"Wincing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shifts seat, shirks touch, As, with a twitchy brow and wincing lip, And cheek that changes to all kinds of white, He proffers his defence, in tones subdued Near to mock-mildness now, so mournful seems The obtuser sense truth fails to satisfy; Now, moved, from pathos at the wrong endured, To passion.... Also his ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... its means of action. Koloman Tisza concluded with the monarch a tacit pact under which the Magyar Government was to be left free to deal as it pleased with the non-Magyars as long as it supplied without wincing the recruits and the money required for the joint army. The Magyar Parliament became almost exclusively representative of the Magyar minority of the people. Out of the 413 constituencies of Hungary proper more than 400 were compelled, by pressure, bribery, and gerrymandering, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... look queer like Saxy's Pilgrim's Progress picture book. Then the panic for home and his business came upon him and he slid weakly down the shallow white steps, and crunched his white feet on the gravel wincing. He had just taken to the grass at the edge and was managing better than he had hoped when a neat little coupe rounded the curve of the drive, and his favorite doctor came swinging up to the steps, eyeing him keenly. Billy started to run, and fell in a crumpled heap, white and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... was wily, he was patient. He could bide his time and secure his chance, and when it came to that, that he had to yield, of to humble himself, to meet loss, or to dispense beyond what was pleasing to a man who took reasonable satisfaction in getting and in holding, he could yet do it without wincing visibly. He was fortunate in being in the hands of two good women, his mother and his wife, who knew him well, and loved him well, and who were jealous for his honour before men, and for his singleness of heart ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... doun's," the other said, wincing a little under the old man's indifference. Braile relented so far as to ask, "Who was ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... was taking in Miss Merivale's tone and words and meaning with a wincing suspicious glance. I was being initiated, and the sensation was so utterly different from anything I had ever experienced before, that my self-control suffered a momentary suspension, when words came to me I used them with ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... addressed as "sir." I paid, pocketed my threepence change, and in the elation of it offered Miss Plinlimmon my arm. We walked down George Street, past the work-box in the window. I managed to pass without wincing, though desperately afraid that the shopman might pop out—it seemed but natural he should be lying in wait—and ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said Lavender, wincing under the rebuke, but fancying that she would soon repent her of this resolve. In the mean time, if she would have it so, she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... two prows, wincing under his fire, were edging for the shore. With that reckless resolution, therefore, to which all true heroes give way at times—not excepting Nelson himself—he resolved to ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... sort of religious dance, in which the young braves test their fortitude and stoicism in resisting pain and torture without wincing. A young officer, who witnessed the "Sun Dance" last year, at the Cheyenne agency, a few miles above Fort Sully, on the Missouri River, gives the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... won't," replied Dick, accepting the hand of the friendly teller in his one good palm, and yet wincing with ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... dwindled, poor old Richards keeping tally of the count, wincing when a name resembling his own was pronounced, and waiting in miserable suspense for the time to come when it would be his humiliating privilege to rise with Mary and finish his plea, which he was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one who is disposed to regard it with favour,—instead of idly, (as is the way with nine-tenths of mankind,) repeating the formula in terms more or less vague and indefinite; and straightway wincing, falling back on generalities, and in a word shirking the point, the instant it is proposed to bring the question to a definite issue;—if a favourer of the present theory I say, instead of so acting, would take up a copy of the New ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... my message." Val stretched his leg cautiously. The cramp was slowly leaving the muscles and he felt as if he could stand the remaining ache without wincing. "I sent Sam Two back to tell Rupert where his family had eloped to. Frankly, Ricky, this wasn't such a smart trick. You know what Charity said about the swamps. Even the little I've seen of them has ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... little as possible about it, mother, please," said Maud softly. She pressed her lips together, wincing with pain, and Mrs Rendell's eyes flashed a look ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... remember that I did not believe you. Now I know it. He has the sort of pluck which enables a man to break a girl's heart,—or to destroy a girl's hopes,—without wincing. He can tell a girl to her face that she can go to the—mischief for him. There are so many men who can't do that, from cowardice, though their hearts be ever so well inclined. 