"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the inhumanity of his words made her recoil for an instant, and then she recovered her ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's most ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of the Civil War the United States purchased a great quantity of these arms, and before their worthlessness became apparent a considerable number was issued. The calibre of most of them was .75; the rifling was very deep; the recoil and trajectory were abnormal, and accuracy of shooting was conspicuous by absence."—Sawyer, "Our Rifles." ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... I would remind them that all suffering is against the ideal order of things. No man can love pain. It is an unlovely, an ugly, abhorrent thing. The more true and delicate the bodily and mental constitution, the more must it recoil from pain. No one, I think, could dislike pain so much as the Saviour must have disliked it. God dislikes it. He is then on our side in the matter. He knows it is grievous to be borne, a thing he would cast out of his blessed universe, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... feverishly alert; he felt the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves, and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of youthful rhetoric, "that come what would, he was going to the devil—and ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... proper charge for that gun is one-fourth the weight of the ball, or one ounce of powder, with which it carries with great nicety and terrific effect, owing to its great weight of metal (twenty-one pounds); but it is a small piece of artillery which tries the shoulder very severely in the recoil. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... of slaughter from which every properly-balanced Christian mind is bound to recoil with horror. One such tale has recently been given to us in the pages of the Avicultural Magazine, of London, for January, 1912, by Mr. Hubert D. Astley, F.Z.S., whose word no man will dispute. In condensing it, let ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... mark, until in time their hands became so steady that at short distances of sixty or seventy yards they could beat their brothers, who were both really good shots. This was principally owing to the fact that the charge of powder used in these rifles was so small that there was scarcely any recoil to disturb the aim. It was some time before they could manage to hit anything flying; but they were very proud one evening when, having been out late with the boys, a fat goose came along overhead, ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... enough, she experienced no revulsion, no horror, no recoil even. He had merely become more aloof, more incomprehensible; his purposes vaster, less susceptible to the grasp of such as she. There may have been some basis for this feeling, or it may have been merely the reflex glow ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... to look again. Awake, ye drowned powers. Ye sprites, for-dull with toil: Resign to me this care of yours, And from dead sleep recoil. Think not upon your loathsome luck, But arise, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... not hesitate to wreak his revenge on Essex and Manchester, though the blow would probably recoil upon himself.[b]He proposed in the Commons what was afterwards called the "self-denying ordinance," that the members of both houses should be excluded from all offices, whether civil or military. He would not, he said, reflect on what was passed, but suggest a remedy for the future. The nation ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... knew him, and almost at the same moment he recognized me; uttering an oath of rage, he rose up as if to spring at my throat. But either because I did not recoil—being too deep-set in the hay to move—or for some other reason, he only shook his claw-like fingers at me, and held off. "Where is it, you dog?" he cried, finding his voice with an effort. "Speak, or I will have your throat slit. Speak; do you hear? What have ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... infidelity in wives, the crimes have been fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband, cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; but the husband must hold ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... of women at the South in aid of the Slave-holders' Rebellion, and can form some estimate of the "fierceness of their wrath"; but, God be thanked, the days approach when their mad passions will recoil upon themselves—the days approach when their evil cause must die. Let us unitedly pledge ourselves to stand by the Government, in our legitimate sphere, and out of it, if needs be. Let us, with womanly zeal, help to crush the power of its iniquitous assailants, remembering that the name ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... when the vessels are rendered relaxed, the resistance is removed, the heart begins to run quicker, like a watch from which the pallets have been removed, and the heart-stroke, losing nothing in force, is greatly increased in frequency, with a weakened recoil stroke. It is easy to account, in this manner, for the quickened heart and pulse which accompany the first stage of deranged action from alcohol, and you will be interested to know to what extent this increase of vascular action proceeds. The information on this subject ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... from it, and that is by speech. Speech has a way of clearing the clogged channels of the mind, and allowing the thought to flow outwards, and possibly to disappear altogether; whereas, without this clearance, the thought of necessity returns to its source, gathering in volume with each recoil. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... forming the reserve. As soon as formed the line was ordered to advance rapidly. Exhausted by running, it received the American fire at the distance of thirty or forty paces. The effect was so great as to produce something of a recoil. The fire was returned; and the light infantry made two attempts to charge, but were repulsed with loss. The Highlanders next were ordered up, and rapidly advancing in charge, the American front line gave way and retreated through an open space in the second line. This ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... have occurred to her that only the day before he had spent a part of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the hill. He had in fact turned into the National Gallery and had wandered about there for more than an hour, and it was just while he did so that the immitigable recoil had begun perversely to make itself felt. The perversity was all the greater from the fact that if the experience was depressing this was not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by the sight of the grand things that had been done—things so much grander than any that would ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... overhead. And these feats seem curious. But an accomplished "Constitutional Adviser" can perform feats far more surprising with a few lumps of coal or a number of ships-knees, which are but boomerangs of a larger growth. Another has invented the deadliest of political missiles, (in their recoil,) shaped like mules and dismantled forts, while a third has demolished the Treasury with a simple miscalculation. Still more astonishing are the performances of an eminent functionary who encourages polygamy by intimidation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... his contemptuous "better to marry than to burn" is only out of date in respect of his belief that the end of the world was at hand and that there was therefore no longer any population question. His instinctive recoil from its worst aspect as a slavery to pleasure which induces two people to accept slavery to one another has remained an active force in the world to this day, and is now stirring more uneasily than ever. We have more and more Pauline celibates whose objection to marriage is the intolerable indignity ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... without doubt, that his recoil from you is correspondingly great. He goes to New Spain as soon as his health is recovered sufficiently ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... King is but temporary, since, according to M. Jonnart's declaration, it rests with the people to call him back after the War; that all resistance on the part of the people will result in the abolition of the dynasty and the establishment of a Republic under Venizelos; that the Allies would not recoil from a bombardment of the capital and a military occupation; but if the people keep quiet, there will be no military occupation of Athens, only some soldiers may land at the Piraeus to stretch their legs—and so ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... to giving double the stability against overturning or being driven bodily out of place. But our guns may be reasonably well protected by earthen parapets without any expensive armor by so mounting them that when fired they will recoil downward or to one side, so as to come below the parapet for loading. This method of mounting is called the disappearing principle, and has been suggested by many engineers, some of whose designs date back more than one hundred years. We may also mount our guns in deep pits, where they will be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... at this final onslaught, and used their war-clubs in the most gallant manner. Jimmy, too, seemed to be transformed into as brave a black warrior as ever fought; and it was the gallant resistance offered that checked the enemy and made them recoil. ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... of Burns were written in a desire to work off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it. Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for strong drink, trying ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... spectators they had barely started forward with their blood curdling, the engine had but screamed, and Mallston was merely seen dropping a basket of potatoes and leaping with upright hair and starting eyes, before the whole thing was over. The train stopped with such a recoil that many passengers were thrown from their seats: the engineer dropped from his cab, and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... recoil had drawn him to his side. His cruel, mirthless grin seemed to her to carry inexpressible menace. Very slowly, while his eyes taunted her, he pulled ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly. It was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil, crushed an unworthy ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the gun carriage; this gave play to the sole and the framework, separated the two platforms, and the breeching. The tackle had given way, so that the cannon was no longer firm on its carriage. The stationary breeching, which prevents recoil, was not in use at this time. A heavy sea struck the port, the carronade, insecurely fastened, had recoiled and broken its chain, and began its terrible course over ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... free, you would not have felt the recoil, which, even in a heavy, well-made gun, is equal to the fall of a weight fifty to sixty pounds from a height of one foot, and in overloaded or defective guns, exceeds twice and even three times that. It is a wonder that your shoulder was not broken, and a still ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... sonnets in our literature; but it would be well to warn editors how they print this one sonnet; "I wished to share the transport" is by no means an uncommon reading. Into the history of the variant I have not looked. It is enough that all the suddenness, all the clash and recoil of these impassioned lines are lost by that "wished" in the place of "turned." The loss would be the less tolerable in as much as perhaps only here and in that heart-moving poem, 'Tis said that some have died for love, is Wordsworth ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... that it could not be expected that the colonists, merely out of a compliment to the mother country, should submit to perish for thirst with water in their own wells. And these clear-sighted politicians saw plainly enough that such blows as the Government were aiming at America must in the end recoil upon Great Britain herself. They appreciated the injury that must be done to British commerce by even a temporary interruption of the intercourse between the two countries. But bad as the restrictive measures were in their immediate, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... piece with its heavy, old-fashioned trail and no recoil cylinder was never meant to play any part in an army of movement. You could picture how it had been dragged up into position back of the German trenches and how a crew of old Landsturm gunners had been allowed a certain number of shells a day and told off ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... gave name to the Cynosarges, are all various phases of the same thought,—the Greek notion of the dog being throughout confused between its serviceable fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul voracity, shamelessness, and deadly madness, while with the curious reversal or recoil of the meaning which attaches itself to nearly every great myth,—and which we shall presently see notably exemplified in the relations of the serpent to Athena,—the dog becomes in philosophy a type of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... were a Samson, the laws of hydrostatics would set at naught their strength. The shock with which they touch the mill will recoil on the skiff; if they grapple it they will be dragged away by it. It is as if a spider would catch ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... I do not. [Patiomkin throws her into Edstaston's arms.] Oh! [The pair, awkward and shamefaced, recoil from one ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... peace barely forty miles away, was one of the victims, for he had taken sides with Long Nolan, who without rhyme or reason had been discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained to stir all hands within ten miles to the support of ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the recoil of Orestes—the remonstrance of Pylades—the renewed passion of the avenger—the sudden recollection of her dream, which the murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm Orestes to its fulfilment, and he pursues and slays her by the side of the adulterer; ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by your neglect; your care of them was displayed in sending persons to govern them who were the deputies of deputies of ministers—men whose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men who have been promoted to the highest seats of justice in a foreign country, in order to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own." Mr. Pitt opposed the fatal policy of Grenville ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... on a platform in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up my bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here are my interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. The effect of pictures in this place is surprising. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eye of no superior authority is on them, or nothing else to deter, they are "hail fellow well met" with such of the convicts as are unprincipled enough to curry favor with and assist them in covering up their peccadilloes from their superiors. They naturally recoil at the hardness and parsimony of the Government toward them, evading the performance of duties when they can, and I have heard more than one say: "Why should we care what prisoners do, so long as we don't ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... e.i.c.m.) and other allied muscles, and the diaphragm (dia.) contracts and becomes flatter; the air is consequently sucked, in as the lungs follow the movement of the thorax wall. In expiration the intercostals and diaphragm relax and allow the elastic recoil of the lungs to come into play. The thoracic wall is simultaneously depressed by the muscles of the abdominal area, the diaphragm thrust forwards, as the result of the displacement and compression of the alimentary viscera thus brought about. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... His nerve was inexhaustible; his judgment sure. There was, after all, a simple key to the mystery. Wimberley had led a solitary life as a dynamiter, deep under ground. He was frightened of men, but danger was his element. When he saw other men recoil at the thing which bothered him not at all, he realized that he was the big man, though he only stood 5 feet 3 inches ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... he dies as the brute dies, he will soon live as the brute lives, and all that is precious to the heart of man will be forever destroyed. We recoil from such a fate, but live in the serene assurance that such a ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... all these could claim Exemptions from the lot of penal shame, Or snatch from glory's plant one servile wreath, To deck the waste of crimes, that frown'd beneath. Harden'd in villany, with fate unfeign'd He mock'd at warning, scorn'd reproach, nor deign'd To answer either, and remorse's dart Recoil'd from his impenetrable heart: Save in those hours when darkness or when pain Recals its force, and guilt recedes again; When passion, vice, and fancy quit their sway, When lawless pleasure trembling shrinks away, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... are the half-starved, half-clothed, half-human sons of the forest and the waste; or, when gathered in states, they are slaves without enjoyment or sense beyond the hour; and the reason that they do not recoil from the pangs of death is because they have never known the real pleasures or the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... incorporation into the English language. Thus 'shash', a Turkish word, becomes 'sash'; 'colone' (Burton) 'clown'{55}; 'restoration' was at first spelt 'restauration'; and so long as 'vicinage' was spelt 'voisinage'{56} (Sanderson), 'mirror' 'miroir' (Fuller), 'recoil' 'recule', or 'career' 'carriere' (both by Holland), they could scarcely be considered those purely English words ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... that crawl and swarm in the dark. Turn up a stone, and the creeping things hurry out of the penetrating glare so unwelcome. 'What maketh heaven, that maketh hell,' and the same presence is life or death, joy or agony. The dear perception of divine purity and the shuddering recoil of impotent hatred from it are surely of the very essence of the demonic nature, and every man, who looks into the depths of his own spirit, knows that the possibilities of such a state ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... With a recoil in every fibre of her nature, Diana turned to take up her life burden. She felt as if she had had ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... came on; she was near at hand. We saw her plainly—saw the rotted planks, the crumbling rigging, the rust-corroded metal-work, the broken rail, the gaping deck, and I could imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean. She made no sound. No single thing stirred aboard the ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... to sea again now that it was so rough, and the wind changed so frequently, seemed more terrible than to remain where they were. Pyrrhus rose and leapt into the water, and at once was eagerly followed by his friends and his body-guard. The darkness of night and the violent recoil of the roaring waves made it hard for them to help him, and it was not until daybreak, when the wind abated, that he reached the land, faint and helpless in body, but with his spirit invincible in misfortune. The Messapians, upon whose coast he ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... missed them. She had intended to marry a very important person who much admired her. She had been almost sure that she could marry him if she wanted to, and she had found out that she couldn't. It had not been, as in her youth, her own shrinking and her own recoil at the last decisive moment. She had been resolved and unwavering; her discomfiture had been sudden and its cause the quite grotesque one of her admirer having fallen head over heels in love with a child of eighteen—a foolish, affected little child, who ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... seen me hitherto a poor man and oppressed me; you see me now rich and powerful, and well prepared to punish your villany; and thus, in every instance, may oppression recoil on the oppressor. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... could call their own in society, until they find a man to take them under his wing. She degrades womanhood who thinks thus of herself. It says ill for the relation of father and mother if the young women of a family recoil from the thought of being married, but it says ill for the relation of parents and children if they ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... fact that the brave general did not come to this decision till he had done all that a brave man could under the circumstances; for it is permitted a man to recoil when there is nothing left but to let himself be ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... clever a man of this world might be, and bate not a jot of his self admiration! Men who salute a neighbour as a man of the world, paying him the greatest compliment they know in acknowledging him of their kind, recoil with a sort of fear from the man alien to their thoughts, and impracticable for their purposes. They say "He is beyond me," and despise him. So is there a great world beyond them with which they hold a frightful relationship—that of unrecognized, unattempted duty! Lord ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... with a voice so loud It seemed as it would shatter heaven! The bravest quailed; it swept so near, It made the ruddiest cheek to blanch, While look replied to look in fear, "The avalanche! The avalanche!" It forced the foremost to recoil, Before its sideward billows thrown,— Who cried, "O God! Here ends our toil! The path ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... instant the above dialogue—from the frivolity of which the universally-learned readers of modern times will, we fear, recoil with contempt—was interrupted by a movement on the part of its hero which showed that his occupation was at an end. With the elaborate deliberation of a man who disdains to exhibit himself as liable to be hurried by any mortal affair, Vetranio slowly folded up the vellum he had ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... in good earnest.— How sometimes nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzled, Lest it should bite its master, and so prove, As ornaments oft do, too dangerous. How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This squash, this gentleman.—Mine honest friend, Will you take eggs ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... of escaping instant death. To close and bar the door, and stand on his defence, was the work of a moment. Corsican houses are strongholds; Orso Paolo was in possession of the enemy's fortress. He threatens death to the first assailant, and the boldest recoil. What was to be done? It was proposed to set fire to the house, but Ruggero's youngest son, a child of seven or eight years old, had been left asleep in the house when the family went to church. He would perish in the flames. At that ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... and reflux of sound. First, the formidable shock of the clapper against the vase, then a sort of crushing and scattering of the sounds as if ground fine with the pestle, then a rounding of the reverberation; then the recoil of the clapper, adding, in the bronze mortar, other sonorous vibrations which it ground up and cast out and dispersed through the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... our mind the impersonal mass-crimes to which our own times so frightfully incline, when many a man who would recoil in horror from an ordinary act of pocket-picking or from manslaughter with intent to commit larceny, robs thousands in cold blood by means of a swindling enterprise, or, for the sake of a fraudulent insurance, destroys the lives ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... illustrious for the genius and virtues of a Hannibal and the profound philosophy of St. Augustine, there grew up some of the most terrible despotisms ever known to the world. The things done daily by the robber sovereigns were such as to make a civilized imagination recoil with horror. One of these cheerful creatures, who reigned in the middle of the eighteenth century, and was called Muley Abdallah, especially prided himself on his peculiar skill in mounting a horse. Resting his left hand upon the horse's ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... I sprang quickly and was just about to lie down behind it, when a man rose from its other side. I did not lie down. He looked at me; I looked at him. He was unarmed. We were about eight feet apart. He began to recoil. There was light sufficient to enable me to tell from his dress that he was a rebel. Of course he would think me a Confederate. I stepped over ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... an eager half-turn. "He will want to embrace me," thought our young man with a deep recoil of all his being, while his limbs seemed too heavy to move. But it was a groundless alarm. He had to do now with a generation of conspirators who did not kiss each other on both cheeks; and raising an arm that ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... with a united roar; but making a second attempt, they succeeded in getting up. Wilkins at once presented in the direction of the lions and again fired. Whether any of them fell is a matter of dispute, but certain it is that Wilkins fell, for the recoil of the gun knocked him back, his footing being insecure, and he went down on the top of a tent which had been pitched on the other side of the wagon, and broke the pole of it. After this several more shots were fired, apparently without success. While they were reloading a lion leaped ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... to Europe, that the interference of Europe, therefore, in those concerns should be spontaneously withheld by her upon the same principles that we have never interfered with hers, and that if she should interfere, as she may, by measures which may have a great and dangerous recoil upon ourselves, we might be called, in defence of our altars and firesides, to take an attitude which would cause our neutrality to be respected, and choose peace or war as our interest ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... began to recoil before the sweep of the English cannon. Dieskau received a severe wound and the ardour of his followers was visibly cooled. At four o'clock the English general thought the opportune moment had arrived to make a sortie, and his men climbed over the rampart ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... blow to him, and the practical inconveniences involved were great. But the fibre of him—of which she had just felt the toughness—was delicate and sensitive as her own, and after a very short recoil he met her with great chivalry and sweetness, agreeing that everything should be put off for six weeks, till Easter in fact. She would have been very grateful to him but that something—some secret thought—checked the words she ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... peace with each other. The wicked man did not dislike virtue, nor the good man vice: the villain could admire a saint, and the saint could excuse a villain, in things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes recoil ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... waited: and across her genuine absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing on, "And, Neale, what do you think? She has worked on him, and he has worked on himself till he's got himself in a morbid state. He thinks perhaps he ought to leave Ashley that he loves so much and go down ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... began gathering and scrambling—for, manage it how you may, nutting is scrambling work,—those boughs, however tightly you may grasp them by the young fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves, will recoil and burst away; but there is a pleasure even in that: so on we go, scrambling and gathering with all our might and all our glee. Oh, what an enjoyment! All my life long I have had a passion for that sort of seeking which implies finding (the secret, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... evanescent anguish—occurring in the appeal to Sir Horace Welby, her friendly foe, in the strong scene of the second act—was wonderfully subtle. That appeal, as Genevieve Ward made it, began in artifice, became profoundly sincere, and then was stunned and startled into a recoil of resentment by a harsh rebuff, whereupon it subsided through hysterical levity into frigid and brittle sarcasm and gay defiance. For a while, accordingly, the feelings of the observer were deeply moved. Yet this did not make the character of Stephanie less detestable. The blight remains upon ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... back. Her body seemed to recoil, but her head thrust forward as if to bring her eyes in better ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... assumed and merited the name of the Infernal, by the horrid atrocities which they committed. At Pilau, they roasted the women and children in a heated oven. Many similar horrors could be added, did not the heart and hand recoil from the task. Without quoting any more special instances of horror, we use the words of a republican eye witness, to express the general spectacle presented by the theatre ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... when Joseph had finished. "You have honestly earned your epaulets, and to-day you will for the first time appear at my dinner-table as a Russian officer. Ah, I prophesy a great future for you. You have the requisite skill and address to make your fortune. You are shrewd, daring, and you recoil from no means, finding them all good and useful when they forward your aims. With such principles one may go far in this world, and Russia in fact offers you the best opportunity for bringing all these fine talents ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... a thought to their inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without such thoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses, in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; but they cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensive tracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods that for a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... not reply and did not recoil. He seemed ready himself to catch the beech-tree in his open arms in order to cast it on ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... the position of very many. They are hovering between the idea of extinction and that of torment. They try to believe in torment; they have been inoculated with that idea; they think, or are afraid, that it is Scriptural; but they recoil from any hearty reception of it. They have not got the length as yet of the idea of final salvation. But some day that truth may flash upon their souls like a ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... said it is clear that we must not seek too high for Jeremiah's rank as a poet. The temptation to this—which has overcome some recent writers—is due partly to a recoil from older, unjust depreciations of his prophetic style and partly to the sublimity of the truths which that mixed style frequently conveys. But those truths apart, his verse was just that of the folksongs ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... moment to lose, for the Federals were already charging down with triumphant cheers, confident of an easy victory. Calhoun had posted his men well, and a withering volley sent the Federals reeling back. They charged again, only to recoil before the fierce fire of the Confederates. There was now a lull in the fighting. Calhoun saw that they were flanking him on the right and left. "Charge!" he shouted, and the little band were soon in the midst of their enemies. ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... mind, too, is Kue Pih-yuh! When the land is being rightly governed he will serve; when it is under bad government he is apt to recoil, and brood." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... pursuers of glory calumniate glory to others who are their rivals, that they may get it without antagonists. In this they resemble rowers, who face the stern of the vessel but propel it ahead, that by the recoil from the stroke of their oars they may reach port, so those that give vent to precepts like this pursue glory with their face turned in the opposite direction. For otherwise what need was there to utter a precept ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... this has subsided, and you think the matter calmly over, you will be forced to acknowledge that only the purest friendship could prompt me to remonstrate with you on your ruinous career. Of course, if you choose, you can soon wreck yourself; you are your own master; but the infatuation will recoil upon you. Your disgrace and ruin will not affect me, save that, as your friend, I should mourn your fall. Ah, Eugene, I have risked your displeasure— I have ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... stride, and going in the most elastic way in spite of the long run, but the eland was labouring heavily, as Dyke drew trigger, felt the sharp, jerking recoil shoot right up his arm to the shoulder; and then to his astonishment, as he dashed on out of the smoke, he was alone, and the eland lying fifty yards behind, where it had come down with a ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... passenger in railway carriages, continually offered Somebody's oats, inks, washing blue, candles, and soap, apparently as a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there and thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or recoil from that particular quality. Or, as an unbiased observer, he wondered if, on the other hand, impressible passengers, after passing three or four stations, had ever leaped from the train and refused to proceed further until they were supplied with one or more of those articles. ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... pressed down and held in position by either a weight or any contrivance handy. It should be done a little more than seems necessary for restoring the even line of the edging, which can be fairly well seen by looking along from end to end; this is to allow of a slight recoil when the loops ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... where there is only one hope, its death is equally bitter, whether it be a great or a little hope. And there is often no power of reaction, in a mind which has been gradually reduced to one little faint hope, when that hope goes out in darkness. There is a recoil which is very helpful, from the blow that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... in his hand a slip of oak, with which he gave a flourish, that, however slight, intimated some acquaintance with the noble art of single-stick. From this demonstration Sir Bingo thought it prudent somewhat to recoil, though backed by a party of friends, who, in their zeal for his honour, would rather have seen his bones broken in conflict bold, than his honour injured by a discreditable retreat; and Tyrrel ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... depend on the amount of capital and labour. A number of far subtler factors enter into the account—science, organisation, energy, credit, confidence, the spirit in which men set about their business. The one thing which would be certain to diminish that income, and to recoil on all of us, would be that war of classes which many people seem anxious to stir up. Nothing could be more fatal to prosperity, and to the fairest hopes of social progress, than if the great body of the upper and middle classes ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... of them; your care of them was displayed, as soon as you began to take care about them, in sending persons to rule them who were the deputies of deputies of ministers—men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them—men who have been promoted to the highest seats of justice in that country, in order to escape being brought to the bar of justice in their own. I have been conversant with the Americans, and I know them to be loyal indeed, but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a bound. Struck by her daring, we all crowded up behind her, and, curious brutes that we were, grouped ourselves in a semicircle about the doorway as she faltered toward her sister's outstretched form and fell on her knees beside it. Her involuntary shriek and the fierce recoil she made as her eyes fell on the long white ribbon trailing over the floor from her sister's wrist, struck me as voicing the utmost horror of which the human soul is capable. It was as though her very soul ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... to talk to him quietly. She talked abut herself, and he knew that she did this not because of egoism, but because delicately she wished to give him a full opportunity for recovery. She had seen just where he was, and she had understood his recoil from the abyss. Now she wished, perhaps, to help him to draw back farther from it, to draw back so far that he would no longer see it or ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the most dangerous quarters, with ruffians and nose-eaters, were the most insignificant episodes of his nightly career. Nor do I dare relate other adventures of a more intimate character, from which, as the writers of an earlier day would say in noble style, a pen the least timorous would recoil with horror. ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... memorial soil! That marks success (though near to foil) Of one who with prophetic ken, With honest zeal and ceaseless toil, Opposed the vandal wish to spoil This lovely bit of vale and glen; Who, 'mid discussion and turmoil Of adverse minds, did not recoil From vigorous stroke of tongue and pen; And then, till passion ceased to boil, On troubled waters poured out oil And to his plans won ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... perhaps fall in order to obtain reparation for the injury which this government might inflict upon them, as we see has been attempted. The city and commandant of Macan request these islands to make reparation immediately for the goods, so that the difficulty may not recoil upon them, to the damage of their goods and of the commerce between Yndia and Japon, which they declare to be of great importance for the preservation ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... another road. The individual is responsible only for himself. If, either from weakness or from moral reasons, he neglects his own advantage, he only injures himself, the consequences of his actions recoil only on him. The situation is quite different in the case of a State. It represents the ramifying and often conflicting interests of a community. Should it from any reason neglect the interests, it not only to ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... give the Romish bishops a better title to be called bishops in partibus infidelium than has always been the case. The attempt to make men believe too much naturally provokes them to believe too little; and such has been and will be the recoil from the movement towards Rome. It is only one, however, of the causes of that widely diffused infidelity which is perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon of our day. Other and more potent causes are ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... chains of this ensnaring woman, was justifying the innocency of his wife by his own indiscreet demeanor—by the public exhibition of his passion for Madame de Gisard, and thus caused the accusations launched against Josephine to recoil upon ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... 321):—'To make verses was his first labour, and to mend them was his last. ... He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure.' Thomas Carlyle, in 1824, speaking of writing, says:—'I always recoil from again engaging with it.' Froude's Carlyle, i. 213. Five years later he wrote:—'Writing is a dreadful labour, yet not so dreadful as idleness.' Ib. ii. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... bazoola, a primitive instrument fashioned from the stalk of the figwort (Scrophulariaceae). It may interest music lovers to know that the Filbertines employ the diatetic scale exclusively, four notes in the ascent and five on the recoil. ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... were alive to greet the ship which came with new colonists and supplies. It took a soul of iron to continue the project of nation-planting after such a tragic beginning; but Champlain was not the man to recoil from the task. More settlers were landed; women and children were brought along; land was broken for cultivation; and in due course a little village grew up about the fort. This was Quebec, the centre and soul of French hopes beyond ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... upon the rock he threw his whole weight upon it in the attempt to save the canoe. The shock was tremendous, the canoe was turned violently broadside-on to the current, and at that critical moment Dick's pole snapped clean in two, the recoil sending the youngster headlong into the boiling current, while the next moment the canoe swept up against the submerged rock, was rolled over and over, and her remaining occupants ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the different States of the Union, as London is of the different counties of the United Kingdom; she would have collected in her borders all their capitols and public buildings; and their variety, if not dignity, would valiantly abet her in the rivalry from which one must now recoil on her behalf. She could not, of course, except on such rare days of fog as seem to greet Englishmen in New York on purpose to vex us, have the adventitious aid which the London atmosphere renders; her air is of such a helpless sincerity ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... peculiar circumstances, are so singular, that an attempt to explain them may perhaps be excused. If a gun is loaded with ball it will not kick so much as when loaded with small shot; and amongst different kinds of shot, that which is the smallest, causes the greatest recoil against the shoulder. A gun loaded with a quantity of sand, equal in weight to a charge of snipe-shot, kicks still more. If, in loading, a space is left between the wadding and the charge, the gun either recoils violently, or bursts. If the muzzle of a gun has accidentally been stuck into ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... perception. Set against each other, I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense, And of eternity;—and oh! how light Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale! And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom Nature recoil'd, in His remember'd words: "I am the Resurrection and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... outline of his features, and how the easy, supercilious smile, as he threw away his cigar, appeared to drop out of his face with a kind of vacant awe as he faced him. He felt his nerves become as steel as the counting began, and at the word "three," knew he had fired by the recoil of the pistol in his leveled hand, simultaneously with its utterance. And at the same moment, still standing like a rock, he saw his adversary miserably collapse, his legs grotesquely curving inwards under him,—without even the dignity of death ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... rate, to provide for the future good government of the country; otherwise, the Zulu war was unjust indeed. If we continue to fail, as we have hitherto, to carry out our responsibilities as a humane and Christian nation ought to do, our lapse from what is right will certainly recoil upon our own heads, and, in the stern lessons of future troubles and disasters, we shall learn that Providence with the nation, as with the individual, makes a neglected duty its own avenger. We have sown the wind, let us be careful lest we ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the surface clear Of mirror, leaps unto the opposite part, Ascending at a glance, e'en as it fell, (And so much differs from the stone, that falls Through equal space, as practice skill hath shown; Thus with refracted light before me seemed The ground there smitten; whence in sudden haste My sight recoil'd. "What is this, sire belov'd! 'Gainst which I strive to shield the sight in vain?" Cried I, "and which towards us moving seems?" "Marvel not, if the family of heav'n," He answer'd, "yet with dazzling radiance dim Thy sense it is a messenger ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... field pieces that stopped the Germans' Paris drive at the Marne—the same that gave Little Willie a headache at Verdun,—the inimitable, rapid firing, target hugging, hell raising, shell spitting engine of destruction whose secret of recoil remained a secret after almost twenty years and whose dependability was a ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... for scarcely more than a minute. Men trained, strong, clear of brain, were in those stricken lines—men who had seen Indian battle before. The recoil came, swift as had been the surprise. Voice after voice rang out in old familiar orders, steadying instantly the startled nerves; discipline conquered disorder, and the shattered column rolled out, as if by magic, into the semblance of a battle line. On foot and on horseback, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Paine, the "Vindiciae Gallicae" of Sir James Mackintosh made the most impression, especially the last chapter, wherein he declared that the conspiracy of the monarchs to crush the liberties of France would recoil on their ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... held up, the left down, in a gesture of astonishment. In this work we see again Myron's skill in suggesting movement. We get a lively impression of an advance suddenly checked and changed to a recoil. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... knows it not,—this dead recoil Of weary fibres stretched with toil, The pulse that flutters faint and low When Summer's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... turmoil of winds and seas around him, which usually lifted his spirits, was sad, feeling lonely and wretched; he was suffering from the recoil of his little friend's charming presence. Pearl came on deck again looking for him. He did not see her, and the child, seeing an opening for a new game, avoided both her father and mother, who also stood in the shelter of the charthouse, and ran round behind it on the weather side, calling ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... that their Government was at all times able to control them. It was interesting to see the argument of the burghers getting out of hand, which was used with such effect in the case of Dr. Jameson and quoted by Sir Hercules Robinson, recoil upon the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which he yielded, we ought to remember how much he may have resisted: I invite them to apply this rule to myself; they can have no idea of the feeling with which I {264} contemplate all attempts to repress freedom of inquiry, nor of the loathing with which I recoil from the proposal to be art and part. They have asked me to give a public opinion upon a certain point. It is true that they have had the kindness to tender both the opinion they wish me to form, and the shape in which they would have ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... their guns upon cider barrels, with allowance of roll for recoil, and charged them to the very best of their knowledge, and pointed them as nearly as they could guess at the dwellings of the outlaws in the glen; three cannons on the north were of Somerset and the three on ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... the trilling of crickets and the fluting of birds had ceased, of nights when the voices of the marsh had been hushed for fear. In one enormous rank the veteran trees stood shoulder to shoulder, but in the attitude of giants over mastered,—forced backward towards the marsh,—made to recoil by the might of the ghostly enemy with whom they had striven a thousand years,—the Shrieker, the ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out of her senses, as she cowered under the ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yours," said Colonel Clifford to Julia. "I did not believe appearances against a Clifford." With these words he took two steps toward his niece and held out his arm. She moved toward him. Percy came forward radiant to congratulate her. She drew up with a look of furious scorn that made him recoil, and she marched proudly away with her uncle. He bestowed one parting glance of contempt upon the discomfited Bartley, and marched his niece proudly off, more determined than ever that she should be his daughter. But for once he was wise enough not to press that topic: he let her indignation ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... recoil was far greater than the first movement. Paul Sabatier wrote (in 1913) that until 1870 Protestantism had enjoyed the esteem of thoughtful {738} men on account of its good sense, domestic and civic virtues and its openness to science and literary criticism. This high opinion, strengthened by the prestige ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... suddenly cold as he stood and watched her recoil momentarily from his two-edged glance. "No!" ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... lives in aid of the shipwrecked crew. Then the Stranger gets into a boat, and Vita jumps in after him. The squall redoubles in violence. A wave of enormous height breaks on the jetty, flooding the scene with a dazzling green light. The crowd recoil in fear. There is a silence; and an old fisherman takes off his woollen cap and intones the De Profundis. The villagers take up ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... might pull him in if we found him exhausted. He went over the surf with great ease, until he came to the breakers on the beach, through which he could not force his way; for the moment he touched the ground with his foot, the recoil of the sea, and what is called by sailors the undertow, carried him back again, and left him in the rear of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... me! tell me!" panted the girl. "Oh! if I have spoken with him, it is a wonder that my tongue was not paralyzed in the act—that my very soul did not shrink and recoil with aversion from him!" she exclaimed, trembling from ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... volunteer rescuers as had been allowed through the police cordon. Outside that line of ropes and men were gathered a tragic crowd, begging, imploring to be allowed through to search for some beloved body. Now and then a fresh explosion made the mob recoil, only to press ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thrusting them down with pikes, hurling grenades and stink-pots from the tops; while the swivels on both sides poured their grape, and bar, and chain, and the great main-deck guns, thundering muzzle to muzzle, made both ships quiver and recoil, as they smashed the round shot through ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... worthy the sacrifice grand, The heritage noble we took at their hand, The peace and the comfort, the fruits of the land; And, sunk in a torpor as hopeless as base, Recoil from the shock of the Sodomite band, That would ruin the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... her hosts, among them frightful demon shapes of all imaginable forms, she advances for the purpose of expelling the gods from their seats. The affrighted deities turn for protection to the high gods, Anu and Ea, who, however, recoil in terror from the hosts of the dragon Tiamat. Anshar then applies to Marduk. The gods are invited to a feast, the situation is described, and Marduk is invited to lead the heavenly hosts against the foe. He agrees on condition ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and turns his eyes to mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... this cry, in this "You!" ejaculated with a rapid movement of recoil-amazement, fright, scorn, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sign of recognition, but the horror in his once-handsome face, now white and drawn, told of his shock at finding her with me, and fear and recoil weakened him to the point of faintness. In his effort to recover himself, to resist what might be coming, he struggled as one for breath, but from him ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... had no desire to converse with him, for his frozen eyes chilled and repelled me and from the moment when I had approached him, and seen him fold his hands behind him, and recoil a step as he inquired with suppressed sternness, "What do you want?" there had fallen away from me all further ambition to learn the nature of the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other countries would, from their intelligence and station, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... calling for its father. Its father, was he not a criminal? Yes! but was it for her to ruin him, to invoke the law, to send him to death, after having taken him to her heart, to deliver him to infamy which would recoil on her own head and her child's and on the infant which was yet unborn? If he had sinned before God, was it not for God to punish him? If against herself, ought she not rather to overwhelm him with contempt? But to invoke the help, of strangers to expiate this offence; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... exalted virtues, pity for the one rises to respect and affection—indignation against the other becomes exasperated to hatred, to abhorrence, and disgust; without the intervention of the will, but merely from the spontaneous movements of the heart, we sympathise, we silently pray for the one—we recoil from, we execrate the other. We are pressed by our very nature into the service of virtue; our souls are up in arms against vice and improbity, and thus we receive lasting impressions, which, when our hearts are not very ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of Steenie. Her sunny nature shrank from the shadow, as of a wall, in which Steenie appeared to her always to stand. From any little attention he would offer her, she, although never rude to him, would involuntarily recoil, and he soon learned to leave her undismayed. That the child's repugnance troubled him, though he never spoke of it, Kirsty saw quite plainly, for she could read his face like a book, and heard him sigh when even his mother did not. Her eyes were constantly regarding him, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald |
