"Convulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire I wouldn't have believed it were true. I wouldn't have believed anything evolved out of the brains of men and put together by the fingers of men could operate with such devilish accuracy to compass such utter destruction. I would have said it was some planetic force, some convulsion of natural forces, and not an agency of human devisement, that turned Fort Loncin inside out, and transformed it within a space of hours from a supposedly impregnable stronghold into a hodgepodge of complete and hideous ruination. And what befell Fort Loncin on the hills behind Liege befell ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... along with his eight sons, formed the last relic in our province of that race of petty feudal tyrants by which France had been overrun and harassed for so many centuries. Civilization, already advancing rapidly towards the great convulsion of the Revolution, was gradually stamping out the systematic extortions of these robbers. The light of education, a species of good taste reflected, however dimly, from a polished court, and perhaps a presentiment ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... service to the kingdom of heaven among foreign nations. From the first feeble beginnings of foreign missions from America in India and in the Sandwich Islands, they had been attended by the manifest favor of God. When the convulsion of the Civil War came on, with prostrations of business houses, and enormous burdens of public obligation, and private beneficence drawn down, as it seemed, to its "bottom dollar" for new calls of patriotism and charity, and especially when the dollar in a man's pocket ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... boy—ending in a highly organized fight—absolute defiance of tutor and housemaster on Desmond's part—and threatened expulsion. The Squire's irritable pride had made him side ostentatiously with his son, and Pamela could only be miserable and expect the worst. Then suddenly the whole convulsion had quieted down, and Desmond's last year at Eton had been a very happy one. Why? What had happened? Pamela ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cavaliers of the former vision, they came pushing, bustling, panting, and swaggering. And as they passed, the good Father noticed that giant trees were prostrated as with the breath of a tornado, and the bowels of the earth were torn and rent as with a convulsion. And Father Jose looked in vain for holy cross or Christian symbol; there was but one that seemed an ensign, and he crossed himself with holy horror as he perceived it bore the effigy of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... The man falls over suddenly unconscious in a convulsion, which continues until he is blue in the face, when he gradually quiets down and regains consciousness. He is liable to injure himself by the fall and by biting his tongue. Put a stick or cork between his teeth and let him lie quietly undisturbed. Don't ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... cases, extravagance dissipates wealth, but the laws favour accumulation of landed property, and counteract extravagance; the advantages are in favour of all the wealthy in general, and the consequence is, that from the first origin of any particular order of things, till some convulsion takes place, the division of property becomes more and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... little colourless eyes had tears in them. "I shall have to go and leave her, and who will take care of her? She is to have a thing like yours upon her head." He was ready to sob, but kept himself in with a great effort, swallowing the little convulsion of nature. His mother's widow's cap was more to Geoff than his father's death; at least it was a visible sign of something tremendous which had happened, more telling than the mere absence of one who had been so often absent. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... for the amelioration of conditions to such an extent that his race might be saved from being goaded on to an unequal and disastrous conflict. He hoped that its efficacy would be so self-evident that Earl might stay the hand that threatened the South and the nation with another awful convulsion. No wonder that his voice was charged with deep emotion as ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... Black Sea and by those interested in the trade and navigation of the Danube. But the opening of the Straits was one thing, the possession of Constantinople by Russia was another, and in his opinion would cause a European convulsion; for he saw in Constantinople what has since been termed 'the great strategic centre of the world': [Footnote: The expression was used by Mr. Winston Churchill in a speech on November 15th, 1915, in the House of Commons.] the meeting-place and clearing-house of the trade and politics ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... A sudden convulsion of rage shook me. I was almost moved to batter his foolish head in, as he lay there helpless at my feet. Then suddenly his hand moved, so feebly, so pitifully, that my wrath vanished. He groaned, and opened his eyes for a minute. I knelt down beside him and raised his head. He opened ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... critics require. The eye, which has been accustomed to delight in paintings of caricature, regards a picture from real life as an insipid work. The extravagance of farce has given to the Town a taste for the pleasant convulsion of hearty laughter, and smiles are contemned, as ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... into the hood that was attached to it. As soon as they had finished dancing they went to the hood, and rummaged violently for them again. And all the time the piper blew frantically into his instrument, and rocked himself about like a man in a convulsion. ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... repeat that we had not before our eyes that fabulous land which Arthur Pym described. The soil we were treading had been ravaged, wrecked, torn by convulsion. It was black, a cindery black, as though it had been vomited from the earth under the action of Plutonian forces; it suggested that some appalling and irresistible cataclysm had overturned the whole ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... one, and is not found in the Upsal MS. of the Prose Edda, which is supposed to be the oldest extant. Gefjon's ploughing is obviously a mythic way of accounting for some convulsions of nature, perhaps the convulsion that produced the Sound, and thus effected a junction between the Baltic and the ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... right of claim is in that degree effaced; and it has been even gravely maintained that a discovery of a mountain of gold would cancel the National Debt; in other words, that men may be paid for what costs much in what costs nothing. Now, it is true that there is little chance of sudden convulsion in this respect; the world will not so rapidly increase in wisdom as to despise gold on a sudden; and perhaps may [for a little time] desire it more eagerly the more easily it is obtained; nevertheless, the right of debt ought not ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Kelly thought Tilden an unfit candidate because he did not decide for himself that he had been elected and proceed to take his seat at the cost of a tremendous civil convulsion. Perhaps it was this policy more than Kelly's personality which had begun to alienate Dorsheimer. One who had been brought up in the bosom of culture and conservatism could have little confidence in such a man. The platform, though bitter, avoided this revolutionary sentiment. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the East Indies. In-fest'ed, troubled, annoyed. 3. Sub'tile, acute, piercing. In-fus'es, intro-duces. 4. Ob-structs', hinders. De-lir'i-um, a wandering of the mind. 5. Ran'kle, to rage. Par'ox-ysm, a fit, a convulsion. 