'I have changed my mind.' There is something ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... I said, wincing. "But as for Theobald, never fret about that, Gran. We were only brother and sister, too close to ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... was full of wonder at the beast. Commonly it tired his arm worse with thrashing it during his hour's ride, than the exercise of his goose and sleeve-board did for a whole day; but now he was fain to pull it in. It was to no purpose; faster than ever it dashed on, prancing, running sideways, wincing, and beginning to show a most ugly temper. What, in the name of all Balaams, could possess the animal, he could not for his life conceive! The only chance of safety appeared to lie in clinging with both arms and legs to it, like a boa-constrictor ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of sensitiveness] Excitability — N. excitability, impetuosity, vehemence; boisterousness &c adj.; turbulence; impatience, intolerance, nonendurance^; irritability &c (irascibility) 901; itching &c (desire) 865; wincing; disquiet, disquietude; restlessness; fidgets, fidgetiness; agitation &c (irregular motion) 315. trepidation, perturbation, ruffle, hurry, fuss, flurry; fluster, flutter; pother, stew, ferment; whirl; buck fever; hurry-skurry^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... quite forgave my word silvern. Yet, he professed not to have prejudices in such matters, but to use any word that would serve his turn, without wincing; and he certainly did use and defend words, as undisprivacied and disnatured, that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beating while I listened, for what man hears his honor smirched without wincing? Even so I think I would have held my tongue, only that Gooja Singh, who dozed in a niche on the other side of the funk-hole entrance, heard the same ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... cake of baked fish upon the point of it, thrust it towards the wardsman's mouth. Any ordinary man would have been afraid to accept the morsel so roughly offered; but Chobei simply opened his mouth, and taking the cake off the sword's point ate it without wincing. Whilst Jiurozayemon was wondering in his heart what manner of man this was, that nothing could daunt, Chobei ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... with very bad grace, wincing, when she added, "And give my dearest love to Cecile!" As he disappeared in the rue d'Assas, the girl turned as if to go, but then suddenly remembering Hastings, looked at him ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... and, she scarcely wincing, injected the last drop of my morphia: yes, Roddy, and kissed the spot like any poor fool, she not resisting! . . . Her last words were that I should lay the guitar back again on her lap. . . . ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... still eyes ever on my hands, With eyes that seemed to burn my hands, My wincing, overwearied hands, She watched, with bloodless lips apart, And silent, indrawn breath: And every stroke my chisel cut, Death cut still deeper in her heart: The two of us were ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... always been charming; there could be no doubt about that, whatever else you might come to think about him. Able, too, but living on his nerves, wincing like a high-strung horse from the annoyances and disappointments of life, such as Quaker oats because the grape-nuts had come to an end, and the industrial news of the morning, which was as bad as ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... wincing imperceptibly. "Oh! that was the Paymaster's old notion. Once I almost fell in with it, and as odd a thing as you could imagine put an end to the scheme. Do you know what it was?" He glanced at ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... wonderful thing in the world that you and I have met?' said Cadurcis. 'Now I look upon ourselves as something like, eh! Fellows with some pith in them. By Jove, if we only joined together, how we could lay it on! Crack, crack, crack; I think I see them wincing under the thong, the pompous poltroons! If you only knew how they behaved to me! By Jove, sir, they hooted me going to the House of Lords, and nearly pulled me off my horse. The ruffians would have massacred me if they could; and then ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he still owed him, and he recalled the words in which he had begged him to wait another year, and the look of perplexity and resignation which had appeared on the tailor's face. 'Oh, my God, my God!' he repeated, wincing and trying to drive away the intolerable thought. 'All the same and in spite of everything she loved me,' thought he of the girl they had talked about at the farewell supper. 'Yes, had I married her I should not now be owing anything, and as it is I am in debt ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... unblinking, he sprang and sprang again. Neither did he growl when he attacked nor yelp when he was kicked. Fear of the blow was not in him. As Tom Haggin had so often bragged of Biddy and Terrence, they bred true in Jerry and Michael in the matter of not wincing at a blow. Always—they were so made—they sprang to meet the blow and to encounter the creature who delivered the blow. With a silence that was invested with the seriousness of death, they were wont to attack and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... care and earnest thoughtfulness than she had used in preparing to receive Gerard to-night. This was no time for coquetry; as he came for her, she would go to him, she knew, without evasion or pretense to harass his weakness. She shrank, wincing sensitively, from this rough criticism, but every member of the family had learned not to reply to the new ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... wincing a little at the name, as a horse with a sore back winces at the touch of the saddle, "it wasn't about the sheep that I was going to speak to you. I want you ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... didn't," said Bingley, wincing with the pain, as Joel slowly drew him to his feet; "it wasn't your stinger of a blow, Pepper, but some of those dastardly cads stepped all over me; I could feel them hoofing me. There, set me in that chair, and I'll draw a long ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... there to be astonished at in such an intention?" said the Marchese, evidently wincing under the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... little touched by the meekness with which the elder lady bore her persecutions. Fanny loved to torture her in her husband's presence (who, poor fellow, was also in happy ignorance about his wife's early history), and the other bore her agony, wincing as little as might be. I sometimes would remonstrate with Madam Harry, and ask her was she a Red Indian, that she tortured her victims so? "Have not I had torture enough in my time?" says the young lady, and looked as though she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hurry,' said Claire, clenching her fists as two simultaneous bursts of song, in different keys and varying tempos, proceeded from the dining-room and kitchen. A girl has to be in a sunnier mood than she was to bear up without wincing under the infliction of a duet consisting of the Rock of Ages and Waiting for the Robert E. Lee. Assuredly Claire proposed to hurry. She meant to get her packing done in record time and escape from this place. She went into her bedroom and began to throw ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... talking of," she replied wincing, but forgiving me again. "If I once thought that, it was pretty to me while it lasted and it lasted but a little time. I have long been sure that your kindness to me was due to some ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... closely every rift and crevice in the boundary cliff, it was a most tedious undertaking; and I do remember how my great trooper boots, sun-drying on my feet, made every step a wincing agony. They say an army goes upon its belly, but an old campaigner will tell you that you can march a soldier till he be too thin to cast a shadow if only he hath ease of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... other, evidently wincing under these questions; 'No; there was a man with him, nigh about my size. He went with him. That's all I know about either of them. There, there; get through with your questions. They turn my head,' said he, in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... pause, without haste, the endless labor of the day went on as quiet as a summer cloud. Meeting or overtaking, coolies passed in single file, their bare feet slapping the enormous flags of antique, sunken granite, their twin baskets bobbing and creaking to the rhythm of their wincing trot. The yellow muscles rippled strongly over straining ribs, as with serious faces, and slant eyes intent on their path, they chanted in pairs the ageless refrain, the call and answer which ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... for Price. It sounds easy; but poke around with our poles as wildly or as scientifically as we might, the raft would not budge. The noonday sun was blazing right overhead and the muddy water running all over slippered feet and dainty dresses. How long we staid praying for rescue, yet wincing already at the laugh that would come with it, I shall never know. It seemed like a day before the welcome boat and the "Ha, ha!" of H. and Max were heard. The confinement tells severely on all the animal life about us. Half the chickens are dead and ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... in attending to the sick has proved beneficial to me, for they make me speak the language perpetually, and if I were inclined to be lazy in learning it, they would prevent me indulging the propensity. And they are excellent patients, too, besides. There is no wincing; everything prescribed is done instanter. Their only failing is that they become tired of a long course. But in any operation, even the women sit unmoved. I have been quite astonished again and again at their calmness. In cutting out a tumor, an inch in diameter, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... truth," replied the man, wincing as Paul deliberately cut away the dead flesh. "We know now why it is that we are all ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... English wine-merchants add brandy to a good many foreign wines, or they would be quite unacceptable from being deficient in combustible. It is for the same reason, also, that Russians can swallow, without wincing, bumpers of brandy which would kill a Provencal outright: and that the Swedish Government has no end of trouble to keep the country people from converting into brandy the corn that ought to go to the miller; whilst the Mohammedan ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... was heart-breaking work. The horses suffered most; the extreme toil, and scant pasturage weakened them so that some died from exhaustion; others fell over precipices and the magpies proved evil foes, picking the sore backs of the wincing, saddle-galled beasts. In striving to find some pass for the horses the whole party was more than once strung out in detachments miles apart, through the mountains. Early in January, near the site of the present Canyon City, Pike found a valley where deer were plentiful. Here ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... who could look upon that man's face without wincing. In early scalping-days it had been slashed on one side with a scalping-knife in such a way that the left eye was totally destroyed, and a livid scar ran from the eyebrow to the neck—drawing the flesh into creases ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... flow of his eloquence ceased; his mouth remained open but no sound came from it. Suddenly his staring eyes puckered and closed, wincing as from a blow; and his face flushed to a fiery red, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... wincing as the movement of the facial muscles gave him a thrill of pain. It was evident, he reasoned, that the Birwas had mistaken him for an officer ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... of his way until the first burst of indignation against him had subsided, and after a time began to address Eric as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile he had completely regained his ascendancy over the lower part of the school, which was not difficult, because they were wincing under Montagu's contempt, and mingled no little dislike with it; a dislike which all are too apt to feel towards those whose very presence and moral superiority are a tacit rebuke of their own failings. But while Montagu was hated, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... are very cruel to animals, practise the most barbarous experiments on a captive fox without being able to rouse it into exhibiting any sign of life. This has greatly puzzled me, since, if death-feigning is simply a cunning habit, the animal could not suffer itself to be mutilated without wincing. I can only believe that the fox, though not insensible, as its behaviour on being left to itself appears to prove, yet has its body thrown by extreme terror into that benumbed condition which simulates death, and during which it is unable to feel ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... suppose there's a word of truth in what he says? I don't mean about Charlton or—or poor Holdaway," said Pocket, wincing over his victim's name, which he had just gleaned from the paper. "But do you think the police ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... that the dog had threatened him, but at this instant he would have let himself be torn by him without wincing, so completely was he overmastered by the fury ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the impetus of his swoop and by the advantage and weight of a man. He dropped headlong—dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him—to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Below he saw the Croyden hills. He jerked upward and once more ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... me to keep my fingers off the weak, and to clench my fist against the strong—to carry no tales out of school—to stand forth like a true man—obey the stern order of a PANDE MANUM, and endure my pawmies without wincing, like one that is determined not to be the better for them. In a word, before I knew thee, I ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... wanting to have something done with it, which proved to be tying it around his leg. Meanwhile one of the horses behaved badly, whereupon the teacher said, "I see you are booked for a whipping," and the culprit came out in the floor, straightened himself, and received without wincing what seemed to be a severe whipping; but in reality it was all done with a soft cotton snapper, which made more sound than ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... himself wincing a little. The driver was not angry. He was hopeless. But men should not despair. They shouldn't accept hostility from those about them as a device ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... evident that Mr Wentworth, even were he perfectly cleared of every imputation, having himself nothing to live upon, could scarcely offer to share his poverty with poor Mr Wodehouse's cherished pet and darling. "I daresay she has been used to live expensively," Mr Proctor said to himself, wincing a little in his own mind at the thought. It was about one o'clock when he reached the green door—an hour at which, during the few months of his incumbency at Carlingford, he had often presented himself at that hospitable ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... what they are doing and how they are doing it. He was talking about you a little while ago, and so admiringly. It brought the tears to my eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, that our friendship has always been so much on the surface, so 'void of offence'—is that the phrase? I can look at it without wincing; and I am glad. It never was a thing of importance to you, for I am not important, and there was no weight of life in it or in me. But even the butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in your ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the big brute, I obeying without wincing after the first stroke; and so he went on, flaying my poor hands until he had given me six "pandies," as the boys called the infliction, on each, by which time both of my palms were as raw as a piece of ordinary beefsteak, and, I'm certain, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is deep and silent sorrow, hers is frequent allusions. Doubtless her way jars upon you; but, Ned, you are younger than she, and it is easier for you to change. Why not try and accept her method as being a part of her, and try, instead of wincing every time that she touches the sore, to accustom yourself to it. It may be hard at first, but it will be far easier ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... the first time he had heard her voice, and he started at the sound, wincing as, with one quick, furtive glance, he met her ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... Mr. Barradine, although still wincing, had recovered composure, and what he said now appeared to be an implied excuse for the sharpness of his protest. "When you get to my time of life, you'll ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... returned, wincing under her cruel thrust, but persistent, "but we are not discussing me ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... three. For half an hour Babbitt sat looking at a calendar and a clock on a whitewashed wall. The chair was hard and mean and creaky. People went through the office and, he thought, stared at him. He felt a belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... of you to survive here." The commander wiped at his swollen lips, wincing, and an almost child-like petulance came into his tone. "You weren't ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... legs is unhappy because he has not three; so why should a man with one be unhappy because he has not two? But infirmities of mind and temper are quite another matter. If one of us has no self-control, or is too weak to bear the strain of our truthful life without wincing, or is tormented by depraved appetites and superstitions, or is unable to keep free from pain and depression, he naturally becomes discouraged, and refuses ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... commanded, sharply, wincing nevertheless under the sick scorn in her voice and words. "You have no right to say that. I am not a spy. Or if I am, then every police officer and every detective and every cross-examining lawyer is a spy! ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... where Rattray must have set them, on an oak stool beside the bed; as he spoke he crossed the room, filled the glass till the spirit dripped, and drained it at a gulp. He was twitching and wincing still when he turned, walked up to Joaquin Santos, and pointed to where I stood with a ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... over, Mr. Grimshaw rose and bade me follow him. A door opened, and I stood in the blaze of forty-two pairs of upturned eyes. I was a cool hand for my age, but I lacked the boldness to face this battery without wincing. In a sort of dazed way I stumbled after Mr. Grimshaw down a narrow aisle between two rows of desks, and shyly took the seat ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Irony couldn't have devised a more intolerable situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... came for Mary to take her departure, and Hal got up, wincing with pain, to escort her home. She regarded him gravely, having not realised before how seriously he was suffering. As they walked along she asked, "Why do ye do such work, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... showing pleasure in anything. "It wasn't bad," is about the highest expression of our praise; and I doubt if we would accord more to heaven—if we got there. The grand test of your modern Englishman is, to bear any amount of amusement without wincing: no pleasure is to wring a smile from him, nor is any expectancy to interest, or any unlooked-for event to astonish. He would admit that "the Governor"—meaning his father—was surprised; he would concede the fact, as recording some prejudice of a bygone ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... there was something to show for it; all those who passed through his hands when they subsequently fell into the clutches of the Law could endure as many as five-and-twenty strokes from the hardest bludgeon without so much as wincing. They had been case hardened by their ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... terror rose a little to the volume of his silence. His head was so square. She wanted him to rage and she to hurl herself against his storm. Her whole being wanted a lashing. She could pinch herself to the capacity of her strength without wincing. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... away steadily, giving his books to the world, accepting the comforts and discomforts of an author's life, laughing at the outrageous reports that were in circulation about him, yet occasionally, I think, inwardly wincing at them, and learning from the number of begging letters which he received, and into which he usually caused searching inquiry to be made, that there are in the world a vast number ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... energy. The desolation which met our eyes on every side, no less than the death-like stillness which prevailed, even the birds, as it seemed to us, being silent, chilled the most reckless to the heart. Maignan's face lost its colour, his voice its ring. As for the rest, starting at a sound and wincing if a leather galled them, they glanced backwards twice for once they looked forwards, and held themselves ready to take to their heels and be ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... looked the emperor full in the face, and bore the scrutiny of his searching eyes without wincing. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... men in oilskin clothes and by women with shawls over their heads. Aunt Jane, who always felt responsible for whatever went on in the elements, sat in-doors with one lid closed, wincing at every flash, and watching the universe with the air of a coachman ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... incomprehensible fourth hypothesis, big with the terrors of the mystic infinite, rose up before his disturbed mind, like a grim and hollow ghost. After a few seconds, however, he looked at it straight in the face without wincing. His companions showed themselves just as firm. Whether it was science that emboldened Barbican, his phlegmatic stoicism that propped up the Captain, or his enthusiastic vivacity that cheered the irrepressible Ardan, I cannot exactly ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... strode Alcibiade Tourniquet, jeweller and native of Argenteuil, the best fellow in the world: but one who would persist in marching in a pair of Parisian boots with high, tapering heels, bearing the pain they gave with little wincing. For him the ground we trod was classical, for we were in the neighbourhood of Austerlitz. Immediately in his rear swaggered the Austrian, with swarthy features and black straggling locks, swaddled and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... was afraid as though Fear's very self had laid hold of his soul by the heels and would not let it go until its vision of itself was absolute. He was afraid with a great fear such as he had never dreamed to know; who knew well the wincing of the flesh from risk of pain, the shuddering of the spirit in the shadow of death, and horror such as had gripped him that morning in poor ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... among his kind," observed the guest satirically, wincing as an unusual bang overhead shook the ceiling. "But I'll warrant my man won't have to open my luggage after ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... "Indeed," said Gertrude, wincing as all the hard things Trefusis had told her of herself came into her mind at the heels of Erskine's unfortunate allusion to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She had a first lesson in shooting, in keeping her eyes open, not wincing, understanding that the bead at the end of the barrel really had something to do with pointing the gun. She was radiant; she almost believed Sam when he insisted that it was she who had shot the mallard at which ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... soldierly fellow, with close-cropped fair curly hair and a fair moustache, and frank blue eyes that, even in Parliament, had seen no harm in his fellow-creatures. Aristide's magical vision caught him wincing ever so little at Mr. Smith's effusive greeting and overdone introductions. He shook Aristide warmly ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... and Jones, who likes popularity, grieves at the unfortunate publicity. But Jones is relieved from a burden which would have broken his poor shoulders, and which even Ferdinand Lopez, who is a strong man, often finds it hard to bear without wincing. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... said Adam, with a sudden grasp on her wrist. "My God! one must go first; and I could naither leave you nor close these eyes of yours." He put his other hand across his eyelids, his lower features wincing. "Sweetheart," said Adam, removing it, and taking her head between his palms, "for what we have already received the Lord make us duly thankful. And shut up about the rest. And there's grace said for dinner: excepting I didn't uncover ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... when the sittings are over, and you behold yourself hanging on your own wall, looking as it you could direct kingdoms or lead armies, you feel grateful to the artist. He ministers to your self-love, and you pay him his hire without wincing. Your heart warms towards him as it would towards a poet who addresses you in an ode of panegyric, the kindling terms of which—a little astonishing to your friends—you believe in your heart of hearts to be the simple truth, and, in the matter of expression, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Wincing at the words, which slipped out unconsciously as the conductor thought of what might have happened to the boy, Bob hastened to defend the ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... forever laughing, when he was not crying under that cruel rod. Sometimes he would not cry; but when he was caught in one of his frequent offences and called up before the teacher's desk in the face of the whole school, and whipped over his thinly jacketed shoulders, he would take it without wincing, and go smiling to his seat, and perhaps be called back and whipped more for smiling. He was a sort of hero with the boys on this account, but he was too kind-hearted to be proud, and mingled with the rest on ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... thus dissected, put together, and dissected again, has not been able to restrain some wincing and an occasional outcry, when the scalpel has been held by a more than usually unskilful hand—demonstrations of sensibility which have occasioned apparently as much disapprobation as surprise in the anatomists. We flatter ourselves that there is peculiar fitness in the metaphor just used, for ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... childishness of my own conduct, and the superior manliness of Miss Vernon's, and assured her, that she need not fear my wincing under criticism which I knew ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Hola he, my friend, did your sore bother you on the leg, that you have transferred it to your arm?" So saying, with the dexterity of a monkey, he flung a bit of silver into the gray felt hat which the beggar held in his ailing arm. The mendicant received both the alms and the sarcasm without wincing, and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... wincing with pain, and he spoke jerkily; but the doctor was still angry. He felt that there was something between these two which he did not understand, and it was strange to him, and unpleasant, to find Grizel unable to speak for herself. I think he doubted Tommy from ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... the other returned, with conciliatory eagerness; "I knows that—I knows it and I ain't shirking. But, Master Harry, they ain't doing me right 'bout my cabin—I just wants to show you." He got out some dirty papers, and started to hobble forward, wincing with pain. Mary Taylor stirred in her seat under an involuntary impulse to help, but ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... struggling. He still held her by the wing, and they lay on the ground and looked at each other. He tried to growl threateningly, ferociously. She pecked on his nose, which by now, what of previous adventures was sore. He winced but held on. She pecked him again and again. From wincing he went to whimpering. He tried to back away from her, oblivious to the fact that by his hold on her he dragged her after him. A rain of pecks fell on his ill-used nose. The flood of fight ebbed down in him, and, releasing his prey, he turned ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... to a man when wincing under an attack of this kind. "Never mind, sir," said he to Goldsmith, when he saw that he felt the sting. "A man whose business it is to be talked of is much helped by being attacked. Fame, sir, is a shuttlecock; if it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... her head in token that she understood, then turned away too crushed to utter a word. Jervis Ferrars went back to the sickroom, wincing at the pain he had been compelled to inflict as if the blow had fallen on himself. There were no tears in Katherine's eyes, only the terrible black misery in her heart. She had filled in all the blanks in what, the Englishman had said, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... wincing as the eyes opened and stared stupidly at the ring of anxious faces. "How do ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... morning light, while the birds began to sing, and the sheep tried to find food on the dewy ground, George Dawe tied a cloth tightly across my naked chest, and I could not help wincing at the pain. Just as he was finishing, Jacob Buddle got slowly up from the ground. He had been badly stunned, but no ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... tempting mark. He soon saw what we were up to, fled to the stable, and climbed to the top of the hay manger. He was still within range, however, and we kept the stones flying faster and faster, but he just blinked and played possum without wincing either at our best shots or at the noise we made. I happened to strike him pretty hard with a good-sized pebble, but he still blinked and sat still as if without feeling. "He must be mortally wounded," I said, "and now we must kill him to put him out of pain," the savage in ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... Lucy, wincing at the word. "I see now why you wanted me to tell Cecil, and what you meant by 'some other source.' You knew that you had told Miss Lavish, and that she was ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... Mr. John Burns, the more does it seem to this stalwart optimist that the working class is honoured. He arrays himself in court dress at the palaces of kings, receives honorary degrees at Universities, and is kept before the public by the newspaper paragraphist, without wincing or pretending to dislike it. Why should the workman not be esteemed by kings and universities? Mr. Burns asks. So great is his self-respect that the respect of others is taken as a matter of course. Much of the criticism that ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... out of breath with her exertions, complied. Squeers caught the boy firmly in his grip; one desperate cut had fallen on his body—he was wincing from the lash and uttering a scream of pain—it was raised again, and again about to fall—when Nicholas Nickleby, suddenly starting up, cried 'Stop!' in a voice that made the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... "Yes," Walter spoke, wincing at his father's use of the word. "I wish you would not say 'gambling' father. It was a friendly wager. It is the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... my keen relish for all creature comforts, and also on my power of doing without them, if need be. My lord's woods are ample, and I indulge myself with a fire in my bedroom for nine months in the year; yet I could travel in Iceland without wincing from the cold.