"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no woman could twice forgive. Even if I loved you, if I were blind to all else, if I forgot all else, I should still see Camille! Her love for you is a barrier too high to be o'erleaped by any power, even by the wings of an angel; none but a devil would fail to recoil before such treachery. In this, my dear Calyste, are many motives which delicate and noble women keep to themselves, of which you men know nothing; nor could you understand them, even though you were all as like our sex as you yourself appear ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... very much in their places in a gutter. Their devotion to the person of the queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici—who had brought them to the court of France and foisted them into their high offices—compelled them not to recoil before any of the consequences of their intrusion. But to explain how and why these courtiers were thus perched, it is necessary to relate a scene which had taken place an hour earlier not far from this very gutter, in that beautiful brown room of the Louvre, all that now remains to us of the apartments ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... uttered blasphemies that made his jailer recoil with horror, dashed himself furiously against the walls of his prison, wreaked his anger upon everything, and chiefly upon himself, so that the least thing,—a grain of sand, a straw, or a breath of air that annoyed him, led to paroxysms of fury. Then the letter that Villefort ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'tis pretty to 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 used ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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
... in the second trial this space was diminished to 1/2 in. It will be noticed that as this distance increases we have augmented pressures, and these are not due, as might be supposed, to increase of head, which is practically nothing, but they are due to the recoil of a portion of the stream, which occurs increasingly as it becomes more and more broken up. These alterations in pressure can only be eliminated when care is taken to measure that only due to impact, without at the same time adding the effect of an imperfect reaction. Any stream that can ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... while bounce without tact will elevate him occasionally to his own perdition. Conversationally he was furnished with tentacles sensitive to the lightest touch of an idea; he had the very subtlest discernment of shades within shades. He grasped with airy impact; he moved by a delicate contact and recoil, a process he was pleased to describe as ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and it. Chevalier de Belleisle judges that, however difficult, it can and must be possible to French valor; and storms in upon it, huge and furious (20,000, or if needful 30,000);—but is torn into mere wreck, and hideous recoil; rallies, snatches a standard, 'We must take it or die,'—and dies, does not take it; falls shot on the rampart, 'pulling at the palisades with his own hands,' nay some say 'with his teeth,' when ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... been wiser, and truer to their real inspiration, to have laid all the emphasis on evils to be abated, leaving the good to shape itself in freedom. Suffering is the instant and obvious sign of some outrage done to human nature; without this natural recoil, actual or imminent, no morality would have any sanction, and no precept could be imperative. What silliness to command me to pursue pleasure or to avoid it, if in any case everything would be well! Save for some shadow of dire repentance looming in the distance, I am deeply free to walk ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... undercurrent of thought which for some time had been setting towards this conception. As soon as it was made clear whither the concession that animals may be changed by their environment must logically trend, the recoil from the idea was instantaneous and fervid. Then for a generation Cuvier was almost absolutely dominant, and his ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... practically it is not! Prostitution is the source of this domestic infelicity. The "mistress" sips the sweet nectar that is denied to the deceived wife. Legislators have battled with intemperance, but have done comparatively little to banish from our midst this necessary (?) evil. They recoil with disgust from this abyss of iniquity and disease. Within it is coiled a hydra-headed monster, which invades our hearthstones, contaminates our social atmosphere, and whose very breath is laden with poisonous vapors, the inexhaustible source ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... were still found flourishing fifty years afterwards. The Maoris of Poverty Bay had a story that Cook gave to one of their chiefs a musket with a supply of powder and lead. The fate of the musket was that the first man to fire it was so frightened by the report and recoil that he flung it away into the sea. The powder the natives sowed in the ground believing it to be cabbage seed. Of the lead they made an axe, and when the axe bent at the first blow they put it ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... balusters, and her tiny feet dangling loosely in mid-air, while her long and elegant head nodded each time Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus pranced carefully sideways to a higher step. The Prophet followed solicitously behind, with hands outstretched to check any dangerous recoil. His face was very grave, but not ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... intrenchments, notwithstanding that a large part of the ground over which they had to move was swept by a heavy fire of canister from both my batteries. Before they had quite reached us, however, our telling fire made them recoil, and as they fell back, I directed an advance of my whole division, bringing up my reserve regiments to occupy the crest of the hills; Colonel William P. Carlin's brigade of Mitchell's division meanwhile moving ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... a recoil of genuine amusement. She could imagine that Anthony March would laugh himself. In one particular Paula was unquestionably right. He wouldn't feel insulted. He was just the last person in the world to be accessible to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... now a child of fortune, to be fostered by some and buffeted by others. What will be the general opinion or the reception of it is not for me to decide; nor shall I say anything for or against it. If it be good, I suppose it will work its way; if bad, it will recoil on the framers." We catch sight here of the old theory that his public life was at an end, and now, when this exceptional duty had been performed, that he would retire once more to remote privacy. This fancy, ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... longed to communicate his own adventures, as well as to learn from them the particulars of the campaign. It may be imagined he was received with great glee by men to whom the late uniformity of their military life had rendered any change of society an interesting novelty. Allan M'Aulay alone seemed to recoil from his former acquaintance, although, when challenged by his brother, he could render no other reason than a reluctance to be familiar with one who had been so lately in the company of Argyle, and other enemies. Major Dalgetty was a little alarmed by this sort of instinctive consciousness ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... through a period of fireworks of every description, and the making of a great many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get anywhere. It was a convention, not a march. Lovely things were said, but when we got home we found the furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken advantage of the recoil from such a period, and they have promised "the good old times"—which usually means the bad old abuses—and because they are perfectly void of vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men." Their return to power is often hailed as the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members in this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them: men whose behavior on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice—some who to my knowledge were glad, by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... has not heard of the rattlesnake or copperhead? An unexpected sight of either of these reptiles will make even the lords of creation recoil; but there is a species of worm, found in various parts of this country, which conveys a poison of a nature so deadly that, compared with it, even the venom of the rattlesnake is harmless. To guard our readers against ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... produces luscious fruit. "Like begets like." An enfeebled father means not only feebleness in the next generation, but also perpetuated misery and vice and crime. Marriage is sacred and necessary and obligatory, but not all marriages are so. There are some marriages from which woman should recoil as much as she would from death itself. Rather that death would woo her than a man—if I may be permitted to honor him with that name—whose constitution is undermined, whose strength is sapped, and whose marrow and blood are poisoned. Rather an ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to recoil as before. It is no use saying anything if I am not candid. I avow then, that on this occasion, predisposed as I was to regard him very favourably, his manners and his personal presence scarcely pleased me more than at the first interview. He gave me a book at parting, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... his beautiful wife and she loved him. She loved him just as all good women love, with a complete abandon—with heart, mind and strength. He at first had periods of such abandon, too, but his conscience soon made him recoil from an affection of which God might be jealous. He believed that a man should forsake father, mother, wife and child in order to follow duty—and duty to him was the thing we didn't want to do. That which was pleasant was not wholly good. And so he strove to thrust from him all earthly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... change is this in one who like a reed Bent to my twisting hands? Does he recoil? Is this the hound whom I have used to feed With sops of vinegar and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his horse, and by the terrible cries which he uttered; for, in the heat of battle, this extraordinary man appeared to have regained the vigour and audacity of his youth. Twenty times he led his soldiers to the charge, and as often was forced to recoil towards his castles. He brought up his reserves, but in vain. Fate had declared against him. His troops which were attacking the intrenched camp found themselves taken between two fires, and he could not help them. Foaming with passion, he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... indeed that she might perhaps borrow money, but there again her paralyzing honesty made her recoil from the prospect of uncertain repayment. And besides, from whom ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... With a recoil in every fibre of her nature, Diana turned to take up her life burden. She felt as if she had ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... and of spontaneous recoil from this dreadful scene, naturally carried the whole of that scene, raised and idealised, into my dreams, and very soon into a rolling succession of dreams. The actual scene, as looked down upon from the box of the mail, was transformed into a dream, as tumultuous and changing as a musical fugue. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... but she did not recoil, for as a serpent holds its prey, so he held her. She wanted to protest, to resist him fiercely, but she was mute. Even the power to flee was taken from her. She could only stand as if chained to ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... has been 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 of the peasants among whom he ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... 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. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... doctor's weak point. When he called the family to prayers, she would whistle and sing and yell to drown his voice, would strike him with her fist, and try to kick him. But her hand or foot would always recoil when within an inch or two of his body; thus giving the idea that there was a sort of invisible coat of mail, of heavenly temper, and proof against the assaults of the Devil, around his sacred person! After a while, Dr. Mather concluded to prepare an account of these extraordinary circumstances, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the "kastion" by means of a pulley, and the former taken away; then and not till then could the gunner properly get the range. The carriage vacuum sucking apparatus had to be well fixed in hard ground to prevent recoil. ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... it out of me; so the evil be upon your sweet head! Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon him! Ha-ha—I'm awfully glad you have made an apostate of me all the same! Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too. For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way—neglected by one who ought to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... projecting masses of ice had become detached and had gone thundering down into the water, fortunately at some few yards' distance astern of the whaler, and the shock of collision had been so great as to compel the momentary recoil of the bergs, with ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to recoil into its old routine of life, that Gabrielle collapsed. The blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so staggering, in its first impact, that for a time she had been numbed. In a week or two, with returning ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... world—knew neither how pitilessly selfish, nor how meanly 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
... his companion's invitation, and they entered the chambers together. A fire lingered in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The honest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. What was he there for? The answer was pretty evident. There was nothing between this loud-babbling youth and himself which could have drawn them into even a momentary comradeship, if it had not been for the suspicion his father's story had inspired in ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... if the spirits of riot had spent themselves. In one of these pauses Prosper was pretty sure he heard a step on the stairs. Not at all surprised, for it was just such a night as he would have chosen, he listened painfully; but the noise drowned all. Came another moment of recoil, he heard it again, nearer. He got out of bed, went to the door, opened it silently, and listened. There were certainly movements in the house, feet coming up the stairs; he thought to catch hoarse whisperings, and once ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... it would be. I doffed my shawl, tucked up my flounces, turned my straw bonnet into a basket, and 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, I believe, of ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... he saw rising from the kitchen chimney. He tried to call, but found he had no voice left. An unearthly guttural hiss alternately rattled and wheezed in his throat. He fumbled for the rifle, got it to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The recoil of the discharge tore through his frame, racking it with a thousand agonies. The rifle had fallen across his knees, and an attempt to lift it to his shoulder failed. He knew he must be quick, and felt that he was fainting, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth. It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth, together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it was to go much further. He would wish to know what it was supposed to be, like Nash's histrionics. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... among the many; but that is thus violently set aside. The Rationalistic interpreters have in this respect an easier task. They allow the substitution to stand; but they consider it as a vain fancy. The fact that Hofmann does not recoil from even the most violent interpretations, in order to remove the exclusive reference to Christ, appears, e.g., from his remark, S. 132, that "the chastisement of our peace" designates an actual chastisement, which convinces them of their sin, and of the earnestness of divine holiness, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... 