7. Worm, a spiral metallic pipe used in distilling liquors. Still, a vessel used in ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... made new mores. Vain attempts have been made to control the new order by legislation. The only result is the proof that legislation cannot make mores. We see also that mores do not form under social convulsion and discord. It is only just now that the new society seems to be taking shape. There is a trend in the mores now as they begin to form under the new state of things. It is not at all what the humanitarians ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... love of God, speak, caan't 'e? Why be you all dumb an' glazin' that awful!" cried the woman, knowing the truth before she heard it. Then she listened to the elder Pritchard, who whispered his wife, and so fell into a great convulsion ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... to express, in one view, both the celestial and the terrestrial aspect of death—the visible and the invisible part of dying. For the visible part, you have the body of the princess in all the desolation and abandonment of death. The attitude of the figure is as if she had thrown herself over in a convulsion, and died. The body is lying listless, simply covered with a sheet, through every fold of which you can see the utter relaxation of that moment when vitality departs, but the limbs have not yet stiffened. Her hand and a part of the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... an extinct volcano," the captain answered me, "a volcano whose interior was invaded by the sea after some convulsion in the earth. While you were sleeping, professor, the Nautilus entered this lagoon through a natural channel that opens ten meters below the surface of the ocean. This is our home port, secure, convenient, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... courageous character of John Knox, Carlyle says, with characteristic force: "Honor to all the brave and true; everlasting honor to John Knox, one of the truest of the true! That, in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the schoolmaster forth to all comers, and said, 'Let the people be taught;' this is but one, and, indeed, an inevitable and comparatively inconsiderable item in his great message to men. This message, ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... looked at each other, and then, to Barker's infinite perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty fell upon them. They laughed, holding on each other's shoulders; they laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling figure; they went out and laughed with their backs against a tree. They laughed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... people of Ireland, to the sorrow of every friend to peace, to the Irish name, and to the British connection, stood forth in opposition to the King's troops. The scene of blood is now opened. Ireland is wasting her vital strength in convulsion; and whether victory or defeat await them, humanity, loyalty, and patriotism must weep ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... projections of the one accurately corresponding with the indentations of the other, and clearly demonstrating that, at some distant period of the earth's history, that mighty chasm had been suddenly torn open by a great natural convulsion awful in its intensity beyond all power of imagination. The rent was roofed in as it were by boulders which thickly hung suspended and jammed in at varying heights between the almost touching walls of the rift; and the adventurous ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... years he had not ridden as many miles as he had during the past two days, so that long unused muscles cried out for rest and relaxation. As a result, Bridge was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, and so profound was his slumber that it seemed that nothing short of a convulsion of nature would ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... miserable little creature had ridden to Chilworth Street, hastening her own inevitable end by the stupendous act of folly, and ensuring Saxham's. That certainty had pierced him, even as the first horrible convulsion seized her and wrenched her sideways off the bench. He caught her, and shouted for his man, and they carried her into the consulting-room, and laid her on a sofa, and he did what might be done, knowing that his mercy on her involved swift and pitiless retribution ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and suffered her night-clothes to be changed, or put in order, yet so soon as she put her hand to her neck, as if to search for the for the fatal flue ribbon, a tide of recollections seemed to rush upon her, which her mind and body were alike incapable of bearing. Convulsion followed convulsion, till they closed in death, without her being able to utter a word explanatory of the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the truth." It required a European War on the vastest scale that the world had ever known to shake him out of his fallacies and illusions, and many of us felt that it would have been better if a less terrible convulsion had sufficed to awaken him, but still, now he was awakened, he was prompt in owning he had been in the wrong and therefore no more was to be said. The subsequent stages of this Representation of the People Bill were a series of triumphs for the suffrage cause. The second reading debate was taken ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... paused, exhausted. His face was pale and livid—his form trembled with convulsion—and his lips grew white and chalky, while quivering like a troubled water. The landlord, after ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... catastrophes, is admitted. Whenever new edifices are raised on the ruins of the old, we hear from those who refuse to build, that the destruction of Lisbon on the first day of November, 1755, was soon followed by a second, and not less fatal convulsion, on ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... antique oratory stood The boy of whom I spake;—he was alone, And pale and pacing to and fro: anon He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere With a convulsion—then arose again, And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written, but he shed no tears. And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet; as he paused, The lady of his ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... belief, they were formed to find their element in such a decent and whiggish convulsion, spectacular in its course, moderate ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was leaning back nervelessly in his chair. His face was quite pale and cold. His lips were slightly parted. His eyes were wide open and stared before him without expression. His head hung far back over the edge of his chair. He looked exactly like a man who had just died, and died in a convulsion. For though the lips were parted, the teeth set tightly together grinned through them, and the hands were intensely contracted into fists. Julian seized Valentine in his arms, lifted the drooping body from the chair and laid it out at length on the divan. He put a pillow under the head, which ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the stage; and into that arm-chair Miss Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen stepped forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from Miss Marrable's hand; and stopped ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... contributions to literature, her encyclopaedic knowledge of historical facts, and her thorough grasp of the main political, religious, and economic considerations which moved the hearts and influenced the actions of men during the revolutionary convulsion give her a claim, which none will dare to dispute, to speak with authority on this subject. Those who have heretofore looked for guidance to Taine will, therefore, rejoice to note that she is able to vindicate his reputation as an historian. "The six volumes of the Origines," she says, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the world now witnesses. The geologist deals in such sublime conceptions as a world of molten matter, tossed into waves by violent efforts of escaping vapors, cooling, cracking, and rending, in dire convulsion. He then ceases to discuss the changes and formation of worlds, and condescends to inform us how to fertilize our soil, where to look for coal and iron, copper, tin, cobalt, lead, and where we need not look for either. He is the Milton of poetry, and the Watt of philosophy. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... gigantic blow, striking the whole world at once; a cosmic convulsion, quite indescribable. The air became suddenly a living thing, which leaped against your face; the windows of the little eating-place flew inward in a shower of glass, and the walls and tables shook as if with palsy. The sound of it all was a vast, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... down stairs and stepped into her brougham. The packet lay upon her lap and she unfolded it. A round ticket was enclosed, and the bill. On the ticket was printed, A Present from Zedediah Moss. With a convulsion of disgust she swept the parcel on to the floor. "How dare he?" she cried again, and her thoughts flew back to the brief period of their engagement. She had been just Kitty Arlton in those days, the daughter of a poor sea-captain but dowered with the compensating grace of personal attractions. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the tent. She held the metal mirror so as to conceal her face from the captain of the watch, put the little flask to her lips and emptied it at one mouthful. The mirror fell from her hand, she staggered, a deadly convulsion seized her—the officer rushed forward, and while she fixed her dying look upon him ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as to who would come out ahead. Just as you began to feel that the old Chief was at the end of his tether, and ready to give up the ghost, the Shaman, rising suddenly with a demoniac yell, flung himself down on the floor in a convulsion. His body writhed horribly; he kicked ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... bed, and by the assistance of his attendants walked across the chamber. Soon after he was seized with a violent convulsion, in which ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... me more probable. Yet I dared not tell the brother of the deceased, that, perhaps, a less rash blow would have aroused, without having killed her; therefore I began to sever the head entirely—but once again the dying one groaned, stretched herself out in a convulsion of pain, and breathed her last. Then terror overpowered me, and I rushed shivering ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... the battle. All these distant cottages, scattered about and charming in the sun, had been burnt; they were rebuilt; Nature, so quickly diverted, had repaired everything, had cleaned everything, had swept everything, had replaced everything. The ferocious convulsion of men had vanished, eternal order had resumed its sway. But, as I have said, the sun was there in vain, all this valley was smoke and darkness. In the distance, upon an eminence to my left, I saw a huge castle; it was Vandresse. There lodged the King of Prussia. Halfway up this height, along ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... compose the banks of this river; some of which on either side, arise perpendicularly to the height of 200 feet, presenting an appearance as though the opposite banks had been burst asunder by some dreadful convulsion. It is extremely deep, about 180 feet wide, and terminates very abruptly at about eight miles from its mouth, two or three miles below Matanzas. At the head of the Canimar is a small settlement, called the Embarcadero, a kind of thoroughfare to Matanzas for twenty ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... the airs of superiority affected by old nobles in respect to merit sprung from the people; and if, in the opinion of my father, your marriage with the daughter of your friend, seemed a degradation, forgive him. Remember that he died at an epoch of strife and convulsion in which every noble defended, with the greatest possible ardor, the prerogatives of his rank, which he saw were attacked by the maddest passion, and were in danger of being lost. Since then we have made much progress. The barriers which formerly divided society into two classes ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... other centers, from which spasmodic discharges of nerve energy may be liberated, which passing to the muscles, throw them into violent and spasmodic contraction. In other words, the child has a fit, or convulsion. All this disturbance being the result of reflex action (the spasmodic motions being quite involuntary, as the brain takes no part in them), the child meanwhile is, of course, entirely unconscious and, however it may seem to be distressed, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... such fun in all my life," he ejaculated, with difficulty, and he went off into a fresh convulsion. "The old feller won't forget me ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... was rising, and ever and anon a mournful gust blew through the shrouds; the birds were screaming on the wing, and the water line of the black horizon was fringed with a narrow ridge of foam. The thunder rolled at a distance, and I perceived that convulsion of the elements was at hand. The sails were all set, and without assistance I could not reduce them; but I was indifferent to my fate. The lightning now darted in every direction, and large drops of rain pattered on the deck. With the means ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... spark of ferocity dilated in his eyes, and seizing the largest of his modeling tools, he obliterated at one swoop the whole exquisite face. Poor Gertrude turned ashy white, and a convulsion ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... he had served longer than Jacob served for Rachel, and the time had not appeared long. The suggestion that the money he had striven for from youth to age should go to some reprobate foreigner, to pay his gambling-debts, nearly threw him into a convulsion. His ancestors had been driven from home to starve in the wilderness by such creatures. "Before any d——d foreign reprobate should have a dollar of his money he would endow a lunatic asylum with it." So Mrs. Yorke prudently refrained from pressing ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... We-lo-lon-nan-nai sat himself down under the rocky ledge at the entrance to the mighty gap in the range, and, lighting his pipe, directed the smoke of the fragrant kin-nik-i-nik toward the heavens. Suddenly there was a terrible convulsion of the earth, and immediately there burst forth fountains of hot water and mud mounds, where before there was not the sign of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Unperceived in the general convulsion and cachinnation, Pinchas leaped to his feet, and, seeing scarlet, bounded through the iron door and made for the stage. But a hand was extended in the nick of time—the hand he had kissed—and Pinchas was drawn ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... at having discovered the nest, and planning to come the next day. We came next day, and many days thereafter, but never again did we see the birds near. They abandoned the nest, doubtless feeling that they had been driven away by a convulsion ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... matter personal to himself. Instantly there was a dead silence—' but here Coningsby, who had moved for some time very restlessly on his chair, suddenly started up, and struggling for a moment against the inward convulsion, but in vain, stamped against the floor, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... were no other discrepancies. In the natural order of things, a man who had just put a bullet into his own brain would, if he were sitting erect, as Lord Stavornell was, drop the revolver in the spasmodic opening and shutting of the hands in the final convulsion; but, if he retained any sort of a hold upon it, be sure his forefinger would be in the loop of the trigger. He wouldn't be holding the weapon backward, so to speak, with the cylinder against the ball of his thumb ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... They had not courage to enter. After a short deliberation they returned to the place of conflict, where they found a few corpses, and among them Atacinus. He was quivering yet; but, after a moment of more violent convulsion, he stretched ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... reached the apartment where they had carried her dying son. She knelt by the bed side; and taking his cold hand, 'my poor boy,' said she, 'I will not be parted from thee: husband! son! both at once lost. Father of mercies, spare me!' She fell into a strong convulsion, and expired in about two hours. In the mean time, a surgeon had dressed George's wounds; but they were in such a situation as to bar the smallest hopes of recovery. He never was sensible from the time he was brought home, ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... Marquise and the master of the house both perfectly understood why the children had come back so suddenly. Mme. d'Aiglemont looked at her daughter, and rose as if to go to her, but a terrible convulsion passed over her face, and all that could be read ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... was the sealing of her destiny. A wild convulsion shook her inner world; Its lowest depths were heaved tumultuously; Far unknown molten gulfs of being rushed Up into mountain-peaks, rushed up and stood. The soul that led a fairy life, athirst For beauty only, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... upon the roof, it is difficult to believe that we are more than one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, or that so extensive an architectural surface could have been reared in air by the patient labor of men's hands. It rather seems as if a little village had been lifted up by some geological convulsion. Here are wide spaces to walk about in, houses for human habitation, a fountain playing, and all the signs of life. The views are everywhere fine, and one can fancy that the air is purer and the sky more blue than to those left below. The dome soars high above the eye, and a new sense of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... the fire, and knelt before it—though she had no need of warmth. Starts and shudders indicated her mental anguish. Yet no sound escape her, until, in a sudden convulsion of her frame, she gave a cry of terror, and threw herself at full length upon the ground. There she lay, struggling with hysterical passion, half choked by sobs, now and then uttering a hoarse wail, at length weeping with the self-abandonment ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... had promised we performed upon that stubborn turtle. With a convulsion, as the ammonia fumes entered his nostrils, if he had such things, he let go of the toe, shuddered and withdrew into his shell, to die, I supposed, though I afterwards learned that he crawled off in the night, ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Pressed with an equal load of ill, Equal at least. Look further still, And own your lamentable case Is little short of happiness. In yonder hut, that stands alone, Attend to Famine's feeble moan; Or view the couch where Sickness lies; Mark his pale cheek, and languid eyes, His frame by strong convulsion torn, His struggling sighs, and looks forlorn. Or see, transfixed with keener pangs, Where o'er his hoard the miser hangs; Whistles the wind; he starts, he stares, Nor Slumber's balmy blessing shares; Despair, Remorse, and Terror roll Their tempests ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... time to shake hands before the music began—then, that after he had stood a little while by the elbow of the settee at the empty end, the torrent-like confluences of bass and treble seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the conduct of petty mortals into insignificance, and to warrant his ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... religious beliefs which had long been closely associated with moral teaching always brings with it grave moral dangers, but those dangers are greatly diminished when the change of belief is effected by a gradual transition, without any violent convulsion or disruption severing men from their old religious observances. Such a transition has silently taken place in England among great numbers of educated men, and in some measure under the influence ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... disheartened, went to Brundusium, whence putting forth with a prosperous wind, a contrary gale blowing from the sea carried him back to Italy- the next day. He put again to sea, and having reached Dyrrachium, on his coming to shore there, it is reported that an earthquake and a convulsion in the sea happened at the same time, signs which the diviners said intimated that his exile would not be long, for these were prognostics of change. Although many visited him with respect, and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... lay a vast quantity of hiaqua. This he strung on elk's sinews—enough of it to make him the richest of men. Then he hurried to depart. But he left no thank-offering to the tanahnawas powers. Thereupon the whole earth shook with a mighty convulsion, and the mountain shot forth terrible fires, which melted the snows and poured floods down the slopes, where they were turned to ice again by the breath of the storm-god. And above the roar of torrents and the crash of thunder, {p.038} Miser heard the voices of all the tamahnawas, hissing: ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... the office he did not go home so directly as he came, perhaps because Mrs. March's eye was not on him. He was very curious about some aspects of the strike, whose importance, as a great social convulsion, he felt people did not recognize; and, with his temperance in everything, he found its negative expressions as significant as its more violent phases. He had promised his wife solemnly that he would keep away from these, and he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... instantaneous convulsion in my cousin's face, and I distinctly heard him gnash his teeth at this reply; but, to my surprise, he resumed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... until 1840, when he removed to Cleveland, taking with him the patterns and materials connected with the stove business, and commenced on his own account in a small way, his capital having been seriously crippled by the financial convulsion ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... this news decided me; not that I pretend to have even dreamed of the tremendous changes which were to be produced in the world by that convulsion. But it struck me as the beginning of a time, when the lazy quietude of years was about to be broken up, and room made for all who were inclined to exert themselves. Before we had reached the level lawns and trim parterres which showed us the lights of the family festivity, I had settled all the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... clasping it, and with the same clasp as it were holding herself. For a moment she had "forgotten her sucking child,"—the words came home; and it was only by that convulsive hold of herself that she could keep from crying out. With her face turned away from the sick woman, she waited till the convulsion had passed; and then said in measured, ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... so great a calamity descended so suddenly upon the Human Family, unless we except the earthquake toppling down cities and submersing a whole coast in a single night. But how small all that has ensued from any such convulsion, compared with the desolation and destruction already produced by this war! From the first murmur to the outbreak was a brief moment of time, as between the flash of lightning and the bursting of ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... we reach still another chasm, above which piles of dark rocks lie heaped in such confusion as might result from a great convulsion. There is a narrow path along its edge, and here the stones are small; but, as we look up, the mighty masses frown down upon us with threatening grandeur. Along this path, treading lightly, as if gifted with wings, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... action of some controlling part—an effect such as might be expected if a pawl should be jostled from the teeth of a ratchet-wheel. But before I had time for much conjecture as to its