats with), and could not, for the very death of him, summon up courage to go; so that her ladyship had no alternative but to try and reassure him. "My precious darling" she urged, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... regard as a shimmering, polished floor, was now rumpled and broken into lumpy waves, like mud on a road, and the waves broke into dull yellow foam caps. There was not a light gleam on the whole surface, and dark shadows seemed to crawl and twist about in the very substance of the heavy ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... listen. I could be black. You could rub soot from the chimney all over my face and hands. And I could pin my hair close on top of my head and twist one of your mammy's handkerchiefs tight over it. Then nobody would know me." Sylvia had quite forgotten the fine cookies. She was holding Estralla by the arm, and talking very rapidly. Estralla was almost frightened ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... told me he had a similar shock. He spoke of "Westford and Oxminster," instead of "Oxford and Westminster," and never again could he get it correctly, try as he would. Neither his twist nor mine was quite as bad as that of the speaker who said: "I feel within me a half-warmed fish; I mean ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... the room were stern old croakers, Yellow vests and snow-white chokers. Froggie belles with rush-leaf fans, Froggie beaux in green brogans, Flirted in the bowers there, Hidden from the ball-room's glare. Three old froggies tried a reel,— Twist 'em, turn 'em, ...
— The Nursery, February 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... skunk, a puppy, a person of undesirable ancestry; and when Hal endeavoured to ask a question—which he did quite genuinely, not grasping at once the meaning of what was happening—the marshal bade him "shut his face," and emphasised the command by a twist at his coat-collar. At the same time two of the huskiest mine-guards, who had been waiting at the dining-room door, took him, one by each arm, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... ran against him. He smiled frankly, however, with that droll twist of his mouth which had won so many, and the raillery of his eyes was more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which was not normal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor he could think of was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and presence would look, with the additional twist given in a false ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... part of their something-or-otherishness. Why they should want to be men, men cannot conceive. Men pale before them, grow hot and cold before them, run before them (and after them), swear by them (and at them), and a bit of a chit of a thing in short skirts and lisle-thread stockings will twist able-bodied ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... anything to eat between breakfast and dinner let him have a piece of dry bread; and if he have eaten very heartily at dinner, and, like Oliver Twist, "asks for more!" give him, to satisfy his craving, a piece of dry bread. He will never eat more of that than will do him good, and yet he will take sufficient to satisfy his hunger, which is ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... true speech of a lady, and the twist of the tongue on French, and the nice little things you've missed here among the sheep, Joan darlin', and that neither me nor your mother nor John Mackenzie—good lad that he is, though mistaken at times, woeful mistaken in his judgment ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... codger," explained the philosopher. "Play up to 'im a bit, an' you'll be able to twist 'im round your little finger. I b'lieve he's goin' dotty, an' you can trust me to see that the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... a twist of his life, not a facet of his temperament, not an individual of his family, friends, or acquaintances, not the slightest scrap of paper bearing the mark of his hand, but has been peered into, scrutinised, tracked ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... but the chaff and carcases, so we shall be none the poorer in reality. So as the frost has broken gloriously, I wish you would get me a couple of dozen of good flies, viz., cock a bondhues, red palmers with plenty of gold twist; winged duns, with bodies of hare's ear and yellow mohair mixed well; hackle duns with grey bodies, and a wee silver, these last tied as palmers, and the silver ribbed all the way down. If you could send them in a week I shall be very ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... out ower her neck, And that was her gold twist to be;[189] And they cam down thro' Dumfries toun, And wow but they ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... not passed unnoticed by him, for before I fully realised what was happening, he had in some inexplicable manner sprung to his feet with a single, lightning-like movement, and his hand was already upon my left wrist, when with a quick twist of the arm I managed to get my pistol-barrel pointed at him as I pressed the trigger. There was a bright flash, lighting up the whole cabin as though by a gleam of lightning, and glancing vividly from the rolling eyeballs of my antagonist, a sharp ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... was the Crown Prince of Karnia then, more dashing than Hubert, who was already married and had always been a serious youth, handsomer, a blond in a country of few blond men. His joyous smile had not taken on the mocking twist it acquired later. His blue ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not speed the arrow, when thy hands will be robbed of their cunning. When ookiah (winter) comes with his lashes of frost he will smite thy fingers—they will fall off. Then how wilt thou get food for thy wife? Ookiah will twist thy nose, and it will freeze. ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... stung to the very quick, and in his rage he caught Folly by the hair, and swore a great oath that never should she again invade starry heaven and Olympus, for she was the bane of all. Then he whirled her round with a twist of his hand, and flung her down from heaven so that she fell on to the fields of mortal men; and he was ever angry with her when he saw his son groaning under the cruel labours that Eurystheus laid upon him. Even so did I grieve when mighty Hector was ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... sturdy auxiliary; and with considerable manual exertion and remarkable agility, he gave the unfortunate Adolphus a peculiar twist that at once deposited him behind the bar and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... of it is that Eva has really been the person to bring it about, and—I don't like saying so—she managed to twist what I said, and what you said, so as to make us each believe that the one was quite willing for the move and was only kept back by the other,' observed Amy, who had resented this management when ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... bite is on a limb, tie the limb above the bite toward the body and twist the ligature so tight that the circulation is cut off, or checked. Then cut the wound open very freely. When the bite is on the body, make a free cut, and when this cannot be done suck the wound vigorously, which can done without ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... lumbered heavily, and it was true that Ruth had all she could do to manage the oars. In some places, where the eddies tugged at the blade, it seemed as though a submerged giant seized it and tried to twist it from ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars—even ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... understood him, or that he was a journeyman and not the master of the establishment. But he was as free and easy and natural as possible. An American tobacco-chewer, of fifty years' standing, would not have asked a cut from a neighbor's "lady's twist," or "pig-tail" in more perfect good faith. That good, round, English face would have blushed crimson if the man suspected that I misunderstood him. Nay, more, he would quite likely have thrown the pennies at my head if I had offered them to him ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... than anything else at this present moment"). "I am staying there. It was dark on the balcony and there were a lot of us children; you wouldn't notice me. My name is Mollie—oh, you simply must not twist your leg about like that! Your ankle may be broken; ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the coming down to breakfast with a teeny, weeny twist in one's temper that makes some ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... light very complete, make the base of two pieces of brass tube—one being a sliding fit in the other and with projecting pieces to prevent the cylinder from going too far. The light may then be elevated or lowered as wished. On two ordinary brass terminals twist or solder some flexible wire, but before doing so fix a little bone washer on the screws of the terminal so as to insulate it from the tube. When the wires have been secured to the terminals cover the joint ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... so much diminish the buccal orifice, and twist its corners, as to cause great deformity. The addition of an incision horizontally outwards, at one or both angles of the mouth, will do away with such risk, and allow the surfaces to come together without puckering; while by stitching the skin ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... twist, shot down a narrow courtway—and I was left to fight the fog, and mayhap this Bill Sykes and all the other wild ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... birth to these sects and largely moulded their peculiar doctrines. One extreme begot another, and while each of these denominations emphasized some neglected religious truth, it emphasized it so strongly as to often twist it into an untruth or out of proper relationship to other truths. The people in free America are not interested in the polemical controversies that resulted from religious and political conditions ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... arises in your breast, that all is not right with him (Dash), muzzle him, and lead him in a string (common pack-thread will do; he don't care for twist) to Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... gloomy rest? It was a nymph uprisen to the breast In the fountain's pebbly margin, and she stood 100 'Mong lilies, like the youngest of the brood. To him her dripping hand she softly kist, And anxiously began to plait and twist Her ringlets round her fingers, saying: "Youth! Too long, alas, hast thou starv'd on the ruth, The bitterness of love: too long indeed, Seeing thou art so gentle. Could I weed Thy soul of care, by heavens, I ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... friend! a man of rhymes, And, better still, a man of guineas, To talk of "patrons," in these times, When authors thrive like spinning-jennies, And Arkwright's twist and Bulwer's page Alike may laugh ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of his sort here," the girl remarked; "his soul would fit in a flea-track." She spied the Bronco Kid sauntering back towards her and joined him. He leaned against the wall, watching the gossamer thread of smoke twist upward from his cigarette, seemingly oblivious to the surroundings, and showing no hint of the emotion he had ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... variety of uses to which they are put are innumerable. They are used to advantage in the plain and fancy woolen trade, in the manufacture of shawls and plain woolens of a soft nature, and are also suitable for mixing with cotton in the production of twist threads. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... sides as she stood facing Hilmer, as if waiting for his decision. But he had made no move, he merely had returned her gaze in equal silence. At that moment Mrs. Hilmer's clawlike fingers closed over her husband's mangled thumb with a clutch of triumph and she had turned with a painful twist to dart her venomous scorn at Helen. A fortnight ago the doctors had given Mrs. Hilmer a scant six months of life. But now Fred Starratt knew that she would live as long as her spirits had ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... would, he could not be sure. There were moments when he seemed on the very verge of settling the matter, and then some invisible person would meanly insert a red-hot corkscrew in the top of his head and begin to twist it, and this would interfere with calm thought. He was still in a state of uncertainty when Bayliss returned, bearing ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... he fumbled over his soft felt hat, decorated with little lead medals, like the cap of king Louis XI. of devout memory, and also adorned with some if that worsted twist made by the young country girls, on a primitive frame composed of four or five pins stuck ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... I have an especial fondness for any particular luxury, it manifests itself in a remarkable way when properly made December sausages are placed before me. While at breakfast, Judge Davis, noticing that, after having been bountifully served with sausage, like Oliver Twist I wanted some more, said, 'You seem fond of our Illinois sausages.' To which I responded affirmatively, adding that I thought the article might be relied on where pork was cheaper than dogs. 'That,' ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... sprang upon the taffrail and the next instant a slim line uncoiled itself over the water. Duff, springing up, caught the end on his oar blade, and by a dexterous twist brought ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... other partners "cunningly drew him into a bond," and "did unjustly enter staple actions in Bristol of great value against him, because he was of the king's party;" but it would appear as if there had been some twist or infirmity of temper in Dudley himself, which prevented him from working harmoniously with such persons as he became associated with in affairs ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... finest, brittlest point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for good and all. Small pains are more manageable, ore within our reach; we can fret and worry ourselves about them, can turn them into any shape, can twist and torture them how we please:—a grain of sand in the eye, a thorn in the flesh, only irritates the part, and leaves us strength enough to quarrel and get out of all patience with it: a heavy blow stuns and takes away all power of sense as well as of resistance. The great and mighty ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of terrified madness she grasped his wounded arm, and in the second in which he made a sudden wince, she gave an eel-like twist and slipped from his grasp, and as she did so she seized the pistol in his belt and stood erect while she placed the muzzle to her ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... the winter all ice-sheets move and twist, tear apart and press up into ridges, and thousands of bergs charge through these sheets, raising hummocks and lines of pressure and mixing things up; then of course where such rents are made in the winter the sea freezes again, forming a ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... show; but they fought stubbornly, if clumsily, and now Jim found himself fighting in grim earnest. He saw a big Lanky spring at him from the logs, with bayonet set stock to hip, and with a lucky twist of, his pole he beat down the other's weapon. But the long hafts of the pikes made them most unwieldy, and in the few seconds that followed Jim stood cheek-by-jowl with death. Suddenly his eyes encountered the face of Canty over the left shoulder of the swaddy. The little Irishman had pulled himself ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... high-shouldered herons standing on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold stare of monumental effigies.—A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look at in the light of one of Nature's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lance, four and a half feet long, of wood, with a barbed head of iron,—so that the whole length of the weapon was six feet nine inches. It was used either to throw or thrust with, and when it pierced the enemy's shield the iron head was bent, and the spear, owing to the twist in the iron, still held to the shield. Each soldier carried two of these weapons, and threw the heavy pilum over the heads of their comrades in front, in order to break the enemy's line. In the time of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... You have to draw it out until every portion of it is as strong as every other—a pretty little conundrum! It is the drawing, twisting, and doubling which makes the thread first uniform and then strong. Try working-out devices that shall do all these things—devices that shall twist and then double without untwisting, for example. You'll find it worse than ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... say that the more recent outbreak of Anglophobia in Germany may probably be ascribed to the same official stimulus; and it too may be expected to cease when the politicians of Berlin see that it no longer pays to twist the British lion's tail. That sport ceased in and after 1886, because France was found still to be the enemy. Frenchmen did not speak much about Alsace-Lorraine. They followed Gambetta's advice: "Never ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... ditch where the river used to be in ancient times; and they think they can persuade the water around that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it used to do, and fetch the town back into the world again. That is, they are going to take this whole Mississippi, and twist it around and make it run several miles UP STREAM. Well you've got to admire men that deal in ideas of that size and can tote them around without crutches; but you haven't got to believe they can DO such miracles, have you! And yet you ain't absolutely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who glared at him with bloodshot eyes that glittered in the moonlight. He tested the keenness of his blade, shook back his shaggy hair, and with a sudden twist removed the gag from the old man's jaws, choking back, at the same moment, with pitiless hands, the cry which rose to his lips. Then he bent over, so that the bulk of him hid from the moonlight his victim and his work. There was a single glint of steel, a convulsion of the thin figure on the ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... glided past, they glided fast, Like travellers through a mist: They mocked the moon in a rigadoon Of delicate turn and twist, And with formal pace and loathsome grace The phantoms ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... stammering savoured of the bombast of a man who had no desire to serve me, but who, not daring to break his word, used all his wits to twist and overrate the little he could not hinder himself from saying. This letter was simply for Grimaldo, as the letter of M. le Duc d'Orleans was simply for the King of Spain. The last was even weaker than the first. It was like a design in pencil nearly effaced by the rain, and in which nothing, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... centipedes. They are ugly-looking creatures. One dreads a close contact with them. They run and twist about as if they felt they ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... see how it is all done in cooperation with the forces at work outside itself. The wind knocks off and tosses away the dainty shutde-cocks of the scabious as they ripen one by one, and the pods wait for the hot touch of the sun to split them with the sudden contracting twist that sends the grains flying, ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two—they are not necessarily incompatible ideas—will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labour constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Mrs. Bell, making the unnecessary feminine twist to get a view of her back hair from the mirror with a hand-glass, "aren't you delighted? Try to be candid with yourself now, and ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this—to move the Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words, and no word missing, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... tell you! It's the custom. Whenever a door is opened one must run, jump, twist oneself into half circles ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... a personage who could bring little physical strength to help us, but who had more mind (though with a wrong twist in it) than both ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... person, he loosed his firm hold of him, as if it was an acknowledgment of weakness to hold him longer a close prisoner. Seizing the prostrate lawyer by the hair, he bade him rise, at the same time giving a sharp twist to the ornamental appendage of his cranium. But the hair yielded to the motion of his hand, and the entire scalp scaled off, bringing with it the huge parti-colored whiskers, and revealing a beautiful head of black, curly hair, where the mixed color ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... because he was puzzled. His sense of humor wore a different complexion from Letty's. He liked a joke, and he could tell a good story, but they must lie within the logic of fun. Letty could put her own interpretation on her griefs, and twist them into shapes calculated to send her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... tinkle. I object to the poetic license which performs a Germanic divorce between subject and verb, so that instead of a complete thought which can be mastered before another is set before the brain, there is a twist in the grammatical sequence that requires a conscious effort of will to keep the original thread. The world is too busy to do this; reading must be a relaxation, not a study.... When poetry conforms in its mental tone to the spirit of the times; when ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... twist you give to my words, I must declare," she said; "but not new by any means. Little Adrienne Bourcier could tell you that. She says that you have vowed to her over and over that you dream about her, and wish for her, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... almost all since the beginning of the papacy. You have not escaped me yet—you must confess that the papacy has not always existed, it has often perished, because it was ofttimes without love. But if it had been established by divine right, in these words of Christ, it would not have perished. Twist and turn as you will, these words will not yield a papacy; or else the papacy must cease in Christendom whenever the pope is without love. Now you have said yourself that the person may be evil, but the office remains; again you admit, and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... if I could whisper a small word or two in his ear, I should be apt to say, "That will never do, sir. You can't pass yourself off for a great scholar with this clap-trap. You are nothing but a pistareen, and rather smooth at that. You are, indeed. Those big words that we have to bend up and twist around to get into our coat-pockets, will not go for sense. So pray be quiet, and not attempt to pass for any more than you are honestly worth, which is ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... please, Hugh and Thad!" called some one from the rear; and looking back they discovered a lame boy called Limpy Wallace, who always carried a crutch and had to twist his body in a curious fashion when he wished ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... staircase had been replaced by a steep stone-way; but the approach and the ascent were still steep enough to make one wonder how the portly Lemon could, without difficulty or fear of accident, scale the classic heights, and twist his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... it means," she responded wearily. "It means that if I continue to hold my head up or dare to look my neighbour in the face I shall be called brazen as well as corrupt," she went on after a moment, a sardonic little twist at the corner of her mouth. "Well, so be it. I have thought of all that. Have no fear for me, my friend. I have never been afraid of the dark,—so why should ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... last, the ponderous, inert, uncanny