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a thing?" answered the man, wincing again. "You speak of something that is an abomination, that would stink in a decent man's nostrils. And—and you speak of shame! Do you think such a word could express all that a man would be overwhelmed with if he had done such a thing? Great Heavens! Miss ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... settling, the , that document being the common property of , and more especially as three-fourths at least of the cash realized is understood to belong to the men. , however, <is not the practice>; and hence the fishermen, naturally jealous, and still wincing under the scars of former years, are never satisfied; and I consider the curer in acting thus is reprehensible, and the fishermen justified in complaining, even when the curer is a sufferer. Were it made penal on the part of the curer to treat the bargain so, there would be less injustice ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... intellectual type, quick, ironical, sentimental, and on his knees before the woman he adored but did not want to marry. Maurice Pervin was different. He came of a good old country family—the Grange was not a very great distance from Oxford. He was passionate, sensitive, perhaps over-sensitive, wincing—a big fellow with heavy limbs and a forehead that flushed painfully. For his mind was slow, as if drugged by the strong provincial blood that beat in his veins. He was very sensitive to his own mental slowness, his feelings being quick and acute. So that ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... faces that we meet by thousands, even among the affluent classes of civilization, testify only too clearly how seldom this mastery is obtained. How rare indeed to meet a man! How common rather to discover a creature hounded on by tyrant thoughts (or cares or desires), cowering, wincing under the lash—or perchance priding himself to run merrily in obedience to a driver that rattles the reins and persuades him that he is free—whom we cannot converse with in careless tete-a-tete because that alien presence is always there, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... picked up the part of the wall where there isn't any wall in sight just now," said Tom, wincing over his own bull. "Hazelton ought to be just this side ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... agreeable situation in Bath, especially the upper side of it; but the avenues to it are mean, dirty, dangerous, and indirect. Its communication with the Baths, is through the yard of an inn, where the poor trembling valetudinarian is carried in a chair, betwixt the heels of a double row of horses, wincing under the curry-combs of grooms and postilions, over and above the hazard of being obstructed, or overturned by the carriages which are continually making their exit or their entrance — I suppose after some chairmen shall have been maimed, and a ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... poor broken-down, nervous wretch, in his worn black garments, with his watery eyes, his honest old outspoken wig, his miserable mohair stock, and his false teeth that were incapable of deceiving anybody—there he sat, politely ill at ease; now shrinking in the glare of the lamp, now wincing under the shock of Allan's sturdy voice; a man with the wrinkles of sixty years in his face, and the manners of a child in the presence of strangers; an object of pity surely, if ever there ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... skittles sally along with a new play on its try-out in the one-night circuit. When one sees the delightful humour, fortitude, and high spirits with which the players face their task he gains a new respect for the profession. It is with a sense of shame that the wincing author hears his lines repeated night after night—lines that seem to him to have grown so stale and disreputably stupid, and which the ingenuity of the players contrives to instill with life. With a sense of shame indeed does he reflect that because one day long ago he was struck with ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... agreed to forget all that, Mater," he said, wincing slightly. "Anyway, if I don't turn out a better Tommy than I did a Prince, they won't have me in the regiment long. But I'm not going to get the push this time, if I can help it. Come, Mater," he concluded, "don't worry any more over what's done and can't be undone—just try and make the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... stirred: no one was near: under golden stars it was chilling towards one of the first faint frosts of the year: and insensibly Val relaxed his guard: a heavy sigh broke from him, and he moved restlessly, indulging himself in recollection as a man who habitually endures pain without wincing will now and then allow himself the relief ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... belonging to Peebles, had been sitting at church for some time listening attentively to a strong representation from the pulpit of the guilt of deceit and falsehood in Christian characters. He was observed to turn red, and grow very uneasy, until at last, as if wincing under the supposed attack upon himself personally, he roared out, "Indeed, minister, there's mair leears in Peebles than me." As examples of this class of persons possessing much of the dry humour of their more sane countrymen, and of their facility ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... again, "I will listen to you with calmness, as I would remain calm under the probe of a surgeon tenting a festered wound. But when you touch me to the quick, when you prick the very nerve, you cannot expect me to endure without wincing." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... clamour for my downfall, if revolution is preparing at this hour, must I not go forth to meet the inevitable? should I not save these horrors and be done with these absurdities? in a word, should I not abdicate? O, believe me, I feel the ridicule, the vast abuse of language," he added, wincing, "but even a principulus like me cannot resign; he must make a great gesture, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... few small pieces of medicinal roots. I removed it for him, and he always walked with his head much more erect than he needed to do ever afterward. Both men and women submit to an operation without wincing, or any of that shouting which caused young students to faint in the operating theatre before the introduction of chloroform. The women pride themselves on their ability to bear pain. A mother will address her little girl, from whose foot a thorn ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... hat without wincing: "I guess that ends things 'tween you and me." He started uncertainly ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... that I have behaved in such a manner to Blanche as to frighten her when I ask her to confide in me, is a little too cruel. I have a sensitive—an unduly sensitive nature, dear Sir Patrick. Forgive me for wincing when I am wounded. Forgive me for feeling it when the wound is dealt me by a person whom ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Then there was the storm without. The Grandissimes were in a high state of excitement. The news had reached them all that Honore had met the question of titles by selling one of their largest estates. It was received with wincing frowns, indrawn breath, and lifted feet, but without protest, and presently with ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... him the credit, or the discredit, of possessing, for there was certainly no sign of guilt in his tone or his manner, except that he did not look the inquirer square in the face when he answered his questions, though some guilty people can even do this without wincing. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... and grotesque," Hilda said, contemplatively; "you're young and beautiful." The freedom seemed bred, imperceptibly and enjoyably, from the delicate cloud in the air. Alicia flushed ever so little under it, but took it without wincing. She had less than the common palate for flattery of the obvious kind, but this was something quite different—a mere casual ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... wincing—not with the blow, but the insult: and then making a dash at the mate, who, holding out his long arm, kept him lazily at bay, and laughed at him, till, had I not feared a broken head, I should infallibly have pitched my boy's bulk ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Harriet pleaded wincing when she saw Lionel bound and helpless. Lionel then reproached her. She knew perfectly that she deserved it and felt her love for him growing greater. Everybody was in a most dreadful state of mind. Then a page rushed in and cried that Queen Anne was coming toward ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... any swallow chittering on a bern*. *barn Thereto* she coulde skip, and *make a game* *also *romp* As any kid or calf following his dame. Her mouth was sweet as braket, or as methe* *mead Or hoard of apples, laid in hay or heath. Wincing* she was as is a jolly colt, *skittish Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. A brooch she bare upon her low collere, As broad as is the boss of a bucklere. Her shoon were laced on her legges high; She was a primerole,* a piggesnie , *primrose For any lord t' have ligging* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... very nicely executed in this volume, and wonderfully like. It is needless to particularise where all is so graphic and faithful; but let the studious little rabbit over his arithmetic lesson at p. 32, with that demure conscience-striken pair behind him wincing at the flogging of their idle brother, be ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... most noble heart,", the Knight said, with calmness; neither wincing at the blow upon the table, nor at the "unlike other men," flung ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... spoke, and that cry and start troubled me more than all the rest, for there was something indescribably guilty about them. My wife had always been a woman of a frank, open nature, and it gave me a chill to see her slinking into her own room, and crying out and wincing when her own husband ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and skilfully bandage the slightly damaged foot. He held it carefully, as though it were something very precious, but delicate as was his handling she could not help wincing once as the bandage accidentally brushed a rather badly scratched ankle. Trenby paused almost breathlessly. The hand in which he held the white, blue-veined foot ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... and slender Antonia above all, with the Italian woman's ardent and theatrical face, ebony-framed, and wearing a hat of Parisian splendor. For Antonia is very elegant since she married Veron. I could not help wincing when I saw that lanky woman, who had clung to me in venturesome rooms, now assiduous around us in her ceremonious attire. But how far off and obliterated ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... knew and dreaded what was coming. I looked round at their strange faces. When I saw their wincing attitudes and the furtive dread in their bright eyes, I wondered that I had ever believed ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... appealing "Don't say that—" now stared vainly and unable to comprehend why it was that fresh shots were raising the echoes again in the direction of the cavern kopje; and it was not till Buck Denham on one side, Dan Mann on the other, caught Mark, wincing and grimacing with pain from their numbed arms, and pointed, that the truth ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... vouchsafed no answer, and walked with his hands in the pockets of his water-proof, wincing from the weather. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... be sensible that I was only made for the use of the small vulgar. Aesop had given me a fair warning of this in one of his fables. Well, I must e'en scamper or take what follows. With this he fell a-trotting, and wincing, and yerking, and calcitrating, alias kicking, and farting, and funking, and curvetting, and bounding, and springing, and galloping full drive, as if the devil had come for ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... these harrowing events, had not a word to answer, and replied only by shrugging and twisting his shoulders with pain. The departure of Tom made it necessary for him to assist the negro in rowing back the boat, which he did with a handkerchief tied about his head, which Primus lent him and wincing with the soreness of his bones, the negro interspersed his moans with expressions of sorrow over their ill luck and of wonder whether it was Holden or the ghost of the fisherman that assaulted the constable vowing he would "hab satisfacshum for de ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... friend came with me as far as the village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller. Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley, scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts, and had ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... and without defense," resumed Blue Cap; "for one who cannot stretch out his neck without wincing, it is always a pity. When one has teeth to bite, then it is different. You have tusks? Well, show them, and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue |
