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More "Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the attempt to get their heads into the centre of the tangled mass which, all in motion, heaved and sank and rolled from side to side, the lower portions of the serpents' bodies and their tails being free to lash and writhe about in the air, while at a second glance the spectators began to realise the fact that all around, gliding in and out amongst the stones, were hundreds upon hundreds more of the reptiles, apparently urged on by some savage instinct to form other knots, till the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... know, I shan't be wanted to pal up much with that chap, shall I? I mean to say, he wears so many clothes. They make me writhe as if I wore them myself. It won't ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... thought that she must faint. Het lungs seemed to writhe for air, and she opened her lips and took long draughts of the rising mist, never speaking for a moment or two until she had sufficiently recovered from this tremendous ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see hell ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... are not at rest! Can they neither live nor die? See, they writhe in their throbbing grave! While the nervous mesh of the quivering flesh Its strange anguish renews as the hot, bloody dews Follow the track of my Beautiful back As they rush into life again, Bringing nought but a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bush for some time, till he felt that midnight could not be far off, when suddenly there arose in the middle of the moor a brilliant glow, as if a star was shining over one of the hillocks. At the same moment all the hillocks began to writhe and to crawl, and from each one came hundreds of serpents and made straight for the glow, where they knew they should find their king. When they reached the hillock where he dwelt, which was higher and broader than ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... taken, to me from whom all is taken?—husband, sons, wealth, land, renown, power,—power which I loved, wretch that I was, as well as husband and as sons? Ah God! the girl is right. Better to rot in the convent, than writhe in the world. Better never to have had, than ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... reflected. Disastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen or intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession. The tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the head of affairs—that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe under the heel of the same—had alone animated them, so far as he could see; for he knew nothing of Jopp's incitements. Other considerations were also involved. Lucetta had confessed everything to him before her death, and it was not altogether ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... his Moon "rips the womb" of the cloud that crosses it; Shelley's Moon, in keeping with the ways of his more tender-hefted universe, merely broke its woof. So the gentle wife of James Lee sees in a vineyard "the vines writhe in rows each impaled ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... mishap, and who, knowing the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr. Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr. Lawley, too exhausted to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! it had missed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... he called them, too], he felt convinced there would be no hanging back that night; but to-morrow, or, rather, Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki. He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly enlisting John Bright ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... poison he lifts, and the lot he shifts! Oh! unfortunate miser Jew! What use is your gold, now your time is told, And your moments in life are few? You may writhe where you sit Like an eel in a fit, But you'll die like the Jews of old! You may struggle a lot, And get awfully hot, But you'll have to lie stiff and cold! You may wriggle no end, But you're a dead 'un, my friend— Till the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... a moment, glancing at her mother, and then stepped out of the summer-house. Chris saw that bitter smile writhe and die on the elder woman's face, but she ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... that he is! I tell you, Tumm, that lad's sheer daft with admiration of his pa. He've lifted his pa above God Almighty. When he finds out the truth, he'll fall down and scream in agony, an' he'll die squirmin', too. I can fair hear un now—an' see un writhe in pain." ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... uttered the sacred words the convulsions of the superior recommenced; but it seemed as if Duncan had more strength than his six predecessors together, for twist and writhe and struggle as she would, the superior's wrist remained none the less firmly clasped in Duncan's hand. At length she fell back ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and again Mary seemed to catch a glint in his eye. "These sketches now," he approached the table on which lay the skyscraper studies. "Very harsh—cruel, you might say—but clever, yes, sir, mighty clever." Mary saw Stefan writhe with irritation at the other's air of connoisseur. She shot him a glance at once amused and pleading, but he ignored it with a shrug, as if to indicate that Mary was responsible for this intrusion, and must expect no aid ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... is reached when he solemnly warns her again—"Greatest of trusts, Elsa, I have shown thee." To another most lovely theme he tries again to soothe her: she will not listen, and the Ortrud theme begins to writhe in the orchestra, and we know that Elsa's soul is fast bound in the spell of suspicion which Ortrud put upon her. She gets nearer and nearer to the fatal question, and suddenly in the impotent rage ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... what I want you to do, damn you—anything you please. I'm accusing nobody, but I'm getting somebody. I've got somebody right now for this old man's murder. My man's going to writhe and burn in the chair, confession or no confession. Now get out of this room since you're so anxious, and don't come near ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... the tragedy, to witness and sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me curiously from a sodden ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts," continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; "for you have much to answer ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... that he could not endure the thought of living without hope of her. But what hope was there of her? And he was jealous, detestably jealous, so jealous that in that direction he did not dare to let his mind go. He sawed at the bit and brought it back, or he would have had to writhe about the carriage. His thoughts ran furiously all over the place to avoid that pit. And now he found himself flashing at moments into wild and hopeless rebellion against the institution of marriage, of which he had hitherto sought always to be the dignified and smiling champion ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this crowd to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes of ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... left him to himself in that charming woodland glade to writhe in protracted agony upon the ground, tearing up the grass with his stiffening fingers and praying for death, which would be hours yet ere it came to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... crouch, and writhe my fawning tayle, To some great Patron for my best avayle. Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie, Or let it never ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... see the form of his cherished, but wretched wife, not only exposed to the rude gaze of a beastly tyrant, but he must unresistingly see the heavy cowhide descend upon her shrinking flesh, and her manacled limbs writhe in inexpressible torture, while her piteous cries for help ring through his ears unanswered. The wild throbbing of his heart must be suppressed, and his righteous indignation find no voice, in the presence of the human monster who holds ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... his feet, sprang to his side, and held it up to him, while he worked his hand into it, and she pulled it on for him. Then he transferred his grasp from one hand to the other, and in that moment the powerful bloodhound made a desperate struggle, and managed to get one paw on the ground, and writhe itself round so as to fly at his face and make its teeth actually meet in his beard, a great mouthful of which it tore out, and we saw it champing the hairs, as he again swung it up, so that it could only make frantic contortions with its body and legs, while he held it at ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), and was very ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... I am mortified with myself beyond measure, and I am bitterly ashamed that my aunt, her own mother, should have so grossly misjudged her. Sibley, no doubt, IS the occasion of her trouble in part, for she seems fairly to writhe under the false position in which he has placed her by leading every one to associate her name with his; but I now believe that she loathes and detests him more than you or I can. Certainly no woman could ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine's looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one's ear while watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that streamlet, that a thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! What will have happened then? I may live five years—ten! What will have happened after the five? the ten? I may live twenty, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... little farther on you behold the head of the rapid, and half-way down the Coho Falls thunder everlastingly. When the logs reach the falls they are meat for the mills. Nothing can stop them then. One after another they rise on end to take the final plunge. Some twist and writhe as if in agony, as if conscious that the river and forest shall know them no more. Thousands have travelled the self-same way; not one has ever returned. The lower rapid of the Coho hardly deserves its name. Half a mile ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents, scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down to the bar and gambling room. The drink of whiskey he got made even his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to join a group of calm and ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... a terrible explosion after that; they saw at last how I had deceived them, and put the very worst construction upon everything. Even now I writhe impotently at times, and my cheeks smart and tingle with humiliation, as I recall that scene—the colonel's very plain speaking, Lilian's passionate reproaches and contempt, and her aunt's speechless prostration ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... and nothing really hurt me except my shoulder. It was the body lying half across me that held me prone, and I struggled vainly to roll it to one side. But I had no strength, and the effort was vain. The pain made me writhe and moan, my face beaded with perspiration. A wounded man lifted his arm from out a tangled heap of dead, and fired a revolver up into the ceiling; I saw the bullet tear through the plaster, and the hand sink back nerveless, the fingers dropping the weapon. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... smile of unbelief caused her to writhe inwardly. "Do you think the unsupported statement of a woman suspected of murder will find credence?" Kathleen clenched John Hargraves' letter until her knuckles shone white under the taut skin. "Secondly," he continued ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... listening eagerly to every word, when suddenly Dick Hunt ran a long pin deep into his leg. The pain made him start and almost cry out, but he suppressed the cry as he turned and gave Dick a savage pinch that made him writhe, as he exclaimed in a threatening ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... as he saw the victim writhe, "that I have given him a receipt for his daughter's eyes that will be more potent than Mesmer's passes. It will never do to restore the age ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... any most uncanny chance, heard of that Episode at the January Cotillion; and knew that Mr. Bennet had Kissed her and that she had believed that he wanted to marry her and he had Not. The Thought made her writhe in agony under the new blue and white "counter-pin." Rather would she have died a thousand deaths than to have Timothy know of ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... waved his hand and smiled as the men went out of the door. "You will find they are a success, to surprise yourself," he called out: "her most bosom friends will writhe and scream with envy." ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... year she was certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody was following, ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and rushing to the window, draws the curtains and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... natural sons, they, "men professing meekness, took the matter somewhat more angrily than befitted men so pious in the opinion of the people." So Buchanan himself puts it: but, to do the poor friars justice, they must have been angels, not men, if they did not writhe somewhat under the scourge which he had laid on them. To be told that there was hardly a place in heaven for monks, was hard to hear and bear. They accused him to the king of heresy: but not being then in ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... we wait for evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs, While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social thongs? Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right, Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... surprise. With a quick writhe the Netop broke loose, and bolted headlong, fairly into Captain Church himself, among the baggage and the horses. This was a surprise for the captain, too. He grabbed him but could not keep him, because he was a naked Indian and as slippery as ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... might wring a mighty ransom from your people would I but return you to them unharmed, but a thousand times rather would I watch that beautiful face writhe in the agony of torture; it shall be long drawn out, that I promise you; ten days of pleasure were all too short to show the love I harbor for your race. The terrors of your death shall haunt the slumbers ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and hauled, the reptile coming up quickly enough half-way, and then beginning to writhe and shake its head furiously, every movement being communicated to our arms, and giving us a good notion of the strength of the enemy we were fighting, if fighting it could be called. Up we drew it inch ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... quickly strewn with broken wheels and cars, and massive arms lopped off from trunks, and brave horsemen deprived of life. And, O foremost one among the Kurus, a large number of warriors, mangled with falling arrows, were seen in that great battle to roll and writhe on the ground in agony of the last spasms of death. During the progress of that terrible battle, resembling the encounter in days of old between the celestials and the Asuras, king Yudhishthira the just, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are clad in pink and gold, when the little scarlet runners come like poems out of the breast of the earth—go there and sit down and look at that photograph and think of the flesh, now dust, and how you caned it to writhe in pain and agony. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... American speak to his fellow whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different angles and attitudes of awkwardness, trying to keep the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... dry arroyos; sifted by the hot winds fine as flour; with rings and belts and wavering layers of heat—heat from the orange sun edged red by the Desert dust of the atmosphere—heat from the wind off some white flamed furnace—heat from the ochre shifting sands panting to the loom and writhe of the blue-flamed air, and over all a veil, was it blue or lilac or lavender? tinted as of rainbow mists. For a little while, neither spoke. Each knew what the dusty dead orange earth, the smoking sand hills, the sifted volcanic ash, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... mouth and throat craved no more perpetually for the cooling drinks that had not allayed their misery. Light could be borne without any grave discomfort, and the agonizing abdominal pains, which had made the victim writhe and almost desire death, had entirely subsided. From the face, too, the dreadful hue which had even struck those who had only seen Nigel casually had nearly departed. Though still very thin and pale, it did not look unnatural. It was now the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... looked over the ragged crest of the ridge, and sent long shadows down the sparsely wooded slope. Though there was no wind, and every tree was as motionless as if carved of ice, these spare, intricate shadows seemed to stir and writhe, as if instinct with a kind of sinister activity. This confusion of light and dark was increased by the patches of snow that still clung in the dips and on the gentler slopes. The air was cold, yet with a bitter softness in it, the breath ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Semiramis Re-risen, and mightier, from the Assyrian dead, Kindling, as dawn a frost-bound precipice, The steely snows of Russia, for the tread Of feet that felt before them crawl and hiss The snaky lines of blood violently shed. Like living creeping things That writhe but have no stings To scare adulterers from the imperial bed Bowed with its load of lust, Or chill the ravenous gusts That made her body a fire from heel to head; Or change her high bright spirit and clear, For all its mortal stains, from taint of ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... humanity common to, and shared equally by, both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses, than to hers? To ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea might writhe and supplicate and despair as he ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... you a door, through which you see—what? Pictures and fountains, and mirrors and flowers? No: it is a lazar-house of disease. The walls drip, drip, drip with the damps of sepulchres. The victims, strewn over the floor, writhe and twist among each other in contortions indescribable, holding up their ulcerous wounds, tearing their matted hair, weeping tears of blood: some hooting with revengeful cry; some howling with a maniac's ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... was completed by Saul and Seraphita, who were on either side of their son, touching his hands, an expression of pain and perplexity passed over his pale face, and he began to writhe and mutter. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... grandfather. The thunder-clouds had so encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... delight My dainty appetite, For I, alas! must learn to drink, However I may writhe and shrink, Pure water. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was the body of a young boy. When she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to enjoy it," she said, "but enough for to-day. I am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes. I take a cruel joy in seeing you tremble and writhe beneath my whip, and in hearing your groans and wails; I want to go on whipping without pity until you beg for mercy, until you lose your senses. You have awakened dangerous elements in my being. But now ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... instruments of trellis-work shaped like fantastic quadrupeds or birds. The patient invariably falls down in a swoon and is carried like dead to his hammock, where he is tightly lashed with cords. As they come to themselves, they writhe in agony, so that their hammocks rock violently to and fro, causing the hut to shake as if it were about to collapse. This dreadful ordeal is called ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... axe to see them writhe, Bellow like calves, fall dead like flies; Such bonny sights, and sounds so blithe, With rapture fill our eats ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Into my snare the victim creeps.— To him has destiny a spirit given, That unrestrainedly still onward sweeps, To scale the skies long since hath striven, And all earth's pleasures overleaps. He shall through life's wild scenes be driven, And through its flat unmeaningness, I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen, And midst all sensual excess, His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven, Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink; And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given, Still must he to ...
— Faust • Goethe
... as it were, wild lambent flame, all was black, like a wall of ebony, from out of which continually there rushed into view coiling, curling, hoary-headed monsters, in the shape of roaring billows, which burst upon and over them, deluging the decks, and causing the timbers of the ship to writhe as if in pain. ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... actually witness a murder, he cannot imagine the shock and dreadfulness of seeing one man shot down, writhe, gasp, grow pale and cease struggling. To picture ten men murdered simply stuns the mind. An effort to realize hundreds, thousands, millions of men mangled, wounded, bayoneted, crushed, blown to atoms by shells and mine—all this becomes vague, ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... bottom, the plump river snails discreetly raise their lid, opening ever so little the shutters of their dwelling; on the level of the water, in the glades of the aquatic garden, the pond snails—Physa, Limnaea and Planorbis—take the air. Dark leeches writhe upon their prey, a chunk of earthworm; thousands of tiny, reddish grubs, future mosquitoes, go spinning around and twist and curve like so many ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... ears and a blurring in his eyes. He raised his clenched hands, only to drop them limply, impotently. All these months wasted, all these longings and regrets for nothing, all this suffering to afford Monsieur le Marquis the momentary pleasure of seeing his own flesh and blood writhe! Hate. As hot lead sinks into the flesh, so this word sank into the Chevalier's soul, blotting out charity and forgiveness. Forgive? His laughter rang out hard and sinister. Only God could forgive such a wrong. How that wrinkled face roused the venom in his soul! Was the marquis telling ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... the thresher, who evidently had been waiting for him and knew the precise spot where he would reappear, threw himself up in the air, turning a sort of summersault; and, "whack!" came his whip- like tail round his victim's body, the whale seeming to writhe under the blow as if ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... "sincerity" demolished, you will find that you have grown With a "colour-sense" fresh handselled (whilst the moral ditto's cancelled) you'll develop into—well, What Philistia's fools malicious might esteem a vaurien vicious (alias "hedonic swell"). And every one will say, As you writhe your sinuous way. "If the highest result of the true 'Development' is decomposition, why see What a very perfectly developed young man this developed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... - Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue, And brass and iron clang From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo, ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant thing of all the living creatures I have ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... been inwardly writhing in a tortured frame of mind which their arrival brought a necessity for masking and the things which had made him so writhe had been the reviews in these papers ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... know? You'd rather continue to writhe on the gridiron than to turn over and fall into the fire ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... closer inspection of one of the marvelous tapestries showed that it also was of metal, its threads numbering thousands to the inch. Woven of many different metals, of vivid but harmonious colors in a strange and intricate design, it seemed to writhe as its colors changed with every variation in the color of the light; which, pouring from concealed sources, was reflected by the highly-polished metal and innumerable jewels ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... rending, whence ofttimes the back Was stript of all its skin. "That upper spirit, Who hath worse punishment," so spake my guide, "Is Judas, he that hath his head within And plies the feet without. Of th' other two, Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe And speaks not! Th' other Cassius, that appears So large of limb. But night now re-ascends, And it is time for ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... looked at him, long and straight and black; his figure seemed to writhe like that of a snake about to strike; then he turned on his heel, went back to the cabin and opened a bottle of champagne. When eight bells were cried, he slept on the floor beside the captain on the locker; and of the whole starboard watch, only Sally ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... that idea has not risen uppermost in my thoughts," Petrescu answered. "I owe the Englishman an apology for the attack which was made upon him directly he succeeded in wounding me. He is a gentleman and a gallant swordsman, and I writhe under the fear that he believes that attack was of ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... tooth that will not move, and the leaves (such of them as are left), which in summer made a music as pleasant as that of windbells, rattle in their branches like the laughter of a skeleton. The oak and the thorn-bush could scarcely writhe more if they were crippled by rheumatism. Every leaf on the sycamore is spotted as if with ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... midnight. Two weeks in that vast Babel,—then, ho! for Paris! Twelve hours by rail and steamer carried us out of John Bull's dominions into the brilliant metropolis of his French neighbor. Joseph accompanied us, and wrote letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make Margaret writhe. I had not found it so easy to forget her as I had supposed it would be. Flora's power over me was sovereign; but when I was weary of the dazzle and whirl of the life she led me,—when I looked into the depths of my heart, and saw what the thin film of passion and pleasure concealed,—in those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... past him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Smoking things dropped from it, which expanded into columns of swiftly-descending vapor. They reached the jungle and blotted it out. The flying machine swung again and swept back to the left. More smoking things dropped. Ragged Men erupted from the jungle's edge in screaming groups, only to writhe and fall and lie still. But a group of five of them sped toward Tommy, shrieking their rage upon him as the cause of disaster. Tommy held his fire, looking upward. A hundred yards, ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the fingers of the half dead logger clung convulsively to the planking of the bridge. A business man stamped on them with a curse until the grip was broken. There was a swishing sound; then a sudden crunching jerk and the rope tied to the girder began to writhe and twist like a live thing. This lasted but a short time. The lynchers peered over the railing into the darkness. Then they slowly pulled up the dead body, attached a longer rope and repeated the performance. This did not seem to suit them either, so they again ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... a pursuer was child's play for the Numidian; but the fury of fight was on him, and, gnashing his white teeth, from which the thick, black lips seemed to writhe away, he bent low amid his horse's mane and, with an inarticulate cry, urged him straight at the veteran. His javelins had all been expended in breaking through the Roman line, and a short, heavy dagger was his only weapon. Nothing ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... the creak of the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... be dancing to God, your Guide, And peal my pipes, and riot my feet, and writhe to His Heat, my tripes. So fair! With Rum-te-te-Tum te Tum, And Rum and Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, te Tum. So fair! This freehold for seraphs free! That flame! those skies! and Blest is Her Name, and blest ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... all but a little light, and I was left alone on my back. By the tricks I had long since learned in the jacket, I managed to writhe myself across the floor an inch at a time until the edge of the sole of my right shoe touched the door. There was an immense cheer in this. I was not utterly alone. If the need arose, I could at least rap knuckle talk ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Book,—as specified in the other Letter: five hundred copies for America, which are to cost he computes about 2/7, and your Bookseller will bind them, and defy Piracy. My Lectures come on, this day two weeks: O Heaven! I cannot "speak"; I can only gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and fashionables,—being forced to it by want of money. In five weeks I shall be free, and then—! Shall it be Switzerland, shall it be Scotland, nay, shall it be America ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... come to you, of course," I interrupted. "I've the right to know the meaning of this infernal nonsense." In the half light of the room, which was greenish, because of the tree-tops screening the window, I saw him writhe his meagre shoulders. It came into my head, as disconnected ideas will come at all sorts of times into one's head, that this, most likely, was the very room where, if the tale were true, Falk had been ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... in their weakness, whose cross, instead of crushing them to the earth, seemed only to lift them up. We are told that Robert Hall, the great preacher, suffered much from disease. He was forced often to throw himself down and writhe on the ground in paroxysms of pain. From these he would rise with a smile, saying, "I suffered much, but I did not cry out, did I? did I ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... his great finger in front of the young man. "Your pretty bit of pink and white will burn! Burn, see you! A show for the little boys, a holiday for the young men and the young women, a treat for the old men, who will see her white limbs writhe in the smoke! Ha!" as Claude, with a face of horror, would have waved him away, "that touches you, does it? You had not thought of that? Nay, you had not thought of other things. I tell you, before the sun sets this evening, this house shall be anathema! Before night what we have heard will be ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... serve you now, as I had always meant to serve you some day. Ey, yes, I think I always meant to give you back to Perion as a free gift. Meanwhile to see, and to writhe in seeing your perfection, has meant so much to me that daily I have delayed such a transfiguration of myself until to-morrow." The man grimaced. "My son Orestes, who will presently succeed me, has been summoned. I will order that ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... his sorrows to himself, but the recollection of them will make him "yerk," i.e., writhe, or start with ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... fig trees and almonds, even at heights so great that the car wallowed among clouds. This steep road was the road to Fort National—the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were men of a very different type from the mild ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a newspaper man left at Key West who did not writhe with envy and anger when he heard of it. When the wire was closed for the night, and they had gathered at Josh Kerry's, Keating was the storm-centre ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... at the sight that he leaned up against the wall with his hand to his throat to stifle his inclination to call out. His first thought was that the prostrate figure was that of some wounded or dying man, but as he watched it he saw it writhe along the ground and into the hall with the rapidity and noiselessness of a serpent. Once within the house the man sprang to his feet, closed the door, and revealed to the astonished farmer the fierce face and ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... struck no answering spark. Never before had he spoken to men without a consciousness of his powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did not respond to his pleadings nor writhe under the whip of his words. It was apathetic, stolid. In its weary heart it knew what it was there to do, and it would do it in spite of Dulac.... He would not admit it. He would not submit to defeat. He talked on and on, not daring to stop, for with the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... hands were laid upon my burning brow, if her voice, like a moist, refreshing wind, passed through the fiery furnace of my affliction, I should not die but live—I should weep at her feet, not writhe and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... the tender, tearful, pleading countenance, and the sorrow that seized his own, making his features writhe, beggars language. He instinctively put out his arms, then drew them back, and hid his face in his hands; saying in low, broken, almost ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Loves him to madness; loves him with like fury. As hates he thee.—Oh! glorious field for vengeance: Think how 'twill writhe his haughty soul to hear, This son, this darling, perished on the scaffold, Branded, disgraced, a traitor, a foiled traitor. Joy, joy, Alfonso; ere 'tis night thy wrath ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dwarfs, suggesting, as they stand like pygmies round their mightier brethren, a group of mediaeval jesters in a court of kings. In the faint dusk of evening, as one flits by them in the moving train, their weird, uncanny forms appear to writhe in pain, and he is tempted to regard them as the material shapes ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... so calm. He felt his lips writhe back in a snarl. The wind tingled on his teeth. "I know now," he said. "I know about the minutes I lost. I know why they're after me. ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... curls of vapour wriggled over the black river-surface. Our homeless, irrelevant, tiny steamer seemed to hang between two abysms. One became suddenly aware of the miles of dark water beneath. I found that under a prolonged gaze the face of the river began to writhe and eddy, as if from some horrible suppressed emotion. It seemed likely that something might appear. I reflected that if the river failed us, all hope was gone; and that anyhow this region was the abode of devils. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... hundred miles thick; and so dazzling is their brightness that it bursts the eyes which look at them anywhere within a distance of four hundred leagues.7 The poor creatures here, wrapped in shrouds of fire, writhe and yell in frenzy of pain. The very revelry and ecstasy of terror and anguish fill the whole region. The skins of some wretches are taken off from head to foot, and then scalding vinegar is poured over them. A glutton is punished thus: experiencing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... grassy open place; and not a comfort had been denied the woman there. For Gloria Ramero, Ferdinand's wife, had governed that. And Eloise had entered there to stay. This much was clear enough. But that which followed seemed to twist and writhe about in my mind with only one thing sure—Eloise loved Beverly, would always love him. And he could not love any one else. He could be kind to any girl, but he would not be happy. Some day when he was older—a real man—then he would long for ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... reprovest me," says the boy, "for a very little thing." "Custom," replied Plato, "is no little thing." I find that our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit, when they hear ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... penal servitude for a term of years that then seemed eternity to me. I was removed from the court to the prison, stripped of my clothes, clad in the garb of the convict, and turned into a cell, there to writhe in tearless agony, and to indulge in bitter and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... thanks the good devil who has made her without conscience and virtue so that she may take her happiness when it comes. Her soul seeks but blindly, for nothing answers. How her happiness will seethe, quiver, writhe, shine, dance, rush, surge, rage, blare, and wreak with love ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... succession! No religious super-serviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... tenfold strength and spirit we oppose. In them no god protects his mortal sons, Or speaks, in thunder, from their roaring guns. Nor come they children of the radiant sky; 100 But, like the wounded snake, to writhe and die. Then, rush resistless on their prostrate bands, Snatch the red lightning from their feeble hands, And swear to the great spirits, hovering near, Who now this awful invocation hear, That we shall never see our household hearth, Till, like the dust, we sweep ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a fly, "ha! brother Charles, this stroke is intended for you. Really, there lies the fly writhing, as the generalissimo did, on the floor. But he has a tougher life than the fly; for the fly will writhe until it is dead, but the generalissimo always revives; and when he has no fits, he is a very brave and illustrious man, before whom his emperor must humbly stand aside. I cannot take the fly-flap and strike his writhing limbs as I do this miserable fly, the little Archduke Charles, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... old you will say to your grandchildren: 'Once I lit a cigar with a thousand-dollar check.' The oldest inhabitant will be silenced forever; it may become history. And then, too, if there are spirits, as Scripture says there are, your uncle's will writhe at the performance. I trust that you will forgive me my part in the matter. I have taken a fancy to you, and if you will accept my friendship I shall be happy to accept yours. Your uncle's revenge will not be a marker to the restitution his ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... you had learned how doing is a nobler thing than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burning in the holy place. But now you go, and there will be no return. The stars are faded from the sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid like winter snow. And—O bitterest cup of all!—the golden memories of the past have vanished from your heart. I totter down to the grave, while you go on from strength to strength. The Junes that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... scorned myself! I hated him! but felt a living goad Writhe and crawl beneath my bosom—shameful burden! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... desire her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible hands had just laid him bare ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... off smoking cigarettes, while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to offer him a burning match to light them. When more than fifty strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe, and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that the man ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... cleverer of you to choose something you knew a little more about than gardening, wouldn't it? And we can't be strangers after this. That thing there," and she indicated the headless serpent, which had now ceased to writhe, and lay limp in the grass, with all its brilliant colour faded to dingy grey, "introduced us, but it carelessly forgot to mention ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... little thought To spend I know not what of life, remote From all communion with existence, save The maniac and his tyrant;—had I been Their fellow, many years ere this had seen My mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.[bh] But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave? 180 Perchance in such a cell we suffer more Than the wrecked sailor on his desert shore; The world is all before him—mine is here, Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier. What though he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... comes about, that, in this present year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers, and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... In the body here, Or in the soul hereafter do we writhe, Atoning for the malice of our lives? Of the uncounted millions that have died, Not one has slipped the napkin from his chin And loosed the jaw to tell us: even he, The intrepid Captain, who gave life to find A doubtful way through clanging worlds of ice,— A ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... body; and the clumsy little raft offered as much resistance as a log. He could not tell how far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... bounding. Should the moon shine out from the charging clouds, then earth has not anything to show more fair; the broad track of light looks like an immeasurable river peopled by fiery serpents that dart and writhe and interwind, until the eye aches with gazing on them. Sleep seems impossible at first, and yet by degrees the poppied touch lulls our nerves, and we slumber without heeding the harrowing groans of the timbers or the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... to Shif'less Sol, when an immense force was hurled upon him, and he was thrown to the ground. His comrade was served in the same way, but the shiftless one was uncommonly strong and agile. He managed to writhe half way to his knees, and he shouted ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... froze. He watched the ZX-2 wallow in her death throes, writhe in the fiery doom that had struck her in seconds, that was devouring her with awful rapidity while thousands of men, blanched and trembling, gazed on helplessly. He saw her plunge, a blazing inferno, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... eye. And best of all, the empty chatter of the magpie Mrs. Hanway-Harley—who knows nothing, being a fool! It is that magpie chatter to be poison in the ears of the others! Oh, you should behold them, my San Reve! You should witness how they writhe and how they tremble in ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... fellow-guests, as well as to mortify the lawyer, that he had emptied the bottle, when it came to his turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Over the glimmering field And bleeding furrows, with their sodden yield Of sheaves that still did writhe, After the scythe; The teeming field, and darkly overstrewn With all the garnered fullness of that noon— Two looked upon each other. One was a Woman, men had called their mother: And ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... special art of adapting his abuse to the "Dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English sailorman. And as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... said, "there is no respectable conclusion to be drawn. It is tragic, but prosaic. She has been governess or companion in some great house. She may be a well-born woman. It is ten times more hideous for her than if she were a girl. She has to writhe under knowing that both her friends and her enemies are saying that she had not the excuse of not having been old enough ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... "Oh, yes, I am quite certain that the curl of the lip is responsible for my being here; it kept sending me constant telegrams; but what I want to know is, do I come for the pleasure of the thing or for the pain? Do I like your disdain, Alice, or does it make me writhe? Am I here to beg you to do it again, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... rushes over his snowy flesh. See how his knees writhe, how his sides give way! The flowers upon his face have soaked the gore. He is dead! Let us ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... cyclist can steer with one hand, his face is given over to Beelzebub. Contemplative flies stroll over it, and trifle absently with its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to dislodge them is to shake the head forcibly and to writhe one's features violently. This is not only a lengthy and frequently ineffectual method, but one exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. And again, sometimes the beginner rides for a space with one eye closed by perspiration, giving him a waggish air foreign to his ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... named the Impaler in consequence of a practice which is well known to our readers through the so-called Bulgarian atrocities. A sharpened pole was forced into the body of the victim, and the other end was then driven into the earth, the unfortunate man, woman, or child being left to writhe in agony until relieved ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... around us and our hearts full of great gladness, we look up and thank the good Father for his precious blessings, feeling nerved for the fiercest fight; but when the storm-clouds gather and the golden brightness is withdrawn, we bow before the blinding tempest and writhe under our pain, unless—and the kind voice spoke very softly—the Master has our hearts in his own safe keeping, unless we have learned to love his will. Then we can discern the bright stars of his love shining through the darkness, and find that the apparently pitiless storm has left diamond ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... and Church has made its choice since then. You have to make yours. 'The fire shall try every man's work, of what sort it is.' Shall our work be gold, and silver, and precious stones which shall gleam and flash in the light, or wood, hay, and stubble which shall writhe for a moment in the blaze and perish? 'Our God is a consuming fire.' Shall that be the ground of my confidence that I shall one day be pure from all my sins, or shall it be the parent of my ghastliest fear that I may be, like the chaff, destroyed by contact ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... will run along his spine, he'll do a few steps of our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully into the ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the case of cruelty before referred to. In 1820 or 21, while the public works were going forward on Dauphin Island, Mobile Bay, a contractor, engaged on the works, beat one of his slaves so severely that the poor creature had no longer power to writhe under his suffering: he then took out his knife, and began to cut his flesh in strips, from his hips down. At this moment, the gentleman referred to, who was also a contractor, shocked at such inhumanity, stepped forward, between the wretch and his victim, and exclaimed, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cried: "it is all very well for you to talk in this philosophical strain. You have not been educated in the same bitter school with me; you have not known what it is to writhe beneath the oppressive authority of this cold, unfeeling man; you cannot understand the nature of my sufferings, or the painful humiliation I ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... loathe your ways, You writhe at these my words of warning, In agony your hands you raise." (And so they did, for ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... what were they? Your Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams, Lies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood And agony: such tortures as we scarce Dream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench Of slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones— Yes, even the Papal throne—draw me not back With longing toward it. Rich that time might be If one were Michael Angelo; but how If one were peasant, or meek householder, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... faces crying for help, pressing upon him, urging, yet all without sound or word. He attempts in his diary to use phrases for all this—he speaks of a pit in which is no water, of shadows and forms that writhe and plead, of a light of glass mingled with fire; and yet of an inevitability, of a Justice which there is no questioning and a Force that there is no resisting. And, on the other side, there was this help given by men of flesh and blood like himself—using ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... the laden ships go gayly up the sparkling river, a festive foe. Night drops her mantle, and silently the unsuspected squadron floats down the stealthy waters, and debarks its fateful freight. Silently in the darkness, the long line of armed men writhe up the rugged path. The rising sun reveals a startling sight. The impossible has been attained. Now, too late, the hurried summons sounds. Too late the deadly fire pours in. Too late the thickets flash with murderous ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of trees and underbrush being unusually marshy, the girls had to pick their way carefully. Mollie walked ahead while they were talking. Barbara jumping from the twisted root of one tree to another half a yard away, felt something writhe and wriggle under her foot. Without stopping to look down, she shrieked—"A snake! a snake!"—and ran blindly forward. Before Mollie had time to look around, Barbara caught her foot under a root and tumbled headlong into ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... I would wish for no better revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then see thee writhe in despair. Knew I more than I know, can the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... hive she gently lifts,— Oh, foolish, foolish child,— Down, down it falls—out swarm the bees Buzzing with fury wild. With fright she shrieks, and tries to run, But ah! 'tis all in vain; Upon her light the angry bees, And make her writhe with pain. ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman
... the vessel, the wind roared, the thick mist enveloped them with its funereal pall; down, down she went, when a loud crash was heard, the stout timbers and planks were rent and torn asunder; he lifted on the summit of a wave, the bow was seen to twist and writhe, and separating from the after part, to sink in the foaming whirlpool, while the stern was cast with terrific violence on the rocks—another wave lifted it yet higher, and there it remained securely and immovably fixed, though with difficulty ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Markow, Brigadier, Insisting on removal of the Prince Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,— All common fellows, who might writhe and wince, And shriek for water into a deaf ear,— The General Markow, who could thus evince His sympathy for rank, by the same token, To teach him greater, had his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... time to flee, and Glenarvan and his party hurried away to the eastern side of their refuge, which was meantime untouched by the fire. They were all silent, troubled, and terrified, as they watched branch after branch shrivel, and crack, and writhe in the flame like living serpents, and then drop into the swollen torrent, still red and gleaming, as it was borne swiftly along on the rapid current. The flames sometimes rose to a prodigious height, and seemed almost lost in the atmosphere, and sometimes, beaten down by the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to Miss Dobson since yesterday evening; you, only since this afternoon; I, at close quarters; you, at a respectful distance. Your fetters have not galled you yet. MY wrists, MY ankles, are excoriated. The iron has entered into my soul. I droop. I stumble. Blood flows from me. I quiver and curse. I writhe. The sun mocks me. The moon titters in my face. I can stand it no longer. I will no more of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... to laugh at his fellow-guests, as well as to mortify the lawyer, that he had emptied the bottle, when it came to his turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor —' 'In troth mester what d'ye ca'um (replied the lawyer), your wit has run you into a filthy ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... attempt to get their heads into the centre of the tangled mass which, all in motion, heaved and sank and rolled from side to side, the lower portions of the serpents' bodies and their tails being free to lash and writhe about in the air, while at a second glance the spectators began to realise the fact that all around, gliding in and out amongst the stones, were hundreds upon hundreds more of the reptiles, apparently urged on by some savage instinct to form other knots, till the whole of the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... frightened eye. And best of all, the empty chatter of the magpie Mrs. Hanway-Harley—who knows nothing, being a fool! It is that magpie chatter to be poison in the ears of the others! Oh, you should behold them, my San Reve! You should witness how they writhe and how they tremble in the presence of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and answer one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes,—for an hour, for two hours,—the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... enough. Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of gypsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That's yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help, you have taken drow; shall I tell you your fortune, sir, your dukkerin? God bless you, pretty gentleman, much trouble ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea might writhe and supplicate and despair as he ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and most of Fielding's and De Foe's. But once I saw him throw a volume in the fire, which he had been fidgeting over for a while. I was just finishing a sum I had brought across to him to help me with. I looked up, and saw the volume in the fire. The heat made it writhe open, and I saw the author's name, and that was Sterne. He had bought it at a book-stall as he came home. He sat awhile, and then got up and took down his Bible, and began reading a chapter in the New Testament, as if for an antidote to the book ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... issue out of it, through blood and sacrifice. But they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... on the arts of war: he wielded in his clasp the ruddy-flashing wood, and victoriously with noble stroke made their fallen captain writhe. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself and ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneath Gale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then she leaned exhausted against a post and wiped her eyes, for the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... new back, I guess," she sighed ruefully, as a sharp twinge of pain recalled her to her surroundings and caused her to writhe in agony, "and a pair of legs to match. You are a sure-enough doctor, ain't you? Can't you mend me up again? The other doctors' job didn't last ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... my native hills, my strife is ended; Like my sleeping hills, I have earned life's calm. The sun that smiles on New England's streams Bids human conflicts forever cease. Let those who must, writhe in their dreams At thought of days with horror blended. For me, the meadow's gentle balm— I am of New England—where all ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... subsided and retired to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong tide, imagining ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... must be proud of him," and again Mary seemed to catch a glint in his eye. "These sketches now," he approached the table on which lay the skyscraper studies. "Very harsh—cruel, you might say—but clever, yes, sir, mighty clever." Mary saw Stefan writhe with irritation at the other's air of connoisseur. She shot him a glance at once amused and pleading, but he ignored it with a shrug, as if to indicate that Mary was responsible for this intrusion, and must expect no aid ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different angles and attitudes ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk of mankind, may be plunged in misery—who or what cares? Man is surrounded by indifference ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... Some nights he lingered talking, and others the Sheik dismissed him in a few minutes with only a curt word or two, and then there would be silence, and Diana would bury her face in her pillow and writhe in her desperate loneliness, sick with longing for the strong arms she had once dreaded and the kisses she had once loathed. He had slept in the outer room since his illness, and tossing feverishly on the soft cushions of the big empty bed in which she lay alone Diana had suffered the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... hate that message!—the message that the true wrath of God, necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. How they writhe under it! How they shut their ears to it, and cry to their preachers, 'No! Tell us of any wrath of God but that! Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning God, of absolute decrees to destruction, of the reprobation of millions before they are born; ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last, by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr Lawley, too much tired to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... limbs of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly, hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and, like the snakes of superstition, writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy her brand, perjury her oath, and the law its power; and bigotry tortures ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully into ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight of his ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... kisses all over her face and neck. She had taken her hands from her face and lay still, making no response to his efforts, her thoughts so confused that she could understand nothing, until suddenly she felt a sharp pain, and then she began to moan and writhe ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... with rough and grimy timbers and walled with bare or whitewashed brick. Imagine the floor so crammed with machinery for economy of space as to allow bare room for the workers to writhe about among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaning death or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air, with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... I have done more?" And with a laugh he sauntered on, leaving Lionel to writhe there with ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... could see them going to the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of Margaret's first day at the mill, knowing how her father and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard the old man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... an easy job. The pig did writhe and twist, while the frantic mother danced up and down in the pen behind, and drove the surgeon nearly crazy with her noise. But he toiled bravely on, and when at last the operation was done, the heart of Romeo Augustus was knit unto that ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... unexpected movement. He would burst into tears at any sudden sound. Small noises, whisperings, murmurings, creakings, soft shufflings, irritated him. Loud noises, the slamming of doors, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, made him writhe in agony. For Colin the deep silence of the Manor was the ambush for some stupendous, crashing, annihilating sound; sound that was always coming and never came. The droop of the mouth that used to appear suddenly in his moments of childish anguish was fixed now, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... gods have met in battle to arouse This whirling shadow of invisible things, These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods? O Father, and O Mother of the gods, Is there some trouble in the heavenly house? We who are captained by its unseen kings Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies, What powers who held dominion o'er our will Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies The younger gods ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-powerful fascination of his wife the parting with his money on paper had not been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the pang; he had resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was the dreaded ordeal ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... it in their very midst, a ghastly heap of mangled flesh and shattered limbs were scattered to right and left. Two unhappy lads were blown to unrecognisable fragments. No words can convey the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in your serene safety, if ever my ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... the slave; while at the same time they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color. The impression produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... a quick writhe the Netop broke loose, and bolted headlong, fairly into Captain Church himself, among the baggage and the horses. This was a surprise for the captain, too. He grabbed him but could not keep him, because he was a naked Indian and as ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-grey ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... ridiculous of him, of course, to writhe as he did under that chance meeting. What else could he have expected? A hundred times already he had told himself she had forgotten all about him, or, worse still, she remembered him only to despise him. And a hundred times, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... discover, when too late, that "the harp and the voice may thrill him, sound may enchant his ear, but, by and by, the hand will wither, and the sweet notes turn to discord; the eye, so brilliant at even, may be red with sorrow in the morning; and the sylph-like form of elegance must writhe in the ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... sprang, healed not a passion or a pang entailed on human hearts. Go! let Oblivion's curtain fall upon the stage of men! nor with thy rising beams recall life's tragedy again! Its piteous pageants bring not back, nor waken flesh upon the rack of pain anew to writhe, stretched in Disease's shapes abhorred, or mown in battle by the sword, like grass beneath the scythe! Even I am weary in yon skies to watch thy fading fire: test of all sumless agonies, behold not me expire! My lips, that speak ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... broken open. Over it was spread all my letters, and private papers, a diary I kept when twelve years old, and sundry tokens of dried roses, etc., which must have been very funny, they all being labeled with the donor's name, and the occasion. Fool! how I writhe when I think of all they saw; the invitations to buggy rides, concerts, "Compliments of," etc.—! Lilly's sewing-machine had disappeared; but as mother's was too heavy to move, they merely ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... often began to moan and fret until the mother would take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost herself in her ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... have take hire in his Arm, Asmod, which was a fend of helle, And serveth, as the bokes telle, To tempte a man of such a wise, Was redy there, and thilke emprise, Which he hath set upon delit, He vengeth thanne in such a plit, 5340 That he his necke hathe writhe atuo. This yonge wif was sory tho, Which wiste nothing what it mente; And natheles yit thus it wente Noght only of this ferste man, Bot after, riht as he began, Sexe othre of hire housebondes Asmod ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... the haste of gathering up the wounded under the fire from the castle, and the rays of the burning sun beat down with terrible fervor upon the wounded limb, causing heavy groans to issue from his pallid lips, and his marble countenance to writhe with pain. ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... which contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows:—Fox thought himself inspired, and consequently was of opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. Inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could scarce deliver himself in ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... look!" cried Bertalda, eagerly and angrily, "how the poor bright water curls and writhes, because you would deprive it of every gleam of sunshine, and of the cheerful faces of men, whose mirror it was created to be!" In truth, the spring did writhe and bubble up wonderfully, just as if someone were trying to force his way through; but Undine pressed them the more to dispatch the work. Nor was there much need to repeat her commands. The household people were too ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... The dark blood rushes over his snowy flesh. See how his knees writhe, how his sides give way! The flowers upon his face have soaked the gore. He is dead! Let us ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not rejoice to find ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... George Jean, "witty, wise, and cruel," and the "amaranthine" Louis Sherwin, who understands better than anybody else how to plunge the rapier into the vulnerable spot and twist it in the wound, making the victim writhe, have been having some fun with the art of acting lately, or to be exact, with the art of actors. Now actor-baiting is no new game; as a winter sport it is as popular as making jokes about mothers-in-law, decrying the art of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... Oriental splendor. There she stood, her hair flowing dark and silky from beneath her twisted turban, her eyes,—black melted loadstones; the broad Egyptian pendants gleaming and glowing from temple to shoulder. The golden serpent seemed to writhe on her bosom, informed from its wearer with a subtile vitality. Through all dominated a grand repose, like the calm of nature, which storms may ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... sharpened brand, A week ago, upon my steed, With Forrest and his warrior band, I made the hell-hounds writhe ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... hardly come within a hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, and cried, "Have mercy! have mercy! we feel you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require." He let them kick a few seconds longer, and then took the toad ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you—" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... "colour-sense" fresh handselled (whilst the moral ditto's cancelled) you'll develop into—well, What Philistia's fools malicious might esteem a vaurien vicious (alias "hedonic swell"). And every one will say, As you writhe your sinuous way. "If the highest result of the true 'Development' is decomposition, why see What a very perfectly developed young man this developed young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... of some new agony in store for her. I have seen such a look of terror on a poor dumb animal's countenance, and once or twice on human faces. I pray I may never see it again on either! Jemima felt the hand she held in her strong grasp writhe itself free. Ruth spread her arms before her, clasping and lacing her fingers together, her head thrown a little back, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "He that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter." How often do we hear, "I wouldn't, for the world, tell any one but you, but—;" and then follows a string of repeated confidences which the friend under discussion would writhe to hear; yet the speaker would be most indignant at being considered dishonourable, because "it was only said to So-and-so, which is so different from saying it to any one else"! The Son of Sirach made no exception in favour of "So-and-so" when he said, "Rehearse not ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... can delight My dainty appetite, For I, alas! must learn to drink, However I may writhe and shrink, Pure water. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, which a blow from the butt end of the gun knocked over, and I saw the horrible claws of the monster writhe in terrible convulsions. This incident reminded me that other animals more to be feared might haunt these obscure depths, against whose attacks my diving-dress would not protect me. I had never thought of it before, but I now resolved to be upon my guard. Indeed, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... knees. Feeling herself held fast, she tried to push his forehead back from her waist. It was fiery hot; and she heard him mutter: "Have mercy! Love me a little!" But the clutch of his hands, never still on the thin silk of her dress, turned her faint. She tried to writhe away, but could not; stood still again, and at last ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that browsed the grass Writhe in the blistering rays, The herbage in his shrinking jaws Was all a fiery blaze; I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags, Bob through the bubbling brine; And thoughts of supper crossed my soul; I ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... enshroud the higher land. Through the mingled mist and darkness the sombre trunks of the towering cypress trees rose with supernatural blackness. The mysterious "knees," those strange, naked, blackened roots, so wildly gnarled and twisted about the foot of the cypress, appeared to writhe out of the swamp's awful dimness like monstrous serpents ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... talked persistently about Bermuda; as if my exile had ever been a possibility! In all my blind whirlwind of pain, I was glad that this was the last night I should have to writhe under the click of her knitting needles, and sit opposite her ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... always collapses before a world crisis, has failed utterly. The hideous chicane of imperial government and imperial religion against mankind has resulted in a Christian veneer, which cracks at the first test and reveals the unchanged human brute beneath. The nations which writhe in deadly embrace to-day have never sought to prove God. They but emphasize the awful fact that the human mind has no grasp upon the Principle which is God, and at a time of crisis reverts almost instantly to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... lifted themselves in a thousand incredible shapes, shapes squared and globed and spiked and shifting swiftly into other thousands as incredible. I saw a mass of them draw themselves up into the likeness of a tent skyscraper high; hang so for an instant, then writhe into a monstrous chimera of a dozen towering legs that strode away like a gigantic headless and bodiless tarantula in steps two hundred feet long. I watched mile-long lines of them shape and reshape into circles, into interlaced lozenges and pentagons—then lift in great columns and shoot through ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... was always milk, and tall pitchers of it were constantly filled and emptied during this as well as the other meals. And then there were eggs—eggs hard boiled, eggs soft boiled, eggs medium, eggs poached—until, at the end of the season, the mere mention of eggs caused Joel's stomach to writhe in disgust. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Three crosses in this noonday night uplifted, Three human figures that in mortal pain Gleam white against the supernatural darkness; Two thieves, that writhe in torture, and between them The Suffering Messiah, the Son of Joseph, Ay, the Messiah Triumphant, Son of David! A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! Those hands that healed the sick now pierced ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen to be in the fashion built new banquet-rooms ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... priesthood, but he was more extravagant than Brigham in his promises of blessings in store for them. He never resorted to vagueness in his pictures of what the Lord was about to do for them. He was literal and circumstantial to a degree that made Brigham and the older men in authority sometimes writhe in public and chide him in private. They were appalled at the sweeping victories he promised the Saints over the hated Gentiles at an early day. They suggested, too, that the Lord might withhold an abundance ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes,—more rarely into houses, and on one memorable occasion, early in the last century, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... must her lifeblood feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... all the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just enjoyed; and, almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched the fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to writhe and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no mistake this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into shadow he could see there the same shaven cheeks as his own, and the small stubby moustache of a few weeks' growth. The ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and her spirit ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue shirts drip ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... there was grim mockery on his lips now as the light went out and the sensitive fingers closed on the knob of the dial, the perpetrator—the Gray Seal. It would afford excellent food for the violent editorial diatribes under which the police again would writhe in frenzy! ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb. In the angles nude men, painted caryatides, jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... warnings that hundreds of us are uttering may be ignored. The squandering may go on, the vulgar bacchanalia may be prolonged, the poor may have to writhe under the iron heel of the iron lord—the dance of death may go on until society's E string snaps, and then the Vesuvius of the underworld will belch forth its lava of death and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... their peace disturbed, thrust a sword into his mouth, so that the hilt rested upon his lower jaw and the point pierced the roof of his mouth. They next fastened the cord to a rock, and left the wolf to writhe and struggle and shake the earth. So they were freed for a time from their enemy, but at the cost of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had gone! It made his soul writhe to think of it. It had hurt enough to be jilted; but this—well, this struck at his pride even ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... path swelling barriers Of hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all The ridges of thy power. And I will show This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman, A thing to make his proud heart of evil Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law, Easily as a boy goes on windy grass.— O marvel! that my little life of mind Can by mere thinking the unsizeable Creature of sea enslave! I must believe it. The mind hath many ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... dance tune, the young fellow would step into the middle of the circle, and begin to leap and twist about and stamp his feet, and then come down with a crash on the ground—and there represent the movements of a fish which has been thrown out of the water upon the dry land; and he would writhe about this way and that, and even bring his heels up to his neck; and then, when he sprang to his feet and began to shout, the earth would simply tremble beneath him! Alexyei Sergyeitch was extremely fond of choral songs and dances, as I have already said; ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... entering on a lecture upon the principles which ought to regulate the matter in question. He was, I fancy, rather fond of lecturing, and would rather have liked the work of a professor of the fine arts. I have seen people writhe under his patient and lengthy expositions, which they were as capable of understanding as so many bullocks, and which they had brought down on themselves by some absolutely absurd remark on the work before them. I have seen such delinquents use every sort of effort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... drenched the beady-eyed, flat-iron head, flooded the swaying neck and spattered the thick scaly coils. With a writhe and a hiss the blinded snake threshed to one side and burrowed for shelter. Jack chuckled and shook. He had cleared ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible hands had just laid him bare with ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to Lessing in the epithet of the following sentence: "How dearly must I pay for the single year I have lived with a sensible wife!" Werther had then been published four years. Lessing's grief has that pathos which he praised in sculpture,—he may writhe, but he must not scream. Nor is this a new thing with him. On the death of a younger brother, he wrote to his father, fourteen years before: "Why should those who grieve communicate their grief to each ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... contingent of friendly natives, and in order to test the question, one of them was to bare his back (for a shilling) and an officer applied to it, with all his strength, a horsewhip. I saw the black man's body writhe for an instant as he puckered his mouth; but it was only for an instant—then he smiled and asked for another stroke for another shilling. This seemed to indicate to the officers that there was something more than ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... I shan't be wanted to pal up much with that chap, shall I? I mean to say, he wears so many clothes. They make me writhe as if I wore them myself. It won't ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... full of great gladness, we look up and thank the good Father for his precious blessings, feeling nerved for the fiercest fight; but when the storm-clouds gather and the golden brightness is withdrawn, we bow before the blinding tempest and writhe under our pain, unless—and the kind voice spoke very softly—the Master has our hearts in his own safe keeping, unless we have learned to love his will. Then we can discern the bright stars of his love shining through the darkness, and find that the apparently pitiless storm has ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... flashing for a moment in the sunshine. A quick, sharp report rang out. The bullet, sent with true and steady aim, by the hand of Frank Merriwell, ploughed through the tiger's brain, and the beast flattened out convulsively, and began to kick and writhe in its ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... was dishonourable. That went without saying. He had failed ignominiously from the outset to behave as an upright and honourable man. Self-analysis laid his pride in the dust and made him writhe in self-condemnation. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... his freedom," said Uncle Dick, as he gave the bands a shake so that the hook came out of the eel's mouth, and it began to writhe and twine about ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... a rebel, I wonder if I ought to be good to him," thought Nelly, watching the reptile writhe with pain. "Will said there were sick rebels in his hospital, and one was very kind to him. It says, too, in my little book, 'Love your enemies.' I think snakes are mine, but I guess I'll try and love him because God made him. Some boy will kill him if I leave him here, and then perhaps his ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... of them." He sighed. "When I think," he added, "that, but for my good offices, Nobby would have sent that treacherous drawlatch away, not only empty, but with the modern equivalent of a flea in his ear, I could writhe. When I reflect that it was I who supported the swine's predilection for hard cash, I could scream. But when I remember that ever since our purchase of the shawl, my wife has never once stopped enumerating and/or ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of local personality, and he mentally upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... yourself out, as you got yourself in," she said nastily. "The simplest thing, if you don't mind my suggesting it, is to poison the coffee and kill the lot of us. Only, if you decide to do it, let me know; I want to live just long enough to see Jimmy Wilson WRITHE!" ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the four who were holding the rope felt it begin to writhe and twist in their grasp!—like a live thing. And its black length took on a scaly look, glittering in that pink glow as if it were covered with small ebon paillettes. It grew cold and clammy. At ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... up from her stool with a chuckle of anticipation. Pat proceeded to give utterance to a series of hollow and extraordinary groans, and to writhe in a manner intended to convey the extreme agony of the rich man. Roseen fairly danced about, imitating Pat's moanings to the best of her ability. "Ou-ou-ou-ough! Ugh!" "'By this an' by that,' says the gentleman, 'tare an' ages!' says he, 'thunder an' turf!' he says, 'what ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... what it is like to live with a telepath. It is disquieting in the extreme. One of the concomitants of consciousness is that it is private consciousness. And when this isn't true, when someone, even a loved one, can creep into your mind and know what you think, your insides writhe. Caterpillars course around under your skin. And you resent. Sooner or later you will hate. I ran away from home because I couldn't stand Mother in my mind, and couldn't bear the thought of ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs, While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social thongs? Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right, Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... the nightmare's grip, Fears he has let Time's scanty forelock slip, And lost a great occasion Of self-advancement. How that mouth's a-writhe With hate, on platforms oft so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... began to writhe its body down a fissure in the rock, keeping its head elevated more than a foot from the ground. Its rattle made very little noise. It every moment darted out its forked tongue, its eyes became reddish and inflamed, and it moved rather quicker than ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... my judgment right, I should have been spared this sorrow now?' Am I not right? Those who know most of God and their own souls will agree most with me; those who know little about God and their own souls will agree but hardly with me, for they provoke God's chastisements, and writhe under them for the time, and then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild beast will turn and bite the stone thrown at him without having the sense to see why it ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was the opal serpent brooch, and Aaron's lips were fastened together with the stout pin. On his mouth and across his agonised face in which the one eye gleamed with terrific meaning the jewelled serpent seemed to writhe. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... strength, and the serpent with its vital writhe and deadly reverted bite, are both characteristic of the finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic—a masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression with every touch, and never ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... stamp no nation out, though day and night Ye tread them with that absolute heel which grates And grinds them flat from all attempted height. You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die; The tail curls stronger when you lop the head: They writhe at every wound and multiply And shudder into a heap of life that's made Thus vital from God's own vitality. 'T is hard to shrivel back a day of God's Once fixed for judgment: 't is as hard to change The peoples, when they rise beneath their loads ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... superior numbers to cut him up alive with their knives, to chop him with their axes, or to smash him with their clubs. He will only allow them to stab him with their spears, repeating of course the stabs again and again till the victim ceases to writhe and quiver, and lies there dead as a stone. Then begins the real time of peril for the virtuous kinsman who has been a spectator and director of the scene; for the ghost of the murdered man has now deserted its mangled body, and, still blinded with blood and smarting with pain, might easily ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... The fires were lighted, and the smoke rolled up in volumes, and threatened to suffocate us and put a speedy end to our torments. In a few seconds however, as the wood got fairly blazing, the smoke lifted, and as we began to writhe in agony, a yell of delight went up from more than three thousand savage throats. The heat grew more intense; my skin was scorched and blistered; dizzy and faint, I felt that the end was near, and longed for death as a speedy ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... measures they had already taken. Here, then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance of life, he could never sit his horse again, or even hope to carry on in his own person his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... within the storied page, Iron is worn, at heart, by many still— The tyrant Custom binds the serf-like will; If the sharp rack, and screw, and chain be gone, These later days have tortures of their own; The guiltless writhe, while Guilt is stretched in sleep, And Virtue lies, too often, dungeon deep. Awake the Present! what the Past has sown Be in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown! How pride breeds pride, and wrong engenders wrong, Read in the volume Truth has held so long, Assured that where ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... I can burst them asunder at will! I had hoped to avenge myself on that accursed Sydney, in a terrible appalling manner; but the law has become the avenger—he will die upon the gallows, and I am content. Ha, ha, ha! how he will writhe, and choke while I shall be at liberty, to read the account of his execution in the papers, and gloat over the description of his dying agonies! But I have an account to settle with you, Kinchen; you recollect how you hurled the wine-bottle at my head, as I was about to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... kind man, who hated any injustice, but when his wife awoke he said many unpleasant things to her, opening his mouth with difficulty, and he complained that he was left alone, like a jackal, to groan and writhe for pain. His wife met the undeserved reproaches patiently, for she knew that they came not from an angry heart—and she brought him numerous good remedies: rats' litter to be applied to his cheek, some strong liquid in which a scorpion was preserved, and a real chip of the tablets ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... her vagaries and absurdities during the last few years when she had been so provoking had been smiled at, had been, Susie knew, put down to her treatment of her. Treatment of her, indeed! The thought of these things made Susie writhe. She had been looking forward to the next season, to having her pretty sister-in-law with her in the happy mood she had been in since she heard of her good fortune, and had foreseen nothing but advantages to herself from Anna's presence in ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... universally named the Impaler in consequence of a practice which is well known to our readers through the so-called Bulgarian atrocities. A sharpened pole was forced into the body of the victim, and the other end was then driven into the earth, the unfortunate man, woman, or child being left to writhe in agony until ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... another writhe as he watched the two riders out of sight, and then muttering in an ill-used way, "Pick 'em out with a pin indeed!" he half turned in his seat, lolling in his saddle, and patting and playing with his horse, when lazily turning his eyes round amongst ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... to feel A yearning nature's strong appeal Should writhe on this eternal wheel In ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe to restore the circulation. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... a quiet laugh over his predicament. And, to add zest to the situation, I informed Singleton of what was going forward. He came over every night for supper, and to my delight the bluff Englishman was received in a fashion to make the doctor writhe and snort with mortification. Never in his life had he been so insignificant a person. And he, whose conversation was so sought after in the gay season in town, was thrown for companionship upon a scarce-grown boy whose talk was about as salted, and whose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... yours; instruct me, sir; If it be so, I'll kneel and weep before you. With all the obedience of a penitent child, Imploring pardon. Kill me, if you please; I will not writhe my body at the wound, But sink upon your feet with a last sigh, And ask forgiveness with my ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and Lust's exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of KINGS; When the low Flattery of their reptile Lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When Eunuchs sing, and Fools buffoon'ry make. And Dancers writhe their harlot limbs in vain: Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... gibbering ghost with war outworn, And thy faint life in Hades not begun? Art thou a man that holdst my grief in scorn, And yet dost live, and look upon the sun? If man,—methinks thy pleasant days are done, And thou shalt writhe in torment worse than mine; If ghost,—new pain in Hades hast thou won, And there with double woe shalt ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... whipping and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you—" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's always sweet ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... The monists themselves writhe like worms on the hook to escape pluralistic or at least dualistic language, but they cannot escape it. They speak of the eternal and the temporal 'points of view'; of the universe in its infinite 'aspect' or in its finite 'capacity'; they say that 'qua absolute' it is one thing, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Anti-Vivisection Societies, and Homes of Rest for Horses, and a hundred such institutions, and they will find contributors to these institutions stirring not one finger when hundreds of thousands of men writhe under hails of shrapnel, and crowds of homeless women and children fly in terror before the unavoidable calamities or the superfluous brutalities of war. They will see a generation shaken and shuddering as the ghastly picture ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... the inner folds of her tight fitting sheath kept me prisoner, and treated my Cock to the most delicious contractions and pressures, till I was so inflamed, Cupid's charger plunged on his mad career once more, making my dark beauty writhe and squirm in the excess of her ecstatic emotion; several times we seemed to stop by mutual consent, and lay for a while enjoying those heavenly sensations. After thus delaying the final crisis to the uttermost, the moment came when the life ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... talking, All of us together, You flash forth sudden utterance Of buried things That writhe in obscure life Within our minds' last darkness. That which we think and say not You say and think not. In us these thoughts Like worms stir vilely. But from you they depart as sudden butterflies Crimson and green against ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... God!—I will fight with you once more, and I will leave you so maimed and so disfigured that you can woo no woman to ruin again and jest at her shame and agony with no man—for none can bear to look at you without a shudder—and you will lie and writhe to be given the coup de grace." He lifted the hilt of his sword and kissed it. "That I swear," he said, "by this first ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... come within a few hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot, Who stands firm just because he feels it writhe." ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. The soft night was about them; ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Anstice and Carstairs had overpowered her with their superior might she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering a sharp cry fell to the floor in a ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... thou wert so ugly and contemptible in comparison with him. They have flung thee the relic of a life that they would not take away, merely in derision. Wilt thou live even with a victim that despises thee? Half dead and half alive, like a lizard mangled by a passing crow, and left to writhe: a deer, struck by an idle hunter, left wounded in the jungle, unable even to procure its death, to ebb away its life through burning days and black intolerable nights, eyed by the vultures sitting by. And thou wouldst ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... too much for one night! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Love, hatred, passion, triumph, rage, revenge, ambition, all, all gratified! Ha! ha! Soft, gentle Julia—proud, virtuous one that did despise me, thou shalt writhe for it—from thy soul shalt thou bleed for it! Ha! ha! Arvina—liar! fool! perjurer! but this will wring thee worse than Ixion's wheel, or whips of scorpions!—Ha! ha! Cicero! Cicero!—No! no! Chrea. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... lifeblood feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see hell yield ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... imitation of a gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife—timid, and all too gentle—could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory criticisms on the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... with a somewhat feeble constitution, but healthy in appearance and of steady habits, greedily swallow some new kind of cordial and then suddenly fall to the ground, foam at the mouth, act deliriously and writhe in convulsions, we at once surmise that this agreeable beverage contained some dangerous substance; but a delicate analysis is necessary to detect and decompose the poison. The philosophy of the eighteenth century contained poison, and of a kind as potent as it was peculiar; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong tide, imagining ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... sick, child, sure enough. Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of gypsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That's yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help, you have taken drow; shall I tell you your fortune, sir, your dukkerin? God bless you, pretty gentleman, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Rodney laughed, tickled by such praises, and drank what they offered, and tried to stifle his conscience and harden himself in sin. Yet often, when he was alone, did he shrink from himself, and writhe under the lashings of conscience; and the remembrance of home, and thoughts of his conduct, rendered ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... young fellow would step into the middle of the circle, and begin to leap and twist about and stamp his feet, and then come down with a crash on the ground—and there represent the movements of a fish which has been thrown out of the water upon the dry land; and he would writhe about this way and that, and even bring his heels up to his neck; and then, when he sprang to his feet and began to shout, the earth would simply tremble beneath him! Alexyei Sergyeitch was extremely fond ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... struggling in the nightmare's grip, Fears he has let Time's scanty forelock slip, And lost a great occasion Of self-advancement. How that mouth's a-writhe With hate, on platforms oft so blandly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... One of the concomitants of consciousness is that it is private consciousness. And when this isn't true, when someone, even a loved one, can creep into your mind and know what you think, your insides writhe. Caterpillars course around under your skin. And you resent. Sooner or later you will hate. I ran away from home because I couldn't stand Mother in my mind, and couldn't bear the ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... little longer time of sanity. The poor devils that are left—well—they'll be camaradas, peons, laborers, without the intelligence to know what they can do. They'll wait patiently for their masters to come back. And presently their hands will writhe.... And the town will be ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... claws, horrible to look at, were thrust out and clutched the wave-beaten fragments of rock, while the sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes that served them instead of hair seemed likewise to be asleep, although now and then one would writhe and lift its head and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... on!' answered the raving voice from within. 'Slay, till not a Christian is left! Victory! Serapis! See, they drop from our walls!—they writhe bleeding on the earth beneath us! There is no worship but the worship of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... stings, and actresses have spent many a sleepless night under your malign influence. You have tortured Dukes on the peaks of gracious splendour where they sit enthroned as far above common mortals as they ought to be above the common feeling of envy; and you have caused even Queens to writhe because there happened to be a few ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... cruel, and the time is hard as steel To English slaves, trod down and bruised beneath the Norman heel. Like worms they writhe, but by-and-by the Norman heel may learn There are worms that carry poison, and that are not ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... to forfeiture and attainder; and I call upon every one here present to aid me in arresting you, and you to surrender yourself, to take your trial according to law!" "Weak man, give over!" replied the Colonel. "All your schemes are frustrated, all your base designs are vain. You writhe under my heel, like a crushed adder, but, serpent, I tell you, you bite upon a file. First, for myself, I am not a proclaimed traitor; but, pleading the King's full pardon for everything in which I may have offended, I claim all that is mine own, my rights, my privileges, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... proportions, nor keep the key through 'Yankee Doodle,' I long to insist upon his making a practical trial in such things before daring to make a criticism. Yet it is a fact that artistic people of every grade and type have to writhe under the criticisms of ignoramuses, who could not accomplish the piece of work they scathingly denounce if their lives depended upon it. I pick up a book and fling it aside with the comment, 'It's not worth reading!' or I look over a great vessel like ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... she did not writhe or quiver or breathe. Lane felt surrender in her, and when he lifted his face from hers he was sure. Despite the fact that he had inflexibly clamped his will to one purpose, holding his emotion in abeyance, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... him, and because he had really too much of the dark-young-Crusader-knight in him, to break my heart! I made up my mind that I would take him at his word, quickly, if he gave me the chance; and I would tell Di that he was dreadfully in love with me. That would make her writhe. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... a second: two others are farther in flight, they reach the edge of a deep river,—the water is beat into a hollow by the force of their plunge;—close to us is the great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... comes about that, in this year of grace 1877, two persons may be charged with cruelty to animals. One has impaled a frog, and suffered the creature to writhe about in that condition for hours; the other has pained the animal no more than one of us would be pained by tying strings round his fingers and keeping him in the position of a hydropathic patient. The first offender says, "I did it because I find fishing very ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... fully warm And wolde have take hire in his Arm, Asmod, which was a fend of helle, And serveth, as the bokes telle, To tempte a man of such a wise, Was redy there, and thilke emprise, Which he hath set upon delit, He vengeth thanne in such a plit, 5340 That he his necke hathe writhe atuo. This yonge wif was sory tho, Which wiste nothing what it mente; And natheles yit thus it wente Noght only of this ferste man, Bot after, riht as he began, Sexe othre of hire housebondes Asmod hath take into hise bondes, So that thei alle abedde deiden, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... pondered on the arts of war: he wielded in his clasp the ruddy-flashing wood, and victoriously with noble stroke made their fallen captain writhe. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun Maclir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the cruel anguish Dying on the shameful tree, All abandoned by Thy Father, Thuo didst writhe in agony. Jesus! Jesus! By these three long hours of sorrow Thou didst purchase ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit, dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating 'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law of the Suspect ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... him to, and Hicks, I after engaging the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents, scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down to the bar and gambling room. The drink of whiskey he got made even his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to join a group of calm and ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... volume in the fire, which he had been fidgeting over for a while. I was just finishing a sum I had brought across to him to help me with. I looked up, and saw the volume in the fire. The heat made it writhe open, and I saw the author's name, and that was Sterne. He had bought it at a book-stall as he came home. He sat awhile, and then got up and took down his Bible, and began reading a chapter in the New Testament, as if for an antidote to the book ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... hell are over a hundred miles thick; and so dazzling is their brightness that it bursts the eyes which look at them anywhere within a distance of four hundred leagues.7 The poor creatures here, wrapped in shrouds of fire, writhe and yell in frenzy of pain. The very revelry and ecstasy of terror and anguish fill the whole region. The skins of some wretches are taken off from head to foot, and then scalding vinegar is poured ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the foul thing bare! One lightning-picture—see—yon bayonet-bristling square Mown down, mown down, mown down, wild swathes of crimson wheat, The white-eyed charge, the blast, the terrible retreat, The blood-greased wheels of cannon thundering into line O'er that red writhe of pain, rent groin and shattered spine, The moaning faceless face that kissed its child last night, The raw pulp of the heart that beat for love's delight, The heap of twisting bodies, clotted and congealed In one red huddle ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... thunder; in a minute, a louder, angrier growl—as if the first were a menace which had not been heeded. Then there was a violent gush of wind—cold; smelling of the forests from which it came; scattering everything before it, dust, dead leaves, the fallen petals of flowers; making the trees writhe and labour, like giants wrestling with invisible giants; making the short grass shudder; corrugating the steel surface of the lake. Then two or three big raindrops fell—and ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... rebellion. I listened to some stinging rebukes delivered by Mlle. Jacquier when she would arise in her wrath in the dining-room and address them collectively. She knew how to get under their skin, for they would blush, hang their heads, and writhe. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... cringe and cower and bring a shrine a forced and faithless faith Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death. For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt—no gods are mine that love a lie! Nor gods that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells— Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must cry for miracles? ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... rule he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that of ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... of unbelief caused her to writhe inwardly. "Do you think the unsupported statement of a woman suspected of murder will find credence?" Kathleen clenched John Hargraves' letter until her knuckles shone white under the taut skin. "Secondly," he continued in the same quiet tone, "you speak tonight only of this winter. Have you forgotten ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... such a situation. The Brethes knew nothing and thought nothing. The girl, unaware that these were my own people, saw me being used and treated as a chauffeur by four strangers, while she looked on and got the thanks; and the thought made her writhe. Berry and the others found me about to call them "Sir" and "Madam" and to serve them by mending my own car in the capacity of chauffeur to somebody they had never seen. And I wanted to burst out into hysterical ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... eyes staring on a window that looked on the branches of the highest tree about the castle. He had been reading or praying with his master before the physician had come in; he had been doing his duty (I could swear by his stern jaw), and making MacCailein Mor writhe to the flame of a conscience revived. There was a constraint on the company for some minutes, on no one more than Argile, who sat propped up on his bolsters, and, fiddling with long thin fingers with the fringes of his coverlet, looked every way but in the eyes of M'Iver or myself. I can swear ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... placed her, this year she was certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... hope along the hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal. After twenty years spent in teaching, he still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special bete noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... see poor Susan writhe with pain under these harsh words. But she merely heaved a sigh, and let fall a tear on the babe, which she had taken from its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... crock? I suppose what it comes to,' she added, as the Babe did his best to find a definition, 'is this, that you yourself dislike him.' The Babe admitted the impeachment. Mr Dacre had a finished gift of sarcasm which had made him writhe on several occasions, and sarcastic masters are ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... and it grieves you. To-day the Schulze Society will come with wreaths and will sing the memorial song ordered by my son-in-law. I daresay having to stand and listen to it will make you writhe. ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... neither been troubled by my own grave shortcomings nor by Chichester's excellence of character. I had always felt myself set far above him by my superior mental faculties and my greater will power over the crowd, though, alas! not always over my own demon. I began to writhe now under the thought of Chichester's crystal purity and of my own besmirched condition of soul. All self-confidence departed from me; but I endeavored, of course, to conceal this from the world, and especially from Chichester. With the world for a time no doubt I succeeded. But with Chichester—did ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... might even be tolerable, but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of that brutal ophicleide ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... tate weird han'dle un clean' an'o dyne swale clam'or be tween' col on nade' swain gram'mar ma rine' ser e nade' storm ham'mer com plete' dom i neer' swarm palm'er de feat' bel ve dere' scythe sa'tyr de ceit' pen'ni less writhe trai'tor co erce' mon'ey less sieve wait'er dis burse' joc'u lar give cra'ter ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... and Durham was left alone. Bracing his muscles, he strained at the cords which bound him, trying to writhe himself free. The chair creaked. In a moment the man with the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... whom he does not know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different angles and attitudes of awkwardness, ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... of her long arms ended, not in a hand, but in a claw like that of a bird of rapine. Her hair resembled the locks of the classic Medusa, and her faces were inexpressibly loathsome. She seemed, with all her dreadful heads and limbs, to writhe in the flames and yet not to be consumed by them. She gathered them in to herself; her claws caught them and drew them down; her triple body appeared to suck the fire into itself, as though a blast ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... seemed to rest, and for a long time no sound or stir broke the silence, till at last Viola began to writhe in her chair ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... howled and snapped and growled, until the gods, unwilling to have their peace disturbed, thrust a sword into his mouth, so that the hilt rested upon his lower jaw and the point pierced the roof of his mouth. They next fastened the cord to a rock, and left the wolf to writhe and struggle and shake the earth. So they were freed for a time from their enemy, but at the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hesitated a moment, glancing at her mother, and then stepped out of the summer-house. Chris saw that bitter smile writhe and die on the elder woman's face, but she ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the little bank where her father had opened an account before she was born, and Lite was made to writhe inwardly with her boasting. Lite, if you please, had long ago started a savings account at that same bank, and had lately cut out poker, and even pool, from among his joys, that his account might fatten the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and her ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... and the dance is organized. He leans his left cheek lovingly on his instrument, and has just run his bow across the discordant strings, when suddenly a loud crash is heard in the gorges of the mountain. It is the roar of the storm. The maple tops writhe and twist in the sweep of the winds that come up in eddies from the river far beneath. The sky is suddenly darkened. The snow falls thick and fast. These portents are sufficiently significant to startle the whole party. The dance is broken up and every ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... he was dishonourable. That went without saying. He had failed ignominiously from the outset to behave as an upright and honourable man. Self-analysis laid his pride in the dust and made him writhe in self-condemnation. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... my God, they are not at rest! Can they neither live nor die? See, they writhe in their throbbing grave! While the nervous mesh of the quivering flesh Its strange anguish renews as the hot, bloody dews Follow the track of my Beautiful back As they rush into life again, Bringing nought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at the enactment, that the charge must be paid by senders. "Proprietors of journals," says the Quebec Chronicle, "find it hard enough at present to collect the simple subscription, without demanding postage in advance. People who writhe at present under the payment of their bare paper account, will find forwarding postage, in advance, an excruciating sacrifice." The 2 cents is no doubt primarily intended for soldiers' letters. The 3 cents pays the new ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... more quiet, his muscles stiffened and relaxed—he was no longer conscious. A few more convulsive quivers, as a serpent might writhe and jerk, then he hung, a limp dead thing, in my hands. My outstretched arms seemed made as a gibbet, feeling no fatigue, so lightly did they sustain him. Cords of brass could be no more tense than mine; his weight was as nothing. Softly I eased him down, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... this gloomy, savage force that has made the contemplative soul of spiritual inquiry writhe under the startling contradictions of history. When this force has been aroused with fear it has snarled and roared defiance; when it has been enraged by opposition or the lash of mastership it has cooled its ferocity in the blood of countless wars, pillages and sacrifices; ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... powers, without pose, without dramatics. Now he was himself, and more dramatic, more compelling than ever before. ... He pleaded, begged, flayed his audience, but it did not respond to his pleadings nor writhe under the whip of his words. It was apathetic, stolid. In its weary heart it knew what it was there to do, and it would do it in spite of Dulac.... He would not admit it. He would not submit to defeat. He talked on and on, not daring to stop, for with the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the crumbling base of the auld kirk tower Is the broad-leaved dock and the bright brae flower; And the adders hiss o'er the lime-bound stones, And playfully writhe round mouldering bones: The bat clingeth close to the binewood's root, Where its gnarled boughs up the belfry shoot, As, hiding the handworks of ruthless time, It garlands in grandeur and green sublime ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his lips twitching with the pain he was trying to defy; "I have not been able to laugh at the futility of pain. Ah!" It was almost a scream that issued from between his stretched lips. He began to writhe.... ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... path might be rough, you trod it bravely. I saw that you had learned how doing is a nobler thing than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burning in the holy place. But now you go, and there will be no return. The stars are faded from the sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid like winter snow. And—O bitterest cup of all!—the golden memories of the past have vanished from your heart. I totter down to the grave, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ship glided on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could have called ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... up the creek from the ocean and the finest ones found their way into the pool, and on Friday the cook and his men supplied the tables with fresh fish. How many times have I seen those fine fish, caught on the prongs of a spear, writhe and wriggle to get off. At first I could not taste them, I felt so sorry to see them killed in that way. I would not go out on Friday until after the fishing was done. The lamper eels crawled up the stream and the men gathered them by the barrels ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... story in Tiverton of one man who went remorsefully mad after his wife's death, and whose mind dwelt unceasingly on the things he had denied her. These were not many, yet the sum seemed to him colossal. It piled the Ossa of his grief. Especially did he writhe under the remembrance of certain blue dishes she had desired the week before her sudden death; and one night, driven by an insane impulse to expiate his blindness, he walked to town, bought them, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... reclined upon the sofa in their house, that priest began to moan and writhe as if in agony. His wife, in great alarm, inquired what ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the ZX-2 wallow in her death throes, writhe in the fiery doom that had struck her in seconds, that was devouring her with awful rapidity while thousands of men, blanched and trembling, gazed on helplessly. He saw her plunge, a blazing inferno, ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... others with his own insights and convictions. With bitter discouragement and chagrin, he saw that the spiritual man must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and indifference and animal sensuality that surround him,—that the curse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe under awful visions of truths which no one around him will regard. In early life the associate only of the cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not but experience at times an insupportable ennui in listening to the confessions of people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your work! Who ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... the time to seal the fate of our foe," said I to Fritz; and with that we went out with our guns. When we got near, we both took a straight aim, and each put a ball in its head. This made it move with a start, and writhe as ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... sounded the honeyed accents of De Griers as he leant over to whisper in the Grandmother's ear. "That stake will never win. No, no, it is impossible," he added in Russian with a writhe. "No, no!" ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... This consisted simply of defending his own practice by entering on a lecture upon the principles which ought to regulate the matter in question. He was, I fancy, rather fond of lecturing, and would rather have liked the work of a professor of the fine arts. I have seen people writhe under his patient and lengthy expositions, which they were as capable of understanding as so many bullocks, and which they had brought down on themselves by some absolutely absurd remark on the work before them. I have seen such delinquents use every sort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... faced with another equally unpleasant—that never-annihilated possibility that she had gone off with Holliday somewhere. Perhaps she was with him now, in Monte Carlo, or Nice, Paris even. Therese would not know, of course. Arthur would be careful to keep it from her. The mere idea of it made him writhe, while he felt his skin flush all over as though a fire flared up ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... I turned giddy again and reeled against the door of a cabin, which gave way so far as to let me fall inwards on to a heap of old sails, ropes, and other softish ship lumber stowed away within. As I fell my hand struck something warm, which I fancied gave a writhe out of my grasp. I groped and seized it again, and now there was no mistake. It was somebody's arm, who said in a quick undertone, "Gently, gently, sirs; I'm coming along with ye. I'll gie ye my word ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Son of Mary, before Whom the Scribes and Pharisees brought the woman taken in adultery, forgive her, pardon her! If a soul must writhe in those eternal fires they preach of, in justice let it be mine! Thou Who didst pity that woman of old time, standing white and shameful in the midst of the evil, jeering crowd, with the wicked fingers pointing at her, say to this other woman, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... one hand, his face is given over to Beelzebub. Contemplative flies stroll over it, and trifle absently with its most sensitive surfaces. The only way to dislodge them is to shake the head forcibly and to writhe one's features violently. This is not only a lengthy and frequently ineffectual method, but one exceedingly terrifying to foot passengers. And again, sometimes the beginner rides for a space with one eye closed by perspiration, giving him a waggish air foreign to his mood and ill calculated to ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... but it seemed to be the only chance for escaping torture and death, and it suited the reckless daring of the man's character. Waiting to the last moment, in order that the stern of the scow might fairly rub against the platform, he began to writhe again, as if in intolerable suffering, execrating all Indians in general, and the Hurons in particular, and then he suddenly and rapidly rolled over and over, taking the direction of the stern of the scow. Unfortunately, Hurry's shoulders required more space to revolve in than his ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... good many men who profess 'realism,' brutal frankness and a sweeping disbelief of everything not 'scientifically' true, Mr. Lushington was almost morbidly sensitive to the opinion of others. Criticism hurt him; indifference wounded him to the quick; ridicule made him writhe. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... one vengeance fire! Who doubts the glorious issue! To our foes A tenfold strength and spirit we oppose. In them no god protects his mortal sons, Or speaks, in thunder, from their roaring guns. Nor come they children of the radiant sky; 100 But, like the wounded snake, to writhe and die. Then, rush resistless on their prostrate bands, Snatch the red lightning from their feeble hands, And swear to the great spirits, hovering near, Who now this awful invocation hear, That we shall ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... also another reason why he did not breathe a word to her of his suspicions, and that was the slow dread that was laming him—the dread of her contempt. She made no further attempt to drape it; and he had learned to writhe before it, to cringe and go softly. Weeks had passed now, since the night on which he had made his last stand against her weeks of increasing torture. Just at first, incredible as it had seemed, his horrible treatment of her had brought about a slackening ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... whispered, "he suffers horribly when he moves, and I tried to persuade him to have his dinner sent into the parlor, but in honor of your presence he will come, and he doesn't want us to see him wince and writhe under the effort." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... sweetheart to have her look upon a new one. Rather would he strive to cover up his faithlessness. But he hath been untrue to thee in this—that he shares a thought with the witch when his whole mind should be full of thee. Bide thy time till he emerges from the spell, then make him writhe. Meantime, save thy tears. Never was a man ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... exactions on his fellow's purse; And when that poor means fail'd, held o'er his head Threats of impending death in hideous forms; Till the small culprit on his nightly couch Dream'd of strange pains, and felt his body writhe In tortuous pangs around ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... but disliked for his selfishness, cynicism, and overbearing assumption of mastership in the theory and practice of fishing. As he was ever laying down the highest standards of sport much was forgiven him. The men who used phantom, prawn, and worm, however much and often they were made to writhe under his sneers, felt that in maintaining the artificial fly as the only lure with which the noble salmon should be tempted, he was on a lofty plane, and, if not unassailable, had better be left there in his vain glory. They loved him none the more, of course, and spun, prawned, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... already found in a Gaboon factory, the excessive prevalence of petty pilfering. The Moleques or house-boys steal like magpies, even what is utterly useless to them; these young clerks of St. Nicholas will scream and writhe, and confess and beg pardon under the lash, and repeat the offence within the hour: as they are born serviles, we cannot explain the habit ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... emotions of humanity common to, and shared equally by, both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses, than to hers? To all these interrogatories ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... find that there are crooked lanes, muddy crossings, dull market-places, tiresome houses. Odd misshapen figures, fretful and wearied, plod through the streets or look out at windows; here is a ruin, with doleful creatures moping in the shade; we overturn a stone, and blind uncanny things writhe away from the light. We begin to reflect that it is after all much like other places, and that our fine romantic view of it was due to some accident of light and colour, some transfiguring mood of our own mind; and then we set out in search of another ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... linger on the hideous details of such a scene? Sorrowful that man should come, with his evil ambitions and his fierce revenges, to stain and to spoil such wonders of beauty as the hand of the Creator has here moulded. Sorrowful that man, in league with the serpent, should writhe into such scenes as these, and poison them with ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... summoned all his strength and struck him half a dozen blows, that made poor Jack writhe. Then he walked up and down the room awhile, to give the victim time to consider whether he would ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... to tannic bitterness, of heady hypocras charged with cinnamon, with almonds, and with musk, of raging liquors clouded with golden particles—mad drinks which spurred the guests in this womanless castle to frenzies of lechery and made them, at the end of the meal, writhe in monstrous dreams. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... General Markow, Brigadier, Insisting on removal of the Prince Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,— All common fellows, who might writhe and wince, And shriek for water into a deaf ear,— The General Markow, who could thus evince His sympathy for rank, by the same token, To teach him greater, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... hissing to the saw. Their instinct to make use of the downright in retort, restrained as it is by a buttoned coat of civilization, is amusing, inviting. Colney Durance allured them to the quag's edge and plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically; and although it may be said, that they felt their situation less than did he the venom they sprang in his blood, he was cruel; he caused discomfort. But these good friends about him stood for the country, an illogical country; and as he could not well attack his host Victor ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very nearly offensive, but was at the same time so polished, that it would indicate a want of good breeding to be annoyed at it. It was thus a real treat for Uncle Richard to see the magistrate, with all his aplomb, writhe under Delphin's adroit and sarcastic rejoinders. Aalbom, on the other hand, was not so well bred, and often, therefore, broke through conventionalities, to the great delight of both the attache ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... man left at Key West who did not writhe with envy and anger when he heard of it. When the wire was closed for the night, and they had gathered at Josh Kerry's, Keating was the storm-centre of ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... present we have no means of ascertaining. The letters giving them the miss-in-baulk in no uncertain voice were only despatched yesterday. But it cannot affect us how they writhe beneath the blow. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... which I distinctly beheld each of my faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... their taunts in silence; and all her struggle was not to let them see their power to make her writhe within. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... deaths—women, blasted by disease and drink till their shame brought not tuppence in the open mart; and men, in fantastic rags, wrenched by hardship and exposure out of all semblance of men, their faces in a perpetual writhe of pain, grinning idiotically, shambling like apes, dying with every step they took and each breath they drew. And there were young girls, of eighteen and twenty, with trim bodies and faces yet untouched with twist and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... beyond that one flat statement, around the turn below you comes a Ford, rattling all its joints trying to make the hill on "high." The driver honks wildly at you to give him the road—you, Casey Ryan! Wouldn't you writhe and invent words and apply them viciously to all Fords and the man who invented them? But the driver comes at you ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Honourable Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid was quartered in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... ear less charged with insanity; small sounds of movement, of strange shiverings, swarmings, crepitations; sounds of incessant, infinitely subtle urging, of agony and recoil. Sounds they were of the invisible things unborn, driven towards birth; sounds of the worm unborn, of things that creep and writhe towards dissolution. She knew what she heard and saw. She heard the stirring of the corruption that Life was; the young blades of corn were frightful to her, for in them was the push, the passion of the evil which was Life; the trees as they stretched out their arms and threatened her ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... triumphs, that beneath thee sprang, healed not a passion or a pang entailed on human hearts. Go! let Oblivion's curtain fall upon the stage of men! nor with thy rising beams recall life's tragedy again! Its piteous pageants bring not back, nor waken flesh upon the rack of pain anew to writhe, stretched in Disease's shapes abhorred, or mown in battle by the sword, like grass beneath the scythe! Even I am weary in yon skies to watch thy fading fire: test of all sumless agonies, behold not me expire! My lips, that speak thy dirge of death, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... old, it said, and will wither before thy face, and be as the waning moon in the heavens. And my heart cried out in an agony. But my will sought to comfort my heart, and said, Cry not out, for, in spite of old age as in spite of death, I will love her still. Then something began to writhe within me, and to hiss out words that gathered themselves unto this purpose: But she will grow unlovely, and wrinkled, and dark of hue, and the shape of her body will vanish, and her form be unformed, and her eyes will grow small and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... others, knowing how this youth Would shine, if love could make him great, When caught and tortured for the truth Would only writhe and hesitate; While she, arranging for his days What centuries could not fulfill, Transmutes him with her faith and praise, And has him shining ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... howled again; the pain was too much for him and he toppled sidewise to writhe in ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... fire? Did you not shoot down my father in the wood, fearing lest he should prove you traitor, and after rob me of my heritage? Did you not compel your monks to work evil and bring some of them to their deaths? Oh! have done! Worm dressed up as God's priest, how can you writhe there ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... her own bed. Later also she often began to moan and fret until the mother would take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost herself in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... "is the king's own favourite, and if any harm come to a lock of her hair, I tell you that there is not a living soul within this portcullis who will not die a death of torture. Fools, will you gasp out your lives upon the rack, or writhe in boiling oil, at ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... still locked fast in each other's arms, went further. Then they realized where they were, and there was a simultaneous writhe to get back again. It was too late. The blue jay saw them hang for a moment on the brink and then go crashing into the void. His paralyzed voice came back to him, and, chattering wildly with terror, he flew away from the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... thronging mass of faces crying for help, pressing upon him, urging, yet all without sound or word. He attempts in his diary to use phrases for all this—he speaks of a pit in which is no water, of shadows and forms that writhe and plead, of a light of glass mingled with fire; and yet of an inevitability, of a Justice which there is no questioning and a Force that there is no resisting. And, on the other side, there was this help ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... hour of triumph, then I'll goad you till you writhe again; Then shall you curse the evil hour You made a mockery ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... see them is when they are fed, which is after the real lions. The keeper goes into the enclosure with a basket of fish, and in their excitement the sea-lions writhe and wind and chase each other till the pond seems full of gigantic eels. He throws the fish one by one in all directions, and the great beasts simply dance after them. Even after the last fish has gone, still the happy commotion continues ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Foxy reveled in his power over his rival, and ground his slave in bitter bondage, subjecting him to such humiliation as made the school wonder and Hughie writhe; and if ever Hughie showed any sign of resentment or rebellion, Foxy could tame him to groveling submission by a single word. "Well, I guess I'll go down to-night to see your mother," was all he needed to say to make Hughie ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... gushed out—it was shed to save him; and he raised his eyes, lifted his clasped hands, turned his whole face up towards heaven, saying, "Jack loves, loves, very loves good Jesus Christ!" When another violent pang made him start and writhe a little, he recovered in a moment, nodded his head, and said, "Good pain, make Jack soon ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... much resistance as a log. He could not tell how far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... would use a rod, a riding-whip, bind him and chain him, and so on. But it is to be noted that she declares "this could, in general, only give me enjoyment if the man concerned endured such torture with a certain pleasure. He must, indeed, writhe with pain, but at the same time be in a state of sexual ecstasy, followed by satisfaction." His pleasure must not, however, be so great that it overwhelms his pain; if it did, her own pleasure would vanish, and she has found witty her husband that when ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... examination and he began to veto some of the worst of them. Each veto message explained the grounds for his dissent, sometimes patiently, sometimes with a sharp sarcasm that must have made the victim writhe. In one case where a widow sought a pension because of the death of her soldier husband it was discovered that he had been accidentally shot by a neighbor while hunting. Another claimant was one who had enlisted at the close of the war, served nine days, had been ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... worship Mahound and Termagant. I saw a blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in Paul's Walk. He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair. I marvelled that he did not writhe and flee when he came within the Minster, but Ned Burgess said he ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... say so? Well, I'll never guess a man's age by his looks Again.—Poor Master Waller! He must writhe To hear I think Sir William is so young. I'll turn his visit yet to more account.—[Aside.] A handsome ring, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... breakers clash and boom; We saw them plunge and writhe and rise, And toss great flakes of ashen spume High toward ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
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