"Vitals" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the spices of Arabia were distilled, and all the powers of nature were employed to give new spirits to his nerves, and new balsam to his blood. Nouradin was for some time amused with promises, invigorated with cordials, or soothed with anodynes; but the disease preyed upon his vitals, and he soon discovered with indignation, that health was not to be bought. He was confined to his chamber, deserted by his physicians, and rarely visited by his friends; but his unwillingness to die flattered him long with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... naught save a flitting breath * And an eye whose babe ever wandereth. There remains not a joint in his limbs, but what * Disease firm fixt ever tortureth. His tears are flowing, his vitals burning; * Yet for all his tongue still he silenceth. All foemen in pity beweep his woes; * Ah for freke ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... We need not stain our hands with innocent blood. If we but sit passive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. Already disease is sapping their vitals. Like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. When they go hence, it is to go forever. It is the law of life, which God has given to the earth. To coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... an instant. All of us were silent. One could have heard a pin drop upon the deck. Then, out of the port foc'sle, a dreadful sound came to our ears, a low, strangled moan. It stabbed the vitals of the most hardened of us; with my own eyes I saw the mate tremble. Aye, in some way Holy Joe had sent a fear into the brute soul of Fitzgibbon; in some way he had sent a fear into the brute souls of us all, and, at least in my case, a great wonder. The pain-filled wail ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... shivering graybeard!" cried the king. "Come, warm your vitals with this cup of spiced ale. Be not afraid. Sit here at my side in the ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... his vitals the unfortunate skipper, hardly able to believe his ears, heard the cook come down and clear away. The smell of dinner gave way to that of tobacco, and the mate, having half finished his pipe, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... their country's cause, When now of conquest and dominion sure, They sought alone to hold their fruits secure; When taught by these, Oppression hid the face, To leave Corruption stronger in her place, By silent spells to work the public fate, And taint the vitals of the passive state, Till healing Wisdom should avail no more, And Freedom loathe to tread the poison'd shore: 90 Then, like some guardian god that flies to save The weary pilgrim from an instant grave, Whom, sleeping and secure, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Dingley, and not strain your dear little eyes? I am sure 'tis the grief of my soul to think you are out of order." They had been keeping his birthday; Swift wished he had been with them, rather than in London, where he had no manner of pleasure: "I say Amen with all my heart and vitals, that we may never be asunder again ten days together while poor Presto lives." A few days later he says, "I wish I were at Laracor, with dear charming MD," and again, "Farewell, dearest beloved MD, and love poor ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the strongest kind of feeling that critical biography is your real vein. The Landor was one nail; another, I think, would be good for you and the public. Indeed I would do the Keats. He is worth doing; it is a brave and a sad little story, and the critical part lies deep in the very vitals of art. All summed, I would do him; remember it is but a small order alongside of Landor; and L100, and kudos, and a good word for the poor, great lad, who will otherwise fall among the molluscs. Up, heart! give me a John Keats! Houghton, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manner of one's death," he pursued with increased despondency. "It is easy for you, Henry, whose mind is at peace with itself and the world, to preach fortitude and resignation, but, felt you the burning flame which scorches my vitals, you would acknowledge the wide, wide difference between theory ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... 'New occasions teach new duties.' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. While fresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests and the suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of the Common. Citizens ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... that each one of us requires. Does the refiner hesitate to put the crude ore into the crucible? Does the sculptor shrink from chiselling the shapeless block into beauty? Does not the surgeon, with nerves of steel and pulse unquickened, cut near the very vitals of his agonized patient? He sees that it is necessary, in order to save from greater evil, and therefore he is as remorseless as fate. If to cure some transient, physical infirmity, man is justified in inflicting—nay, more, is compelled to inflict—so much suffering upon his fellow-creatures, how ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... factions cannot boast, but which, notwithstanding, are very suitable to the fierce and gloomy silence of that premeditated vengeance which burns with such intensity in the heart, and scorches up the vitals into such a thirst for blood. Not but that they come by different means to the same conclusion; because it is the feeling, and not altogether the manner of operation, that ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... if you like and make the disease stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister. Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at the time to be nearest to the vitals ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... a stranger. While the imposing Mrs Elton quivered inwardly, Mrs Ranyard—for all her 'creeps' and her fluffiness—knew no flicker of fear. In any case, there were few who would confess to it, though it gnawed at their vitals; and Roy's quick eye noted that, among the women, as a whole, the light-hearted courage of Anglo-India prevailed. It gave him a sharp inner tweak to look at them all and remember that nightmare of seething, yelling rebels at ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Ha! live I may not, though I would For life give more than all; And die I dare not, though I should The world gain by my fall. 32. No, here he must no longer stay, He feels his life run out, His night is come, also the day That makes him fear and doubt. 33. He feels his very vitals die, All waxeth pale and wan; Nay, worse, he fears to misery He shortly must be gone. 34. Death doth already strike his heart With his most fearful sting Of guilt, which makes his conscience start, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in that it was not external—was even then, all unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's vitals. In a locked and shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the liner, was the great air purifier. Now a man leaned against the primary duct—the aorta through which flowed the stream of pure air ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... joined us. Two hundred of us soon were melting the ice. The rivulets merged into brooks, to streams—and soon a river torrent of hissing, boiling water gathering volume as it went, was surging at the wall. The wall began melting—itself feeding this monster which was eating at its vitals ... a yawning hole began opening at the base of the wall ... it began sagging at the ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... my breast is human still: The rising sigh, the falling tear, My languid vitals' feeble rill, The sickness ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... and his limbs, and his beard matted with human blood. Death was before my eyes, {and} yet that was the least of my woes. I imagined that[20] now he was about to seize hold of me, and that now he was on the very point of swallowing my vitals within his own; in my mind was fixed the impress of that time when I beheld two bodies of my companions three or four times dashed against the ground. Throwing himself on the top of them, just like a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... you call me a 'thing,' Eve Marsham," the other broke in with a laugh, "or we'll quarrel. I'm just a plain woman with sense enough to say nothing when Gay gets home with more whiskey aboard than is good for his vitals. And don't you think I'm not putting a good value on myself when I say that. Not that Gay's given to sousing a heap. No, he's a good feller, sure, an' wouldn't swap him for—for your Will—on'y when he snores. So you ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... have called in question the academic accuracy of Borrow's researches in the Romany language: but such frettings are beside the mark; Borrow is the only genuine expounder of Gipsyness that ever lived. He laid hold of their vitals, and they of his; his act of brotherhood with Mr. Jasper Petulengro is but a symbol of his mystical alliance with the race. This is not to say that he fathomed the heart of their mystery; the gipsies themselves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... I tell you? It's the same reason that's been urging me to pick a quarrel with you so that I might have the satisfaction of slipping a couple of feet of steel into your vitals. When I accepted your commission, I was moved to think it might redeem me in the eyes of Miss Bishop—for whose sake, as you may have guessed, I took it. But I have discovered that such a thing is beyond accomplishment. I should have known it for ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... my boy," said Cappy amiably, yet with a queer sinking feeling in his vitals, for he did not like the look in Skinner's eye; and something told him there was blood on ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... sotto voce, "but I hadn't the heart to refuse. They're eating it up, my dear fellow. Up to this instant they've been sitting with their mouths wide open while I hurled it, word after word, into their very vitals. "Whereupon he resumed the sonorous monologue, glowering balefully upon ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... was passed much after the same fashion. But the fear had begun to die away a little in the hearts of the women, who did not know what had taken place in the studio on the previous night. It burrowed, however, with gathered force in the vitals of Teufelsbuerst. But this night likewise passed in peace; and before it was over, the old woman had taken to speculating in her own mind as to the best way of disposing of the body, seeing it was not at all likely to be troublesome. But when the painter entered ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... a bird could scarce fly through the passage. The rocks were held apart with the help of Athena, and from that day they became fixed and harmless. Further on, they came in sight of Mount Caucasus, saw the eagle which preyed on the vitals of Prometheus, and heard the sufferer's woeful cries. So their journey was accomplished, and they arrived at AEa, and the palace ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Lo! in the vale of years beneath, A grisly troop are seen, The painful family of Death, More hideous than their queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every labouring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage; Lo! Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... a vulture whose claws are hard to unloose from the vitals of the spirit, I think it is jealousy. I found it had got hold of me, and was tearing the life out of me. I knew it in time. O sing praise to our King, you who know Him! he is mightier than our enemies; ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... strike a violent blow at the very vitals of Great Britain, a multitude of the wiser inhabitants assembled, and having purchased all the British manufactures they could find, they made thereof a huge bonfire, and in the patriotic glow of the moment, every man present who ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has travelled in the paths worn by her destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of her empire. A mortal disease was upon her vitals before Csar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns,—the swarms of the North,—completed only what was already begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that selectman occasionally has remorse now about that pie; dreams, perhaps, that it is buttoned up under his jacket and sticking to him like a breastplate; that it lies upon his stomach like a round and red-hot nightmare, eating into his vitals. Perhaps not. It is difficult to say exactly what was the sin of stealing that kind of pie, especially if the one who stole it ate it. It could have been used for the game of pitching quoits, and a pair of them would have made ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... way. As soon as he returned to the surface he set off at his best gait, but that was so slow that we easily hauled up close alongside of him, holding the boats in that position without the slightest attempt to guard ourselves from reprisals on his part, while the officers searched his vitals with the lances as if ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... fearful sight and the adventurers gazed at it in wonder, mingled with terror. The bears would seek to enfold the lions in their strong fore-paws, while the lions would try to sink their long tusks into the vitals ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... executioners. In our present lives we are storing up good or bad Karma which will stick to us closely, and which will demand expression and manifestation in lives to come. When we fasten around ourselves the evil of bad Karma, we have taken to shelter a monster which will gnaw into our very vitals until we shake him off by developing opposite qualities. And when we draw to ourselves the good Karma of Duty well performed, kindness well expressed, and Good Deeds freely performed without hope of reward, then do we weave for ourselves the beautiful garments which we are destined to wear upon ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... watch the progress of the malady and see with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute; a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the marquise was so insistent as to the necessity ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... impossible to avoid altogether without cutting very valuable connections, gave me a dreadful dyspepsia. I became livingly sensible of the agonies of Prometheus with the daily vulture gnawing at his vitals. At once I started with all my family for a year's sojourn in Germany, which, in fact, proved three years. But the fiend had left me the very first day. The moment I quitted the British shore, the tormentor quitted me. I suppose he preferred staying behind, where he ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... whirl, cutting to and fro with his terrible campilan, and before any one could prevent, he had felled two troopers. With a howl, Lewis plunged into their midst, pistol leveled, but before he could pull the trigger, the Moro buried the sword in his own vitals and pitched ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections—for a drunkard is not fit for an elector—and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... was nothing he could admire himself, but a second cup of coffee put warmth into his vitals and he recovered sufficiently to pay the breakfast check. If it was Congdon he had shot there was still the hope, encouraged by the newspaper, that the wounded man was in no haste to report his injury to the police. But Archie ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... treacherous coasts, Ferragut could decide to rest only when Toni replaced him on the bridge. With him, he had no fear that, through carelessness, a wave would sweep across the deck and stop the machinery, or that an invisible ledge would drive its stony point into the vitals of the vessel. He held the helm to the course indicated. Silent and immovable he stood, as though sleeping on his feet; but at the right moment he always uttered the brief word ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... corn when we had none? For two years our crops have failed, and hunger has eaten our vitals until there is not a man in the village who has the strength to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... articles have been inserted in widely-spread reviews; statistical accounts have been watched over with the most careful surveillance. If the misrepresentations of the press could have altered the matter of fact, famine would not have been gnawing the vitals of Sutherland in every year just a little less abundant than its fellows, nor would the dejected and oppressed people be feeding their discontent, amid present misery, with the recollections of a happier past. If a singularly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... come on deck, gentlemen?" It was the mate who spoke, and the man was shaken—I could see that—to the very vitals of him. We started and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might be ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from the ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... accidents of Italian life, as foreigners learn to know it. His future was again uncertain, and during his second winter in Rome he was in danger of losing his elder daughter by a malady which he speaks of as a trouble "that pierced to my very vitals." I may mention, with regard to this painful episode, that Franklin Pierce, whose presidential days were over, and who, like other ex-presidents, was travelling in Europe, came to Rome at the time, and that the Note-Books contain some singularly beautiful and touching allusions ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... "Ulin is no more, and the vultures are preying on the vitals of Happuck! Ten provinces have deserted my cause, and the coffers of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... particular overstrain we have been examining is part of Mr Masefield's general condition. Overstrain is permanent with him. If we do not find it in his actual language (and, as we have said, he is ridding himself of the worst of his exaggerations) we are sure to find it in the very vitals of his artistic effort. He is seeking always to be that which he is not, to lash himself into the illusion of a certainty which he knows he ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... "Hunger gnaws my vitals. My name is Blunderbore. 'Twere better had I been born a Blunderbuss, 'cause then I have gone off and dwelt in climes more shootable to my tender constitoosion. Ha! is that a bear ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in my cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas he was being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his vitals, and was more fit for a hospital ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of the heavy days before her and the blank before me. I could not let go her wrists. We were fools to waste our youth. I could work for her in America. My vitals were being torn from me. I should go to the devil without her. I don't know what I said. But I knew the brute love which had risen like a lion in me would never conquer the woman who kissed me in the darkness ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... flow fast, my heart knows no rest * And melts my soul and cares aye molest: Would Heaven mine eyeballs their form beheld * And flies my life, and ah! who shall arrest? 'Tis wondrous the while shows my form to sight, * Fire burns my vitals with flamey crest! Indeed for parting I've wept, and yet * No friend I find to mine aid addrest: Ho thou the Moon in a moment gone * From sight, wilt thou rise to a glance so blest? An thou be 'stranged of estrangement who * Of men shall save me? Would God I wist! Fate hath won the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... struggle was a tremendous one, and though the dragon shattered the tuft of trees into small splinters by the lashing of his tail, yet, as Cadmus was all the while slashing and stabbing at his very vitals, it was not long before the scaly wretch bethought himself of slipping away. He had not gone his length, however, when the brave Cadmus gave him a sword thrust that finished the battle; and, creeping out of the gateway of the creature's ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... world thought only of the sufferings he had inflicted on others; no one dreamed of the pangs he had to endure—no one but herself, to whom Galenus had spoken of them. And had not his features and his look betrayed to her that pain was gnawing at his vitals like the vulture at those of Prometheus? Hapless, pitiable youth, born to the highest fortune, and now a decrepit old man in the flower of his age! To pray and sacrifice for him must be a pious deed, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the familiar instance of the Spartan youth who having stolen a fox and hidden it inside his robe calmly stood up and let the animal gnaw his vitals rather than be caught with it in his possession. But, why? I ask you, why? What was the good of it all? What object was served? To begin with, the boy had absconded with somebody else's fox, or with somebody's else fox, which is undoubtedly the ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... though he expected that thence might fall upon him vengeance for his many sins. A dozen times as he came did I cover him with an imaginary rifle, marking the exact spots where I might have hoped to send a bullet to his vitals, in a kind of automatic fashion, for all my real brain was contemplating my own ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... his vitals waste, Yet drowns his health to please his taste; Till all his active powers are lost, And fainting life draws ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... up to the scratch like a man, though, and sent one of his ponderous fists crashing through his opponent's ribs and in among his vitals, and instantly afterward he hauled out poor Stanford's left lung and smacked him in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? The pulpit is false to its trust, and a moral paralysis has seized the vitals of the church. The sanctity of religion is thrown, like a mantle, over the horrid system. Under its auspices, robbery and oppression have become popular and flourishing. The press, too, by its profound silence, or selfish neutrality, or equivocal course, or active partizanship, is enlisted ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... cases of ordinary illness; the family's grandmother attended to those. Every old woman was a doctor, and gathered her own medicines in the woods, and knew how to compound doses that would stir the vitals of a cast-iron dog. And then there was the "Indian doctor"; a grave savage, remnant of his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most backwoodsmen had high faith in his powers ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... certain it would come to the surface sooner or later. The boy was reckless—a gambler. Cappy abhorred gambling. He never gambled. Occasionally he speculated! What more natural, therefore, than that little Cappy should presently arrogate to himself the privilege of stabbing young J. Augustus to the vitals from time to time, just to impress upon the boy the knowledge that this is a hard, cold, cruel world with a great many bad men ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... since he left the doctor's office to reel and stagger drunkenly through the slush and the sleet, and the icy blasts, which bit cruelly into his very vitals. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... acquaintance who may happen to be up a tree! But may I presume to inquire, Dr. Reasono, what are the most approved of the advantages of the politico-numerical-identity system? For impatience is devouring my vitals." ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Prince Eugene, we find Valenciennes again playing a leading part. And during the last blind, desperate effort of France to shake off the domination of the scoundrels who had fastened themselves upon her vitals at Paris after the collapse of the monarchy, Valenciennes became the theatre of the tolerably well-conceived, but intolerably ill-executed, attempt of Dumouriez to make himself a French Duke of Albemarle. It was quite as unprincipled ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... measure of rations, less of grain in proportion, and there was no military depot to which we could resort. The maps were all wrong, and in the trackless wastes and silent sand-dunes of the Cimarron country gaunt Starvation was waiting to clutch our vitals with its gnarled claws; while with all our nakedness and famine and peril, the winter blizzard, swirling its myriad whips of stinging cold came raging across the land and caught us in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... beam over his shoulder, his own shot in straight for the pit of the other's stomach. It was a bull's-eye blow with the force of a pile-driver behind it, and the groan that forced its way out of St. Pierre's vitals was heard by every ear in the cordon of watchers. His weight stopped, his arms opened, and through that opening Carrigan's fist went a second time to the other's jaw, and a second time the great St. Pierre Boulain sprawled out upon the ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... middlings, movables, mumps, nuptials, optics, phonics, phonetics, physics,[146] pneumatics, poetics, politics, riches, rickets, settlings, shatters, skimmings, spherics, staggers, statics, statistics, stays, strangles, sundries, sweepings, tactics, thanks, tidings, trappings, vives, vitals, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 1841) "and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more. He expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the influence of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of those sympathetic characters who had volunteered to help Mike and his gang win the status of spacemen by firing the Platform's rockets. There were not many of them, and they had lost heavily. They'd had thermite bombs to destroy the Platform's vitals. Ultimately the survivors talked freely, if ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by which the elevator still ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... Male babblers, whom our sufferings and poor pay Might shock, could they but guess Trim figure and smart dress Cover and hide, from all but doctor-ken, Disease and threatening death. Oh! men, men, men! You bow, smile, flatter—aught but understand! Long hours lay lethal hand Upon our very vitals. Seats might save From an untimely grave, Hundreds of harried, inly anguished girls; You see—their snow-girt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... world—such a figure as this Rameses was in his day—with all might, all glory, all climbing power, all vigor, tenacity of purpose, and granite strength of will concentrated within it, struck suddenly down, and falling backward in a collapse of which the thunder might shake the vitals of the earth, and you have this prostrate colossus. Even now one seems to hear it fall, to feel the warm soil trembling beneath one's feet as one approaches it. A row of statues of enormous size, with arms crossed as if in resignation, glowing in the sun, in color ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... or sitting in every attitude of despair and suffering; a dull, hopeless misery in their sunken eyes, a pathetic patience fit to touch a heart of stone; while others still have grown frantic with that terrible pain, the hunger gnawing at their very vitals, and go staggering about, wildly raving ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... find him out? he wondered. Before he could answer that question, it was necessary first to determine whether or no he had committed a sin. The man before him—that gentle and yet impassioned man—bore in his vitals the seed of death which he, Hokosa, had planted there. Was it wrong to have done this? It depended by which standard the deed was judged. According to his own code, the code on which he had been educated and which hitherto he had followed ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... binding force. And these no one will gainsay, at least no one who is versed even moderately in the institutions of the Church. For were we to reject such customs as are unwritten as having no great force, we should unintentionally injure the gospels in their very vitals; or, rather, reduce our public definition to a mere name and nothing more. For example, to take the first and most general instance, who is there who has taught us in writing to sign with the cross those who have trusted in the name of our ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... that our soldiers should be Heaven born more than those of other nations. Experience will make us both have and win; and in the end teach Great Britain that in attempting to enslave us she is aiming a dagger at her own vitals." ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... man, Coarse-grained, who gambled with king Luck, 'Mid pulse of life below the air, Shake at the throb of this unsummed Sphere, where haunted thoughts and dreams scan Athward at a untower'd home, Where vitals that the glow-worm lit— Friends to the Doom! as sorrowed soul, Repress'd with rage, knelt down and prayed, Rise from the hollowed void a moan As sins upon papyrus, writ In vyper's blood—Jems in this shoal! ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sombre: all were wrought and mingled into an exciting and bewildering atmosphere of melody, which thrilled the heart and maddened the brain. But as the music continued, its joyous strains died out; the instrument cried aloud in horror and pain, as if the vulture of Prometheus were tearing at its vitals; darkness seemed to descend upon the room—a darkness alive with the sighs and groans, the disillusions and tears, of lost souls. The men sat transfixed with agony and dread, the women were caught in the wild clutches of hysteria, and Courtney himself was as if possessed with a frenzy: his features ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... is as a stag to me. Had he not broken silence, he were safe, And yet I surely knew that could not be. If one's transparent as an insect is, That looks now red, now green, as is its food, One must beware of any mysteries, Lest e'en the vitals show the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... with a spring and a great cry of triumph, rabbit and all. But his master was not there; he had been gone since early fall and it was now February. He would not return until spring, for he was an old man, and the cruel cold of the mountains clutched at his vitals like a panther, and he had gone to the village to winter. The Cat had known for a long time that his master was gone, but his reasoning was always sequential and circuitous; always for him what had been would be, and the more easily for his marvellous waiting powers so he always ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... praise Heaven for you, Little Mother. Come. [He leads the way out.] It was the temptation of the devil that led your young man to bruise my vitals and deprive me of breath. We must be ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... funny?" Miss Barrace quite rose to it. "That's the way we ARE in Paris." She was always pleased with a new contribution to that queerness. "It's wonderful! But, you know," she declared, "it all depends on you. I don't want to turn the knife in your vitals, but that's naturally what you just now meant by our all being on top of you. We know you as the hero of the drama, and we're gathered ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Dean reascend the kitchen steps, and make a statement of which the words "drink" and "Dora" alone reached us. The drawing-room door closed, and in the release from tension I sank heavily down upon a heap of potatoes. The wolf of laughter that had been gnawing at my vitals broke loose. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... proceeded to Albany for the purpose of remonstrating with General Gates against retaining so large and valuable a part of the army unemployed at a time when the most imminent danger threatened the vitals of the country. Gates was by no means disposed to part with his troops. He could not believe that an expedition then preparing at New York was designed to reinforce General Howe; and insisted that, should ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... and by this act she can gradually get control of the offices of this land, and this is her main object, for if she can control the officials, she will see that such laws are passed as will enable her to coil her slimy self about the vitals of Protestant America, and just as long as the Protestant denominations allow themselves to be made Protestant simpletons of, just that long Catholicism will fool Protestant hosts by offering the "vote ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... find some over the way. It is as I suspected," continued the host, when the man had departed on his errand, "they are Andalusians, and are about to make what they call gaspacho, on which they will all sup. Oh, the meanness of these Andalusians! they are come here to suck the vitals of Galicia, and yet envy the poor innkeeper the gain of a cuarto in the oil which they require for their gaspacho. I tell you one thing, master, when that fellow returns, and demands bread and garlic to mix with the oil, I will tell him ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... nor do I! But you have been faithful to your charge respecting this poor lady within, have you not, dame?" Bigot looked as if his eyes searched her very vitals. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... fought and marched and fought again, Patient and earnest through the bootless toils And fiery trials of that dread campaign Upon the Peninsula. 'Twas fitly called 'Campaign of Battles.' Aye, it sorely pierced The scarred and bleeding nation, and drew blood Deep from her vitals till she shook and reeled, Like some huge giant staggering to his fall— Blinded with blood, yet struggling with his soul, And stretching forth his ponderous, brawny arms, Like Samson in the Temple, to o'erwhelm And crush his mocking ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... and ere long recover. The blow upon the head which has made him senseless for so many days was the worst of his wounds, but the bone was but bruised, not shattered or driven in upon the brain. The flesh cuts on his arms are healing well, and the mail he wore protected his vitals from ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... may add, as a concluding circumstance of some interest, in this sketch of her modern condition, that pretty nearly the same European territories as were assigned to the eastern Roman empire at the time of its separation from the western, [Footnote: "The vitals of the monarchy lay within that vast triangle circumscribed by the Danube, the Save, the Adriatic, Euxine, and Egean Seas, whose altitude may be computed at five hundred, and the length of its base at seven hundred geographical miles."—GORDON. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... column's headway seemed hardly checked, though the cries and the clashing of arms resounded, now, from both flanks as well as from the front, while, in the depths of its vitals, men were crushed together till they could scarce breathe. A rumour, too, like those Pan sends to dismay soldiers, ran quickly from heart to heart, rather than from lip to lip. It was that Hasdrubal had circled the rear and, falling ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... say!—or the next man that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that no surgeon can stop. I'm sick of your bungling ball practice! Keep back!—or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a man's vitals are!" ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in that unblushing manner as in London, and even in New York and Philadelphia. It must not from hence be inferred that vice is less frequent here than elsewhere; there is enough of it, but it is carried on in secret; it is deeper and preys more on the vitals of society than with us. This vice with us, like a humor on the skin, deforms the surface, but here it infects the very heart; the whole system is affected; it is rotten to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... said, as he finished. The idea of anybody passing up a chance like that to enrich himself literally smote him to the vitals. "I see the British Society for Psychical Research checked that case, and got verification from a couple of independent witnesses. If the S.P.R. vouches for a story, it must be the McCoy; they're the toughest-minded gang of confirmed skeptics anywhere ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... tangle of baked nerves, and shook them vigorously. "You are a great boy!" he said with a sort of quizzical solemnity. "A great boy. This damned, God-forsaken, pestilential, demoralizing, brutalizing factory for enriching a few with the very life blood and vitals of thousands that will suffer and starve and never be heard of" (all his language cannot be recorded), "will make two or three reputations by the way. Mine will be one, although I'll get nothing else. Shelikov is safe; but you will have a monument. Well, God bless you. I grudge you ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... a pitcher of fresh, cold water, with some ice in it, if you will, Barty," replied the former. "It seems to me as if this inward heat was consuming my vitals, since ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the Donatists still maintained in some provinces, particularly in Numidia, their superior numbers; and four hundred bishops acknowledged the jurisdiction of their primate. But the invincible spirit of the sect sometimes preyed on its own vitals: and the bosom of their schismatical church was torn by intestine divisions. A fourth part of the Donatist bishops followed the independent standard of the Maximianists. The narrow and solitary path which their first leaders had marked out, continued to deviate from the great society of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and beneficial degree of warmth penetrate his vitals, and all he experienced of his trouble was a singular sort of shiver, which exactly resembled electric shocks, causing pain but doing good. He proved himself susceptible to the consolations of his ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... cavalry; one from Eastport, Mississippi, ten thousand cavalry; Canby, from Mobile Bay, with about eighteen thousand mixed troops—these three latter pushing for Tuscaloosa, Selma and Montgomery; and Sherman with a large army eating out the vitals of South Carolina—is all that will be wanted to leave nothing for the rebellion to stand upon. I would advise you to overcome great obstacles to accomplish this. Charleston was evacuated on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... one of his most important railroad lines.... If he can only maintain this position, without more, this rebellion can only eke out a short and feeble existence, as an animal sometimes may with a thorn in its vitals." ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... chance for a rescue. He would snatch her from the clutches of the Romish Brute. A few stabs in the monster's vitals might accomplish wonders. So he answered, sadly, in a tone ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... with their iron-tipped lances with all their strength. The shields that hang about their necks are not worth two coats of bark: the leather tears, and they split the wood, and they shatter the meshes of the hauberks. Both are pierced to the vitals by the lances, and the horses fall to earth. Now, both the warriors were doughty. Grievously, but not mortally, wounded, they quickly got upon their feet and grasped afresh their lances, which were ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... where the air, smoke-laden and acrid, was hot to suffocation. Here, panting, dripping with sweat, they fed the flaming mouths; then back again into the outer air, which by contrast struck knife-like to the very vitals. The colder the weather and the greater the necessity for fires, the more was the suffering of the slaves increased. The feeding and attendant cleaning of the furnaces was a task given usually either to none but the lowest menials or else as punishment. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... girl could help preferring that celestial peacock to our grey hen, and that Miss Destrey's wish to be kind must have outstripped her obligation to be truthful. This knowledge was turning a screw round in our vitals, when His Highness himself appeared to give it a still ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... acceptance in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of collective selfishness as a moral duty, simply because that selfishness is gigantic in stature, it not only commits depredation, but attacks the very vitals of humanity. It unconsciously generates in people's minds an attitude of defiance against moral law. For men are taught by repeated devices the lesson that the Nation is greater than the people, while yet it scatters to the winds the moral ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... sabbin' doon the glen, an' yon unhaly footstep that cam' ploddin doun the stairs inside the manse. He kenned the foot over weel, for it was Janet's; and at ilka step that cam' a wee thing nearer, the cauld got deeper in his vitals. He commanded his soul to Him that made an' keepit him; 'and O Lord,' said he, 'give me strength this night to war against the powers ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... maddening if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The knowledge that we cannot recall one lost day, nor alter one past page in our life's story, would bring a remorse cruel as the fabled vulture which ever fed upon the vitals of the chained Prometheus. But thanks be to God, Jesus says, "He that sitteth upon the throne saith, Behold, I make all things new." Dear brothers and sisters, some of us need to turn over a new leaf, to make a fresh start, how shall we do it? Let us take our secret sin, our secret sorrow, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... other people or as are inauspicious or are as' sinful. Wordy shafts fall from the mouth. Pierced therewith, the victim grieves day and night. The man of wisdom should never shot them for piercing the vitals of other people. A forest, pierced with shafts or cut down with the axe, grows again. The man, however, that is pierced with words unwisely spoken, becomes the victim of wounds that fester and lead to death.[462] Barbed arrows and Nalikas and broadheaded shafts ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of life the lath sword is no longer satisfactory. Indeed, he now had a vague sense that weapons of wood were unworthy to the point of being contemptible and ridiculous, and he employed them only when he was alone and unseen. For months a yearning had grown more and more poignant in his vitals, and this yearning was symbolized by one of his most profound secrets. In the inner pocket of his jacket he carried a bit of wood whittled into the distant likeness of a pistol, but not even Sam Williams had seen it. The wooden pistol never knew the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... as they reach it, each harpooner plunges his harpoon into its back, to the amount of three, four, or more, according to the size of the whale. It is then actively plied with lances, which are thrust into its body, aiming at its vitals. The sea to a great extent around is dyed with its blood, and the noise made by its tail in its dying struggle, may be heard several miles. In dying, it turns on its back or on its side; which circumstance is announced by the capturers ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... disposition he had I most sincerely hoped our next glass would bring about satisfactory conclusions. I downed her, but it had got to be all I could do, I felt a freezin' cold in my vitals, like William had complained of, instead of the warmth and comfort for which I looked. Y-a-as, I swallered that glass by main strength, like a snake would a hop-toad—kinder lengthened myself until I was ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... their first night on Luzon's soil; but their sleep was not easy. Visions of gore and midnight slaughter passed in review before their drowsy eyes; and just as a black-faced little rebel had them by the throat and was plunging a great long knife into their vitals, they would awaken with a start, feel under their heads for their fire-arms, to reassure themselves, pat the trusty weapon a time or two, call it "good old Bets," and again doze off to sleep, only to repeat ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... his lip intolerant, and Hugh was haunted by the text, "The zeal of Thine house hath ever eaten me." Maitland seemed to be literally devoured by an idea, which, like the fox in the old story of the Spartan boy, appeared to prey on his vitals. Hugh became gradually nettled by the argument, but he was no match for Maitland in scholastic disputation. Maitland felled his arguments with an armoury of texts, which he used like cudgels. Hugh at last said that what he thought ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bibliomania. But the development of the passion is not always marked by exhibitions of violence; sometimes, like the measles, it is slow and obstinate about "coming out," and in such cases applications should be resorted to for the purpose of diverting the malady from the vitals; otherwise serious results ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... who in his excitement did not observe that the steam man was seething, and apparently ready to explode with the tremendous power pent up in its vitals. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... worthy host." The old gentleman's face and manners were like those of a patriarch, regretting the general decay of virtue, not the imaginary diminution of a single vice. He concluded with a sigh that, "The true preux des dames went out with the full periwig; stab my vitals!" ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade |
