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Muscle   Listen
noun
Muscle  n.  
1.
(Anat.)
(a)
An organ which, by its contraction, produces motion.
(b)
The contractile tissue of which muscles are largely made up. Note: Muscles are of two kinds, striated and nonstriated. The striated muscles, which, in most of the higher animals, constitute the principal part of the flesh, exclusive of the fat, are mostly under the control of the will, or voluntary, and are made up of great numbers of elongated fibres bound together into bundles and inclosed in a sheath of connective tissue, the perimysium. Each fiber is inclosed in a delicate membrane (the sarcolemma), is made up of alternate segments of lighter and darker material which give it a transversely striated appearance, and contains, scattered through its substance, protoplasmic nuclei, the so-called muscle corpuscles. The nonstriated muscles are involuntary. They constitute a large part of the walls of the alimentary canal, blood vessels, uterus, and bladder, and are found also in the iris, skin, etc. They are made up of greatly elongated cells, usually grouped in bundles or sheets.
2.
Muscular strength or development; as, to show one's muscle by lifting a heavy weight. (Colloq.)
3.
(Zool.) See Mussel.
4.
An essential part of something; as, budget cuts have gone beyond the fat and are cutting into the muscle of the government.
5.
Bodyguards or other persons hired to provide protection or commit violence; as, he doesn't go out without his muscle along. (slang)
Muscle curve (Physiol.), contraction curve of a muscle; a myogram; the curve inscribed, upon a prepared surface, by means of a myograph when acted upon by a contracting muscle. The character of the curve represents the extent of the contraction.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Muscle" Quotes from Famous Books



... memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name—he could not tell what name—that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... down and out. He didn't seem to have the power to move a muscle. When his master whistled, the big collie stood still, cocked one ear, and then trotted over, as if what he had done to poor Bull were just ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... muscle was tense with expectation. The music of the hounds grew fainter. "Evidently circling again," I mused. I was getting to be quite a huntsman, and chuckled at how David Crocketty ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... hoops were taken off a meat cask, and by a blacksmith in the company fitted round his ankles, knees, and arms, pinioning the latter to his body, so that, excepting his head, which was 'left free to enjoy the prospect,' he could not move a muscle. In this condition he hung for days beside his stiffened companion; dying by inches of famine and cold, which had moderated so as, without ending, to aggravate his misery. Before he died, he had gnawed ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... at these mountains is a soul-inspiring sensation; but to travel over them is exhaustive to muscle and patience. And the possibility of losing at any moment perhaps the most valuable part of your outfit is a constant and severe strain on your mind. Nobody except those who have travelled in the Mexican mountains can understand and ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... will serve as a madrina. In a troop each animal carries on a level road, a cargo weighing 416 pounds (more than 29 stone), but in a mountainous country 100 pounds less; yet with what delicate slim limbs, without any proportional bulk of muscle, these animals support so great a burden! The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... sometimes affords the ecrivisse de mer, which is a lobster without claws, of a sweetish taste; and there are a few rock oysters, very small and very rank. Sometimes the fishermen find under water, pieces of a very hard cement, like plaister of Paris, which contain a kind of muscle, called la datte, from its resemblance to a date. These petrifactions are commonly of a triangular form and may weigh about twelve or fifteen pounds each and one of them may contain a dozen of these muscles which have nothing ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... of this muscle is to extend the third phalanx on the second, the second on the first, and the first on the metacarpus. It also assists in the extension of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... received no salt, as a rule. No one knows the intense longing for this, when one goes without it for a while. When, after a privation of weeks we would get a teaspoonful of salt apiece, it seemed as if every muscle in our bodies was invigorated. We traded buttons to the guards for red peppers, and made our mush, or bread, or dumplings, hot with the fiery-pods, in hopes that this would make up for the lack of salt, but it was a failure. One pinch of salt was worth all the pepper pods in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... literally, who lead forth: the dukes, marshals, generals of democracy, bringers forth of things from the ground, the waters, by brain and muscle; and the transporters of the things brought forth to the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... have some hard work before us. Mining isn't like standing behind a counter, or measuring off calico. It takes considerable more muscle." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... Australian Labour was strike. When the unions were merged into a national body Hughes was the unanimous choice of the husky stevedores for leader. He became the Great Restrainer. Never was influence of lip and brain over muscle and temper better demonstrated. The wild men of the wharves—the roughest crowd in all labour—were under his spell. This nimble-footed shopkeeper flouted them with his wit: ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... man interposed blandly. Hardly any one who looked at Colonel Kelmscott's eyes could even have perceived the profound surprise this announcement caused him. He bowed without moving a muscle of that military face. Guy himself never noticed the intense emotion the introduction aroused in the distinguished stranger. But Mrs. Clifford and Elma, each scanning him closely with those keen grey eyes of theirs, observed at once that, unmoved as he appeared, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen

... Wolf. He was unafraid—and mightily curious. And Kazan, too, was curious. He sniffed. In the gloom his ears were alert. After a little Baree began to move. An inch at a time he dragged himself away from Gray Wolf's side. Every muscle in her lithe body tensed. Again her wolf blood was warning her. There was danger for Baree. Her lips drew back, baring her fangs. Her throat trembled, but the note in it never came. Out of the darkness two yards ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... the landlady was standing by the kitchen fire, her cheeks glowing with the reflection from the hearth, Hans entered, and without moving a muscle of his face, handed to her a paper, and said, "Look ye, there's our marriage-license; the count dispenses with publishing the bans. This is Friday—Sunday is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Every nerve and muscle in the splendid warm-blooded body of this young giant of the hills called for action. The one mastering passion of his soul was the passion for deeds—to do; to serve; to be used. He had felt himself called to the ministry by his desire to accomplish ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... Ardayre—he was such a refreshing sight of health and youth, so tall and fit and English, with his brown smooth head and fearless blue eyes, gay and debonnaire. One could see that he played cricket and polo, and any other game that came along, and that not a muscle of his frame was out of condition. He had "soldier" written upon him—young, gallant, cavalry soldier. Verisschenzko appreciated him; nothing complete, human or inanimate, left him unconscious of its meaning. They knew one another very well—they had ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... analysed laboriously, "it's because I'm gettin' less able all the time and he's growing so fast—him limber an' quick, and me all thumbs. There ain't nothing like just plain muscle and size to make a fellow feel as if he know'd ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... steps. He was gambling his life on the code of the westerners. The big hall-like saloon was vacant except for the two bartenders behind the bar, and a Mexican sweeping out the sawdust. Pan had heard subdued voices, the shuffle of feet, the closing of doors. Every muscle in his body was cramped with tension, ready to leap like lightning into action. Advancing to the bar he called ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... head slowly, glanced at Al, and from him to Tom. Without moving a muscle of their faces the two returned his look. Al slid his cigarette stub thoughtfully into his coffee cup and let his breath out carefully in a long sigh that was scarcely audible. Tom took a corner of his lower lip between his teeth, matching Lance, who had ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... through by dint of muscle and hard thinking. He saw now that the secret of his success was determination. He had earned a reputation for never letting go anything to which he had put his hand. Men feared him, but loved him at the same time. He had proved himself to ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... It was open, unluckily, and he had actually got his knee through when Grace darted to him and seized him, screaming to Julia to help her. Julia did her best, especially in the way of screaming. Grace's muscle and resolution impeded the attempt no more; slowly, gradually, he got both knees upon the window-sill. But the delay was everything. In came a professional nurse. She flung her arms round Walter's waist and just hung back with all her weight. As she was heavy, though not corpulent, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Captain Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... completely from their bases. In other hydroids (e. g., Campanularia) the tentacles may be completely absorbed into the body of the hydranth from which they originally sprang. Among tissue cells degenerative changes may be abrupt, as in the sacrifice of the highly specialized fibrillae in muscle cells; or they may be very gradual, as in the transformation of cells of one sort into another that occurs in the regeneration of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... or moan. Things stricken to the heart generally fall dumbly. It was not her cramped position within the window-seat that paralyzed her limbs, nor the chill of the twilight that crept through vein and bone. For one sick second she believed herself to be dying, and would not have stirred a muscle or spoken a syllable to save the life which had suddenly grown worthless—worthless, since she was never to see Frederic again; be no more to him than if she had never laid her head upon his bosom; never felt his kisses upon lip and forehead; never lived upon his words of love as rapt ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... largest dog; long, gaunt limbs, small, and all muscle, and so persevering that every thing tired before them. They seldom, when they start in a chase, give up ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... favourite volume with Dr. Darwin, printed at la Haye, 1614, 12mo. Dr. Darwin, in his Botanical Garden, thus speaks of opium: "the finest opium is procured by wounding the heads of large poppies with a three-edged knife, and tying muscle-shells to them, to catch the drops. In small quantities it exhilirates the mind, raises the passions, and invigorates the body; in large ones, it is succeeded by intoxication, ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... the essence of life, my boy!" he continued. "I firmly believe I could run five miles to-day without straining a muscle." ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... glances which he received from Jack Means's two sons. The older one eyed him from the top of his brawny shoulders with that amiable look which a big dog turns on a little one before shaking him. Ralph Hartsook had never thought of being measured by the standard of muscle. This notion of beating education into young savages in spite of ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... surprise me that my will was such a cripple against the sensibilities of that delicate creature. I was a man of as much will as was naturally good for me; and my training had made it abnormal like a prize-fighter's bicepital muscle. People of my profession need some counter-irritant, which they seldom get, to the habit of command. To be the ultimate control for a clientele of a thousand people, to enforce the personal opinion in every matter from a broken constitution ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... making a stew, to the unaccustomed cook, from the excitement of wondering what the result will be, and whether any flavour save that of onions will survive the competition in the mixture. On the whole, my cooking (strictly by cookery book) was a success, but my sweeping was bad, for I lacked muscle. This curious episode came to an abrupt end, for one of my little pupils fell ill with diphtheria, and I was transformed from cook to nurse. Mabel I despatched to her grandmother, who adored her with ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... on a smile, in feeble sympathy with the uproariousness of Lady Mariamne's laugh—but her daughter took no such trouble. She sat as grave as a young judge, never moving a muscle. The dog, however, held in her arms, and not at all comfortable, then making prodigious efforts to struggle on to its mistress's more commodious lap, burst out into a responsive bark, as shrill and not ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... to Jarvis Pasha, and sent it to him in an envelope with my card. This combination opened doors for me; and three minutes later I was shaking hands with a tall, thin, white moustached, hawk-featured Englishman who looked all muscle and bones and brain. Jarvis Pasha being in the secret of "Antoun's" identity and business in Cairo, simplified the explanation, and did away with the necessity for a preface. All I had to tell was the brief story of the girls' disappearance with Bedr el Gemaly, and Fenton's following ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... prisoners faced the judges, and the three witnesses—Senoras Bent, Boggs, and Carson—were close to them on a bench by the wall. When Mrs. Bent gave her testimony, the eyes of the culprits were fixed sternly upon her; when she pointed out the Indian who had killed the governor, not a muscle of the chief's face twitched or betrayed agitation, though he was aware her evidence settled his death warrant; he sat with lips gently closed, eyes earnestly fixed on her, without a show of malice or hatred—a spectacle of Indian fortitude, and of the severe mastery to which the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... lungeing doggedly up when the wild welter had flowed over her, and still keeping her nose to the sea. All night long the captain hung on the bridge. It was his second night, and in that time he had only had one biscuit, that the mate gave him. His legs were very tired, and every muscle was strained in the effort to cling fast. He could, of course, see nothing; and it was only by the compass that he could tell how to keep her head. At midnight a wave swept everything; the compass amidships and the one astern both ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... Lowe's muscle, and knew myself secure. Then I unrolled the pages, which I fortunately carried with me, and told him the following ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... with all his might. Every muscle in his body was at play. Blow succeeded blow. The branch was already creaking, when, to his horror, the foremost of the jaguars appeared in sight on the opposite side! He was not discouraged. Again ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... revulsion. A hundred pounds!—all he wanted to complete his education was lying there ready to his hand, if only that hand were strong enough to pick it up. He had thought bitterly that morning that there was no market for his strength, but here was one where his muscle might earn more in an hour than his brains in a year. But a chill of doubt came over him. "How can I fight for the coal-pits?" said he. "I am ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... were open and his lips were closed. Not one muscle of his face moved. So much for the physical facts. But it was a case where the physical facts are supremely unimportant.... At any rate, the priest could only recall them with an effort. The point was that there was something supra-physical there—(personally ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... chorus was resumed, at first on the farther shore, then coming nearer until, close at hand, sounded a hoarse, deep bellow which betokened the presence of a big bullfrog. Ringtail's mouth watered afresh, but he moved not so much as a muscle. The frog was as yet too far ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... the others, who, however, felt a quickening of blood and muscle at the thought that the priest might be under ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... Beasts in the Ocean flow, And Fishes in green Fields are feeding; When Muscle-shells in the Streets grow, And Swans upon dry Rocks be breeding: When Cockle-shells are Diamond Rings, And Glass to Pearl may be compared; Gold is made of a Grey-goose Wings, Oh then my Love ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... simply because he was the very type of the national ideal of a hero-king. Both here and in chapter ix. 2 his stature and bravery are the only qualities mentioned. What Israel wanted was a rough fighter, with physical strength, plenty of bone and muscle. About moral, intellectual or spiritual qualities they did not care, and they got the kind of king that they wanted,—the only kind that they could appreciate. The only way to teach them that one who was a head and shoulders taller than any of them was not thereby certified ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... father, this is not a history,—'tis a sermon thou art reading; prithee begin the sentence again.)—'Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors,—his body so wasted with sorrow and confinement, you will see every nerve and muscle ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... glow had risen in her cheeks at the accusation of Walsingham. Ever and anon she looked to Humfrey's face for sympathy, but he sat gravely listening, his two hands clasped over the hilt of his sword, and his chin resting on them, as if to prevent a muscle of his face from moving. When they rose up to leave the galleries, and there was the power to say a word, she turned to ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... elegance of his person, his blond distinction, made him stand out from his khaki-clad comrades, though he was clad identically with them. Rogers claimed the Bronx to be his home and he was proud of it. He was little, almost undersized, but a knot of muscle, a keen-faced youth with Irish blood in him. These particular soldiers of the squad were ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... maples were thickest was reserved for a sugar grove, and from it was made all of the sweet material they needed, and some besides. Economy of the very strictest kind had to be used in every direction. Main strength and muscle were the only things dispensed in plenty. The crops raised consisted of a small flint corn, rye oats, potatoes and turnips. Three cows, ten or twelve sheep, a few pigs and a yoke of strong oxen comprised the live stock—horses, they had none for many years. A great ox-cart ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... exclaimed the settler, with rage manifest in the clenching of his teeth and the tension of every muscle of his iron frame, "and that for jist tryin' to save a countryman—well, we'll see who'll ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... will notice that all good judges of road and trotting horses like to see a good strong bone in the leg. This is actually necessary. The mule, you will notice, is very deficient in leg, and generally have poor muscle. And many of them ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... to the eyes of Glen Mason after his hours of real peril and imprisonment. It was fine to be able once more to stretch out and shake loose every little muscle, to be able to draw in a long breath, just as deep as one wanted, free from the muffling of a foul mouth gag. The world was a good old place in which to live and surely Glen would henceforth try to live in ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo

... runs sidewise, each one trying to get the wind of the other and watching for a chance advantage. The stranger was a big, heavy buck with plenty of muscle, but one or two trifles such as treading on a turnover and failing to close when Rag was on low ground showed that he had not much cunning and counted on winning his battles by his weight. On he came at last ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... water, mineral salts, [Footnote: I allude to mineral salts as found in the vegetable kingdom, not to the manufactured salts, like the ordinary table salt, etc., which are simply poisons when taken as food.] fats and oils, carbo-hydrates (starch and sugar), and proteids (the flesh and muscle-forming elements). All vegetable foods (in their natural state) contain all these elements, and, at a pinch, human life might be supported on any one of them. I say "at a pinch" because if the nuts, cereals and pulses were ruled out of the dietary, it would, ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... of that little twig had not been unobserved. The trapper's eyes were open, and his senses wide awake on the instant. Yet, so tutored was he in the ways and warfare of the wilderness that no muscle of his huge frame moved, and his eyes were closed again so quickly that the glance of the savage, sharp though it was, failed to detect the fact of his having awakened. The busy mind of Big Ben was active, however, while he lay there. He saw that the savage was armed, but the knife was not yet raised ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... presented a formidable obstacle to our success. Mr Phillott agreed with O'Brien: he ordered the bowmen to lay in their oars and keep the guns pointed ready to fire at the word given, and desiring the other men to pull their best. Every nerve, every muscle was brought into play by our anxious and intrepid seamen. When within about twenty yards of the vessel, and also of the boats, the orders were given to fire—the carronade of the launch poured out round and grape so well directed, that one of the French ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... view, he laid himself flat in the road over which the fisherman must pass and pretended to be dead. The fisherman beheld him with surprise when he drew near, and jumping from his seat poked his sleek sides with his whip. The fox did not move a muscle, and Truvor decided that he had been frozen to death by the cold of the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... with all the force there is in fourteen-year-old muscle. The fist caught Bunny Hepburn on the side of the face and sent ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock

... conscious of a strange chill at the pit of his stomach. Why had Leloo, the very embodiment of savage courage, backed away from that hole with every muscle tense, and why had he hit the back trail displaying every evidence of abject terror? The boy had seen him run foxes to earth before, and he had never acted like that. He had always torn at the edges of the hole with fang and claw. A hundred times more terrifying ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx

... shadows of false-fronted stores lay like blue slag on molten iron. Nothing moved: this particular metropolis-to-be of the Northwest was given over to heat and silence. Yet it wasn't muggy, sea-coast heat that turns bone and muscle into jelly—it was a passion of ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... bit into the water again and Colin was glad to feel the boat moving, for it rolled fearfully on the long heaving swell. But with six good oars and plenty of muscle behind them, the little craft was not long in reaching the place where the 'slick' on the water showed that the whale had come up to breathe and then dived again. Acting under the gunner's orders the crew rested on their oars a short ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... at the doctor, who stood smoothing his chin. "The muscle strain is not serious," he said calmly. "A little gentle exercise will prevent further trouble, I think." Whereupon he turned abruptly to the door of the other room, glanced in at Brit and beckoned Lorraine with an ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... apparently without effort and without speed, his tongue lolling at one side. But we could see that the pace was really terrific—that Lieutenant Baldwin was freely using the spur, and that his swift thoroughbred was stretched out like a greyhound, straining every muscle in his effort to keep up. He was riding close to the buffalo on his left, with revolver in his right hand, and I wondered why he did not shoot, but Faye said it would be useless to fire then—that ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... still in his chair; his hearing had become abnormally acute, but he could not make out what they were saying; and as the dull, intestinal aching grew sharper, parching, searing every strained muscle in throat and chest, he struck the table beside him, and clenched his teeth in the fierce rush of agony that swept him from head to foot, crying out an inarticulate menace on his household. And Dr. Grisby came into the room from the outer shadows ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... behind Danner. They were nearing the last hundred yard flag. Danner threw all his energy and power into the last effort; every nerve and muscle was strained to ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis

... great-room, clean straw covers the earth floor, and upon the long, four-cornered tables is spread a mighty feast of mead and ale and coarse but hearty food, such as the old Norse heroes drew their strength and muscle from. At the door-way stands the Queen Aasta with her maidens, while before the entrance, with thirty "well-clothed men," waits young Olafs stepfather, wise Sigurd Syr, gorgeous in a jewelled suit, a scarlet cloak, and a glittering ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... brawny wrestlers, shining from the bath, Wary and watchful, quick with arm and eye, After long play clinch close, arms twined, knees locked, Each nerve and muscle strained, and stand as still As if a bronze from Vulcan's fabled shop, Or else by power of magic changed to stone In that supremest moment, when a breath Or feather's weight would tip the balanced scale; And when they fall the shouts from hill to hill Sound like the voices of the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... look around, But he felt new joy his bosom swell, When, glittering on the shadowed ground, He saw a purple muscle shell; Thither he ran, and he bent him low, He heaved at the stern and he heaved at the bow, And he pushed her over the yielding sand, Till he came to the verge of the haunted land. She was as lovely a pleasure boat As ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... there any one who supposes that six million of Allied soldiers, working sixteen hours a day, are as fresh and as fit as six million Germans, working only eight hours a day? That is why the situation is so perilous. Fortunately victories are not won by muscle without but by the soul within. The sense of justice in the heart lends a form of omnipotence to a youth. In a moral universe, therefore, we must win. The great problem is, how to carry on until we can get another million Americans across to France, with ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... breathing, each foot seemingly lead, each muscle and tendon a hot wire, Jean stumbled feebly where she ran. Donald caught her, and halted the dog, that shook with his panting like an engine after a long run. Two seconds, and the pack was cut loose, and lay upon the snow. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... and Lieutenant Beverley were drowned in the Wabash. But when a crowd gathered to verify the terrible news it turned out to be untrue. Gaspard Roussillon had once more distinguished himself by an exhibition of heroic nerve and muscle. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... the less wise and instructed. Because we have to set an example to the sleepy of our sex, we must carry on an active warfare—must be invaders. Whether woman is the equal of man I neither know nor care. We are not his equal in size, in weight, in muscle, and, for all I can say, we may have less power of brain. That has nothing to do with it. Enough for us to know that our natural growth has been stunted. The mass of women have always been paltry creatures, and their paltriness ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... was her catcher. Curly strove to wipe out the intervening two years and to imagine himself back at college, pitching for his class in the final championship game. But alas! his arm was stiff and muscle-bound, and creaked in the socket every time ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... men now, with the strength of the hills in bone and muscle, were the old man's chief reliance. They could see that he was failing, and felt sincerely sorry. They noted with what grim determination he stuck to his work. The tenacity inherited from a hundred generations of strong men, farmers, sea-kings, warriors, nerved his old arms and kept strong the ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... realize all this; but let us look and reflect, and even we may feel as must have felt the man of the Renaissance in the presence of that mutilated, stained, battered torso. He sees in that broken stump a grandeur of outline, a magnificence of osseous structure, a breadth of muscle and sinew, a smooth, firm covering of flesh, such as he would vainly seek in any of his living models; he sees a delicate and infinite variety of indentures, of projections, of creases following ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... many of them in terms of adequate praise. The downy plum is almost bursting with ripeness: the butterfly's wings seem to be in tremulous motion, while they dazzle you by their varied lustre: the hairy insect puts every muscle and fibre into action, as he insinuates himself within the curling of the crisped leaves; while these leaves are sometimes glittering with dew, or coated with the finest down. The flowers and the vegetables are equally admirable, and equally true to nature. To ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... sandstone cropped out in several sections. Mosquitoes and sandflies were very trouble-some. I found a species of snail nearly resembling Succinea, in the fissures of the bark of the Myal, on the Box, and in the moist grass. The muscle-shells are of immense size. The well-known tracks of Blackfellows are everywhere visible; such as trees recently stripped of their bark, the swellings of the apple-tree cut off to make vessels for carrying ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... will be gaping open; simply scrape them clean. Your univalves will be more difficult; remove the animal with a crocket hook or other piece of bent wire, turning it gently with the spiral; try to get it out whole to save yourself trouble. Save the univalve's operculum and slice it off the muscle that holds it. It will preserve indefinitely and is a valuable ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company

... Extream, and grow Tyrants that they may seem Masters. Because an uncontroulable Command of their own Actions is a certain Sign of entire Dominion, they wont so much as recede from the Government even in one Muscle, of their Faces. A kind Look they believe would be fawning, and a civil Answer yielding the Superiority. To this must we attribute an Austerity they betray in every Action: What but this can put a Man out of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... and young; Mount Davidson's side was golden with sunflowers. On the long front piazza Mr. Madigan's canaries, in their mammoth cage, were like to burst their throats for joy in the promise of summer. Irene, every lithe muscle a-play, was hanging by her knees on the swinging-bar, her tawny hair sweeping the woodshed floor as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... draws rein, and the obedient horse putting his legs rigidly together, slides forward on his hoofs with his own momentum, scoring out a mark about his own length on the ground, and stops dead without moving a muscle. This mark is the "raya." Another diversion is that where gaily-be-ribboned chickens—alive—are provided by the novias, or sweethearts of the young men: and these, mounted on their steeds, ride fast and furious to capture the bird from the ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... an approving way. He knew the weight of a full-grown male leopard, all muscle and bone, and he was one of those old-fashioned persons mentioned in the Scriptures as taking a delight in a man's legs—or his arms, so long ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... a still deeper red. His fists clenched and, as a muscle started to twitch warningly in his cheek, he started to get up. He stopped for a moment—frozen in silence. Then he relaxed and pushed back his chair. With a heavy sigh, he maneuvered his huge bear of ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... and requested the discontinuance of the drug. The evacuations became less frequent, and in a week the patient was able to be up. Resuming then, Kurz concludes that nitrite of amyl is indicated in cardiac affections when the capillary circulation is obstructed and the cardiac muscle is threatened with paralysis from overwork; further, in cases of impeded circulation occasioned by cholera or severe diarrhea, particularly in the so-called hydrocephaloid (false hydrocephalus) of children. It is worthy of trial in tetanic and eclamptic seizures, and in tonic ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... purpose, they would say, is not at all to squeeze more work out of the nerves and muscles of the labourer, to fill still more the pocket of the corporations, to produce still more of the infernal noise in the workshops of the world. The real aim has nothing to do with the output and the muscle, but with the joy and happiness of the industrial workers, who have become slaves in the capitalistic era. It is quite true that if this is the end, the arguments which speak against the efficiency of socialism ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... his performance. He passed the night in the western basement of the hotel, and spoiled the sleep of a dozen or more persons who lodged near him. When we left San Francisco, Norcum was residing in the baggage-room at the Occidental, under special care of the porters, who employed a great deal of muscle in teaching him that silence ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but just take a pinch of wax—that way!—and accent that relaxed flank muscle!... Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows.... That's it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject. Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... pursued, to avoid the vicinity of Mount Lodge, was tedious, and she was already weary. But the cottage was a restful place to arrive at, for she was her own mistress there—her grandmother never coming down stairs—and Edy, the woman who lived with and attended her, being a cipher except in muscle and voice. The approach was by a straight open road, bordered by thin lank trees, all sloping away from the south-west wind-quarter, and the scene bore a strange resemblance to certain bits of Dutch landscape ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy

... proceeded from legions of small fish, which come and leap about on the shore.—(Travels, vol. 1, p. 397., Lond. 1812). He adds, "M. Seetzen, who is yet travelling in Arabia, observed in the Dead sea neither the helix nor the muscle, but found ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... reached the battle-ground, the great champions were already stripped and prepared for the "mill." Both were in splendid condition, and displayed a redundancy of muscle about the breast and arms which was delightful to the eye of the sportive connoisseur. They were well matched. Adepts said that Stanford's "heft" and tall stature were fairly offset by Low's superior litheness and activity. From their heads to the Union colors around their waists, their ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... in an enormous breath, stiffening every muscle in order to hold the air, thus depriving their muscles ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... the broad shoulders and the great knots of muscle on the man's arms. He was of medium height, but with a frame ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... one of the rarest. It was said of him that he showed what Demosthenes meant by "action." The whole man, body and soul, was not only in action, but was an action concentrated into speech. His strongly built frame,—every limb, muscle, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... pleasanter on these lines. The last three of her father's curates had been devoted to the single life. I asked, for the sake of conversation, what had become of them, and she told me, without the change of a muscle of her face, that they had married. The vicar awoke to the subject of our conversation here, and said that they had married his ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... those walls and the massive iron-plated door. The white and polished arms were stretched out in a position fearfully painful beyond the victim's head, and the wrists were fastened to a steel bar by means of a thin cord, which cut through flesh, muscle and nerve to the very bone! The ankles were attached in a similar manner to a bar at the lower end of the rack, and thus from the female's hands and feet thick clots of gore fell on the stone pavement. But even the blood flowed not so fast from her lacerated limbs as streamed the big drops ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... delight in correcting their children with severity. They are washer-women, housemaids, cooks; soldiers, policemen, postmen; coach, horsemen, and horses, by turns; and in all these characters they scour, sweep, fry, fight, pursue, carry, whirl, ride, and are ridden, without changing a muscle. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... with the locks I heard the inimitable, unmistakable divine laugh of a negro. The door opened at last. Entered a beautiful pillar of black strutting muscle topped with a tremendous display of the whitest teeth on earth. The muscle bowed politely in our direction, the grin remarked musically: "Bo'jour, tou'l'monde"; then came a cascade of laughter. Its effect on the spectators ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... flash, two arrows flew at her and disappeared through her heaving sides. She faltered, wilted, and as we drew to shoot again, she sprawled out on the ground, a convulsed, quivering mass of fur and muscle—she was dead. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... creep over her, as if a blast of cold air had blown down through the side scene, and a sudden spark blazed up in the dilating eyes, as a mirror flashes when a candle flame smites its cold dark surface; but not a muscle quivered in the fair proud face, and only the Varney at her side noticed that when the slight hand fell back it sought its mate with a quick groping motion, and the delicate fingers clutched each other till the nails ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... other from the mass. They both contain lines, but in the one case the lines are the contours of felt forms and in the other the boundaries of visual masses. In the Michael Angelo the silhouette is only the result of the overlapping of rich forms considered in the round. Every muscle and bone has been mentally realised as a concrete thing and the drawing made as an expression of this idea. Note the line rhythm also; the sense of energy and movement conveyed by the swinging curves; and compare with what is said later ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... was not a pleasant vis-a-vis. He wore the same picturesque ruffianliness of apparel as his fellows, but the resemblance stopped there. He lacked their dusky bloom, their clearness of eye, the suppleness and easy flow of muscle that is the hall-mark of these frontiersmen. He was fat and squat and had not the rich bronzing of wind, sun, and rain. His small, black eyes twinkled from his puffy, white face, like raisins in ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... the rocks on the other coast. The sound of oars was heard close to them,—an eager pressing stroke, as of men who knew well that they were rowing for the salvation of a life. On they came, close under the rocks, obeying with every muscle of their bodies the behests of those who called to them from the shore. The boat came with such rapidity,—was so recklessly urged, that it was driven somewhat beyond the inlet; but in passing, a blow was struck ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope

... urge his brain without harm to his stomach; and that, when he loses his stomach, he loses the very citadel of health. The whole body is renewed from the blood, and the blood is made from the food taken into the stomach. The power of the blood to renew bone and brain and muscle depends upon ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... young and agile; strong, too, with that quick response of muscle they have who keep their bodies well; but he was no match for her. Her speed and agility out-classed his own with ease. She leapt. Before he had moved one leg forward towards escape, she was clinging with ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. The Academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces our manhood and our womanhood. There does not stand today upon God's earth a race more capable in muscle, in intellect, in morals, than the American Negro, if he will bend his energies in the right ...
— The Conservation of Races - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 2 • W. E. Burghardt Du Bois

... still more striking contrast to the existing state of the Chinese, who bandage their women's feet in order to show that they are high born and never needed to walk or to exert themselves!—the assumption being that no one would ever move a muscle unless under fear of the lash of poverty or of actual hunger. The farther Western civilisation travels from that effete Eastern ideal, the greater will be the hope for human progress in physical, mental ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... he said. Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the college, could barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds in the scale,—not a heavy weight, surely; but some of the middle weights, as the present English champion, for instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... possible for brilliant sunshine, even on a cloudless day, to become somehow lustreless and dull. The walls showed a deep red in the sunset light. The house was still as the grave. His feet were rooted to the ground, and it seemed as if he could not move a single muscle; and as he stood there, the blood ebbing quickly from his heart, the words of the governess a few days before rushed back into his mind, and turned his fear into a dreadful, all-possessing horror. In another minute the battered door would slowly open and the horrible ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... superb bay from the stables of the Baron de Soubeyran, and combined extreme elegance of build with extraordinary strength of muscle. His fine and shining coat, under which the tracery of veins was distinctly visible on chest and flank, seemed almost to exhale a fiery vapour, so intense was the creature's vitality. A splendid jumper, he had often carried his master in the hunting-field ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... a muscle of her face moving; and, without replying, she looked steadily into the doctor's eyes. In her turn, she was studying him. It was like a defiance before ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... certain amount of self-abnegation in the matter of food, but Trevor left his men barely enough to support life—enough, that is, of the things that are really worth eating. The consequence was that Donaldson's would turn out for an important match all muscle and bone, and on such occasions it was bad for those of their opponents who had been taking life more easily. Besides Trevor they had Clowes, and had had bad luck in not having Paget. Had Paget stopped, no other house could have looked at them. But by his departure, the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... do as you bid me," cried Herbert, walking stoutly into the room: "Grace, here's the comb;" and he turned to her the tangled locks at the back of his head. She pulled unmercifully, but he stood without moving a muscle of his countenance. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... two noble beasts stood like bits of statuary, not a muscle quivering, their tails slowly waving to and fro. Then with a couple of bounds they vanished in ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... his description. There were at least five words in every sentence which must have been very much astonished at the use to which they were put, and yet no others apparently could so well have conveyed his idea. He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flowing out in every burst. It is a great pity he is ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... in dry air the sea-born stranger roves, Each muscle quickens, and each sense improves; Cold gills aquatic form respiring lungs, And sounds aerial flow from ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... pleased with the quickness of the boy, who sat without moving a muscle of his face, his mouth open, and generally prepared to give answers much as an instrument responds to ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... Marshall. Betimes the next morning we were hurrying eastward through Thoroughfare Gap of Bull Run Mountain, and late in the evening we arrived at Manassas Junction,—between Pope's army and Washington. I had read that walking was an excellent form of exercise because it brought into play every muscle of the body, and having walked nearly sixty miles in two days I was convinced that the reason assigned was valid, for the muscles of my arms and neck were almost as sore as were those of my legs. ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway

... Barbados, being of opinion that it might be advantageously employed as human food, requested Dr. Shier, the analytical chemist, of Demerara, to determine in his laboratory its richness in protein compounds (the muscle-forming part of vegetable food) in comparison with Indian corn. He, therefore, caused a sample of each to be burned for nitrogen, when the following ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... of the charge. Philosophical Transactions 1776 page 212.) It will perhaps be found that, in most animals, every contraction of the muscular fibre is preceded by a discharge from the nerve into the muscle; and that the mere simple contact of heterogeneous substances is a source of movement and of life in all organized beings. Did an ingenious and lively people, the Arabians, guess from remote antiquity, that the same force which inflames the vault of Heaven in storms, is the living and invisible ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... precipice appears, The toil of the old fisher, gray with years; Mark, as to drag the laden net he strains, The labouring muscle and the swelling veins! There, in the sun, the clustered vineyard bends, And shines empurpled, as the morn ascends! A little boy, with idly-happy mien, To guard the grapes upon the ground is seen; Two wily foxes creeping round appear,— The scrip that holds his morning ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... did mind, very seriously; she continued to stand on that branch with an aggrieved air, as if life were no longer worth living, now that her home was perhaps discovered. Without uttering a sound or moving a muscle, so far as I could see, she remained for half an hour before she accepted my taking a distant seat and turning my attention to dragonflies as an apology, and ventured to visit her nest again. After that I made very sure that she was ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... that the writer caught the infection from his grandfather. With one half the world, in its judgment of literature and of life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is merely negative, and implies the absence of all character, and, in language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle. I have a notion—only do not whisper such heresy within college walls—that a college tutor must be genteel in his college judgments, that 'The Polite Letter Writer' was the work of an M.A. in the 'Augustan Age.' You may find in Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... individual who happened to be within their reach, thus disconcerting the aim of many an otherwise deadly stroke. For a few breathless seconds all was fire, smoke, and fury, pistols cracking, steel rasping upon steel, cheers, execrations, groans, the dull crunching sound of cutlasses sheering through muscle and bone, the heavy fall of the stricken on deck, the scuffling of feet, and shouts of defiance exchanged between the contending parties; then a few of us contrived to get in on deck, forcing back the pirates and making ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... made no answer. He glanced furtively around to see that no one heard the question. Then he went on feeling the horse, inch by inch. Every muscle and sinew he ran his hand over, and each moment his face cleared up more and more. "He ain' nothin' but rock!" he said, straightening up. "Walk him off dyah, son"—with a wave of ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... told him. Yet he stood rooted to the spot, staring at the carpet of fur near him. It was only ten feet away. Ten feet? His every muscle jumped. The lock that had held his muscles and brain in a tight vice gave loose and a flood of realization hit him. "It's moving!" he realized ...
— The Day of the Dog • Anderson Horne

... guard railing of a tree, and was now apostrophizing it with extravagant bows and honeyed accents in which there was an undertone of hiss. For confirmation, Miss Polly turned to the others. The first face her eyes fell on was that of the ball- player. Every muscle in it was drawn, and from the tightened lips streamed such whispered curses as the girl never before had heard. Next him stood the hermit, solid and still, but with a queer spreading pallor under his tan. In front ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... half-conscious self- contempt and degradation? Be sure that there is, that the blindness and hurry of civilisation, as it now is, have to answer a heavy charge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work—work that tries every muscle of the body and every atom of the brain, and which is done without pleasure and without aim—work which everybody who has to do with tries to shuffle off in the speediest way that dread of starvation or ruin ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... die, because she is too good to live. Sorrow is a bad pasture for a young creature like her to feed on, Dame Dodier!" was the answer, but it did not change a muscle on ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... hare out of the field with any gun he possessed as unerringly as could he. I lived his life with him hour by hour, learned to think as he thought, to speak his easy transatlantic speech, and did equal trencher duty with him at all times, so that muscle and brawn were packed on my tall, broad woman's body with the same compactness as it was packed upon his, by the time I had reached my twenty-first birthday. By that time he and I had been alone together for ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... each a different grace, but similar each, indeed upon the very same identical pattern air of young-lady fashion—well-bred, and apparently well-natured. No sooner was Miss Stanley made known to them by Lady Cecilia, than, smiling just enough, not a muscle too much, they moved; the ranks opened softly, but sufficiently, and Helen was in the group; amongst them, but not of them—and of this she became immediately sensible, though without knowing how or why. One of these daughters had had ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... weight of the wagon being out of all proportion to their strength, they fell often in their futile struggles. At the side of the road near the top of the hill the water oozed from an alkali spring, which kept the road perpetually muddy. The horses were straining every nerve and muscle, their eyes bulging and nostrils distended, and still the driver, loudmouthed and vacuously profane, lashed them mercilessly with the stinging thongs of his leather whip. Smith, from the top of the hill, watched him with ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... against the ornament of the Surgical Ward of St. Isidore's. He was tired: the languid summer air thus early in the year would shake any man's nerve. But the head nurse understood well that such a wavering of will or muscle must not occur again, or the hairbreadth chance the drunken ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... the man who had jumped from behind the curtain suddenly threw down his upraised hands. Before I could fire, instantaneously in fact, I felt a thrill as though a million needles had been thrust into all parts of my body at once paralyzing every muscle and nerve. The gun fell from my nerveless hand, clattering to ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... seemed to vibrate when he grew anxious about her. The bond between him and his brother was equally strong, but in feeling different. Between him and Alister it was a cable; between him and his mother a harpstring; in the one case it was a muscle, in the other a nerve. The one retained, the other drew him. Given to roaming as he was, again and again he returned, from pure love-longing, to what he always felt as the PROTECTION of his mother. It was protection indeed he often had sought—protection from his own glooms, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... day was so sunnily warm in the garden paths and spaces, without being hot. A gardener whom we saw oftenest hung about his flowers in a sort of vegetable calm, and not very different from theirs except that they were not smoking cigarettes. He did not move a muscle or falter in his apparently unseeing gaze; but when one of us picked a seed from the ground and wondered what it was he said it was a magnolia seed, and as if he could bear no more went away. In one wilding place which seemed set apart for a nursery several men were idly working ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... bead embroidered affair, covered a silk-stockinged foot. Each arm was tightly clasped around the baby. The rigidity of death should have passed away, but the arms were fixed in their position as if composed of an unbendable material instead of muscle and bone. The fingers were imbedded in the sides of the little baby as if its protector had made a final effort not to be separated and to save if possible the fragile life. The faces of both were scarred and disfigured from contact ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... the name of land, As but the offscouring of the British sand, And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots when they heaved the lead, Or what by ocean's slow alluvium fell Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell; This indigestful vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... in which, as he was often the victim, he was forced to join. His fastidiousness loathed the coarse personal contact of arms and legs and bodies. His undeveloped strength could not cope with the muscle of his young brother barbarians. Aching with the day's fatigue, he would plead, to no avail, to be left alone. Compared with these feared and detested scraps, he considered, in after-times, battles to ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... found to possess all the more strength of will, elevation of mind, and grace and grandeur of life, from the school from which they graduate. Each exercise of strength we take in resisting temptation, is the moral gymnastics that redoubles that power against the next encounter, and adds muscle and fire to all the capabilities of life. Each exercise of sense we take to discriminate between true and false life, true and false pleasure, true and false charmers, is a training of the intellect and judgment to more delicate discernments, and more virtuous ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... was not of my complexion that Bindon thought, for on a plate before the chair behind which he stood, lay a small dark gray wad about the size of a five-shilling piece. I hesitated, and Bindon said in an undertone, "Miss Betty made it." Not a muscle ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss

... abundant in quantity and very varied in kind." While co-operative parts would often be more or less correlated, so that they would tend to vary together, coincident variation is not necessary. The lengthened wing might be gained in one generation, and the strengthened muscle at a subsequent period; the bird in the meanwhile drawing upon its surplus energy, aided (as I would suggest) by the strengthening effect of increased use in the individual. Seeing that artificial selection ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... after such a game he will feel that he must fall back once more on that old excuse of the golfer for a disappointing day, that at all events he has had the fresh air and the exercise. The tasting of the pure atmosphere and the working of limb and muscle are splendid things, enough to justify any day and any game, but no golfer is heard to put them in the forefront of the advantages he has derived from his day's participation in the game unless the golf he has played has been miserably ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon

... before which a Northern mendicant would grow pale. They will not be denied. They will stand perfectly still and look through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not driven away, with their imploring eyes fixed upon you, like a stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. They act as if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if the least indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to this strange island, is a daily supply ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey

... the shoulder with both hands, the fingers under the armpit, the thumbs on top. Bouroche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: "Raise him!" seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a swift movement of the right cut through the flesh of the arm and severed the muscle; then, with a deft rearward cut, he disarticulated the joint at a single stroke, and presto! the arm fell on the table, taken off in three motions. The assistant slipped his thumbs over the brachial artery in such manner as to close it. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... The structure of muscle and bone and the proportion of various parts of the body differ materially; the bones of the child for some time are soft and largely composed of cartilages which may be easily bent out of shape and permanently injured. The ratio of some of the ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... gray hair and the parchment-surfaced skin, had the old fellow changed in all these years. Without bodily vices, and clinging ever to the open air and the exercise of the foil, he was still young in muscle and endurance. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... big billy will kill any dog in the world, and some hunters declare that they will even fight a grizzly bear. Their little black horns are sharp as needles, and they can hit a hard blow with that neck of theirs, backed by a couple of hundred pounds of bone and muscle. ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... in the cracked voice of an adolescent as the other jumped down to face the scout. They stood at almost eye-to-eye level, but the stranger was still all boy, awkwardly unsure of strength or muscle control. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... him. Her self-command was so complete that not a throb of her leaping heart betrayed itself in vein or muscle. She even met his eyes with a placid gaze which he felt as a new aspect ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... lay mostly in the hands of strangers. His small size and puny appearance must have operated very much against his hopes of obtaining employment in a service which particularly calls for manhood and muscle. In what capacity, or in what sort of vessel he obtained a berth, we are left wholly to conjecture. Choosing the sea as a vocation, and laudably resolved on acquiring a proper knowledge of his business (as from what we know of his character, we may suppose was the case), ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... months, the beast for a handful of years, but man for an epoch measured by twenty years and more. To grow a sage or a statesman nature asks thirty years with which to build the basis of greatness in the bone and muscle of the peasant grandparents, thirty years in which to compact the nerve and brain of parents; thirty years more in which the heir of these ancestral gifts shall enter into full-orbed power and stand forth fully furnished for his task. Nature makes a dead snowflake ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... work at once in good earnest. Tom, and the three or four other freshmen present, were duly presented to Miller as they came in, who looked them over as the colonel of a crack regiment might look over horses at Horncastle-fair, with a single eye to their bone and muscle, and how much work might be got out of them. They then gathered towards the lower end of the long table, and surveyed the celebrities at the upper end with much respect. Miller, the coxswain, sat ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the centre. The patches eventually become markedly anaesthetic, and the overlying skin, and the skin on other parts as well, becomes atrophic and of a brownish or yellowish color. The subcutaneous tissues, muscle, hair and nails undergo atrophic or degenerative changes, and these changes are especially noted about the hands and feet. These parts become crooked, the bone tissues are involved, the phalanges dropping off or disappearing by disintegration or absorption (lepra mutilans). Sooner or ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... the historical associations of the place are worthy of note. Here lived the Rev. George Burroughs, who suffered death as a wizard more than two centuries ago. He was a man of immense strength of muscle, and his astonishing athletic feats were cited at his trial as evidence of his dealings with the Evil One. The well of his homestead is shown under the boughs of an immense elm, and the canopy now over it was the sounding-board ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... Persian's hands from his hips, pressed his fingers between those of Rustem, forced him back on to his pillows, set his knees against the brazen frame of the couch, and so effectually held him down that he could not sit up again. Rustem exerted every muscle to shake off his opponent; but the leech was the stronger, for the Masdakite was weakened by fever and loss of blood. Paula watched this contest between intelligent force and the animal strength of a raving giant with a beating heart, trembling in every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... had never seen any of their race until that moment. They continually talked in their guttural, grunting fashion, smiling and nodding their heads. Two of them pinched the limbs of the boys as though testing their muscle. So far from showing any alarm, Jack Carleton clenched his fist and elevated his arm, swaying the hand back and forth as if proud to display the development of his biceps. But Otto was in too doleful a mood to indulge in ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... my mind, When (each opinion with the next at strife, One ebb and flow of follies all my life) I plant, root up; I build, and then confound; Turn round to square, and square again to round; You never change one muscle of your face, You think this madness but a common case, Nor once to Chancery, nor to Hale apply; Yet hang your lip, to see a seam awry! Careless how ill I with myself agree, Kind to my dress, my figure, not to me. Is this my guide, philosopher, and Friend? This, he who loves me, and who ought ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... wish I had your muscle, old man! I ain't worth a cent in things like that. Caesar! But ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... stand by . . . Chased me out. Diana Warwick's there:—worth fifty of me! Dacier, I've had my sword-blade tried by Indian horsemen, and I know what true as steel means. She's there. And I know she shrinks from the sight of blood. My oath on it, she won't quiver a muscle! Next to my wife, you may take my word for it, Dacier, Diana Warwick is the pick of living women. I could prove it. They go together. I could prove it over and over. She 's the loyallest woman anywhere. Her one error was that marriage of hers, and how she ever ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... most monstrous conclusions. How does this apply to the case of sex? Mill held that the difference in the law was due simply to the superiority of men to women in physical strength. Fitzjames replies that men are stronger throughout, stronger in body, in nerve and muscle, in mind and character. To neglect this fact would be silly; but if we admit it, we must admit its relevance to legislation. Marriage, for example, is one of the cases with which law and morality are both compelled to deal. Now the marriage contract necessarily involves the subordination ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... on sociology calls attention to the fact that nervous prostrations and general breakdowns are most common among those members of society who achieve the least and who may be regarded as parasites. Exercise both of brain and of muscle is necessary for growth ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... superhuman demons have to be overcome with strategy, not muscle. The heroes, consequently, are beings endowed with cleverness. After Suac has killed Pugut and has come into possession of his victim's magic club, he easily slays a man-eating giant (see F4 in notes to preceding tale). The tricks played on the Bungisngis by the monkey ("ringing ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... transversely, about twelve inches apart. The man she came to seek was bound in a horizontal position upon this frame, with his neck projecting over the end of it. If he allowed his head to hang, the blood rushed to his brain, and suffocated him, while the effort to keep it raised strained every muscle to agony pitch. His face was purple, and he foamed at the mouth. Sylvia uttered a cry. "This is no punishment; it's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke



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