nature my attention was taken by the strange motions of the automaton itself. A slight but continuous convulsion appeared to have possession of it. In body and head it shook like a man with palsy or an ague chill, and the motion augmented every moment until the entire figure was in violent agitation. Suddenly it sprang to its feet and with a movement almost too quick ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the truth of his words when Bobby came striding into the room, with the family doctor at his heels. For the past forty-eight hours, Beatrix had watched convulsion after convulsion rack the tiny frame, wear itself out and die away, only to be followed by another and yet another. Under this new sorrow, the grandparents had given way entirely. They were powerless to help, and Beatrix, pitying their misery which she knew was more than half for her sake, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... in a final convulsion, and, despite the rope, kicked out with all his last strength. A tablespoonful of black clot came forth, the trickling of red blood ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Steadfast did not return. The whole island had been explored. It was found not to be more than a couple of miles long, and scarcely half a mile in width, the greater portion consisting of black volcanic rocks thrown up by some mighty convulsion of nature. No other harbour was discovered; indeed, there was not a spot besides the bay they had entered on which a landing could be effected without danger. They probably were the first people who had entered the bay, for there ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... been respectable, energetic, and intelligent people. Daniel Andrew was one of the strong men of the village; had been a deputy to the General Court, and acted a prominent part before and after the witchcraft convulsion. But the great family of the village—greater in numbers and in aggregate wealth than any other, and eminently conspicuous on both sides in the witchcraft proceedings—remains ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... path of the tornado was a thing impossible to man, so wildly were the wrecks of the tall forest piled together by that fugitive convulsion. I crossed it indeed; with such labour and patience, with so many dangerous slips and falls, as left me, at the further side, bankrupt alike of strength and courage. There I sat down awhile to recruit my forces; ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... when a strange delusion arose in Germany, which took possession of the minds of men, and, in spite of the divinity of our nature, hurried away body and soul into the magic circle of hellish superstition. It was a convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame, and excited the astonishment of contemporaries for more than two centuries, since which time it has never reappeared. It was called the dance of St. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... adorned with gold and green, Long fluted golden tongues of sombre sheen, Like four flames joined in one, around the head And by the outstretched arms, their glory spread. The statue is of wood; of natural size Tinted; one almost sees before one's eyes The last convulsion of the lingering breath. "Behold the man!" Robust and frail. Beneath That breast indeed might throb the Sacred Heart. And from the lips, so holily dispart, The dying murmur breathes "Forgive! Forgive!" O wide-stretched arms! ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray
... distinct sound. It was dreadful to hear, and Miss Carew and the servant were terrified. It was the laughter, not of a maniac, not of pure unreasoning hysteria, not quite of a lost soul. It suggested these elements, perhaps, but it was chiefly a nervous convulsion at an overpowering perception of the irony in the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... food had prevented the poison from attacking the coats of the stomach so violently as would otherwise have been the case. Scarcely had she vomited when a tame boar swallowed what she had rejected, and falling into a convulsion, died immediately. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... at Ishmael's heart. "Something must come to all of us...." Everyone had to die of something, from some outrage on nature. There had to be some convulsion out of the ordinary course to bring it about; cases where the human machine simply ran down, as with the Parson, were rare. This horror was lying in wait for all—the manner of their leaving. It was astonishing, looked at in cold blood, that people lived ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... compounded from materials, the secret of which had been one of the proudest heir-looms of that able and evil race which gave to Italy her wisest and guiltiest tyrants. Its operation was quick yet not sudden: it produced no pain,—it left on the form no grim convulsion, on the skin no purpling spot, to arouse suspicion; you might have cut and carved every membrane and fibre of the corpse, but the sharpest eyes of the leech would not have detected the presence of the subtle life-queller. For twelve hours the victim felt ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... knees bending under him, he fell heavily backwards without a word escaping from his lips. Thrice he endeavored to regain his feet, and thrice he failed in his attempts. He strove to speak, but he could only utter a few unintelligible words, for his life blood was suffocating him. A violent convulsion shook every limb, then arose a long, deep-drawn sigh, and then ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... second attack, was treated at another hospital, and from the account which they sent it appears that the stupor was immediately preceded by a seizure in which the whole body jerked. This is, of course, rather thin evidence of the existence of a definite convulsion, but in the case of Mary F. (Case 3) we have a fuller description. During the two days when the stupor was incubating, she had repeated seizures of the following nature. She sometimes said that prior to the attacks it became dark before her eyes and that her face felt funny or that she had a pain ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... that the valley began to open out, our way at times being along the stony bed of a mountain torrent; while right and left the sides of what looked like a tremendous rift in the mountain, split open in some terrific convulsion of nature, towered up. ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... unbaptized. To them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. With this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own reproaches, by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a convulsion fit. The case of royal children is different; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks but the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand, night and day, to baptize them ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... wrested from nations suddenly and by force; arts and manufactures leave them in time of peace, silently and by degrees, without noise or convulsion; but the consequences are not the less fatal on that account; nor, indeed, is the effect slower, though more silent. Though colonies or conquests pass away at once, such changes only take place after a long chain of causes ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... feet. Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies, and how he told them of his ancient victories over man; how he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm; and how joyously he gloated of some great convulsion* in the northern States, which, rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods, the fierce demon broodingly foresaw. All these fain would I narrate, but they are not of the Rhine, and my story will not brook the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mistress is an exquisitely tender and pathetic farewell, but not the stifled cry of a man who has received a crushing blow. Not easily, but yet without any ruinous convulsion, he makes that transition from love to "mere friendship" which passionate ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.... She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... diversified splendors, and penetrate its chasms and gorges, otherwise inaccessible to man. But to describe them is impossible. Broad fields of sparkling snow, pyramids of ice, wide fissures shining like steel mirrors,—produced by some unimaginable convulsion, possibly a thousand or ten thousand years ago, and large enough to ingulf a city,—with black humps or spires of granite here and there projecting through the white; while afar down the rocky sides of interminable swells and precipices ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... also privately experimented by taking some of it home, and giving it to Hens, after I had given them Oates, Barly and Bread-crums; For, soon after they had drunk of it, they became giddy, reeled, and tumbled upon their backs, with convulsion-fitts, and so dyed with a great extention of their leggs. Giving them common-salt immediatly after they had drunk; they dyed not so soon; giving them vineger, they dyed not at all, but seven or eight days after were troubled with the Pipp. Those ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the papers,' says Coulton, vaguely, 'the cause of death was disease of the heart.' A brief 'convulsion' is distinctly mentioned, whence Coulton concludes that the disease was NOT cardiac. On December 7, Mason writes to Walpole from York: 'Suppose Lord Lyttelton had recovered the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the statement of object. I think"—slowly—"a disinterested observer would have put the question you ask into my mouth." He stared his tall visitor up and down critically, menacingly. Of a sudden, irresistibly, a very convulsion shot over his face. "God, man, you're brazen!" ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... vicinity not altogether out of personal fear, but because I knew that my presence kept up the excitement. Allen, it is impossible for you to conceive what a convulsion this village of Fulton has been thrown into. A regular siege and cannonading could hardly ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... Brown, one convulsion shook his body, his gun fell from his hands, in which he had tightly held it at the moment of his fall, and he expired without ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... the 17th, he thus describes: "Between the two points forming the entrance of the creek, we saw a high wall of ice extending immediately across from land to land, and on arriving at it, found that, by some extraordinary convulsion, the floe had burst upward, and that immense masses of ice had been thrown in every direction. Several blocks, eight or nine feet in thickness, and many yards in diameter, were lying on the level solid floe; yet we were for some time at a loss to discover ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... was less general than the second, and the fourth than the third, and so on, until the public enthusiasm was quite extinct, and Jerusalem returned at last to the dominion of its old masters without a convulsion in Christendom. Various reasons have been assigned for this; and one very generally put forward is, that Europe was wearied with continued struggles, and had become sick of "precipitating itself upon Asia." ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... again. It was so smooth that one dog could have drawn the sled, yet not so smooth as to deny good footing. We kept well out to sea, passing close to the mountainous mass of Besborough Island, plainly riven by some ancient convulsion from the sheer bluffs of the mainland. Our only trouble was in keeping the dogs well enough out, for, not being water-spaniels or other marine species, they had a hankering after the land and a continual tendency to edge in ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... such burning examples of patriotism, far remote collateral descendants entered upon the succession, was this a reproach? Was this held to vitiate or to impair the heraldic honours? A disturbance, a convulsion, that shook the house back into its primitive simplicities of standing, was that a shock to its hereditary grandeur? If it had been, there perished the efficient fountain of nobility as any national or patriotic honour; that being extinguished, it became a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... stabbed the fallen lad between the shoulders. The thrust went home neatly, under the left shoulder-blade, deep and inclined a little upward. It must have reached his heart, for he died after one violent convulsion which threw him into the air, and turned him completely over, his corpse slapping the ground like a flopping ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Then came a convulsion in the heavens—the gathering storm-clouds spoke to each other and exchanged lightning glances until the sky was a sea of fire. Great clouds whirled up from the west, and others bore down from the east, and they mingled around the moon in one great aerial war until the heavens ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... letter, To the Editor of the British Review, on the charge of bribery in Don Juan. Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling composition exists. About the same time, we hear of his leaving the theatre in a convulsion of tears, occasioned by ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... large draughts of water, visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there for scores of acres were to be seen all forms of ghastly fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of convulsion, of mortal conflict, death, and the fear of death—revenge, and the lunacy of revenge—hatred, and the frenzy of hatred—until the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at length averted their eyes in horror. This horror, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... distance, Teresa remained like a statue, staring at the place where he had stood. Then she suddenly turned like a mad woman, glanced down at the gown she was wearing, tore it from her back as if it had been a polluted garment, and stamped upon it in a convulsion of rage. And then, with her beautiful bare arms clasped together over her head, she threw herself upon her couch in a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... passion are deeply impressed upon every feature in his countenance, his nose not excepted, which is absolutely most surprising. His body is tossed and shaken like one afflicted with the hot fit of an ague, or the severest paroxysms of convulsion. Then as to his mind, it is altogether distempered. He is perpetually declaiming on the magnificence, the liberty, and the pleasure, which reigns in the imperial British metropolis. He swears, that in that glorious place alone we can enjoy life. He says, there is no breathing beyond St. James's; ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... his own advance in the intellectual kingdom, clearness with regard to the development of his nation. This has, like himself, its distinct periods; in him some important event in life, in it some agitating world convulsion, may advance them suddenly a great leap forward. The public favor is unsteady; to-day it strews palm-branches, to-morrow it cries, 'Crucify him!' But I regard that as a moment of development. You will permit me to make use of an image to elucidate my idea. The botanist ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Richard Willetts sneezed loudly and unexpectedly to all, himself included, with the result that his ever-ready suspicion fixed upon his neighbor, Andrew Halloran, as the direct cause of the convulsion. Andrew's well-meant efforts to detach from Richard's vest the pocket-handkerchief securely fastened thereto by a large black safety-pin strengthened the latter's conviction of intended assault and battery, and he squirmed ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... that the entire town had been levelled by one tremendous convulsion, and that in many places fires had broken out among the ruins. These fires sent up dense volumes of smoke, which naturally attracted people from all quarters of the surrounding country. Among them came bands of desperate and lawless ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... are many races to the northward which we consider as Caffre races. You may have observed, in the history of the world, that the migrations of the human race are generally from the north to the south: so it appears to have been in Africa. Some convulsion among the northern tribes, probably a pressure from excessive population, had driven the Zoolus to the southward, and they came down like an inundation, sweeping before them all the tribes that fell in their path. Chaka's force consisted of ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ground beyond them, quivering and broken in the midst of its dying guards, was a viscid mass of loathsome gray jelly. Blake's shot had apparently struck home squarely in the center of that vulnerable blob. Even as he watched, the gelatinous mass shuddered in a last convulsion, then became quite still. At the same instant the last sign of life vanished from the writhing ape-things on ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... wide-spread social uneasiness. Part of this uneasiness was directed against the existing government; another and more formidable portion was directed against all government, and against the very institution of property. The convulsion of 1848 followed; France is still unsettled; and Mr. Webster's prophecy seems still to be in the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... quantity of general painful sensation is too great in the system, inordinate voluntary exertions are produced either of our ideas, as in melancholy and madness, or of our muscles, as in convulsion. From these maladies also brute animals are much more exempt than mankind, owing to their greater inaptitude to voluntary exertion, as mentioned in ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to believe that this rock marked the farthest extent of the slip, or slide of earth, and that, could he but round the angle of which it was the termination, he might hope to attain the continuation of the path which had been so strangely interrupted by this convulsion of nature. But the crag jutted out so much as to afford no possibility of passing either under or around it; and as it rose several feet above the position which Arthur had attained, it was no easy matter to climb over it. This was, however, the course which he chose, as the only mode ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... such a shocking idea that Davy stood speechless, staring at the Hole-keeper, who rushed to and fro in a convulsion of distress. ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... first fashioned by the Master of Life, or has since received the shape and appearance it bears from the disruption of some mighty mass of waters, from frightful earthquakes, or some other great convulsion of nature—neither I nor my red brothers can say. Yet does it appear plain that no convulsive heavings of an earthquake could have left its outline or its surface so smooth or regular. No bursting of waters from the top ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... not drop the hand that hung on to the tree-branch. But a mighty heave went over his breast and his whole huge figure, like an earthquake over great hills. And with that convulsion of effort he rent the branch out of the tree, with tongues of torn wood; and, swaying it once only, he let the splintered club fall on Buck, breaking his neck. The planner of the Great Road fell face foremost dead, with his dagger in a grip ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the prohibition of all bank circulation—it will have accomplished ends only inferior in importance to the two primary consequences, the overthrow of the principle of secession and the destruction of slavery. Thus, this tremendous convulsion would bring out of the chaos a new order in the political world, by annihilating secession, and by perpetuating the Union and banishing all fear of its dissolution; in the social, by substituting free men for slaves; in the financial, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the great national convulsion burst forth. Sounds of strife and the clash of arms, and the angry voices of disputants, were borne along by the air, and week after week grew to still louder clamor. Families were divided; adherents to the crown, and ardent upholders of the rebellion, were often found in the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... suppression of the procession, and that she should be put in prison to be more nearly examined, Carlier, a Calvinist doctor, suddenly drew from his pocket something which was averred to be a most violent poison, which he threw into her mouth, and she kept it on her stomach whilst the convulsion lasted, but she threw it up of herself when she came to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Shakspeare was labouring under an access of the most confirmed delirium. They listened to Hamlet, and Lear, and Othello, and did not discover that his inspiration was the effect of over-excitement; that his energy was the preternatural strength bestowed on him by convulsion; and that, in fact, instead of being a swan of Avon, he was neither more nor less than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who never CAN get off the stage fast enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... nevertheless, for all that, I put off the removal of the dressing, fearing lest he should die then and there. Certain gentlemen desired me to go and dress him; which I did at their request; but in dressing him he died under my hands in a convulsion. The priest stayed with him till death, and seized his purse, for fear another man should take it, saying he would say masses for his poor soul. Also he took ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... on, we would further relate to you how during supper Mr. Kennedy senior, tried to make a speech, and broke down amid uproarious applause; how Mr. Kennedy, junior, got up thereafter—being urged thereto by his father, who said, with a convulsion of the cheek, "Get me out of the scrape, Charley, my boy" —and delivered an oration which did not display much power of concise elucidation, but was replete, nevertheless, with consummate impudence; how during this point in the proceedings the gray cat made a last desperate effort to purloin ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... she put up her face; they were both smiling, both on the brink of laughter, all was so innocent and playful; and the Prince, when their lips encountered, was dumfoundered by the sudden convulsion of his being. Both drew instantly apart, and for an appreciable time sat tongue-tied. Otto was indistinctly conscious of a peril in the silence, but could find no words to utter. Suddenly the Countess seemed to awake. "As for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... elsewhere[408] observed, to be of the convulsive kind, and of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus's dance; and in this opinion I am confirmed by the description which Sydenham gives of that disease. 'This disorder is a kind of convulsion. It manifests itself by halting or unsteadiness of one of the legs, which the patient draws after him like an ideot. If the hand of the same side be applied to the breast, or any other part of the body, he cannot keep ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... bud-releasing breath, When hoped the least:—'tis thus with royal minds!' He spake: from that day forth in Canterbury Till reigned the Norman, crowned on Hastings' field, God's Church had rest. In many a Saxon realm Convulsion rocked her cradle: altars raised By earlier kings by later were o'erthrown: One half the mighty Roman work, and more, Fell to the ground: Columba's Irish monks The ruin raised. From Canterbury's towers, 'Rome of the North' long named, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... dexterously of his subordinate position, Mason was open to state facts but respectfully declined to draw inferences. Gainsborough rushed off to the Long Gallery. There lay his bit of Chelsea on the floor—upset, smashed, not picked up! There must have been a convulsion indeed, he declared, as ruefully and tenderly he gathered ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... generation which has beheld him. An analogous proposition might be made with respect to the mechanical arts: of all sorts of knowledge they are the most perishable, because the knowledge of them can not be transmitted by mere description. Let any great convulsion of nature put an end to their practice for a generation or two, and though the scientific part of them may be preserved in books, the skill in manipulation, acquired by a long series of improvements, is lost. If the United ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... many of the military were attacked: some had become to all appearance idiots, weeping or fixing their hollow eyes stedfastly on the ground. There were others whose hair had become stiff, erect, and ropy, and who, amidst a torrent of blasphemies, a horrid convulsion, or a still more frightful ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the enigmatic and frivolous sex and disregarding it, at any rate during the hours of convivial session. The Club is troubled to note that in the intolerable rabies and confusion of this business life men meet merely in a kind of convulsion or horrid passion of haste and perplexity. We see, ever and often, those in whose faces we discern delightful and considerable secrets, messages of just import, grotesque mirth, or improving sadness. In their bearing and gesture, even in hours of haste and irritation, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Chicova and amongst sandstone rocks, similar to those which prevail between Lupata and Kebrabasa. In the latter gorge, as already mentioned, igneous and syenitic masses have been acted on by some great fiery convulsion of nature; the strata are thrown into a huddled heap of confusion. The coal has of course disappeared in Kebrabasa, but is found again in Chicova. Tette grey sandstone is common about Sinjere, and wherever it ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... heads of the civil and military administration at Agra were to be relied upon. That administration had, indeed, completely collapsed; there was no controlling authority; the crisis had produced no one in any responsible position who understood the nature of the convulsion through which we were passing; and endless discussion had resulted (as must always be the case) in fatal indecision ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... fulfil its duties, and where, on the other side, in times of popular infatuation, the Government can maintain a wise course in spite of public opinion." This liberty has been preserved to us through all the turbulence of war. Like some divine element, it has mingled in the convulsion of human passion, and already prophesies the day when the service of man to man, as of man to God, shall be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... mountains, and through deep snow, to the west. There was so great an earthquake that year in this country, that in one city called Arsingan, ten thousand persons are said to have perished. During three days journey we saw frequent gaps in the earth, which had been cleft by the convulsion, and great heaps of earth which had tumbled down from the mountains into the vallies. We passed through the valley where the soldan of the Turks was vanquished by the Tartars, and a servant belonging to my guide, who was in the Tartar army, said the Tartars did not exceed 10,000 men, whereas the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... may have shown 'the will to believe' in an unusual degree; but, for me, the interest of Mrs. Piper is purely anthropological. She exhibits a survival or recrudescence of savage phenomena, real or feigned, of convulsion and of secondary personality, and entertains a survival ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... conceals her light— The lamp's extinguished!— Mists rise,—red, angry rays are darting Around my head!—There falls A horror from the vaulted roof, And seizes me! I feel thy presence, Spirit I invoke! Reveal thyself! Ha! in my heart what rending stroke! With new impulsion My senses heave in this convulsion! I feel thee draw my heart, absorb, exhaust me: Thou must! thou must! and though my life ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... in the dining-room a violent commotion, a shudder which reached to her very vitals came over her. That convulsion, never felt during all the years of her adventurous existence, told her that she had staked her happiness on this issue. Her eyes, gazing into space, took in the whole of d'Arthez's person; their light poured through his flesh, she read his soul; ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... a convulsion in the bed, and the red face of Clarence Breckenridge revealed itself. The eyes were bloodstained, the usually pale skin flushed and oily, the fair, thin hair tumbled across a high and well-developed forehead. Rachael knew every ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... that ought to separate him from one who had regarded Alice as a mother. The load of horror, the agony of shame, were indeed gone; but still a voice whispered as before, "Evelyn is lost to thee forever!" But so shaken had already been her image in the late storms and convulsion of his soul, that this thought was preferable to the thought of sacrificing Alice. If that were all—but Evelyn might still love him; and justice to Alice might be misery to her! He started from his revery with a vehement ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all parties cried out against being deprived of their accustomed haunts. The dealers in coffee, tea, and chocolate demonstrated that the proclamation would greatly lessen his majesty's revenues. Convulsion and discontent loomed large. The king heeded the warning, and on January 8, 1676, another proclamation was issued by which ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Alps have been produced by the action of torrents resulting from the destruction of the forests. The greater, and many of the smaller channels, by which that chain is drained, owe their origin to higher causes. They are primitive fissures, ascribable to disruption in upheaval or other geological convulsion, widened and scarped, and often even polished, so to speak, by the action of glaciers during the ice period, and but little changed in form by running ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... let out by the neck. Of the two modes, the French is apparently the less cruel, for some oxen require many blows to make them fall. Some butchers, however, allege that the separation of the spinal cord, by producing a general nervous convulsion throughout the body, prevents the blood from flowing as rapidly and entirely out of it as when the ox is stunned in the forehead. The skin is then taken off to the knees, when the legs are disjointed, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... scraped the white belly of the life-boat which swelled up from the deck outside the door, giving forth a dull, crunching sound with each convulsion of the engines. The square area above it danced with reeling stars, moiled by ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... addition to the light literature of the last century. The pictures of Charles the Bold and of the unspeakable Louis are extraordinarily vivid. I can see those two deadly enemies watching the hounds chasing the herald, and clinging to each other in the convulsion of their cruel mirth, more clearly than most things which my ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seized with so violent a convulsion of laughter at the idea of such absurd folly as Beechnut had described, that he tumbled off the bannisters, but fortunately he fell in, towards the stairs, and was very little hurt. He came down the stairs to Malleville, and as Beechnut returned ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... that point there was nearly an accident. The cart suddenly bounded as though in the throes of a convulsion, began trembling, and, with a creak, lurched heavily first to the right and then to the left, and at a fearful pace dashed along the forest track. The horses had taken fright at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
