"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stigma—upon the spendthrift, and the swindler, and the thief, the bankrupt debtor, the 'moping idiot, and the madman gay,' whom a paltry spirit of economy congregated to share this dismal habitation, he felt his heart recoil with inexpressible loathing from enduring the contamination of their society ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of Royalty have been entirely harmonious with its origin. What scenes of horror, what refinements of iniquity, do the annals of monarchies present! If we should paint human nature with a baseness of heart, an hypocrisy, from which all must recoil and humanity disavow, it would be the portraiture of kings, their ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... had knock him flat, scarce slowed down the pig's lurching rush; scarce enabled the frightened Mistress to recoil a step. Then, the sow was lunging at her again, over ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the skin is another quality that varies with the concentration in the blood of the internal secretions. Elasticity of the skin, its recoil upon being stretched like a rubber band, may be taken as a measure of the activity of all the endocrine glands. For, as can be noticed especially upon the back of the hand, the older a man grows, the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... valley driven, Swept down, and with a voice so loud It seemed as it would shatter heaven! The bravest quailed; it swept so near, It made the ruddiest cheek to blanch, While look replied to look in fear, "The avalanche! The avalanche!" It forced the foremost to recoil, Before its sideward billows thrown,— Who cried, "O God! Here ends our toil! The ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... as formed the line was ordered to advance rapidly. Exhausted by running, it received the American fire at the distance of thirty or forty paces. The effect was so great as to produce something of a recoil. The fire was returned; and the light infantry made two attempts to charge, but were repulsed with loss. The Highlanders next were ordered up, and rapidly advancing in charge, the American front line gave way and retreated through an open space ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... leafy concealment, where, unseen himself, he had seen and watched from the first, with keen interest, all the movements of the other, whom, at length, he seemed to recognize, with recollections which caused him to recoil, and his whole countenance to contract and darken with angry and disquieting emotions. He was not allowed much time, however, for indulging his disturbed feelings; for scarcely had the object of his annoyance disappeared, before his attention was attracted by a slight rustling sound ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... country under him. This was an important event, indeed, in the reign of Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... penal shame, Or snatch from glory's plant one servile wreath, To deck the waste of crimes, that frown'd beneath. Harden'd in villany, with fate unfeign'd He mock'd at warning, scorn'd reproach, nor deign'd To answer either, and remorse's dart Recoil'd from his impenetrable heart: Save in those hours when darkness or when pain Recals its force, and guilt recedes again; When passion, vice, and fancy quit their sway, When lawless pleasure trembling shrinks away, While black conviction's ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... success. Its reaction on herself to her own good was remarkable. There can be no better auxiliary against our own sins than to help our neighbour in the encounter with his. Merely to contemplate our neighbour will recoil upon us in quite another way: we shall see his faults so black, that we will not consent to believe ours so bad, and will immediately begin to excuse, which is the same as to cherish them, instead of casting them from ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... outside time, into the days that are no more, or the days that have never been. As though the wine of life were not as intoxicating, and its vintages as rich nowadays as ever they were! But men who are weary in soul recoil from direct contact with life: they can only bear to see it through the veil of visions spun by the backward movement of time, and hear it in the echo which sends back and distorts the dead words of those who were once alive.—Christophe's friendship ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... why, then, of course, she could marry Blair; but why should she marry him right away? "It isn't—decent!" said Nannie. And when did she break with David? Only day before yesterday she was expecting to marry him. "It is horrible!" said Nannie; and her recoil of disgust for a moment included Blair. But the habit of love made her instant with excuses: "It's worse in Elizabeth than in him. Mamma will say so, too." Then she felt a shock of terror: "Mamma!" She smoothed out the letter, crumpled in her shaking hand, and read it again: "'I want you to ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... a number of forces which may well prove disastrous in inexperienced hands. All action and reaction are equal and opposite. A child might easily fire a cannon, but could not possibly withstand its recoil. So in the education of the spiritual faculties, it is better to encourage their natural development by legitimate exercise than to invoke the action of stimulants which we may not afterwards be able to control. The continual fretting of the water will wear away a rock, though none doubts ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... subsequent care or industry can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions which he brings out; and, when at last his good sense and good nature recoil from the horrible practical inferences to which this theory leads, he is reduced sometimes to take refuge in arguments inconsistent with his fundamental doctrines, and sometimes to escape from the legitimate consequences of his false principles, under cover of equally ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... thou torment'st thyself; And these dread curses, like the sun 'gainst glass, Or like an overcharged gun, recoil And turns the force of them ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... I have lingered but an hour, It well had paid a week of toil; But truth has banished fancy's power, Restraint and heavy task recoil. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Captain Percy Scott at this time came in for a great share of attention. The feature of the invention is a spade which holds the gun in position, while the recoil is absorbed by the compression of oil and springs. Great strain is thus placed on the spade, and consequently its success depends largely on the character of the soil ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the silken brutality of their visitor made him blush; that he should be accepted as an equal, and the others thus pointedly ignored, pleased him in spite of himself, and then ran through his veins in a recoil of anger. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of best Aylesbury, or a fine red herring, no customer having a penny in his pocket might struggle hard enough to keep it there. For the half-hearted policy of fingering one's money, and asking a price theoretically, would recoil upon the constitution of the strongest man, unless he could detach from all cooperation the congenial researches of his eyes and nose. When the weather was cool and the air full of appetite, and a fine smack ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... addressing the son of Hridika, said, "Wait, Wait." Then, O monarch, Shikhandi sped at his foe ninety shafts of great impetuosity, all equipped with golden wings. Those shafts, however, all recoiled from Kritavarma's armour. Seeing those shafts recoil and scattered on the surface of the Earth, Shikhandi cut off Kritavarma's bow with a keen razor-headed arrow. Filled with wrath he struck the bowless son of Hridika, who then resembled a hornless bull, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... there, only dimly conscious of the scene about them, the sight of the boat bringing Phebe to the shore with the covered coffin beside her, extinguished in his heart the last glimmering of the hope which had been little more than a natural recoil from despair. He was not taken by surprise, or hurried into any vehemence of grief. A cold stupor, which made him almost insensible to his loss, crept over him. Sorrow would assert itself by and by; but now he felt dull and torpid. When the coffin was lifted out of the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... grounds of suspicion when loudly proclaimed; but it is very likely to have indisposed them towards listening. Meantime, so far as I am acquainted with these Roman Catholic demurs, the difference between them and my own is broad. They, without suspecting any subtle, fraudulent purpose, simply recoil from the romantic air of such a statement—which builds up, as with an enchanter's wand, an important sect, such as could not possibly have escaped the notice of Christ and his apostles. I, on the other hand, insist not only upon the revolting ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... we fancy a hideous Eidolon, from whose side even the damned recoil in loathing. There is a grin on the lips yet red and wet with the traces of the unholy banquet. Thyestes exalts over the fulfillment of another chapter in the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... in full stride, and going in the most elastic way in spite of the long run, but the eland was labouring heavily, as Dyke drew trigger, felt the sharp, jerking recoil shoot right up his arm to the shoulder; and then to his astonishment, as he dashed on out of the smoke, he was alone, and the eland lying fifty yards behind, where it had come down ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... guide B, working in a groove, takes the piston with it. When the spring has been fully compressed, the triangular tip of the rocking cam R engages with a groove in the piston's head, and prevents recoil when the barrel is returned to its original position. On pulling the trigger, the piston is released and flies up the cylinder with great force, and the air in the cylinder is compressed and driven through the bore of the barrel, blocked by the leaden slug, to which ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... back, almost upsetting some one behind him by his recoil, on seeing his daughter in her motionless ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... by mysterious influences to take revenge. We have before us a great nobleman, who by atrocious murders has gained possession of the throne, and is slain in fighting for it: the poet brings us into immediate proximity with the crime, its execution, and its recoil: it seems like an inspiration of hell and of its deceitful prophecies: we wander on the confines of the visible world and of that other world which lies on the other side, but extends over into this, where it forms the border-land between conscious sense and unconscious ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... embellishment; The mind is riveted, the gaze is spent Where lavish Nature pours her richest spoil, The tongue is voiceless with bewilderment, Far, far below the ocean's ceaseless toil Makes bosoms inly shudder and all eyes recoil. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... larger kinds of game, such as elephants and buffaloes, experienced sportsmen mostly prefer guns of immense Bore, carrying round bullets that weigh a quarter of a pound. The recoil is tremendous, and would injure the shoulder if the sportsman did not use a pad against which he rests the gun. The guns must be strong, because very large charges of powder are invariably used where great power of penetration is required. African sportsmen found this ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... a human being upon whom this sort of retribution could have sat more painfully than upon Mr. Tyrrel. Though he had not a consciousness of innocence prompting him continually to recoil from the detestation of mankind as a thing totally unallied to his character, yet the imperiousness of his temper and the constant experience he had had of the pliability of other men, prepared him to feel the general and undisguised condemnation into which he was sunk with ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... since your superiors will neither make provision for the support of your prisoners in our hands, nor accommodation for the mere existence of ours, who are now languishing in your prison-ships, it becomes my duty, Sir, to state these pointed facts to you, that the imputations may recoil where they are deserved, and to report to those, under whose authority I have the honor to act, that such measures as they deem ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... messages; And where, beneath the bending willows' shade, The limpid stream its bosom pure displays, As I, with trembling and uncertain foot, Oppressed with grief, upon its margin pause, The dimpled waves recoil, as in disdain, And urge their flight along ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... nauseated with the toujours perdrix. With respect to the last, it induces a man to write for momentary effects; to study a false smartness of style and reasoning; to bound his ambition of durability to the last day of the month; to expect immediate returns for labour; to recoil at the "hope deferred" of serious works on which judgment is slowly formed. The man of talent who begins young at periodicals, and goes on long, has generally something crude and stunted about both his compositions and his celebrity. He grows the oracle of small coteries; and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... softening influence that death imparts, that thought was intolerable to her. This was quite aside from his treatment of her in his will, which, indeed, was strangely little to her. It was the memory of the crafty and common nature under that polished exterior that made her recoil from the thought ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... right. There was a terrific, roaring explosion, and she staggered backwards under the savage kick of the recoil. Recovering herself instantly, and proud of the great noise she had made, she peered through the smoke, expecting to see the bear topple over upon his nose, extinguished. Instead of that, however, she observed a convulsive ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... wide for the spoil of the world. And the meadows are cumbered with shipwreck of chariots that founder on land, [Ant. 7. And the horsemen are broken with breach as of breakers, and scattered as sand. 1360 Through the roar and recoil of the charges that mingle their cries and confound, Like fire are the notes of the trumpets that flash through the darkness of sound. As the swing of the sea churned yellow that sways with the wind as it swells Is the lift and relapse of the wave of ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... so dear, O darling Pally Royl, Vas it to finish here That I did trouble and toyl? That all my plans should break in my ands, And should on me recoil? ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no one would tolerate their choosing so much as a centurion or a tribune for themselves. Are you going to allow this precedent, and by your acquiescence make their crime your own? You will soon see this lawless spirit spreading to the troops abroad, and in time the treason will recoil on us and the war on you. Besides, innocence wins you as much as the murder of your emperor: you will get from us as large a bounty for your loyalty as you would from others for ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and aversion to study. They were precocious and impudent, had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery. Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... room since, you have been unable to keep away from it? Why, this very hour, when you thought yourself unobserved, did you walk straight to this chair and place your hand deliberately upon the place where the poison bottle was concealed? Why did you recoil? Why did that cry rise from your lips when you saw ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... was no refuge. She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your own needs always," Jerome returned, quickly, and with a sudden recoil as from a touch upon a raw surface, for the sensitiveness of a whole life cannot ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"? He would not be so ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... position, will be continually trying to assert itself to itself, by vexatious intermeddling and intruding pretensions; and then, when it meets with the resistance of free and rational spirits, will either recoil in awkward cowardice, or fly into a passion, and appeal to the halter and the sword. Such a Government can never take itself for granted, because it knows that it is not taken for granted by the people. It never can possess the quiet assurance, ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... affinity, is, that the pull of that affinity, acting through a certain space, imparts a motion of translation of the one atom towards the other. This motion is not heat, nor is the force that produces it heat. But when the atoms strike and recoil, the motion of translation is converted into a motion of vibration, which is heat. The vibration, however, so far from causing the extinction of the original attraction, is in part carried on by that attraction. The atoms recoil, in virtue of the elastic force which opposes ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... position by either a weight or any contrivance handy. It should be done a little more than seems necessary for restoring the even line of the edging, which can be fairly well seen by looking along from end to end; this is to allow of a slight recoil when the loops or ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... Ransom felt that inner recoil which we all experience at the prospect of an immediate and definite termination of a long brooding doubt. In another instant and with one word this uncultured and hitherto unknown man would settle for him the greatest question ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... Judges and Jurors, I do not disown my past, my principles, and my convictions. I deny nothing; I conceal nothing. And, in order to show that I am an adversary of monarchy and of present society, and that when duty calls me I do not recoil before the struggle, there was truly no need of the foolish inventions of the policemen of Giessen. I say here freely and openly: Since I have been capable of thinking I have been a republican, and I shall die a republican.[24] ... If I have had to undergo unheard of persecutions ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... commenced, in his own person, the driving of the first piles for the bridge. His soldiers fell fast around him. Count Berlaymont was shot dead, many officers of distinction were killed or wounded, but no soldier dared recoil while their chieftain wrought amid the bullets like a common pioneer. Alexander, unharmed, as by a miracle, never left the spot till the bridge had been constructed, and till ten great guns had been carried across it, and pointed against the demilune. The battery was opened, the mines ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... amazement But he had now paused, almost choking with his rush of emotion, his excitement, his sense of triumph, and straight ensued a certain reluctance, a dull negation, a prophetic recoil from responsibility that clogged his resolve. His eyes roved uncertainly about the familiar domestic scene, darkening now, duskily purple beneath the luminous pearly and roseate tints of the twilight sky. The old woman was a-drowse on the porch of the rickety little log-cabin beneath ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and B, which therefore begin to descend, and so a current of air is driven from the cave into the pit C. Owing to the elasticity of the atmosphere, even at a low temperature, this descent, and the consequent rush of air into C, will be overdone, and a recoil must take place, which accounts for the return current into the cave from the pit C. The sun can reach A more easily than B, and thus the air is lighter and more moveable in the former pit, so that the recoil will make itself more felt in A than in B: accordingly, we found ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... or seventy yards they could beat their brothers, who were both really good shots. This was principally owing to the fact that the charge of powder used in these rifles was so small, that there was scarcely any recoil to disturb the aim. It was some time before they could manage to hit anything flying; but they were very proud one evening when, having been out late with the boys, a fat goose came along overhead, and the girls firing simultaneously, he fell with ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... campaign, as the C.I.V. Battery, we had taken out new weapons (presented by the City of London), in the shape of four 12-1/2-pounder Vickers-Maxim field guns, taking fixed ammunition, having practically no recoil, and with a much improved breech-mechanism. They turned out very good, but of course, being experimental, required practice in handling, which could not have been obtained in the few weeks ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... the grave. When from a herd of unformed brutes they had nurtured you into human beings, they built schools and churches for you, sharing everything with you save the dangers of the battle field, for war they knew you were not formed to bear. As the sharp lance of the pagan was wont to recoil, shattered and riven, from the glittering armor of my fathers, so recoil your vain words as they strike the dazzling record of their long-consecrated glory. They disturb not the repose of their sacred ashes. Like the howlings of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and then several students carrying notebooks entered the laboratory from the lecture theatre, and distributed themselves among the little tables, or stood in a group about the doorway. They were an exceptionally heterogeneous assembly, for while Oxford and Cambridge still recoil from the blushing prospect of mixed classes, the College of Science anticipated America in the matter years ago—mixed socially, too, for the prestige of the College is high, and its scholarships, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the Saviour. Between brethren, the relation of master and slave, of merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would say to-day if the epistle to ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... chambers together. A fire lingered in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The honest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. What was he there for? The answer was pretty evident. There was nothing between this loud-babbling youth and himself which could have drawn them into even a momentary comradeship, if it had not been for the suspicion his father's ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Prostitution is the source of this domestic infelicity. The "mistress" sips the sweet nectar that is denied to the deceived wife. Legislators have battled with intemperance, but have done comparatively little to banish from our midst this necessary (?) evil. They recoil with disgust from this abyss of iniquity and disease. Within it is coiled a hydra-headed monster, which