thing lay balanced across the balustrade and sill, the legs sticking into the room. Breathing hard, Bullard grasped the ankles. A heave, a jerk, a twist, a push.... Hands pressed hard over his ears, Bullard waited for an age of thirty seconds. Then action once more. He closed the window, switched on the lights, and inspected the floor. Finally he rang up ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... men who are unavoidably intellectual, let them turn and twist themselves as they will, and hold their hands before their treacherous eyes—as though the hand were not a betrayer; it always comes out at last that they have something which they hide—namely, intellect. One of the subtlest means of deceiving, at least as long as possible, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Belville was their home. A little chap just like a boy, with smudgy black mustache,— Yet there was nothing juvenile in Julot the apache. From head to heel as tough as steel, as nimble as a cat, With every trick of twist and kick, a master of savate. And Gigolette was tall and fair, as stupid as a cow, With three combs in the greasy hair she banged upon her brow. You'd see her on the Place Pigalle on any afternoon, A primitive and strapping wench as brazen ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... she would put herself to rest close circled in Linda's arms. She would twist up her little feet, and lie so quiet there, that Linda would remain motionless that she might not disturb her Katie's sleep; but soon warm tears would be running on her bosom, and she would know that Katie was ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... about the country. When they met a farmer, they would stop him and ask, 'Which side are you for?' If he did not answer to suit them, the leader of the party would cry out, Hang him up! In an instant one of the band would cut down a long piece of wild grapevine, twist it into a noose, and throw it over the man's head; the next moment he would be dangling from the limb of a tree. Sometimes the band would let him down again; sometimes they would ride on ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery
... Bain to Pierrot's cabin the trail cut within half a mile of the beaver pond, a dozen miles from where Pierrot lived. And it was here, on a twist of the creek in which Wakayoo had caught fish for Baree, that Bush McTaggart made his camp for the night. Only twenty miles of the journey could be made by canoe, and as McTaggart was traveling the last stretch afoot, ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... to answer, but, finding Maskull's eyes still fixed on him, he brought out: "Unless light pulled, as well as pushed, how would flowers contrive to twist their ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... I do," rejoined Mr. Bright. "I'm always in earnest myself; and when I'm sure I'm in the right, I always drive ahead. I soon get out o' patience trying to twist a string that ain't fastened at nary end, as an old neighbor of my father used to say. I suppose some of us Abolitionists are a little rough at times; but I reckon the coarsest of us do more good than the false prophets ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... that ever came from Siberia," wrote Marshal Tesse. "Goodman Don Miguel Guerra is the minister with whom he treats, and the effect of eight or ten apoplexies is, that he has to hold his head with his hands, else his mouth would infallibly twist round over his shoulder. During their audience they seat themselves opposite one another in arm-chairs, and, after a quarter of an hour's silence, the Muscovite opens his mouth and says, 'Sir, I have orders from the emperor, my master, to assure the Catholic King that he loves ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... snore gloss flank brick charge crow quench green tinge shark Scotch chest goose brand thrift space prow twist flange crank wealth slice twain limp screw throb thrice chess flake soon flesh finch flash flaw twelve flung clean ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... him to make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he had never gone out for football—whenever she started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry's behavior pattern seemed to coincide with the behavior pattern which the suave young man apparently considered the norm, ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... neat, handsom and strong, twist the Hair you make it of even, having seen if the Hair be of an equal bigness; then steep your Line in Water, to see if the Hairs shrink, if so, you must twist them over again. The Colour of the Hair is best of Sorrel, White ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... lad ran back and jumped into the boat and pushed it clear of the roof. And none too soon, for as the fire burned deeper into the heart, the monster felt the burn of it and began to writhe and twist. Then he gave a great cough that sent the waters surging back out of his body and into the sea again in ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... I am," he replied with a whimsical twist of his firm mouth. "Well, so long," he went on quickly. "Glad to have met you, anyway." He nodded with a repetition of that frank, engaging smile ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... refreshing fruit of the Vine, possess certain medicinal properties and virtues which give them a proper place among Herbal Simples. The name Vine comes from viere, to twist, being applied with reference to the twining habits of the parent stock; as likewise to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... with a bitter twist of his old, malicious lips. Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down. It seemed to interest him, for he looked ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... find in an original mental twist, very common in French thinkers, and by which M. Comte was distinguished beyond them all. He could not dispense with what he called "unity." It was for the sake of Unity that a religion was, in his eyes, desirable. Not in the mere sense of Unanimity, but in ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill |
