"Undertow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sister. "I happened to be the only one looking out to sea. I think, Mr. Jones, you owe us apologies more than gratitude, for your folly was responsible for the incident. You were altogether too venturesome. Such action on this coast, where the surf rolls high and creates an undertow, is ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... have remained faithful. There are scattered through the other five those who are faithful. And there are no doubt many who feel the pull to be true but are yielding to the strong undertow of the rising tide by ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... He wished the undertow would catch that Spenceley girl. If he should reach her when she was going down for the third time she would have to thank him for saving her and that would about kill her. He decided that he would make a point of bathing when she did, ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... the junks; they shout in the plunging of breakers. 'Tis their white hands that toss in the leap of the surf; their clutch that clatters the shingle, or seizes the swimmer's feet in the pull of the undertow. And the seamen speak euphemistically of the O-'bake, the honourable ghosts, and fear ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... exposition that only Raphael has. Even a peasant enjoys Velasquez. The Greeks fathomed this mystery: all Athens worshipped its marbles, and Phidias was crowned King of Emotions. Music alone lagged in the race, music, part speech, part painting, with a surging undertow of passion, music had been too long in the laboratories of the wise men. To free it from its Egyptian bondage, to make it the tongue of all life, the interpreter of the world's desire—Illowski dreamed the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents, that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift, with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he spake, and thus said he:— "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... undertow, that second, was sucking the beach dry, sucking with such force that gravel and small stones pattered down the slope in showers. And behind it a wave, its ragged top raveled by the wind into white streamers, was piling up, up, up, sheer and green and mighty, curling over now ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... bay for about two miles. It is open from N.N.E. to E.S.E. It is to be observed, easterly winds seldom blow hard on this shore; but when they do, they throw in a great sea, so that if it were not for a great undertow, together with a large river that empties itself in the bottom of the bay, a ship would not be able to ride here. Wood and water are easily to be had, except when it blows hard easterly. The natives here are the same as those at Charlotte's Sound, but more numerous, and seemed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... messenger: "Sweet mistress, grace I pray! But unaware our lord hath come again, Bringing his gossips; and he bade me fetch My lady, if only for a one half hour, Saying the wine was flavorless without Her hand to pour it." At the word she rose, And unreluctant followed. No undertow Of hidden regret disturbed the azure calm Of those clear eyes that still reflected heaven. Then, when they all had drunk and been refreshed, And forth had ridden, Francesca sought her place, And pored again above the Psalter's leaf: "In voluntate tua deduxisti," Conning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... to grasp the situation. During the last few days he had heard more than one tale about this dreaded whirlpool with its merciless undertow, and now it made him sick and faint to see Clay's peril, and yet be unable to devise a way of ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... And leaves devastation and death in its path? So swift, sudden passion may rise in its power, And ruin and blight a whole life in an hour. Two unanchored souls in its maelstrom were whirled, Drawn down by love's undertow, lost to the world. The dark, solemn billows of night shut them in. Like corpses afloat on the ocean of sin They must seem to their true, better selves, when again The tide drifts them back to the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... remorselessly upheld by its laws and its public factotums is an extraneous and artificial pose into which the blundering proletaire has tricked itself. There are innumerable consequences. We have, firstly, the spectacle of the masses disporting themselves slyly in the undertow of cynicism. ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... upright. With a throttled cry he leaped at the surprised woman. He bore down upon her flowers as if they had been a life-preserver, snatching at them as if to prevent himself from being sucked under by some strange mental undertow. The softly-colored bloom might have had some vital magnetizing force for the child's blood, to which his whole feeble nature responded. Tearing the colored mass from the surprised nurse's arms, Gargoyle sank to the floor. He sat there caressing the flowers, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