invades our hearthstones, contaminates our social atmosphere, and whose very breath is laden with poisonous vapors, the inexhaustible source ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... intrigue, and she at last permitted him to visit her at night. Thus he believed he had paved a way to Annunciata's unpolluted chamber; but the Eternal Power willed that this treacherous iniquity should recoil upon the head of its ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... very simple! Nor did the child recoil any longer from the ugly task which milor, with suave speech and tender voice, was so ardently seeking to ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... could do little. Unsteady as they were on their feet the recoil of their heavy arquebuses frequently threw them over, and it was impossible to take anything like an accurate aim at the flying figures that passed them at the speed of a galloping horse. Nevertheless they doggedly kept on their way, leaving the ice ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... deep or passionate dislike, sometimes bred of ill-will. To detest involves an intense, vehement, or deep-seated antipathy. To abhor involves utter repugnance or aversion, with an impulse to recoil. To loathe involves disgust because of physical or moral offensiveness. To abominate involves strong moral aversion, as of that which is odious or wicked. To despise is to dislike and look ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... be said and should be said for the Restoration, that it was the revolt of something human, if only the debris of human nature. But more cannot be said. It was emphatically a fall and not an ascent, a recoil and not an advance, a sudden weakness and not a sudden strength. That the bow of human nature was by Puritanism bent immeasurably too far, that it overstrained the soul by stretching it to the height of an almost horrible idealism, makes ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Nelson's reply was to ask if his own signal for close action was still hoisted. "Yes," said the officer. "Mind you keep it so," said Nelson. Nelson continued to tramp his quarter-deck, the thunder of the battle all about him, his ship reeling to the recoil of its own guns. The stump of his lost arm jerked angrily to and fro, a sure sign of excitement with him. "Leave off action!" he said to his lieutenant; "I'm hanged if I do." "You know, Foley," he said, turning to his captain, "I've only one eye; I've a right ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... is worse than vanity—it is a vile mockery. Life is gladness; it is the death in it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it as death—the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the light comes. This ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... the effects of the British bayonet charges and the way the Germans—Uhlans, Guards, and artillerymen—recoil from them. "If you go near them with the bayonet they squeal like pigs," "they beg for mercy on their knees," "the way they cringe before the bayonet is pitiful"—such are examples of the hundreds of references ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... highest flight sublime Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art, Dissolve, in purifying tears, the heart, Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime; The fond illusions of the youth and maid, At which so many world-formed sages sneer, When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed, Our natural religion must appear. All things in thee tend to one polar star, Magnetic ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a coward that dies And dares not look in death's dim eyes Straight as the stars on seas and skies Whence moon and sun recoil and rise, He looked on life and death, and slept. And there with morning Merlin came, And on the tomb that told their fame He wrote by Balan's Balen's name, And ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... did not recoil. He seemed ready himself to catch the beech-tree in his open arms in order to cast it on ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... no improvement had been made by which the soldier was enabled to take aim. The butt of the arquebus was perfectly straight, and placed against the breast when the gun was fired. The danger of being knocked over by the recoil of the piece was great, that of hurting the enemy very small. The Germans first conceived the idea of bending the butt downward, and thus elevating the barrel so as to bring it in the range of the eye. They also sloped it ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... of fear passed over Miss Bart: a sense of remembered treachery that was like the gleam of a knife in the dusk. But compassion, in a moment, got the better of her instinctive recoil. What was this outpouring of senseless bitterness but the tracked creature's attempt to cloud the medium through which it was fleeing? It was on Lily's lips to exclaim: "You poor soul, don't double ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... one rises to respect and affection—indignation against the other becomes exasperated to hatred, to abhorrence, and disgust; without the intervention of the will, but merely from the spontaneous movements of the heart, we sympathise, we silently pray for the one—we recoil from, we execrate the other. We are pressed by our very nature into the service of virtue; our souls are up in arms against vice and improbity, and thus we receive lasting impressions, which, when our hearts are not very corrupt, must forever after have a favourable ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... forward as Hastings entered; she threw herself in delirious joy upon his bosom. "Thou art come, thou art! It is not true, not true. Heaven bless thee! thou art come!" But sudden as the movement was the recoil. Drawing herself back, she gazed steadily on his face, and said, "Lord Hastings, they tell me thy hand is another's. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old timers, but its power and penetration are tremendous. The largest of this modern type is the .650 cordite—that is, it shoots a bullet six hundred and fifty thousandths of an inch in diameter, and has a frightful recoil. This weapon is prohibitive on account of its recoil, and few, if any, sportsmen now care to carry one. The most popular type is the .450 and .475 cordite double-barreled ejector, hammerless rifles, and these are the ones that every ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Colonel Clifford to Julia. "I did not believe appearances against a Clifford." With these words he took two steps toward his niece and held out his arm. She moved toward him. Percy came forward radiant to congratulate her. She drew up with a look of furious scorn that made him recoil, and she marched proudly away with her uncle. He bestowed one parting glance of contempt upon the discomfited Bartley, and marched his niece proudly off, more determined than ever that she should be his daughter. But for once he was wise enough not to press that topic: ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... a powerful pair of No. 10 polygroove rifles, made by Reilly of Oxford Street; they weighed fifteen pounds, and carried seven drachms of powder without a disagreeable recoil. The bullet was a blunt cone, one and a half diameter of the bore, and I used a mixture of nine-tenths lead and one-tenth quicksilver for the hardening of the projectile. This is superior to all mixtures for that purpose, as it combines ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... this!— And I said to myself, as I heard with a sigh The poor lone victim's stifled cry, "Well, I can't understand How any man's hand COULD wall up that hole in a Christian land! Why, a Mussulman Turk Would recoil from the work, And though, when his ladies run after the fellows, he Stands not on trifles, if madden'd by jealousy, Its objects, I'm sure, would declare, could they speak, In their Georgian, Circassian, or Turkish, or Greek, 'When all's said and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the main deck, barely wide enough to admit the passage of a man or a keg of powder behind the gun-carriages. These latter were not fixed to the planking as afterward became the fashion, but ran on trucks and were kept in their places by rope tackles. In action, the recoil had to be taken up by men who held the ends of these ropes, rove through pulleys in the vessel's side. Despite their efforts the gun would sometimes leap back against the bulkhead hard enough to shatter it. As the charge for each reloading had to be carried ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... prove a consoling faith only to those who find themselves obliged to think that consciousness dissolves with the crumbling of the brain.... It seems to me that few (or none) dare to utter frankly those stupendous doubts and fears which force mortal intelligence to recoil upon itself at every fresh attempt to pass the barrier of the Knowable. Were that barrier unexpectedly pushed back,—were knowledge to be suddenly and vastly expanded beyond its present limits,—perhaps we should find ourselves unable ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... insist on loaded connotations. It's a necessary period of rest. Recoil time for a whole society—well, it all works out neatly in Tighe's formulation. The present state of affairs should continue for about seventy-five years, we feel at the Institute. In that time, reason can—we hope—be so firmly implanted in the ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... instance, when devouring its caterpillar. A hole is made in the victim's side; and the head and neck of the nursling dive deep into the wound, to root luxuriously among the entrails. There is never a withdrawal from the gnawed belly, never a recoil to interrupt the feast and to take breath awhile. The vivacious animal always goes forward, chewing, swallowing, digesting, until the caterpillar's skin is emptied of its contents. Once seated at ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... unaccountable manner, as though it had been loaded with something in addition to a blank cartridge. But he had loaded the gun himself, and was positive that he had placed no shot in the barrel. At that time he was utterly unable to account for the recoil. ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... to Mlle. Moriaz; there was no time to recoil from it. She ordered up her coupe. M. Moriaz had just gone out to make a call in the neighbourhood. She determined to profit by his absence, and besought Mlle. Moiseney to make ready in haste to accompany her ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... I supposed," resumed the doctor, with the same measured utterance. "You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for scarcely more than a minute. Men trained, strong, clear of brain, were in those stricken lines—men who had seen Indian battle before. The recoil came, swift as had been the surprise. Voice after voice rang out in old familiar orders, steadying instantly the startled nerves; discipline conquered disorder, and the shattered column rolled out, as if by magic, into the semblance of a battle line. On foot and on ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... a movement of recoil. At the first glance, at the first sight of those motionless people, she suspected the danger which her feminine instinct had already foreseen. And, deathly pale, deprived of all her strength, she dared not ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... tell you what I think of you, and I am going to do so. Davis has been reared like a gentleman, and it is but natural that he should recoil from contact with ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... was ill-aimed, at least the recoil was prodigious. It is unreasonable to attribute principally to the violence of the Liberator the new and determined rally of the South in defense of slavery,—Calhoun and his followers had far wider grounds for their action than that,—but undoubtedly that violence ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... words of unmeant bitterness. 665 Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what, if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's most used ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... poem so bespatters the theologian's God with his own mud that we dread the image and recoil. From the unsparing vigor of these lines we turn for relief to "Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "Prospice." In both of these we have glimpses of Mr. Browning's true theology, which is the faith of his whole soul in the excellence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... dimpling streams along, Listening the Shepherd's or the Miner's song; But, when afar they view the giant-cave, On timorous fins they circle on the wave, 115 With streaming eyes and throbbing hearts recoil, Plunge their fair forms, and dive beneath the soil.— Closed round their heads reluctant eddies sink, And wider rings successive dash the brink.— Three thousand steps in sparry clefts they stray, 120 Or seek through ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... him sitting in the fireless book-room with a candle flickering while the wind soughed round the house and in through every chink in the worn walls. His fine grey eyes were deep sunken; when he looked up suddenly there was sometimes a little light of madness in them that made her recoil instinctively; his thick hair was greyish, whitening over the temples; his high Keltic cheekbones were gaunter than ever, his forehead and mouth lined with past rages. He had never held a religion—the Lashcairn religion had been a jumble of superstition, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of what in us is lonely and unique creates of necessity a perpetual series of shocks and jars. The unruffled nerves of the lower animals become enviable, and we fall into moods of malicious reaction and vindictive recoil. And yet,—for Nature makes use even of what is named evil to pursue her cherished ends—the very betrayal of our outraged feelings produces no unpleasant effect upon the minds of others. They know us better so, and the sense of power in ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the mere body—they people the world with more or less incapable, unthinking and foolish creatures like themselves. And supposing these to be born in tens of millions, like ants or flies, they will not carry on the real purpose of man's existence to anything more than that stoppage and recoil which is called Death, but which in reality is only a turning back of the wheels of time when the right road has been lost and it becomes imperative to begin the journey all ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... she went on while he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth. It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth, together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it was to go much further. He would wish to know what ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... preach only of God's grace and mercy or not. From "Philip Melancthon demanded of Luther"—to "yet we must press through, and not suffer ourselves to recoil."] ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Why, at that very moment he is making love—what he calls making love—to the woman of his choice, his wife, his mistress, or his fiancee! These are the men who do the most mischief in the world. Your brute, your beast, your groveller in ditches, is not nearly so dangerous. Women recoil from him. They understand him. But the man who presses their hand awakes them, rouses their susceptibility, causes the tender trouble to steal over them that so often ends in grief, or despair, or death! And this is because neither sex is as yet properly ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... himself grow suddenly cold as he stood and watched her recoil momentarily from his two-edged ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Germany is involved in the slowly threatening war, she need not recoil before the numerical superiority of her enemies. But so far as human nature is able to tell, she can only rely on being successful if she is resolutely determined to break the superiority of her enemies by a victory over one or the other ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... with the roar and recoil of the huge gun the shell burst beside the sinking submarine. The explosion was terrific; the whole hull of the undersea boat heaved up, exposing its length for a few seconds. Then the sea-shark sank, ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... it is an evil—the spectacle of putting a man to death. But this of putting out his eyes is, in act, scarce less revolting, and the spectacle is perpetuated. The public execution lasts his lifetime. There is something, too, from which we recoil in associating what has hitherto been the most pitiful affliction of humanity with the idea of punishment of crime. A blind man walks amongst us the universally commiserated—and good need he has of our commiseration; it would be a sore addition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... converse with Angels, they rely on Magi or Chaldeans, who know only the languages of earth. So it was with the miserable population of Sicca now; half famished, seized with a pestilence which was sure to rage before it assuaged, perplexed and oppressed by the recoil upon them of the population whom they had from time to time sent out into the surrounding territory, or from whom they had supplied their markets, they never fancied that the real cause of the visitation which we have been describing ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... a something rather comical and domestic. But to see a grown man spanked for the crime of attempted murder is horrible. Farallone's fury got the better of him, and the blows resounded in the desert. I grappled his arm, and the recoil of it flung me head over heels. When Farallone had finished, the groom could not stand. He rolled in the sands, moaning ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... hereditary rights of the Sultan against his rebellious subjects; but the Sultan, unlike Ferdinand of Spain, was not a Bourbon nor even a Christian; and in a case where the legitimate prince was an infidel and the rebels were Christians, the conscience of the most pious Legitimist might well recoil from the perilous task of deciding between the divine rights of the Crown and the divine rights of the Church, and choose, in so painful an emergency, the simpler course of gratifying the national love of action. There existed, both among Liberals and among Ultramontanes, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high principle nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part that made him decline. "In my youth," said he to the representative of the railway company, "I was an earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." It was said that he received his proportion of the pool ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... weapon-point they close. They close, in clouds of smoke and dust, With sword-sway, and with lance's thrust; And such a yell was there, Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth, And fiends in upper air; Oh, life and death were in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair. Long looked the anxious squires; their eye Could in the darkness ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... passed the two doors light had shown under. One of them was opening and Nelson saw the shadow of the man who had opened it; then the man. The man saw Nelson at about the same time and stood gaping at him. Without realizing that he had fired, Nelson felt the recoil of the gun; the roar of the beam against the close walls hurt his ears, parts of the wall blistered and buckled, other parts of it charred black, some parts vaporizing in thin patches. The patrolman had flared instantly, never ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... proof of "woman's love," so industriously held forth for the sympathy, if not for the esteem of the audience, consists in this, that, though Bertram had become a robber and a murderer by trade, a ruffian in manners, yea, with form and features at which his own mother could not but "recoil," yet she (Lady Imogine) "the wife of a most noble, honoured Lord," estimable as a man, exemplary and affectionate as a husband, and the fond father of her only child—that she, notwithstanding all this, striking her heart, dares ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... it, the man, with his all too light burden, halted. A flame shot through him as Molly turned her head to gaze too: he shook with a brief agony of jealousy—jealousy of the dead! The next instant he felt her recoil, look up pleadingly and cling to him again, and he knew into the soul of his soul that the words spoken by those loyal lips—now clay beneath that clay—were coming true, that, out of his house laid desolate to him was to rise ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... station. He by the same actions moves a pointer on a duplicate instrument before him and the two are synchronized to give identical indications. Thus a message is spelled out letter by letter on both dials simultaneously. The motions of the index are generally produced by what is virtually a recoil escapement. The scape wheel is carried by the axle of the index, and a pallet or anchor is vibrated by an electro-magnet whose armature is attached to the stem of the pallet. As the pallet is vibrated it turns the wheel and index one tooth for each single movement. There are ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... Mesty followed. They opened the door, and beheld a spectacle which made them recoil with horror. There was Mr Easy, with his head in the machine, the platform below fallen from under him, hanging, with his toes just touching the ground. Dr Middleton hastened to him, and, assisted ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... very peculiar; the lines in his face show an inflexibility, and, I must add, a hardness of character which do not attract. As he stood near me, as he looked at me in his keen way, it was all I could do to stand my ground tranquilly and steadily, and not to recoil as before. It is no use saying anything if I am not candid. I avow then, that on this occasion, predisposed as I was to regard him very favourably, his manners and his personal presence scarcely pleased me more than at the first interview. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... sound of the gun. He liked the way it slapped back against his shoulder when he fired. Somehow it did not seem a part of the dank, steaming Venusian jungle. Probably, he realized with a smile, it was the only old-fashioned recoil rifle on the entire planet. As if anyone else would want to use one of those old bone-cracking relics today! But they all failed to realize it ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser
... child was brave and hardy. So now it was not fear, but the loss of old confidence, a sickness coming over the heart and brain of his love, that unnerved him. It was not the horrid cruelty to his friend, and his own grievous loss thereby, but the recoil of his loving endeavour that, jarring him out of every groove of thought, every socket of habit, every joint of action, cast him from the city, and made of him a wanderer indeed, not a wanderer in a strange country, but a wanderer in ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... who still lay gasping on the ground. The shock of the fall and recoil of the weapon had knocked the breath out of the little man's body; beyond ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... by their temperaments, absurdly and diversely, almost incompatibly young. At two-and-thirty Majendie, through very worldliness, was a boy in his infinite capacity for recoil from trouble. Anne had preserved that crude and cloistral youth which belongs to all lives passed between walls that protect them from the world. At seven-and-twenty she was a girl, with a girl's indestructible innocence. She had not yet felt within her the springs of her own ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... to the imperial lodge, 10 together with all his accomplices; and, under the skilful management of the Chinese nobles in the Emperor's establishment, the murderous artifices of these Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon themselves, and the whole of them perished by assassination at a great imperial 15 banquet. For the Chinese morality is exactly of that kind which approves in everything the ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... tribunals are invested with rights which they are afraid to use, and that the fear of punishing too much hinders them from punishing at all. But in America no one hesitates to inflict a penalty from which humanity does not recoil. To condemn a political opponent to death, in order to deprive him of his power, is to commit what all the world would execrate as a horrible assassination; but to declare that opponent unworthy to exercise that authority, to deprive him of it, and to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... saw it not—only heard the crackle of twigs, and the swishing recoil of the branches, as its huge body ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... they may conceive, and let those who cannot quite reach the exalted beings of the spirit world, worship their parents or children, or conjugal companions,—for worship is but unlimited love,—and they who recoil from humanity may perhaps find something to adore in the beauty and grandeur of nature on this globe, which every summer arrays in beauty, and in the grandeur of stellar worlds. From love and adoration come obedience,—which is the perfect life, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... pocket, firmly resolved, like one of my compatriots, to become, some day, one of the foremost men of our country. The man who has often picked his food from baskets of scraps where the restaurateurs put their refuse, which are emptied at six o'clock every morning—that man is not likely to recoil before any means,—avowable, of course. Well, do you think me the friend of the people?" he said, smiling. "One has to have a speaking-trumpet to reach the ear of Fame; she doesn't listen if you speak with your lips; and without fame of what use is talent? The poor man's advocate means ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... were turned to the great events going forward in France. It had not yet occurred to the Italians that the recoil of these events might be felt among themselves. They were simply amused spectators, roused at last to the significance of the show, but never dreaming that they might soon be called from the wings to the footlights. To de Crucis, however, the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a violent recoil, abandon Mathematics and Philosophy and commit our faith to Music? Music is, above all things, harmonious: Music has the emotion in which Mathematics and Philosophy have been found wanting. Music can be "personal"; Music, since the invention of counterpoint, is capable of harmonies ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and jailor; and then skirting those horrid earthen balze which are so common and so unattractive a feature of Apennine scenery. The most hideous balze to be found in the length and breadth of Italy are probably those of Volterra, from which the citizens themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which lure melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide. For ever crumbling, altering with frost and rain, discharging gloomy glaciers of slow-crawling mud, and scarring the hillside with tracts of barrenness, these ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... call him back after the War; that all resistance on the part of the people will result in the abolition of the dynasty and the establishment of a Republic under Venizelos; that the Allies would not recoil from a bombardment of the capital and a military occupation; but if the people keep quiet, there will be no military occupation of Athens, only some soldiers may land at the Piraeus to stretch ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... enthusiasm of women at the South in aid of the Slave-holders' Rebellion, and can form some estimate of the "fierceness of their wrath"; but, God be thanked, the days approach when their mad passions will recoil upon themselves—the days approach when their evil cause must die. Let us unitedly pledge ourselves to stand by the Government, in our legitimate sphere, and out of it, if needs be. Let us, with womanly zeal, help to crush the power of its iniquitous assailants, remembering ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... firmness; but wherever he turned his eyes, they were blasted with some object which made them recoil; he beheld his companions and his soldiers strewing the earth, and their triumphant adversaries mounting their dying bodies, as they hastened with loud huzzas to the destruction of Praga, whose ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... wasted. One republican column assumed and merited the name of the Infernal, by the horrid atrocities which they committed. At Pilau, they roasted the women and children in a heated oven. Many similar horrors could be added, did not the heart and hand recoil from the task. Without quoting any more special instances of horror, we use the words of a republican eye witness, to express the general spectacle presented by ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... when Mr Shanklin alluded to his blunders, and he scowled all the more viciously now because he felt that, after all, he could do little against his two patrons which would not recoil with twofold violence on his own head. No, he had better confine his reprisals to the Crudens by Mr Shuckleford's assistance, and meanwhile make what he could ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the overhanging willows, so grown upon with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of rats, so advertised a storehouse of rheumatic agonies, that the heart of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the abhorred ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... domestic circle, whose members, all adorned by refinement and literature, were many of them, like himself, distinguished by genius. Yet active life was the genuine soil for his virtues; and he sometimes suffered tedium from the monotonous succession of events in our retirement. Pride made him recoil from complaint; and gratitude and affection to Perdita, generally acted as an opiate to all desire, save that of meriting her love. We all observed the visitation of these feelings, and none regretted them so ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... aimed in this fashion at one of my yaks peacefully grazing some thirty yards off. While everybody watched anxiously to see the results of this marksman's shooting, he pulled the trigger; the rifle went off with an extra loud report, and behold! the muzzle of the Martini burst and the violent recoil gave the Lama a fearful blow in the face. The rifle, flying out of his hands, described a somersault in the air, and the Lama fell backwards to the ground, where he remained spread out flat, bleeding all over, and screaming like a child. His nose was squashed; one ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very name they continue to be called at home, those of the hundred band: thus what was at first no more than a number, becomes thenceforth a title and distinction of honour. In arraying their army, they divide the whole into distinct battalions formed sharp in front. To recoil in battle, provided you return again to the attack, passes with them rather for policy than fear. Even when the combat is no more than doubtful, they bear away the bodies of their slain. The most glaring disgrace that ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... been coldly received—no more than a cheer of encouragement from his immediate friends. As he made his points the applause grew. When he finished one half of the audience burst into a storm of cheers; the other was thunderstruck by the sacrilegious recoil of the Bishop's weapon upon his own head: a lady fainted, and had to be carried out. As soon as calm was restored Hooker leapt to his feet, though he hated public speaking yet more than his friend, and drove home the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... his imagination alight; his own recoil from the conjunction, overborne by immediate concern for Dyan. Unable to forget her—who could?—he had thrust the pain of remembering into the dark background of his mind; and there it remained—a hard knot of soreness and bitterness—as Aruna had said. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the loathing of satiety; whether the passenger in railway carriages, continually offered Somebody's oats, inks, washing blue, candles, and soap, apparently as a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there and thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or recoil from that particular quality. Or, as an unbiased observer, he wondered if, on the other hand, impressible passengers, after passing three or four stations, had ever leaped from the train and refused to proceed further ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... He knew that his friend was no coward, but flight was a cowardly act. Then, there was Pauline to consider—an all-powerful argument. All his life had been consecrated to her—let it be consecrated to the end. He had made many sacrifices in her behalf—he should not recoil before this greatest sacrifice. The dear child might acquiesce, but it would cause her many a secret tear, and such as she were too good to be made unhappy. Besides, M. Belmont should think of his compatriots. He was their foremost man. If he fled, they would all be put under the ban. ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... ribs have been raised by inspiration and the abdominal organs pressed down by the diaphragm, the chest, on the cessation of the act, tends to resume its former shape, owing to elastic recoil quite apart from all muscular action; in other words, inspiration is active, expiration largely passive. With the voice-user, especially the singer, expiration becomes the more important, and the more difficult to control, as will ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... talk to him quietly. She talked abut herself, and he knew that she did this not because of egoism, but because delicately she wished to give him a full opportunity for recovery. She had seen just where he was, and she had understood his recoil from the abyss. Now she wished, perhaps, to help him to draw back farther from it, to draw back so far that he would no longer see it ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the fatal charm which, contrary to every instinct of my nature, held me in a bondage that more than all things else must make any investigation into this mystery a danger and a pain from which any woman might well recoil, even though she bore in her heart memories of a past ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... or scandal is so common every where in life, that multitudes are addicted to it without the shadow of a suspicion that they are so. Thousands and thousands of young women whose hearts would recoil at the bare recital of deeds of butchery and blood—nay, who would faint at the sight of the severities, not to say cruelties, which, under the guise of parental discipline, or on the plea of authority, are ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... hide themselves in the most terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon, French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain and throws himself over with the recoil, exactly like a clown. But at last (while I was in town) he aims at the more amiable cat of the two, and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably elated by this victory, he is now engaged from morning to night in hiding behind bushes to get aim at the other. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... are nearly all agreed that in the forest life which was man's originally, fear had its specific marked advantages. Open spaces, dark caverns, loud noises were undoubtedly associated very frequently with danger to the primitive savage, and an instinctive recoil from these centers of disaster was undoubtedly of survival value. But there is an increasing tendency to discount the utility of fear in civilized life. "Many of the manifestations of fear must be regarded as pathological, rather than useful.... A certain amount ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... the body, which was somewhat more advanced than the wings, placed the worst and the weakest of his army. He commanded those in the wings, that, when the enemy had made a thorough charge upon that middle advanced body, which he knew would recoil, as not being able to withstand their shock, and when the Romans, in their pursuit, should be far enough engaged within the two wings, they should, both on the right and the left, charge them in the flank, and endeavor to encompass them. This appears to have been the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Hector's parents implore him to seek refuge within the walls, but the young man is too brave to accept such a proposal. Still, when he sees the fire in Achilles' eyes, he cannot resist an involuntary recoil, and turning, flees, with Achilles in close pursuit, hurling ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of the rear sight, and the left elbow should be almost directly under the rifle. The right hand should do more than half the work of holding the rifle up and against the shoulder, the left hand only steadying and guiding the piece. Do not try to meet the recoil; let the whole body move back with it. Do not be afraid to press the jaw hard against the stock; this steadies the position, and the head goes back with the recoil and insures that your ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in upon her like a flood: what if, after all, God were the self-loving being theology presented—a being from whom no loving human heart could but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature specially evil that she could not accept the God in whom the priests and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... relieve you of your watch a short time," said Arthur; and the woman left the room. He led Helen to the bedside, and turning back the sheet, exposed the venerable features composed into everlasting repose. Helen did not recoil or tremble as she gazed. She even hushed her sobs, as if fearing to ruffle the inexpressible placidity of that dreamless rest. Every trace of harshness was removed from the countenance, and a serene melancholy reigned in its stead. A smile far more gentle than she ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... The instinct of recoil came stronger now. He stepped back with folded arms, saying again, 'God help me! God forbid that I should ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and wretched. If only she could do something! She told herself, with a sensation of recoil and revolt, that she could never face another day of suspense and waiting spent as had been the whole of yesterday ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes |
