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Faints   Listen
noun
Faints  n. pl.  The impure spirit which comes over first and last in the distillation of whisky; the former being called the strong faints, and the latter, which is much more abundant, the weak faints. This crude spirit is much impregnated with fusel oil.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Faints" Quotes from Famous Books



... O Lord? O fair day, without either cloud or end, of which Thyself shalt be the sun, and wherein Thou shalt run through my soul like a torrent of delight! Upon this pleasing hope I cry out: "Who is like Thee, O Lord? My heart melts and my flesh faints, O God of my soul, and my ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... point and my perfect nose wrinkle ferociously, for the joy of holding a living, terrified body. I'll know the intoxication of battle! I'll prance victoriously, shaking my head to torment the bird a little, for it faints away too soon between my teeth! Terrible to see I'll gallop towards the house, singing in a strangled voice, without loosening my grip, for He must stop his scratching to admire me, and She must give chase with distracted cries: "Wicked, ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires Far from the breezes of Coolgardie Burn ghastly and blue ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Edith will be married next Thursday. The wedding dress is being fashioned, and the bridesmaids and groomsmen have arrived. Edith has requested me to be special mistress of ceremonies on Thursday evening, and I have told this terrible little rebel, who talks nothing but blood and thunder, yet faints at the sight of a worm, that if I fill that office no one shall mention war or politics during the whole evening, on pain of expulsion. The clock points to ten. I ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... take notice of these early quarrels, and make them live better together, such domestic feuds proving afterwards the occasion of misfortunes to them both. Peg had, indeed, some odd humours* and comical antipathy, for which John would jeer her. "What think you of my sister Peg," says he, "that faints at the sound of an organ, and yet will dance and frisk at the noise of a bagpipe?" "What's that to you?" quoth Peg. "Everybody's to choose their own music." Then Peg had taken a fancy not to say her Paternoster, which made people imagine strange things ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... starlight, And many nights I slept and dreamed of you; Come, let us climb once more these stairs of starlight, This midnight stream of cloud-flung blue! . . . Music murmurs beneath us like a sea, And faints to a ghostly whisper . . . ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... little flock! the foe Who madly seeks your overthrow, Dread not his rage and power; What though your courage sometimes faints? His seeming triumph o'er God's saints Lasts ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... hands to Moshe the carpenter's boy, who had long had his eye on it. And I had to beg of him, for an hour on end, before he bought it. I almost gave it away for nothing—the little prayer-book. My heart faints and my face burns with shame. Sold! And to what end? For whose sake? For Benny's sake, that he might win off me another few "kopeks." But how is Benny to blame if he ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... tears, Nothing softens, nothing cheers, All is suspected lure; What safety can we hope for, here, When even virtue faints for fear Her ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... takes her on her way (She having roamed a summer's day Along the mountain-sides and scalp), Sleeps in an antre of that alp:— Which is so broad and high that there, As in the topless fields of air, My fancy soars like to a kite And faints in the blue infinite:— Which is so strong, my strongest throes And the rough world's besieging blows Not break it, and so weak withal, Death ebbs and flows in its loose wall As the green sea in fishers' nets, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... don't understand, I was unhappy, in the ordinary sense, unbelievably so. But that wasn't all. I was alive! I lived as the man lives who faints in the dark mine underground, and I lived as the aviator lives, thrilling against the sun, and as the believer in a world of infidels. That was what he did for me. And slowly, as I learned how ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley

... before our startled sight, Struck as with lightning with some keen disease, Drops sudden: By the dread attack o'erpowered He foams, he groans, he trembles, and he faints; Now rigid, now convuls'd, his labouring lungs Heave quick, and quivers ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... indifferently. "At least I do know," she added, "that I always used to be told I didn't try to make small talk, and I can do it less than ever now that it is the smallest of small, and my heart faints from it. Oh Mary!" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... faints; but that we may never be left hopeless, work remains and saves us. Peter's work came to his succor. Just at this crucial time his Eminence the Austrian Cardinal appeared, and Peter ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... found his own spirit strengthened and its frequent struggles calmed. With such unwavering steadiness were his duties performed, that his bodily sufferings never could have been discovered, had not those alarming faints sometimes overpowered him in the cottages he visited ere his duties were completed; and he was thankful, when such was the case, that it occurred when from home, that his mother was thus sometimes spared anxiety. He would walk on quietly home, remain some ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... burden and sorrow of earth, brooding in dim solicitude over the far times and men yet to be, we cannot recklessly utter a word calculated to lessen the hopes of man, pathetic creature, who weeps into the world and faints out of it. It is our faith not knowledge that the spirit is without terminus or rest. The faithful truth hunter, in dying, finds not a covert, but a better trail. Yet the saintliness of the intellect is to be purged from prejudice and self will. With God we are not to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... Mad-Lover The ruby Arcas, least she should recover Her dazled thought, a Diamond he throws, Splendid in all the bright Aspatia's woes; Then to sum up the abstract of his store, He flings a rope of Pearl of forty more. Ah, see! the stagg'ring virtue faints! which he Beholding, darts his Wealths Epitome; And now, to consummate her wished fall, Shows this ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... A protege of yours who faints at the piano wouldn't be at all suitable for one of ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... Ocean done to deserve such a fate? If neither of us can excite your pity, think, I pray you, of your own heaven, and behold how both the poles are smoking which sustain your palace, which must fall if they be destroyed. Atlas faints, and scarce holds up his burden. If sea, earth, and heaven perish, we fall into ancient Chaos. Save what yet remains to us from the devouring flame. O, take thought for our deliverance in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Roland," said Lord Tanlay, with a feeling of profound sadness, "providing that with this aneurism you give me this mother who weeps for joy on seeing you again; this sister who faints with delight at your return; this child who clings upon your neck like some fresh young fruit to a sturdy young tree; this chateau with its dewy shade, its river with its verdant flowering banks, these blue vistas dotted with pretty villages and white-capped belfries graceful ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... Son," said the little bald man. His hand shook on Bart's, and Bart thought, If we're lucky, we can get out of the port before he faints dead away. He said "I'll get a copter," and then, feeling sorry for the stranger, gave him his arm to lean on. He didn't know whether he was worried or scared. Where was his father? Why did this man have his dad's papers? Was his father hiding inside the Lhari ship? He wanted to run, ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... step to bar her path, till she comes to the isolated rock, still some way from the water. This she climbs, to reassure herself. The ship is still in plainest sight. But now, worn out with over tension, Hunilla all but faints; she fears to step down from her giddy perch; she is fain to pause, there where she is, and as a last resort catches the turban from her head, unfurls and waves it over the jungles ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... faints with the heat of the hall," said the thane's wife. "She yet feels the long journey. May she not ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler

... hand upon the other man's eyes, suddenly seizes a wet towel and strikes him across the throat with it. THE CUSTOMER faints. THE BARBER looks at him contemptuously; abruptly raises the chair to a sitting position; puts ...
— The Reckoning - A Play in One Act • Percival Wilde

... against her. But she also remembers the note she believes Tracey has written to Nita, and which, if found after Nita's death, may give her away. So she goes to the closet in Nita's bedroom, finds the note, and faints with horror at her perhaps needless crime when she realizes that the note was written by Sprague, and not Tracey. Of course she is too ill and panic-stricken to leave the closet ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... and so abiding is this corrupt taint in human nature, that long after a man has had his attention called to it, and is far on to a clean escape from it, he still—nay, he all the more—languishes and faints and is ready to die under it. Just hear what two great servants of God have said on this humiliating and degrading matter. Writing on this subject with all his wonted depth and solemnity, Hooker says, 'Even in the good things that we do, how many defects ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... replied the locksmith; 'and I no sooner whispered to her what the matter was—as softly, Doll, and with nearly as much art as you could have used yourself—than she gives a kind of scream and faints away.' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... the puerile details of daily living, fling off your shrouding cares, and lift your worn faces that you may see with a broad outlook how full-fruited is the vineyard in which you are toiling; the thorns are irritating; the glebe is rough; your spirit faints in the heat of the toilsome day. Look up! the lengthening shadows are falling like dew upon you! tired hearts, look up! purple-red hangs the clustering fruit of your life-long work; the vintage has come, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... stars and suns. The science of the future is to be chemistry, emphasizing atoms and elements. Journeying outward in pursuit of the footsteps of God, advancing upon his distant and dizzy march, man's vision faints and falls upon the horizon beyond which are indiscernible splendors. Journeying inward upon the wings of the microscope, we shall find that there is another realm of beauty beyond which the utmost vision of man cannot pierce. For before the microscope "the last ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... manly boldness, saying, "Shepherd, if love or gold can in this desert place procure us entertainment, I pray you bring us where we may rest ourselves; for this young maid, my sister, is much fatigued with travelling, and faints ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... Time! Fame wins The eager youth to her embrace; With tameless ardour he begins, And follows up the bootless race; Ah! bootless—for, as on he hies, With equal speed the phantom flies, Till youth, and strength, and vigour gone, He faints, and sinks, and dies unknown; While the Destroyer passeth by, And smiles, as if in mockery. Gaze, stranger, on the scene below; 'Tis scarce a century ago, Since here abode another race, The men of tomahawk and ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... all very well, Don Jose, but if you truly loved me, you would leave this soldiering which takes you away, and go live with me and my companions in the mountains. There, there is no law, no duties, no——" Don Jose nearly faints at the idea. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... field or in the sick chamber, will agree that the process of dying is seldom more difficult or more painful than taking off one's clothes. The blood ebbs, the senses sleep, "the casement slowly grows a glimmering square," breath gradually fails, unconsciousness faints into deeper unconsciousness, and that is all. Even in terrible wounds and cases of extreme pain, medicine can now alleviate the worst, nor, in any case, do I believe that the expectation of physical agony, however severe, has much share in the instinct ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... (She faints on a worsted ottoman, while her husband raves like an OTTOMAN who has been worsted in a difficulty with an intruder into ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... water-lily dips not as it flows; The swallow, haunter of the charmed spot, Skims through the silence, and awakes it not; Perch'd as in sleep, the gray kingfisher broods, A sentinel among the solitudes; And faints the breeze beneath the heavy sky, Nor bends the bulrush, as it loiters by Thro' long green walls of forest trees, that throw Unwavering shadows in the flood below; And droops from topmost boughs (like garlands dight By elfin hands) the gaudy parasite: Crowning the wave with flow'rs; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... and living in Him we have an abode which can never be 'dissolved,' and above us stretch far-shining glories, unapproached masses of brightness, nebulae of blessedness, spaces where the eye fails and the imagination faints. All is ours, our eternal possession, the inexhaustible source of our joy. Astronomers tell of light which has been travelling for millenniums and has not yet reached this globe; but what is that to the flashing glories which through eternity shall pour on us from Him? So, then, our confidence ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... faints, Hear thine own King, the King of Saints; Though thou wert toiling in the grave, 'Tis He can cheer thee, ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble

... 'Arabian Nights' the lover repeats a passage of poetry and then faints from emotion, and Disraeli's lovers are apt to be as demonstrative and ungovernable in their behaviour. Their happy audacity makes us forget some little defects in their conduct. Take, for example, the model love-story in 'Henrietta Temple.' Told by a cold and unimaginative person, it ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... selfish thing to "lay up treasure in heaven," and so to have "his heart there also." For him the present could not possibly be what it is in its interests, affections, and purposes, if it were not for the revealed certainties of an everlasting future in the presence of the King. "He faints not," in the path of genuine temporal toil and duty, because "he looks at the things which are ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... . . . . . . "I ask one thing. If chance yet ope to me Some path, if even now my hand can win, Strength to requite this Jason for his sin, Betray me not! Oh, in all things but this, I know how full of fears a woman is, And faints at need, and shrinking from the light Of battle; but once spoil her of her right In man's love, and there moves, I warn thee well, No bloodier spirit between ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... not proved how feebly words essay To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess The might—the ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... sunny ease, thinning its bulk over the shoal flat beach with a succession of voluptuous curves, it spreads thence in distance with strands and belts of varied color, away and away, until blind with light it faints on a prodigiously far horizon. Its falling noises are as soft as the sighs of Christabel. Its colors are the pale and milky colors of the opal. But ah! what an impression of boundlessness! How the silver ribbon of beach unrolls for miles and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... him. But man works outwardly and inwardly. After rest he has energy, after energy he needs repose; so, when we have given instruction for a time, we need instruction, and must receive it or the spirit faints and wisdom ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... When Labor faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... thy fiercest, sun! thou canst not wake, In this pure air, the plague that walks unseen. The maize leaf and the maple bough but take, From thy strong heats, a deeper, glossier green. The mountain wind, that faints not in thy ray, Sweeps the blue steams of ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... fair, O Lord of hosts, thy dwellings are! With long desire my spirit faints, To meet the assemblies of ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... become strong in character, but the victory can always be won. When the situation appears hopeless, let the struggling one remember that there is a way of escape somewhere, and that God, who is his freedom and deliverer, will reveal it to him if he faints not. If all who seek deliverance will realize that the Power of the Infinite is on their side, and that they are bound to become victors if they will only keep on, they must succeed. And what a joy is theirs! There is no happiness quite like that which comes ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... nothing at all," Billy told his mother. "Old Sammy's a bit of a coward. He faints when he sees blood. Of course he knows he can't get the prize for valor, or any prize for that matter. His mother has to take ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... alone, when there is a looking-glass in their room. With them, one must be energetic, make use of looks, and squeeze their hands, and even that is useless sometimes. They never know how or where to begin. When one faints in their presence ... as a last resource ... they try to bring you round ... and if you do not recover your senses immediately ... they go and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... fault being sufficient to ruin an army: faults, therefore, he pardons none; they that are precedents of disorder or mutiny repair it by being examples of his justice. Besiege him never so strictly, so long as the air is not cut from him, his heart faints not. He hath learned as well to make use of a victory as to get it, and pursuing his enemies like a whirlwind, carries all before him; being assured if ever a man will benefit himself upon his foe, then is the time when they have lost ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... proof that nearly half the time of pregnancy has passed. If there be liability to miscarry, quickening makes matters more safe, as there is less likelihood of a miscarriage after than before it. A lady at this time frequently feels faint or actually faints away; she is often giddy, or sick, or nervous, and in some instances even hysterically; although, in rare cases, some women do not even know the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... suffer me to kiss the dust from your boots! Oh, thou guardian angel of the righteous, thou defender of the innocent, may God grant thee many, many years upon earth, and, after this life, all the joys of heaven! Was there ever a case like mine? My heart faints within me at the thought of telling my tale; but tell it I must. The whole world must know; and, above all, Mr. Boltay must know what an unfortunate mother I am. Oh, oh, Mr. Boltay, you cannot imagine what a horrible torture it is for a mother who has ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... speaks, though variously applied, Of snaking sleight that soaring strength assails, And strives to drag it from its place of pride, And, after cruel conflict, faints and fails. Sometimes it seems the air's strong monarch vails His crest awhile, as, hampering coil on coil, Insidious knot on pinion proud prevails; Yet towering greatness crawling hate shall foil, Nor shall the Bird of Jove ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various

... faints and bows her head, And want consorts with crime; Or men grown faithless sadly say ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper

... black as they are many) cannot break the spell. Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,—sweet enough, indeed, to be worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pass the sound along their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence. And then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Turn to Leander! henceforth be all sounds, Accents and phrases, that show all griefs' wounds, Analyzed in Leander! O black change! Trumpets, do you, with thunder of your clange, Drive out this change's horror! My voice faints: Where all joy was, now shriek out all complaints!" Thus cried she; for her mixed soul could tell 260 Her love was dead: and when the Morning fell Prostrate upon the weeping earth for woe, Blushes, that bled out of her cheeks, did show Leander brought ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... live. But his word is given, and, full of sorrow, the god and his daughter part. And now comes the hero himself, with his bride. She is fearful of what may befall him in the fight, and would have him flee farther away. He will not do that, and he tries to cheer her, till she faints and sinks down at his feet. Then, beautiful and sad, but still calm, stern, and placid, the Daughter of the God stands ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... rock come so close together that we have to wind through a passage not more than ten feet wide. The air is parched as in an oven. Our horses scramble wearily up the stony gallery and the rough stairways. One of our company faints under the fervent heat, and falls from his horse. But fortunately no bones are broken; a half-hour's rest in the shadow of a great rock revives him and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke

... suffocation, is not universal, as it is in epilepsy, but there is some convulsion, but that without any violent agitation. In syncope both breathing and the pulse fail, the face grows pale, and the woman faints suddenly; but in hysterical attacks there are usually both breathing and pulse, though these are indistinct; the face is red and she has a forewarning of the approaching fit. It cannot, however, be denied that syncope may accompany this feeling of suffocation. Lastly, it can be distinguished from ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... suppose that when two persons look at the same object they would get the same impression, but this is not true at all. Where one person faints with fright or emotion another sees nothing to be disturbed at. Two travelers come in sight of an old homestead. To one it is an object of absorbing interest as the home of his childhood; to the other it is much like any other old ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies So soon as it hath reached the ear ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... ready powers of acquisition; for the mind more often faints from the severity of study than from the severity of gymnastics: the toil is more entirely the mind's own, and is not ...
— The Republic • Plato

... several ways, says Sir JAMES MACKENZIE, the eminent specialist, of tracing heart weakness. One way is to charge the owner of the heart seven-and-six for a pound of butter. If he faints he has a weak heart; if he pays he is merely weak in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various

... genius, bless To some divine excess, Faints the cold work till thou inspire the whole; 45 What each, what all supply, May court, may charm, our eye; Thou, only thou, canst raise the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... Sylvia, shall a husband (whose insensibility will call those raptures of joy! Those heavenly blisses! The drudgery of life) shall he I say receive them? While your Philander, with the very thought of the excess of pleasure the least possession would afford, faints over the paper that brings ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... skin is many times rough, squalid, especially, as Areteus observes, about the arms, knees, and knuckles. The midriff and heart-strings do burn and beat very fearfully, and when this vapour or fume is stirred, flieth upward, the heart itself beats, is sore grieved, and faints, fauces siccitate praecluduntur, ut difficulter possit ab uteri strangulatione decerni, like fits of the mother, Alvus plerisque nil reddit, aliis exiguum, acre, biliosum, lotium flavum. They complain many times, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... that ride through a warm summer rain to the crematory Mrs. Becker went off into light faints, sobbing herself back into consciousness. It frightened Lilly to look at her father; his face had dropped into hollows and the roundness of his back was suddenly a decided hump. And he had fallen into a silence. A sort of hollow urn of it that not even the outbursts ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... The struggle naught availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not nor faileth, And as things have been ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... lightning, she shoots her lover with the darts of her eyes, invisible herself. She will not go to her husband's house till he has her brought by the Government. When she goes her father's village is left empty. She is so delicate she faints at the sight of a flower, Her body cannot bear the weight of her cloth, The garland of jasmine-flowers is a burden on her neck, The red powder on her feet is too ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... the ship's surgeon, the boat is cast off. The boatswain's mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the half-minute bell, the drummer beatin' the rogue's march. From ship to ship the long-boat goes, and the punishment of floggin' is repeated. If he faints, he gets wine or rum, or is taken back to his ship to recover. When his back is healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence. Very few ever live through it, or if they do it's only for a short ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... earth—her thousand plants Are smitten; even the dark, sun-loving maize Faints in the field beneath the torrid blaze; The herd beside the shaded fountain pants; For life is driven from all the landscape brown; The bird has sought his tree, the snake his den, The trout floats dead in the hot stream, and men Drop by the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... Freemasons' dinner, and who, noticing a light issuing from a ruined abbey, creeps up, and looks through the keyhole. He sees the ghost of a 'grey sister' kissing the ghost of a brown monk, and is so inexpressibly shocked and frightened that he faints on the spot, and is discovered there the next morning, lying in a heap against the door, still speechless, and with his faithful latch-key ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome

... interrupted. "If I were to give any attention to your faints, you would be fainting every day just to have a fuss made over you. Now this fainting business has got to be stopped. Do you hear? If you are out of order, I will send for my family physician and have you examined. If you are really ill, you shall be put under ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... said Hay, contemptuously, "you think too much about the thing. Who cares if a pawnbroker faints? Why I wish to go to the shop, is, because I am anxious to see your lady-love. Well, when you do want me to go, send for me; you have my address. 'Day, old man," and the gorgeous being sauntered away, with apparently not a care in the world ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... of Annadoah. It is very fair. It is golden as the radiant face of Sukh-eh-nukh. Her eyes are as bright as stars in the winter night. Oh-h-h, Ootah! Into the eyes of Olafaksoah Annadoah gazes, yea, she faints ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... hastily, then tears it to pieces.] Now, let me tell you, sir, 'Twas a base action to unclose this letter, Or any other not to you address'd. What a curs'd hellish plot hath here been schem'd Against my peace! oh! oh! Maria—oh! [She faints upon ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard

... lady who faints, must be recovered; questions must be answered, and surprizes be explained. Such events are very interesting, but the suspense of them cannot last long. A few minutes made Emma ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... as Darwin realised is very complex. Even the term "expression" has a certain amount of ambiguity. When the emotion is in full flood, the animal fights, flees, or faints. Is this full-tide effect to be regarded as expression; or are we to restrict the term to the premonitory or residual effects—the bared canine when the fighting mood is being roused, the ruffled fur when reminiscent representations of the object ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... Nature, Drop some pity on the soil, Every plant and every creature Droops and faints ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Theatre. The orchestra plays the cachucha. Sound of castanets behind the scenes. The curtain rises, and discovers PRECIOSA in the attitude of commencing the dance. The cachucha. Tumult; hisses; cries of "Brava!" and "Afuera!" She falters and pauses. The music stops. General confusion. PRECIOSA faints. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... bells murmur to each other in the lagoons; the white sail faints into the white distance; the gondola slides athwart the sheeted silver of the bay; the blind beggar, who seemed sleepless as fate, dozes at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... was kind and relieved him of the strain. With a cry as if his heart were bursting, he started up and fell forward on his face unconscious. Some one, a bit more brutal than the rest, said, "It 's five dollars' fine every time a nigger faints," but no one laughed. There was something too portentous, too tragic in the ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... feelings run In soft luxurious flow, Shrinks when hard service must be done, And faints ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... coming out to open the gate for him, he quietly pulls off his hat as a parting salute, and goes away with no greater show of agitation than is visible in the effigy of Mr. Sapsea's father opposite. Rosa faints in going up-stairs, and is carefully carried to her room and laid down on her bed. A thunderstorm is coming on, the maids say, and the hot and stifling air has overset the pretty dear: no wonder; they have felt their own knees all of a ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... there, there... my heart's burst! My shoulder's come off.... Where is my shoulder? I die. [Falls into an armchair] A doctor! [Faints.] ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... she well-nigh faints, but with a supernatural effort of strength she rallies, and begins her work. She has a piece of bread with her, which she gives to the prisoner and with it the remainder of Rocco's wine. Rocco, mild at heart, pities his victim sincerely, but he dares not ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... has the year foreshow'd 170 His wonted course, the sea has overflow'd, The meads were floated with a weeping spring, And frighten'd birds in woods forgot to sing: The strong-limb'd steed beneath his harness faints, And the same shivering sweat his lord attaints. When will the minister of wrath give o'er? Behold him at Araunah's threshing-floor:[175] He stops, and seems to sheathe his flaming brand, Pleased with burnt incense from our David's hand. David ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... this respect, at least, like saints— Was all things unto people of all sorts, And lived contentedly, without complaints, In camps, in ships, in cottages, or courts— Born with that happy soul which seldom faints, And mingling modestly in toils or sports. He likewise could be most things to all women, Without the coxcombry of certain ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... chocklates," Bernard says "in a passionate voice Let us now bask under the spreading trees. Oh yes lets said Ethel." "Ethel he murmered in a trembly voice. [Pg xv] Oh what is it said Ethel." What it was (as well she knew) was love eternal. Ethel accepts him, faints and is brought back to life by a clever "idear" of Bernard's, who pours water on her. "She soon came to and looked up with a sickly smile. Take me back to the 'Gaierty' Hotel she whispered faintly. With pleasure my darling said Bernard I will ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford

... soul of me, I can't help keeping this to plague Grim! You see, I promised to pay him when he charged me with swallowing an assignation, and now if I don't pay him, if I don't make him perspire till he faints, my name is not Mrs. Professor Grimshaw! Let's see! What shall I do! Oh! Why, can't I pretend to lose it, just as Marian lost it, and drop it where he'll find it? I have it! Eureka!" soliloquized the dancing elf, as she placed her handkerchief in the bottom of her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... doubt adorned herself with all her jewels, wore the finest finery in her wardrobe and wreathed her lips in smiles; for she knew that love lives and thrives on smiles and roses, coquetry and gallantry, on laughter and sweet glances, and faints and dies on frowns, neglect and angry words; and so she tripped down to the well, bent on conquest. Then she flung back the drapery to show her dimpled arms, and drawing water filled the trough; then the "shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley

... detest, and the love of Odcombe in Somersetshire, which is so deare unto me that I preferre the very smoak thereof before the fire of all other places under the sunne." So much for Mantua; but Venice, before whose "incomparable and most decantated majestie" his pen faints—Venice beats Odcombe, or something very much like it. He decides that should "foure of the richest mannors of Somersetshire" have been offered him if he would have undertaken not to see Venice, he would have gone without the manors. Odcombe, you see, is not ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... sometimes grotesque in its desire both to startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... her glorious voice, rarely soft, and sweet as a child's, yet powerful withal, rings through the room, swells, faints, every note a separate delight, falling like rounded ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... at home—ye love not to look there On the grim smile of comfortless despair: 240 Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls, Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls. See all alike of more or less bereft; No misers tremble when there's nothing left. 'Blest paper credit;' [20] who shall dare to sing? It clogs like lead Corruption's weary wing. Yet Pallas pluck'd each Premier ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... Priam dies, Here manly Hector faints, here Troilus swounds; Here friend by friend in bloody channel lies, And friend to friend gives unadvised wounds, And one man's lust these many lives confounds: Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire, Troy had been bright with fame and ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... of Europe smoke with marching hooves of thunder, And through each ragged mountain-gorge the guns begin to gleam; And round a hundred cities where the women watch and wonder, The tramp of passing armies aches and faints ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... on his back! Look! as Prometheus in my picture here! Quick, or he faints! stand with the cordial near! Now—bend him to the rack! Press down the poisoned links into his flesh, And tear agape that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... faint again? These faints are so unpleasant—really I don't think"—she paused, and when she resumed her voice sounded still deeper, with a true contralto note—"I don't think even death itself can be much more horrible. The sensation of falling, of sinking ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... her nerve for shooting, into the bargain." He stood looking down perturbedly at Gil, who was smoothing Jean's hair back from her forehead after the manner of men who feel tenderly toward the woman who cries or faints in their presence. "I'm after the punch every time," Burns went on ruefully, "but there's no use being a hog about it. Where's that water-bag, Lee? Go get it out of the machine. Say! Can't you women do something besides stand ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... her hands: not a shred of her robe remains untorn across her breast. She begins to tear her hair and lacerate her tender face. [133] "Ah God!" she cries, "fair gentle Lord, why dost Thou let me thus live on? Come Death, and kill me hastily!" With these words she faints upon his body. When she recovered, she said to herself reproachfully: "Woe is me, wretched Enide; I am the murderer of my lord, in having killed him by my speech. My lord would still be now alive, if I in my mad presumption had not ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... forget,— The day was long in pleasure; Its echoes die away across the hill; Now let thy heart beat time to their slow measure That swells, and sinks, and faints, and falls, till all is still. Then, like a weary child that loves to keep Locked in its arms some treasure, Thy soul in calm content shall fall asleep, ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... a-whirling out of that hole, which he had ketched it with his hands. It was a big bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth was stiffened into spikes, and it lands kerplump into Mis' Rogers's lap, a-wiggling, and it kind o' horns her on the hands, and she is that surprised she faints. Mis' Primrose, she gets up and pushes that fish back into the cistern with her foot from the floor where it had fell, and she says ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... upon his knees, pulling at the old man's sleeves. "Father, father, have pity! I will be self-controlled and docile as I have been these long, long months. But now there is a thing so great that would possess me, my soul faints and sickens. Father, I ask your help, your tenderness. I think I have wronged ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... fast in All's Well that Ends Well. She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boy's clothes. She begins to think Shakspear must have wanted Imagination. I to encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work, flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast and I have been obliged to promise to assist her. To do this it will ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... midnight lamp, the wife bathes an husband's burning brow; or the mother administers draughts to the parched lips of a daughter. To what fears is she then and there subject? Tediously roll the long hours. Not the body alone sinks, but the spirit at length faints. For the conviction is forced on her mind that life is endangered. Suspicion yields to apprehension; that again grows into argument. The physician shows signs of doubt; friends whisper anxieties. Swayed for a season between hope and fear, at length, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... morass of salt, where the life of man and beast, and even of plants and stones, faints away in mortal agony. Unnumbered multitudes of living creatures have sunk into its perfidious abysses. "A caravan of ours," says an Arab author, "had to cross the Chott one day; it was composed of a thousand baggage camels. Unfortunately ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... contemplation of God, finds itself engaged in a species of combat; at one time it seems to prevail, for by understanding and by feeling it tastes somewhat of the Infinite Light; at other times it is overwhelmed, for when it has tasted it faints." ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... bit shabby and worn 'ere and there, but not any the worse of that. You don't need to worry if the kids play puff-puffs on it; and it fits the shape o' the body all the better.—Any one like to try it? Jest the very thing for a tired gent 'ome from biz, or 'andy to pop your lady on when she faints—as the best of ladies will! Any h'offers? Mr. de la Plastrier"—he said "Deelay plastreer"—"a guinea? Thank you, mister. One guinea! Going a guinea!—Now, COME on, ladies and gen'elmen! D'ye think I've got a notion to make you a present of it? What's that? Two-and-twenty? ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... you, not them, and nothing they do can hurt me." Triumph sounded in his voice. "For I have faith in your love, not fear of their enmity. All things may go astray in this world, but not love. Love cannot go wrong unless it be a weakling that faints and stumbles ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... faints in BRIAN'S arms.) That means a clean pinafore. Brian, you'll jolly well have to brush ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne

... should have added) till the morning light Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy pane Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke To gaze upon each other. If this be true, At thought of which my whole soul languishes And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath, as tho' A man in some still garden should infuse Rich attar in the bosom of the rose, Till, drunk with its own wine and overfull Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself, It fall on its own thorns—if ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... a recurrence is a potent cause of a repetition. Standing upright with the body at rest and the mind vacant, the circulation stagnates, the boy's mind is attracted by the suggestion, he fears that he will faint as he has done before, and he faints. Schoolmasters are well aware that if one or two boys faint in chapel and are carried out, the trouble may grow to the proportion of a veritable epidemic. It is important that this habit of fainting should be combated ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... there in the flame! No angel out of heaven could have worn a greater loveliness. Even now my heart faints before the recollection of it, as she stood and smiled at our awed faces, and I would give half my remaining time upon this earth to see ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... (Gen. 15, 12ff.). Sometimes, also, the activity of the senses does not prevent the prophet from seeing the hidden things of the future, and he receives prophetic inspirations while awake. The prophet sometimes faints as he is overcome by the unusual phenomenon, at other times he succeeds in enduring it without swooning. All these cases can be illustrated from the Bible, and examples will readily occur to the reader who is familiar with the various instances and descriptions ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... indignation. At the end of months of unwearied courtship, Mr. Barnes Newcome is honestly accepted, and Lady Clara is waiting for him at Baden, not unhappy to receive him; when walking on the promenade with her father, the ghost of her dead love suddenly rises before her, and the young lady faints to the ground. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... For some; for some what homely housing writ; What keen-eyed men who beggared of content Eat bread well earned as they had stolen it; What flutterers after joy that forward went, And left them in the rear unqueened, unfit For joy, with light that faints in strugglings drear Of all things good ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... sustenance, and at last, if kind entreaties cannot prevail upon her, is compelled by force, and even by blows, to complete the marriage with her husband. It sometimes happens, that when the female match-makers arrive to propose a lover to a Greenland young woman, she either faints, or escapes to the uninhabited mountains, where she remains till she is discovered and carried back by her relations, or is forced to return by hunger and cold; in both which cases, she previously cuts off her hair; a most infallible ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... a woman's friend than it is for him to be by turns her worshipper and oppressor—and you are made to conquer difficult things, and be made stronger by them. You have admirable qualities—self-forgetfulness, lofty purpose, a will that never falters, a heart that never faints. I discovered all these before I received your letters. Otherwise, do you think I would ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... feeblest one, Keenly, as though unto Himself 'twere done;— Who, sees no kindness to the humblest shown, But 'lisas though 'twere to Himself alone;— And who will judge the wrong, the kindness bless, With all a brother's truth and tenderness;— Nay, more: an earthly brother faints and dies, Or faithless oft, forgets affections ties;— His love, enduring as the eternal throne, No change, decay, or loss ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... Langton gets quite frantic as he waves his red pocket handkerchief wildly to his beloved daughter for the last time, and Mrs. Langton faints on the pier and has to be carried away, which sets the helpless Beatrice sobbing as though her heart would break and she shouts messages till she is hoarse and then sheds many tears which continue on and off till she reaches Calcutta, when the sight of two pleasant nurses ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... in us that faints, Thou God, the self-existent! We catch up wild at parting saints And feel Thy ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... no shades. Overwhelmed by this huge heap, Caeneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself into the {open} air, and to throw off the wood cast {upon him}: and sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... saints Look down once more upon a Christian crowd, And Echo startles into life, and faints With rapture at ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West

... balcony] Siddhattha! Siddhattha! Where are you? He is gone! He has departed into homelessness! [She faints.] ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes famous O but then what am I going to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... bleed; then there was an artery to be taken up and tied; then six stitches to be taken with a great big needle. Most providentially dear Julia Willis came in about ten minutes before the doctors and though she was greatly distressed, she never faints, and staid till Lizzy was laid in bed.... She was just like a marble statue, but even more beautiful, while the blood stained her shoulders and bosom. You couldn't have looked on such suffering without fainting, man that you are.—From a letter of Mrs. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... hath not proved how feebly words essay[132] 170 To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight[fl] Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess The might—the majesty of Loveliness? Such was Zuleika—such around her shone The nameless charms unmarked by her alone— The light of Love, the purity of Grace,[fm] The mind, the Music[133] breathing from her ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... who within the narrow slit had endured eight of these Augusts with only two casual faints and a swoon or two nipped in the bud, this ninth August came in so furiously that, sliding out of her sixth showing of a cloth-of-silver and blue-fox opera wrap, a shivering that amounted practically to chill ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... called aloud the awful Word, then the vapours burst and melted, and with my eyes I saw that Glory, at the very thought of which my spirit faints. But what I saw it is not lawful to utter. For, though I have been bidden to write what I have written of this matter, perchance that a record may remain, thereon I have been warned—ay, even now, after these many years. I saw, and what I saw cannot be imagined; for there are Glories and ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... has picked up a bit of gauzy silver, which he is winding round his scraggy neck. And now, here comes a cascade right over our heads; a cascade, not of water, but of cloud; for the poor little brook that makes it faints away before it gets down to us; it falls like a shimmer of moonlight, or a shower of powdered silver, while a tremulous rainbow appears at uncertain intervals, like a ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... as possible people have kept within doors or walked on the shady side of the street. But we can have but a faint idea of what the people suffer crossing a desert or in a tropical clime. The head faints, the tongue swells and deathly sickness comes upon the whole body when long exposed to the summer sun. I see a whole caravan pressing on through the hot sands. "Oh," say the camel-drivers, "for water and shade!" At last they see an elevation against the sky. They revive at the ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... whose souls are fed On what this foolish world calls bread; For lack of food the spirit sighs, And, weak and weary, faints and dies. ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie

... thing burn, and no sweet thing shine; Nor love lower never an ear to listen To words that work in the heart like wine. What time we are set from our land apart, For pain of passion and hunger of heart, Though we walk with exiles fame faints to christen, Or sing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... soul, she beats her wings And pants to fly away Up to immortal things In the heavenly day: Yet she flags and almost faints; Can such be meant for me?— Come and see, say the Saints. Saith Jesus: Come and see. Say the Saints: His pleasures please us Before God and the Lamb. Come and taste My sweets, saith Jesus: Be ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... Mrs. Quick [come] [3] to tell me, that tis come up this Morning a Five hundred Pound Prize. The Husband replies immediately, You lye, you Slut, you have no Ticket, for I have sold it. The poor Woman upon this Faints away in a Fit, recovers, and is now run distracted. As she had no Design to defraud her Husband, but was willing only to participate in his good Fortune, every one pities her, but thinks her Husbands Punishment but just. This, Sir, is Matter of Fact, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... heads misfortunes come: One bears them firm, another faints, While this one hangs them like a drum ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... she screams, and gives one look at the statues and pictures and new carpet in the drawing-room and faints on the floor! And I nearly crazy for being such a fool at ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... dream.' That is to say, these men dreamed that God came to them. So the savage, who dreams of his dead acquaintance, believes he has been visited by the dead man's spirit. This belief in ghosts is confirmed, Mr. Spencer argues, by other phenomena. The savage who faints from the effect of a wound sustained in fight looks just like the dead man beside him. The spirit of the wounded man returns after a long or short period of absence: why should the spirit of the other ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... save an intense cold. He walked on. Then all grew white about him; and the cold stung him like fire. He walked on still, groping through the whiteness. It thickened about him. At last, it got into his heart, and he lost all sense. I would say that he fainted—only whereas in common faints all grows black about you, he felt swallowed up in whiteness. It was when he reached North Wind's heart that he fainted and fell. But as he fell, he rolled over the threshold, and it was thus that Diamond got to the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... move, nor had she moved since the revelation. Carmichael, a secret joy in his heart, watched the girl for the slightest swaying, that inevitable prelude to fainting. But Hildegarde was not the kind of woman who faints in the face of a catastrophe, however great it might be. The only sign of life lay in her beautiful eyes, the gaze of which remained unswervingly fixed upon the chancellor's ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... tender. Well, everybody comes to their senses, or else loses 'em again, whichever you like, all of a sudden, and the women that don't faint gets screechin', and the men are hollerin' for the police, and all except them as are laying in faints begins to run. We were pretty well up to the front, and when Pa sees the young fellow pull out the bars he turns kinder white. Then he grabs Dolly and Joey, and says to the rest of us, 'Vamoose ahead quick,' he says, 'though I don't think ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... from a shepherd's pipe without. It half awakens Tristan, and he talks of it—how it has haunted him since his childhood. Kurvenal tells him Isolda has been sent for. He becomes more and more delirious, and at last, after an outburst, he faints; then awakens and sings the sublime passage in which he sees Isolda coming over-seas, the ship covered with sweet-smelling flowers. The accompaniment to this piece of magic is a figure taken from the fourth theme I have quoted in this chapter. It is given at first to the horns, and over it ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... it fated, and decreed to dwell In youthful hearts, which nothing can expel, A passion doom'd to reign, and irresistible. The struggling mind, when once subdued, in vain Rejects the fury or defies the pain; The strongest reason fails the flames t'allay, And resolution droops and faints away: Hence, when the destined lovers meet, they prove At once the force of this all-powerful love; Each from that period feels the mutual smart, Nor seeks to cure it—heart is changed for heart; Nor is there peace till they delighted stand, And, at the altar—hand is join'd to hand. ...
— Tales • George Crabbe

... ope'd Its doors of pearl and Devis wooed me in. I go to build the Kingdom of the Law, journeying to Gaya and the forest shades, Where, as I think, the light will come to me; For nowise here among the Rishis comes That light, nor from the Shasters, nor from fasts Borne till the body faints, starved by the soul. Yet there is light to reach and truth to win; And surely, O true Friend, if I attain I will ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... AIR, SINGING: Life of Life! thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle 50 Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those looks, where whoso gazes Faints, entangled in their mazes. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... own house hears a voice singing. It is the voice of a friend now in a convent, and she faints, because she is sure it is the voice of the dead. At the same moment that friend does really die, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... of the ship, and cries out in French: "Spare my child!" Dreadful period! when every human being is looked upon as a murderer. The women comfort her. Her clothes are in rags, but upon her fingers are costly jewels. Her babe is restored to her arms; she faints with hunger and exhaustion. For three days, she tells us, she has been hidden in that tree, without food or drink; and has seen all dear to her perish—all but her little Francois. And with what delight Estella and Christina and ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... than they were a half-century ago, when it was considered unladylike to exercise. If you will read the novels of that time, you will find that the heroine faints on the slightest provocation or weeps copiously, like Amelia in Vanity Fair, whenever the situation demands a grain of will-power or of common-sense. But to-day women seldom faint or weep in literature; they play tennis ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... manner of love the Father has bestowed on us' than we can look with undimmed eyes right into the middle of the sun. But we can in some measure imagine the tremendous and beneficent forces that ride forth horsed on his beams to distances which the imagination faints in trying to grasp, and reach their journey's end unwearied and ready for their task as when it began. Here are we, ninety odd millions of miles from the centre of the system, yet warmed by its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... it's only a little toothache; it will soon pass.—Take cold water in your mouth, old friend, and then it will disappear. [Woman faints.] Surely a woman will not faint for such a little pain! [Friends rush out.] Now run to the dentist and let him draw all your teeth, foxes! After that you'll not bite ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg

... to his hut; he meets a weeping wife and starving children; he abuses them, he tumbles into his straw, and he rolls and foams like a mad brute, till he is able to go again. He calls for more rum—he repeats the scene from time to time, and from day to day, till soon his nature faints, and ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... use all his available force of control in keeping the energy in. Some of it will leak away into the nerves of his face and distort his features, some may set his tear-glands at work, some may travel down his vagus nerve and inhibit his heart's action so that he faints, or upset the blood-vessels in his head and give him a stroke. Or if he pens it up, without its reaching any of these vents, it may rise at last to flood-level, and you will have violent assaults, the breaking of furniture, 'murther' ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... deuce is it, then? Lottchen never faints on a frolic. Some poor little girl lost in earnest. I must get her out of this gloomy place at once, and ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... be it Art or hap, He hath spoken true. The very Dice obey him, And in our sports my better cunning faints, Vnder his chance, if we draw lots he speeds, His Cocks do winne the Battaile, still of mine, When it is all to naught: and his Quailes euer Beate mine (in hoopt) at odd's. I will to Egypte: And though I make this marriage ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare



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