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. They give ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... funny. Wait till I tell you about it. This 'envelope' or Shadow Self stood a few feet away from the sleeper. It was invisible, of course, to the eye. It was only located by striking the air and watching for the corresponding portion of the sleeper's body to recoil. By pricking a certain part of the Shadow Self with a pin, the cheek of the patient could be made to bleed. It was at that spot that the camera was focussed for fifteen minutes! The ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... man of frightful appearance: his long, tangled hair hung over two eyes that gleamed with savage ferocity; his face was the most awful that can be imagined—long, lean, cadaverous and livid, it resembled that of a corpse. No stranger could view it without a shudder; it caused the spectator to recoil with horror. His form was tall and bony, and he was gifted with prodigious strength. This man, on account of his corpse-like appearance was known as 'the Dead Man.' He never went by any other title; and his real ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Loango," she answered; "such abuse is apt to recoil. To call a place dull is often ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... stepped back towards the lower end of the cell. Wyat instantly sprang after him, but before he could reach him a flash of fire caused him to recoil, and to his horror and amazement, he beheld the rock open, and yield a passage ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... character) that they are blindly investigating. The head not being destroyed, the obvious alternative is to hide it—and the Baron is equal to the occasion. His studies in the old library have informed him of a safe place of concealment in the palace. The Countess may recoil from handling the acids and watching the process of cremation; but she can surely sprinkle a little ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Touceys to be representative men. They were not aware how utterly the Democratic party had divorced itself from the moral sense of the Free States, nor had they any conception of the tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed convictions, traditions, and instincts of a ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... 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 Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Guerder, who had picked up his rifle, laid it down, executed the maneuver indicated by Guynemer, and resumed his machine-gun fire. This episode lasted two minutes during which Georges maintained the airplane under the Aviatik, unwilling to change his position, as he saw that a recoil would expose them to the ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... as his action had been, it was no more sudden than his recoil. He released her and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... after her arrival she headed a sally against the enemy; twice she repelled them; but, finding their numbers increase every moment with fresh reinforcements, she directed a retreat. Twice she returned upon her pursuers, and made them recoil, the third time she was less fortunate. She found herself alone, surrounded with the enemy; and after having enacted prodigies of valour, she was compelled to surrender a prisoner. This happened on ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... scarcely a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and undisguised condemnation into which he was sunk ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... investigated to the bottom all that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out. The flash of impulse and recoil had passed swiftly through his mind before he woke up, as it were, to ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... turns The intr[)i]c[)a]te wards, and every bolt and bar Unfastens.—On [)a] s[)u]dd[)e]n open fly W[)i]th [)i]mpetuous recoil and jarring sound The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... if his father has suffered from stupidity and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from this ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stream may have developed a temperature sufficiently high to bring about radioactive changes, the effect of which would be to expel helium and other disintegration products at cathode-ray velocity—(Kathoden-Strahlen-Fortpflanzung-Geschwindigkeit)—from the surface of the earth; and the recoil exerted by this expulsion would add itself to the force ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... have reproved those men of rank who mounted the coach-box, who extended a public patronage to the "fancy," or who rode their own horses at a race. Such a reproof, however, unless it were made practically operative, and were powerfully supported by the whole body of the aristocracy, would recoil upon its author as a piece of impertinence, and would soon be resented as an unwarrantable liberty taken with private rights; the censor would be kicked, or challenged to private combat, according to the taste of the parties aggrieved. The office is clearly in this dilemma: if the censor is ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... till she neared a spur of cliff, which runs out near the watch-house, close to the homestead, and here she came in full contact with a mass of rock which shook her, crushed in her stem, and made her recoil. The next wave threw her back again, but luckily more steadily, so that I was enabled to throw my coil of rope down upon her deck from my coign of vantage. I quickly whipped the shore end round the stem of a huge furze bush, which grew within ten feet of the brink of the cliff, and to my joy found ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... clears the air, and should persuade Mr. Dexter and his reactionary friends to think twice before again inaugurating a crusade which can only recoil upon their own heads. I enclose 5 shillings, if only as a protest against this un-English 'hitting below the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... impressionable temperament. This aesthetic sensitiveness gives me as many delights as torments, and renders me one great service: it preserves me from cynicism or otherwise extreme corruption, and serves me instead of moral principle. I recoil from many things, not because they are wicked, but because they are ugly. From my aesthetic nerves I derive also a certain delicacy of feeling. Taken all in all, it seems to me that I am a man a little marred by life, decent enough though to say the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... third may result also from a direct stroke, such as the recoil of a gun, or from violent muscular contraction, the fracture as a rule being transverse, and the displacement less marked than ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... yet to consider this hypothesis as applied to man in Mr. Darwin's latest work. We naturally recoil from the thought that we have sprung from some lower race of animals—that we are only the descendants of some race of anthropoid apes. So long as it is asserted that we are no more than this, we may well be reluctant to admit the suggestion. But if it ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... creatures called goblins, who for various reasons and in various ways made themselves troublesome to all, but to the little princess dangerous. Mainly by the watchful devotion and energy of Curdie, however, their designs had been utterly defeated, and made to recoil upon themselves to their own destruction, so that now there were very few of them left alive, and the miners did not believe there was a single goblin remaining in the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... it, the man, with his all too light burden, halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too: he shook with a brief agony of jealousy—jealousy of the dead! The next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by those loyal lips—now clay beneath that clay—were coming true, that, out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise a new and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... its bare, dry boughs must shed That nearer heaven the living ones may climb; The false must fail, though from our shores of time The old lament be heard, "Great Pan is dead!" That wail is Error's, from his high place hurled; This sharp recoil is Evil undertrod; Our time's unrest, an angel sent of God Troubling with life the waters of the world. Even as they list the winds of the Spirit blow To turn or break our century-rusted vanes; Sands shift and waste; the rock alone remains Where, led of Heaven, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... its fantastical embellishment; The mind is riveted, the gaze is spent Where lavish Nature pours her richest spoil, The tongue is voiceless with bewilderment, Far, far below the ocean's ceaseless toil Makes bosoms inly shudder and all eyes recoil. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Th' infernal doors, and on their ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the recoil should come. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... eyes 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, and dance with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... instantaneously with the roar and recoil of the huge gun the shell burst beside the sinking submarine. The explosion was terrific; the whole hull of the undersea boat heaved up, exposing its length for a few seconds. Then the sea-shark sank, ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... ay, and root out these midnight horrors from my kingdom," exclaimed Isabella, indignation flashing in her eye, and flushing on her cheek. "Once we have been insulted—once deceived; but never to us can such occur a second time. Fearfully shall this deed of infamy recoil upon its perpetrators! Tremble not thus, my poor girl, no one shall injure thee; no one can touch thee, for we are warned, and this fearful tale shall be sifted to the bottom! Child of a reprobate faith, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... greeted by this imperious master with swift acceptance and quiet irony. This day he had smitten his enemies and they had withered before his power. Results had differed in no respect from the outlines of his preparations and yet so poignantly personal had been the recoil that he found himself, when his brain needed its most alert resourcefulness, inwardly admitting a new and strange ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... large room which, before he could examine a single feature of it, was effectively curtained from his sight. Straight into his face shot a current of violent white light that made him blink. There was the natural recoil, but in Donnegan recoils were generally protected by several strata of willpower and seldom showed in any physical action. On the present occasion his first dismay was swiftly overwhelmed by a cold anger at the insulting trick. This was not the trick of a helpless invalid; Donnegan ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... world, he possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? This was a home-thrust Boiviel could no longer recoil; he did believe in it; but according to his idea the audacious chemist committed a great sin in composing it: it was, so to speak, as though attacking the decrees of creation to change into liquid ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... She's the sort that makes a man rather afraid until he realizes that he means to keep her as she is—forever." This was spoken with a definiteness of purpose that made Joan recoil. Again he was defending Nancy from what he had ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Mr. Smooth; these things are our own, and on us will the evil recoil. Be not so earnest in condemning us, for the same sins you lay at our door are fast developing themselves in your would-be fashionable society! Your society is fashionable without being refined. Your aristocracy is a base imitation of our snobby, revelling in the heartless ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... who shrink from the thought of the Infinite, worship the most exalted beings they may conceive, and let those who cannot quite reach the exalted beings of the spirit world, worship their parents or children, or conjugal companions,—for worship is but unlimited love,—and they who recoil from humanity may perhaps find something to adore in the beauty and grandeur of nature on this globe, which every summer arrays in beauty, and in the grandeur of stellar worlds. From love and adoration come obedience,—which is the perfect life, for it is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... this is done, the highly-charged particles—or whatever they are—thus formed are repelled by the terrific stationary force maintained in the projector backing the converter. Each particle departs with a velocity supposed to be that of light, and the recoil upon the projector drives the vessel, or car, or whatever it is attached to. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... yet an effect too subtle to be described. He rose on my entrance, and, other visitors being present, stood with one hand on the back of his chair, awaiting my greeting. So dignified was his manner, so reserved his expression, that I experienced an involuntary recoil, until I turned to him and saw his eyes suddenly brighten as I offered my hand; a barrier seemed to melt between us, and I felt that we were ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... intrigue, and she at last permitted him to visit her at night. Thus he believed he had paved a way to Annunciata's unpolluted chamber; but the Eternal Power willed that this treacherous iniquity should recoil upon the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... in this cry, in this "You!" ejaculated with a rapid movement of recoil-amazement, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil—I allude to spectacles—and possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... cowardly act. Then, there was Pauline to consider—an all-powerful argument. All his life had been consecrated to her—let it be consecrated to the end. He had made many sacrifices in her behalf—he should not recoil before this greatest sacrifice. The dear child might acquiesce, but it would cause her many a secret tear, and such as she were too good to be made unhappy. Besides, M. Belmont should think of his compatriots. He was their foremost man. If he fled, they would ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... The Sailors, one and all, as soon as they saw it, declar'd it the certain Forerunner of a Storm. However, our Ship kept on its Course, before a fine Gale, till we had near passed over half the Bay; when, all on a sudden, there was such a hideous Alteration, as makes Nature recoil on the very Reflection. Those Seas that seem'd before to smile upon us, with the Aspect of a Friend, now in a Moment chang'd their flattering Countenance into that of an open Enemy; and Frowns, the certain Indexes of Wrath, presented us with apparent Danger, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... 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 ...
— Constructive Imperialism • Viscount Milner
... envy those who enjoy the quiet of the Grave: But Death eludes me, and flies from my embrace. In vain do I throw myself in the way of danger. I plunge into the Ocean; The Waves throw me back with abhorrence upon the shore: I rush into fire; The flames recoil at my approach: I oppose myself to the fury of Banditti; Their swords become blunted, and break against my breast: The hungry Tiger shudders at my approach, and the Alligator flies from a Monster more horrible than itself. God has set his seal upon me, and all his Creatures ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... far more fantastic than a plan. I would rather have the most archaic map of the road to Brighton than a general recommendation to turn to the left. Straight lines that are not parallel must meet at last; but curves may recoil forever. A pair of lovers might walk along the frontier of France and Germany, one on the one side and one on the other, so long as they were not vaguely told to keep away from each other. And this is a strictly true parable ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... Austrian service, squares formed by a column in mass are considered preferable to hollow ones, on the supposition that though horses will recoil from a dense mass, they may be easily brought to break through a shallow formation, over which they can see the open ground. But this theory seems to be refuted by numerous facts. A large proportion of the formations that have successfully ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... when Mr Shanklin alluded to his blunders, and he scowled all the more viciously now because he felt that, after all, he could do little against his two patrons which would not recoil with twofold violence on his own head. No, he had better confine his reprisals to the Crudens by Mr Shuckleford's assistance, and meanwhile make what he could out ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... appear well acquainted with the sagacity of a horse—but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp—times when the young Metzengerstein turned pale and shrunk away from the rapid and searching expression of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ingredients for a new kind of concrete; and those who claim to have been present on the occasion declare that within forty-eight hours after they had mixed and molded it, it was ready to bear the weight of the guns and withstand the shock of their recoil. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... of recoil. She had felt the workman's heavy hand on her hand; and that hateful touch ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... the light of battle glows: 'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes. Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to rank it flies— A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies. The wooded hills seem reeling before that fierce recoil; With fire and smoke the valleys like Etna's craters boil: From red volcanoes bursting, hissing, hurtling in the sky, A thousand death-winged messengers like fiery meteors fly: Within that seething ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... her national life we admire, Much we recoil from, or needs must dispute; Germany needs her baptism of fire, But you will find us the first to salute— (God speed the "Day" the awakening shall ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the terrific recoil and the howl of the wind as it rushed into the vacuum created, there was an intense silence. The projectile had been seen by some as a dark speck, rushing through the air like a meteor. Then the wireless operator ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... keenly tempted to stay, the idea held my mind and fascinated it, but with the vision of death came the recoil from it born from the remembrance of my art. The same recoil that had saved me many times before, for youth is usually greatly inclined to suicide, either directly or indirectly in the dangers it courts. But in an artist this is strangely balanced by his love for his work. When he has ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... held 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 seemed to have some inclination ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... his uncle's companion on the road, but he knew better than to insist. Master Bernard de Brocas well knew what he was about, and was plainly deeply interested in the story he had heard. Raymond had long been high in his favour. To cause to recoil upon the head of the treacherous Sanghurst the vengeance he had plotted against his own nephew, to punish him for his treachery — to wrest from his rapacious grasp the lands and the Manor of Basildene, was a task peculiarly agreeable ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... think suffering her natural element, out of which she could not breathe; she was almost in love with misery. And in so sad a world was there not something ignoble about happiness, a selfish aloofness from the life of humanity? And, illogically blent with this questioning, and strengthening her recoil, was an obstinate conviction that there could never be happiness for her, a being of ignominious birth, without roots in life, futile, shadowy, out of relation to the tangible solidities of ordinary existence. To offer her a warm fireside seemed to be to tempt her to be false to something—she ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her of the disastrous incident and that failure was a certainty; a sort of shame had made him recoil from telling her to her face; it was easier to be casual in writing than in talking; the letter had at any rate tempered for both of them the shock of communication. Now, he was out of humour with her ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the angular movement of the fork while locked, it will seldom be found less than two or three degrees. Now, we can all understand that the friction of the locking surface has to be counted as well as the recoil of the draw. Locking friction is seldom looked after as carefully as the situation demands. Our factories make the impulse face of the pallets rounded, but leave the locking face flat. We are aware this condition is, ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... 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 ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... had quickly extricated herself from her husband, who had remained holding her, as one might hold a delicate child who has been causing anxiety. The gentleness and affection of the poor fellow had evidently not touched her—she seemed almost to recoil from it. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... were far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European history. Never has the Western world shown anything like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was a unity then, in thought, will, and object. Christianity was the unit. Mont-Saint-Michel and Byzantium were near each other. The Emperor Constantine and the Emperor Charlemagne were figured ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... 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 ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... addressing the son of Hridika, said, "Wait, Wait." Then, O monarch, Shikhandi sped at his foe ninety shafts of great impetuosity, all equipped with golden wings. Those shafts, however, all recoiled from Kritavarma's armour. Seeing those shafts recoil and scattered on the surface of the Earth, Shikhandi cut off Kritavarma's bow with a keen razor-headed arrow. Filled with wrath he struck the bowless son of Hridika, who then resembled a hornless bull, in the arms and the chest, with eighty arrows. Filled with rage but torn and mangled with shafts, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... cousin to the people as their only legitimate sovereign, he had sought on various occasions to obtain an interview with her, which in all probability would be decisive. Charles was one of those men who to gain their end recoil at nothing; devoured by raging ambition and accustomed from his earliest years to conceal his most ardent desires beneath a mask of careless indifference, he marched ever onward, plot succeeding plot, towards the object ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... distinguished his race, and although for a moment startled at the sudden entry he did not recoil, but drawing a sword from his girdle ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty |
