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Writhe   Listen
verb
Writhe  v. t.  (past writhed; past part. writhed, obs. or poetic writhen; pres. part. writhing)  
1.
To twist; to turn; now, usually, to twist or turn so as to distort; to wring. "With writhing (turning) of a pin." "Then Satan first knew pain, And writhed him to and fro." "Her mouth she writhed, her forehead taught to frown." "His battle-writhen arms, and mighty hands."
2.
To wrest; to distort; to pervert. "The reason which he yieldeth showeth the least part of his meaning to be that whereunto his words are writhed."
3.
To extort; to wring; to wrest. (R.) "The nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sovereign in writhing money from them by every species of oppression."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Writhe" Quotes from Famous Books



... moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of trees and underbrush being unusually marshy, the girls had to pick their way carefully. Mollie walked ahead while they were talking. Barbara jumping from the twisted root of one tree to another half a yard away, felt something writhe and wriggle under her foot. Without stopping to look down, she shrieked—"A snake! a snake!"—and ran blindly forward. Before Mollie had time to look around, Barbara caught her foot under a root and tumbled headlong into ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane

... I would wish for no better revenge upon thee than to be able to paint to thy soul, in the glittering colours of Paradise, all that thou hast lost, and then see thee writhe in despair. Knew I more than I know, can the tongue formed of flesh make intelligible to the ear of flesh what lies beyond the bounds of sense, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... hive she gently lifts,— Oh, foolish, foolish child,— Down, down it falls—out swarm the bees Buzzing with fury wild. With fright she shrieks, and tries to run, But ah! 'tis all in vain; Upon her light the angry bees, And make her writhe with pain. ...
— Slovenly Betsy • Heinrich Hoffman

... the vessel, the wind roared, the thick mist enveloped them with its funereal pall; down, down she went, when a loud crash was heard, the stout timbers and planks were rent and torn asunder; he lifted on the summit of a wave, the bow was seen to twist and writhe, and separating from the after part, to sink in the foaming whirlpool, while the stern was cast with terrific violence on the rocks—another wave lifted it yet higher, and there it remained securely and immovably fixed, though with difficulty ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost were written. [163] Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Markow, Brigadier, Insisting on removal of the Prince Amidst some groaning thousands dying near,— All common fellows, who might writhe and wince, And shriek for water into a deaf ear,— The General Markow, who could thus evince His sympathy for rank, by the same token, To teach him greater, had his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... time to flee, and Glenarvan and his party hurried away to the eastern side of their refuge, which was meantime untouched by the fire. They were all silent, troubled, and terrified, as they watched branch after branch shrivel, and crack, and writhe in the flame like living serpents, and then drop into the swollen torrent, still red and gleaming, as it was borne swiftly along on the rapid current. The flames sometimes rose to a prodigious height, and seemed almost lost in the atmosphere, and sometimes, beaten down by the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... to Miss Dobson since yesterday evening; you, only since this afternoon; I, at close quarters; you, at a respectful distance. Your fetters have not galled you yet. MY wrists, MY ankles, are excoriated. The iron has entered into my soul. I droop. I stumble. Blood flows from me. I quiver and curse. I writhe. The sun mocks me. The moon titters in my face. I can stand it no longer. I will no more of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... to laugh at his fellow-guests, as well as to mortify the lawyer, that he had emptied the bottle, when it came to his turn, and he had laughed accordingly: but now his mirth gave way to his apprehension — He began to spit, to make wry faces, and writhe himself into various contorsions — 'Damn the stuff! (cried he) I thought it had a villainous twang — pah! He that would cozen a Scot, mun get oope betimes, and take Old Scratch for his counsellor —' 'In troth mester what d'ye ca'um (replied the lawyer), your wit has run you into a filthy ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... attempt to get their heads into the centre of the tangled mass which, all in motion, heaved and sank and rolled from side to side, the lower portions of the serpents' bodies and their tails being free to lash and writhe about in the air, while at a second glance the spectators began to realise the fact that all around, gliding in and out amongst the stones, were hundreds upon hundreds more of the reptiles, apparently urged on by some savage instinct to form other knots, till the whole of the ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... or stream, or Muses' spring or grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, and many a Nile flow back and ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing, ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... frightened eye. And best of all, the empty chatter of the magpie Mrs. Hanway-Harley—who knows nothing, being a fool! It is that magpie chatter to be poison in the ears of the others! Oh, you should behold them, my San Reve! You should witness how they writhe and how they tremble in the presence of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... and answer one another across the sky. Then, like a charge of ten thousand lancers, come the wind and the rain, their onset covered by all the artillery of heaven. The lightnings leap, hiss, and blaze; the thunders crack and roar; the rain lashes; the waters writhe; the wind smites and howls. For five, for ten, for twenty minutes,—for an hour, for two hours,—the sky and the flood are never for an instant wholly dark, or the thunder for one moment silent; but while the universal roar sinks and swells, and the wide, vibrant illumination ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... sing how the body comported itself under the soul's woe. But there is no sense of shame when deep cries are wrenched from the throat under the free sky, with only the sea to answer. One can let the body take half the burden of pain, and writhe on the breast of the earth without reproach. I took this relief that nature meant for such as I, wearing myself into the indifference of exhaustion, to which must sooner or later ensue the indifference brought by time. Sometimes a flock of small brown sandbirds watched me ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... writhe under the tortures of your guilty acts," continued Ella, in the same bitter tone; "for you have much ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... enough. Ho, ho! sir, you have taken drows; what, another throe! writhe, sir, writhe, the hog died by the drow of gypsies; I saw him stretched at evening. That's yourself, sir. There is no hope, sir, no help, you have taken drow; shall I tell you your fortune, sir, your dukkerin? God bless you, pretty gentleman, much trouble ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... awful silence fell upon her soul, and in it there suddenly opened one of those great gulfs into which the whole universe seems to be hurled at the touch of one thought. She heard nothing more. Andrea might writhe and supplicate and despair as he ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... and most of Fielding's and De Foe's. But once I saw him throw a volume in the fire, which he had been fidgeting over for a while. I was just finishing a sum I had brought across to him to help me with. I looked up, and saw the volume in the fire. The heat made it writhe open, and I saw the author's name, and that was Sterne. He had bought it at a book-stall as he came home. He sat awhile, and then got up and took down his Bible, and began reading a chapter in the New Testament, as if for an antidote to the book ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... the line of sharpshooters; and the little stabs of smoke, drifting out across the river, blent in a thin blue haze. Every moment or two, one of the Horde would writhe, scream, fall—or hang there twitching, to the cliff, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... issue out of it, through blood and sacrifice. But they knew and felt that Atlanta was the back door to Richmond. Let the enemy once enter that and divide the spinal column of the Confederacy, and what hope was there! For a brief space the maimed and dying body might writhe with final strength; the quivering arms strike fierce, spasmodic blows; but no nourishment could come—the end must be ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... encompassed the sun that its rays burst through them almost exclusively in one wide crater, crimsoning, bronzing, and gilding their vaporous and ever-changing walls. Thence they spread earthward, heavenward, leaving remoter masses to writhe darkly on each other and themselves, in and out, in and in, cloaking this hill in blue shadow, bathing that one in green light, while from a watery fastness somewhere hid in the depth of the forested swamp under the hills, some long-lost bend of the Mississippi or cut-off ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... on the arts of war: he wielded in his clasp the ruddy-flashing wood, and victoriously with noble stroke made their fallen captain writhe. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... end of the timber in his heavy hands, planted his feet firmly on the floor and heaved. The big timber creaked, but did not give. Again he planted himself and this time his great shoulders seemed to twist and writhe until the muscles cracked and then, with a crash, the barrier gave way. He sprang back with amazing quickness and they ran back up the drift for twenty or thirty feet while the mass again readjusted itself and ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... been inwardly writhing in a tortured frame of mind which their arrival brought a necessity for masking and the things which had made him so writhe had been the reviews in these papers ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... humanity common to, and shared equally by, both sexes? Does man hunger and thirst, suffer cold and heat more than woman? Does he love and hate, hope and fear, joy and sorrow more than woman? Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses, than to hers? To ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... whole hour he worked with her, and at length subdued the convulsions of pain which distorted the beautiful face and made the childlike body writhe. He had a resentment against the crime which had been committed. Marriage had not made her into a woman; it had driven her back into an arrested youth. It was as though she ought to have worn short skirts and her hair in a long braid down her back. Hers was the body of a young boy. When she ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... clutch of an hysteria that made her writhe beneath Gale's hand, choking and sobbing, until he loosed her; then she leaned exhausted against a post and wiped her eyes, for the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... new back, I guess," she sighed ruefully, as a sharp twinge of pain recalled her to her surroundings and caused her to writhe in agony, "and a pair of legs to match. You are a sure-enough doctor, ain't you? Can't you mend me up again? The other doctors' job didn't last ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... my native hills, my strife is ended; Like my sleeping hills, I have earned life's calm. The sun that smiles on New England's streams Bids human conflicts forever cease. Let those who must, writhe in their dreams At thought of days with horror blended. For me, the meadow's gentle balm— I am of New England—where all ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... subsided and retired to the darkest corner of the veranda. A four-hour vigil lay before him, and he derived no calm from the still stars that faintly shadowed the quiet waters below. He was assailed by torments reserved for those who, having long made others writhe without caring that they suffered, hear the swish of the lash over their own heads. He had only lately been conscious of his growing irritability. He hated men who yield to irritation; it was a sign of weakness, a failure of self-mastery. He had been carried on by a strong tide, imagining ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... must be proud of him," and again Mary seemed to catch a glint in his eye. "These sketches now," he approached the table on which lay the skyscraper studies. "Very harsh—cruel, you might say—but clever, yes, sir, mighty clever." Mary saw Stefan writhe with irritation at the other's air of connoisseur. She shot him a glance at once amused and pleading, but he ignored it with a shrug, as if to indicate that Mary was responsible for this intrusion, and must expect no aid ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... of the soil. These now complain of their abject dependence, and hopeless bondage, under grinding injustice. They are alleged to be full of discontent, which must grow with the intelligence and manhood of the people who writhe under the system. Their advocates affirm that their discontent must increase in volume and angry force every year, and that, owing to the connection of Ireland with the United States, it may at any time be suddenly swollen with the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... know, is for the time being a blessing. But in the "Ladies' Room" there is not even a community of interest in a single bad habit, to break the monotone of weary stillness. Who has not felt the very soul writhe within her as she has first crossed the threshold of one of these dismal antechambers of journey? Carpetless, dingy, dusty; two or three low sarcophagi of greenish-gray iron in open spaces, surrounded by blue-lipped women, in different angles and attitudes ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... perplexing darkness that so pitifully limits man's vision is the indifference of the forces that govern his destiny. The wrongs he suffers may cry aloud to heaven, but heaven does not hear him. Whether he writhe in agony or be prostrated in the dust (against all reason and justice), he has no appeal, societies, the bulk of mankind, may be plunged in misery—who or what cares? Man is surrounded by indifference ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... Some nights he lingered talking, and others the Sheik dismissed him in a few minutes with only a curt word or two, and then there would be silence, and Diana would bury her face in her pillow and writhe in her desperate loneliness, sick with longing for the strong arms she had once dreaded and the kisses she had once loathed. He had slept in the outer room since his illness, and tossing feverishly on the soft cushions of the big empty bed in which she lay alone Diana had suffered the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... hate that message!—the message that the true wrath of God, necessary, inevitable, is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men. How they writhe under it! How they shut their ears to it, and cry to their preachers, 'No! Tell us of any wrath of God but that! Tell us rather of the torments of the damned, of a frowning God, of absolute decrees to destruction, of the reprobation of millions before they are born; ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... any time its owner fancied that I was turning my toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... the effects of the master's fury, fled with precipitation. In one minute the offender was caught, and Mr Lawley's heavy hand fell recklessly on his ears and back, until he screamed with terror. At last, by a tremendous writhe, wrenching himself free, he darted towards the door, and Mr Lawley, too much tired to pursue, snatched his large gold watch out of his fob, and hurled it at the boy's retreating figure. The watch flew through the air;—crash! ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... limbs of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly, hoot. Wealth sneers, and fashion laughs, and respectability passes on the other side, and scorn points with all her skinny fingers, and, like the snakes of superstition, writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy her brand, perjury her oath, and the law its power; and bigotry tortures ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... our ancient war dance—forward, back, forward again. But I'll stand—motionless as the statue of a Cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival and soon I'll see him writhe, utter false cries, and, as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck, like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully into ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... faults, appeared to flow towards me from out of the temptations with which he was encircled. During this time my eyes were fixed upon my Heavenly Spouse; with him I wept and prayed, and with him I turned towards the consoling angels. Ah, truly did our dear Lord writhe like a worm beneath the weight of his ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... kisses all over her face and neck. She had taken her hands from her face and lay still, making no response to his efforts, her thoughts so confused that she could understand nothing, until suddenly she felt a sharp pain, and then she began to moan and writhe ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... what were they? Your Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams, Lies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood And agony: such tortures as we scarce Dream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench Of slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones— Yes, even the Papal throne—draw me not back With longing toward it. Rich that time might be If one were Michael Angelo; but ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... with rough and grimy timbers and walled with bare or whitewashed brick. Imagine the floor so crammed with machinery for economy of space as to allow bare room for the workers to writhe about among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaning death or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air, with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... I have done more?" And with a laugh he sauntered on, leaving Lionel to writhe there with ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... could see them going to the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of Margaret's first day at the mill, knowing how her father and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard the old man's laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... an easy job. The pig did writhe and twist, while the frantic mother danced up and down in the pen behind, and drove the surgeon nearly crazy with her noise. But he toiled bravely on, and when at last the operation was done, the heart of Romeo Augustus was knit unto that ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... unexpected movement. He would burst into tears at any sudden sound. Small noises, whisperings, murmurings, creakings, soft shufflings, irritated him. Loud noises, the slamming of doors, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, made him writhe in agony. For Colin the deep silence of the Manor was the ambush for some stupendous, crashing, annihilating sound; sound that was always coming and never came. The droop of the mouth that used to appear suddenly in his moments of childish anguish was fixed now, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... gods have met in battle to arouse This whirling shadow of invisible things, These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods? O Father, and O Mother of the gods, Is there some trouble in the heavenly house? We who are captained by its unseen kings Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies, What powers who held dominion o'er our will Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies The younger gods ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-powerful fascination of his wife the parting with his money on paper had not been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the pang; he had resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was the dreaded ordeal ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... it in their very midst, a ghastly heap of mangled flesh and shattered limbs were scattered to right and left. Two unhappy lads were blown to unrecognisable fragments. No words can convey the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in your serene safety, if ever my ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... the slave; while at the same time they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color. The impression produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... a quick writhe the Netop broke loose, and bolted headlong, fairly into Captain Church himself, among the baggage and the horses. This was a surprise for the captain, too. He grabbed him but could not keep him, because he was a naked Indian and as ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark, Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-grey ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... ridiculous of him, of course, to writhe as he did under that chance meeting. What else could he have expected? A hundred times already he had told himself she had forgotten all about him, or, worse still, she remembered him only to despise him. And a hundred times, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... discover, when too late, that "the harp and the voice may thrill him, sound may enchant his ear, but, by and by, the hand will wither, and the sweet notes turn to discord; the eye, so brilliant at even, may be red with sorrow in the morning; and the sylph-like form of elegance must writhe in the ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton

... poison he lifts, and the lot he shifts! Oh! unfortunate miser Jew! What use is your gold, now your time is told, And your moments in life are few? You may writhe where you sit Like an eel in a fit, But you'll die like the Jews of old! You may struggle a lot, And get awfully hot, But you'll have to lie stiff and cold! You may wriggle no end, But you're a dead 'un, my friend— Till the Curtain is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various

... sprang, healed not a passion or a pang entailed on human hearts. Go! let Oblivion's curtain fall upon the stage of men! nor with thy rising beams recall life's tragedy again! Its piteous pageants bring not back, nor waken flesh upon the rack of pain anew to writhe, stretched in Disease's shapes abhorred, or mown in battle by the sword, like grass beneath the scythe! Even I am weary in yon skies to watch thy fading fire: test of all sumless agonies, behold not me expire! My lips, that speak ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... broken open. Over it was spread all my letters, and private papers, a diary I kept when twelve years old, and sundry tokens of dried roses, etc., which must have been very funny, they all being labeled with the donor's name, and the occasion. Fool! how I writhe when I think of all they saw; the invitations to buggy rides, concerts, "Compliments of," etc.—! Lilly's sewing-machine had disappeared; but as mother's was too heavy to move, they merely ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... often began to moan and fret until the mother would take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she almost lost herself in her ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... continued, but they were aimed high. Otherwise the attacker must have been struck as he flung himself up before the opening. The catlike movement brought him head and shoulders above the sill. He twisted forward to writhe into the doorway. Lennon's finger started to crook against the trigger of his rifle. But he did ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... have take hire in his Arm, Asmod, which was a fend of helle, And serveth, as the bokes telle, To tempte a man of such a wise, Was redy there, and thilke emprise, Which he hath set upon delit, He vengeth thanne in such a plit, 5340 That he his necke hathe writhe atuo. This yonge wif was sory tho, Which wiste nothing what it mente; And natheles yit thus it wente Noght only of this ferste man, Bot after, riht as he began, Sexe othre of hire housebondes Asmod ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... the haste of gathering up the wounded under the fire from the castle, and the rays of the burning sun beat down with terrible fervor upon the wounded limb, causing heavy groans to issue from his pallid lips, and his marble countenance to writhe with pain. ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... which contributed chiefly to the spreading of this sect were as follows:—Fox thought himself inspired, and consequently was of opinion that he must speak in a manner different from the rest of mankind. He thereupon began to writhe his body, to screw up his face, to hold in his breath, and to exhale it in a forcible manner, insomuch that the priestess of the Pythian god at Delphos could not have acted her part to better advantage. Inspiration soon became so habitual to him that he could scarce deliver himself in ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... look!" cried Bertalda, eagerly and angrily, "how the poor bright water curls and writhes, because you would deprive it of every gleam of sunshine, and of the cheerful faces of men, whose mirror it was created to be!" In truth, the spring did writhe and bubble up wonderfully, just as if someone were trying to force his way through; but Undine pressed them the more to dispatch the work. Nor was there much need to repeat her commands. The household people were too ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... think what my friend Lincoln Steffens could have done had he but enjoyed my opportunities. It shames me to think what John Reed or other gifted writers for "The Masses" could have done. And I should think that Wallace Morgan would writhe with shame. For, where Art Young would have seen heavy-jowled, pig-eyed Capital, in a silk hat and a checked suit, whirling a cruel knout over the broad and noble (but bent and shuddering) back of Labor—where Boardman Robinson would have found a mother, her white, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... I think of these things a black shadow stalks over my heart. I hear a voice, "Fool, and do you still think that you are ever to escape from this? Do you not perceive that this sordid shame is your lot? Do you not perceive that you may writhe and twist, struggle and pant, toil and serve, till you foam at the lips? Who will heed you! Who will hear you! Who cares anything about you!—Who wants your Art! Who wants your ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... The dark blood rushes over his snowy flesh. See how his knees writhe, how his sides give way! The flowers upon his face have soaked the gore. He is dead! Let us ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... froze. He watched the ZX-2 wallow in her death throes, writhe in the fiery doom that had struck her in seconds, that was devouring her with awful rapidity while thousands of men, blanched and trembling, gazed on helplessly. He saw her plunge, a blazing inferno, into ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... men:" that truest epithet for monarch-man must be the tangent from which my Pegasus shall strike his hoof for the next flight. Who does not writhe while reading details of cruelty, and who would not rejoice to find ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... George Jean, "witty, wise, and cruel," and the "amaranthine" Louis Sherwin, who understands better than anybody else how to plunge the rapier into the vulnerable spot and twist it in the wound, making the victim writhe, have been having some fun with the art of acting lately, or to be exact, with the art of actors. Now actor-baiting is no new game; as a winter sport it is as popular as making jokes about mothers-in-law, decrying the art of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... but to hear a creature attempt to play one of the "songs without words" on an instrument he knew as little of as the music he was parodying, was beyond all bearing! Then, if ever, did my wretched master dig his fingers into his ears, and writhe and shiver and groan at each discord produced by that inhuman performer. He retreated into the innermost recess of his bedroom; he even hid his unhappy head beneath the clothes, if haply he might escape the agony of this torture. But it was hopeless. The shrieks and groans of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... Oriental splendor. There she stood, her hair flowing dark and silky from beneath her twisted turban, her eyes,—black melted loadstones; the broad Egyptian pendants gleaming and glowing from temple to shoulder. The golden serpent seemed to writhe on her bosom, informed from its wearer with a subtile vitality. Through all dominated a grand repose, like the calm of nature, which storms may ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... sharpened brand, A week ago, upon my steed, With Forrest and his warrior band, I made the hell-hounds writhe ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... hardly come within a hundred paces of them when they all fell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began to howl and whimper, and to writhe, as if suffering the most excruciating pain. They stretched out their hands, and cried, "Have mercy! have mercy! we feel you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, and we will do all you require." He let them kick a few seconds longer, and then took the toad ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... and I've tried scolding. Perhaps I'm the wrong mother for you—" A long pause, during which Roger's slender body did not cease to writhe in sobs. Then his mother continued: "Poor little Elschen, that was an awful knock you gave her! I shall have to apologize to Mrs. Wolf again. She's ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... "colour-sense" fresh handselled (whilst the moral ditto's cancelled) you'll develop into—well, What Philistia's fools malicious might esteem a vaurien vicious (alias "hedonic swell"). And every one will say, As you writhe your sinuous way. "If the highest result of the true 'Development' is decomposition, why see What a very perfectly developed young man this developed young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... of some new agony in store for her. I have seen such a look of terror on a poor dumb animal's countenance, and once or twice on human faces. I pray I may never see it again on either! Jemima felt the hand she held in her strong grasp writhe itself free. Ruth spread her arms before her, clasping and lacing her fingers together, her head thrown a little back, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... "He that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter." How often do we hear, "I wouldn't, for the world, tell any one but you, but—;" and then follows a string of repeated confidences which the friend under discussion would writhe to hear; yet the speaker would be most indignant at being considered dishonourable, because "it was only said to So-and-so, which is so different from saying it to any one else"! The Son of Sirach made no exception in favour of "So-and-so" when he said, "Rehearse not ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... can delight My dainty appetite, For I, alas! must learn to drink, However I may writhe and shrink, Pure water. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... help shuddering with horror. Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment. Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, which a blow from the butt end of the gun knocked over, and I saw the horrible claws of the monster writhe in terrible convulsions. This incident reminded me that other animals more to be feared might haunt these obscure depths, against whose attacks my diving-dress would not protect me. I had never thought of it before, but I now resolved to be upon my guard. Indeed, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... knees. Feeling herself held fast, she tried to push his forehead back from her waist. It was fiery hot; and she heard him mutter: "Have mercy! Love me a little!" But the clutch of his hands, never still on the thin silk of her dress, turned her faint. She tried to writhe away, but could not; stood still again, and at last ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... that browsed the grass Writhe in the blistering rays, The herbage in his shrinking jaws Was all a fiery blaze; I saw huge fishes, boiled to rags, Bob through the bubbling brine; And thoughts of supper crossed my soul; I ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... enshroud the higher land. Through the mingled mist and darkness the sombre trunks of the towering cypress trees rose with supernatural blackness. The mysterious "knees," those strange, naked, blackened roots, so wildly gnarled and twisted about the foot of the cypress, appeared to writhe out of the swamp's awful dimness like monstrous serpents ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... talked persistently about Bermuda; as if my exile had ever been a possibility! In all my blind whirlwind of pain, I was glad that this was the last night I should have to writhe under the click of her knitting needles, and sit opposite her ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... to-night shall tread The dance till daylight gleam again? Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead? Who writhe in throes ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... always collapses before a world crisis, has failed utterly. The hideous chicane of imperial government and imperial religion against mankind has resulted in a Christian veneer, which cracks at the first test and reveals the unchanged human brute beneath. The nations which writhe in deadly embrace to-day have never sought to prove God. They but emphasize the awful fact that the human mind has no grasp upon the Principle which is God, and at a time of crisis reverts almost instantly to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... lifted themselves in a thousand incredible shapes, shapes squared and globed and spiked and shifting swiftly into other thousands as incredible. I saw a mass of them draw themselves up into the likeness of a tent skyscraper high; hang so for an instant, then writhe into a monstrous chimera of a dozen towering legs that strode away like a gigantic headless and bodiless tarantula in steps two hundred feet long. I watched mile-long lines of them shape and reshape into circles, into interlaced lozenges and pentagons—then lift in great columns and shoot through ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... was always milk, and tall pitchers of it were constantly filled and emptied during this as well as the other meals. And then there were eggs—eggs hard boiled, eggs soft boiled, eggs medium, eggs poached—until, at the end of the season, the mere mention of eggs caused Joel's stomach to writhe in disgust. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Three crosses in this noonday night uplifted, Three human figures that in mortal pain Gleam white against the supernatural darkness; Two thieves, that writhe in torture, and between them The Suffering Messiah, the Son of Joseph, Ay, the Messiah Triumphant, Son of David! A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! Those hands that healed the sick now pierced ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... he maintains complete silence, and merely makes chewing motions with his strong-toothed jaws as he sits wagging his beard from side to side. At such times there is in his eyes a bluish fire like the gleam of charcoal, while his crooked fingers writhe like worms, and his outward appearance becomes sheerly that ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... the Queen did, set the fashion for all the courtiers, to the profit and prosperity of merchants and craftsmen. Earls might secretly writhe at the prospect of entertaining their sovereign with suitable magnificence, but the tradesmen and purveyors rubbed their hands. When a company of Flemings was employed for four years on the carving of the beams and panels of the Middle Temple Hall, or noblemen to be in the fashion built new banquet-rooms ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... priesthood, but he was more extravagant than Brigham in his promises of blessings in store for them. He never resorted to vagueness in his pictures of what the Lord was about to do for them. He was literal and circumstantial to a degree that made Brigham and the older men in authority sometimes writhe in public and chide him in private. They were appalled at the sweeping victories he promised the Saints over the hated Gentiles at an early day. They suggested, too, that the Lord might withhold an abundance ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the long grass, where the barefooted mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes,—more rarely into houses, and on one memorable occasion, early in the last century, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... must her lifeblood feel The fang that stung her sleeping, the foul germ Even when she wakes of hell's most poisonous worm, Though now it writhe beneath her wounded heel. Turn yet, she will not fade nor fly from thee; Wait, and see ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... all the greater for the contrast with the spell of peace which he had just enjoyed; and, almost paralysed in every sense, he stood and watched the fatal vision and the wrinkly, crawling quicksand that seemed to writhe and yearn for something that lay between. There could be no mistake this time, for though the moon behind threw the face into shadow he could see there the same shaven cheeks as his own, and the small stubby moustache of a few weeks' growth. The ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... be dancing to God, your Guide, And peal my pipes, and riot my feet, and writhe to His Heat, my tripes. So fair! With Rum-te-te-Tum te Tum, And Rum and Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, and Rum-te-te-Tum, te Tum. So fair! This freehold for seraphs free! That flame! those skies! and Blest is Her Name, and blest ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"—and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and her spirit ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... the free men being addressed to the saint who died in his bed, while the slaves belong to the slave, and must therefore simulate his horrid end. And this is the reason why most of the white caftans simply rock and writhe, while the humble blue shirts drip ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... there was grim mockery on his lips now as the light went out and the sensitive fingers closed on the knob of the dial, the perpetrator—the Gray Seal. It would afford excellent food for the violent editorial diatribes under which the police again would writhe in frenzy! ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb. In the angles nude men, painted caryatides, jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. On the ceiling a Mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by Rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. A gigantic Neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... warnings that hundreds of us are uttering may be ignored. The squandering may go on, the vulgar bacchanalia may be prolonged, the poor may have to writhe under the iron heel of the iron lord—the dance of death may go on until society's E string snaps, and then the Vesuvius of the underworld will belch forth its lava of death and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... their peace disturbed, thrust a sword into his mouth, so that the hilt rested upon his lower jaw and the point pierced the roof of his mouth. They next fastened the cord to a rock, and left the wolf to writhe and struggle and shake the earth. So they were freed for a time from their enemy, but at the cost of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... had gone! It made his soul writhe to think of it. It had hurt enough to be jilted; but this—well, this struck at his pride even ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... path swelling barriers Of hatred soul'd in water, yet will I strike My purpose, and God's purpose, clean through all The ridges of thy power. And I will show This mask that the devil wears, this old shipman, A thing to make his proud heart of evil Writhe like a trodden snake; yea, he shall see How godly faith can go upon the huge Fury of forces bursting out of law, Easily as a boy goes on windy grass.— O marvel! that my little life of mind Can by mere thinking the unsizeable Creature of sea enslave! I must believe it. The mind hath many ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... dance tune, the young fellow would step into the middle of the circle, and begin to leap and twist about and stamp his feet, and then come down with a crash on the ground—and there represent the movements of a fish which has been thrown out of the water upon the dry land; and he would writhe about this way and that, and even bring his heels up to his neck; and then, when he sprang to his feet and began to shout, the earth would simply tremble beneath him! Alexyei Sergyeitch was extremely fond of choral songs and dances, as I have already said; ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... entering on a lecture upon the principles which ought to regulate the matter in question. He was, I fancy, rather fond of lecturing, and would rather have liked the work of a professor of the fine arts. I have seen people writhe under his patient and lengthy expositions, which they were as capable of understanding as so many bullocks, and which they had brought down on themselves by some absolutely absurd remark on the work before them. I have seen such delinquents use every sort of effort ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... drenched the beady-eyed, flat-iron head, flooded the swaying neck and spattered the thick scaly coils. With a writhe and a hiss the blinded snake threshed to one side and burrowed for shelter. Jack chuckled and shook. He had cleared ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible hands had just laid him bare with ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... to Lessing in the epithet of the following sentence: "How dearly must I pay for the single year I have lived with a sensible wife!" Werther had then been published four years. Lessing's grief has that pathos which he praised in sculpture,—he may writhe, but he must not scream. Nor is this a new thing with him. On the death of a younger brother, he wrote to his father, fourteen years before: "Why should those who grieve communicate their grief to each ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... contingent of friendly natives, and in order to test the question, one of them was to bare his back (for a shilling) and an officer applied to it, with all his strength, a horsewhip. I saw the black man's body writhe for an instant as he puckered his mouth; but it was only for an instant—then he smiled and asked for another stroke for another shilling. This seemed to indicate to the officers that there was something more than ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... I shan't be wanted to pal up much with that chap, shall I? I mean to say, he wears so many clothes. They make me writhe as if I wore them myself. It won't ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... full of great gladness, we look up and thank the good Father for his precious blessings, feeling nerved for the fiercest fight; but when the storm-clouds gather and the golden brightness is withdrawn, we bow before the blinding tempest and writhe under our pain, unless—and the kind voice spoke very softly—the Master has our hearts in his own safe keeping, unless we have learned to love his will. Then we can discern the bright stars of his love shining through the darkness, and find that the apparently pitiless storm has ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... flashing for a moment in the sunshine. A quick, sharp report rang out. The bullet, sent with true and steady aim, by the hand of Frank Merriwell, ploughed through the tiger's brain, and the beast flattened out convulsively, and began to kick and writhe in its ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... was dishonourable. That went without saying. He had failed ignominiously from the outset to behave as an upright and honourable man. Self-analysis laid his pride in the dust and made him writhe in self-condemnation. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... his freedom," said Uncle Dick, as he gave the bands a shake so that the hook came out of the eel's mouth, and it began to writhe and twine about ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... a rebel, I wonder if I ought to be good to him," thought Nelly, watching the reptile writhe with pain. "Will said there were sick rebels in his hospital, and one was very kind to him. It says, too, in my little book, 'Love your enemies.' I think snakes are mine, but I guess I'll try and love him because God made him. Some boy will kill him if I leave him here, and then perhaps his ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... of them." He sighed. "When I think," he added, "that, but for my good offices, Nobby would have sent that treacherous drawlatch away, not only empty, but with the modern equivalent of a flea in his ear, I could writhe. When I reflect that it was I who supported the swine's predilection for hard cash, I could scream. But when I remember that ever since our purchase of the shawl, my wife has never once stopped enumerating and/or ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... of local personality, and he mentally upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... yourself out, as you got yourself in," she said nastily. "The simplest thing, if you don't mind my suggesting it, is to poison the coffee and kill the lot of us. Only, if you decide to do it, let me know; I want to live just long enough to see Jimmy Wilson WRITHE!" ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the four who were holding the rope felt it begin to writhe and twist in their grasp!—like a live thing. And its black length took on a scaly look, glittering in that pink glow as if it were covered with small ebon paillettes. It grew cold and clammy. At ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... up from her stool with a chuckle of anticipation. Pat proceeded to give utterance to a series of hollow and extraordinary groans, and to writhe in a manner intended to convey the extreme agony of the rich man. Roseen fairly danced about, imitating Pat's moanings to the best of her ability. "Ou-ou-ou-ough! Ugh!" "'By this an' by that,' says the gentleman, 'tare an' ages!' says he, 'thunder an' turf!' he says, 'what ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... what it is like to live with a telepath. It is disquieting in the extreme. One of the concomitants of consciousness is that it is private consciousness. And when this isn't true, when someone, even a loved one, can creep into your mind and know what you think, your insides writhe. Caterpillars course around under your skin. And you resent. Sooner or later you will hate. I ran away from home because I couldn't stand Mother in my mind, and couldn't bear the thought of ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker

... evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs, While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social thongs? Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right, Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... the nightmare's grip, Fears he has let Time's scanty forelock slip, And lost a great occasion Of self-advancement. How that mouth's a-writhe With hate, on platforms oft so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various

... began to writhe its body down a fissure in the rock, keeping its head elevated more than a foot from the ground. Its rattle made very little noise. It every moment darted out its forked tongue, its eyes became reddish and inflamed, and it moved rather quicker than ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... my judgment right, I should have been spared this sorrow now?' Am I not right? Those who know most of God and their own souls will agree most with me; those who know little about God and their own souls will agree but hardly with me, for they provoke God's chastisements, and writhe under them for the time, and then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild beast will turn and bite the stone thrown at him without having the sense to see why it ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... was the opal serpent brooch, and Aaron's lips were fastened together with the stout pin. On his mouth and across his agonised face in which the one eye gleamed with terrific meaning the jewelled serpent seemed to writhe. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... strength, and the serpent with its vital writhe and deadly reverted bite, are both characteristic of the finest Lombard work. The dog's head is 14th century Gothic—a masterpiece of broad, subtle, easy sculpture, getting expression with every touch, and never ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... stamp no nation out, though day and night Ye tread them with that absolute heel which grates And grinds them flat from all attempted height. You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die; The tail curls stronger when you lop the head: They writhe at every wound and multiply And shudder into a heap of life that's made Thus vital from God's own vitality. 'T is hard to shrivel back a day of God's Once fixed for judgment: 't is as hard to change The peoples, when they rise beneath their loads ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... bend and writhe When roars the wind through gap and braken; But 'tis the tenderest reed of all That trembles first when Earth ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recalls the moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... superior numbers to cut him up alive with their knives, to chop him with their axes, or to smash him with their clubs. He will only allow them to stab him with their spears, repeating of course the stabs again and again till the victim ceases to writhe and quiver, and lies there dead as a stone. Then begins the real time of peril for the virtuous kinsman who has been a spectator and director of the scene; for the ghost of the murdered man has now deserted its mangled body, and, still blinded with blood and smarting with pain, might easily ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... The fires were lighted, and the smoke rolled up in volumes, and threatened to suffocate us and put a speedy end to our torments. In a few seconds however, as the wood got fairly blazing, the smoke lifted, and as we began to writhe in agony, a yell of delight went up from more than three thousand savage throats. The heat grew more intense; my skin was scorched and blistered; dizzy and faint, I felt that the end was near, and longed for death as a speedy ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman

... measures they had already taken. Here, then, disease, as if enraged that he should have borne up so long, that his spirit had mastered even her, convened the whole powers of suffering, and compelled him not alone to acknowledge, but to writhe beneath her sway. His whole frame was shaken; intolerable pains took possession of him, and though the virulence of the complaint was at length so far abated as to permit him a short continuance of life, he could never sit his horse again, or even hope to carry on in his own person his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... within the storied page, Iron is worn, at heart, by many still— The tyrant Custom binds the serf-like will; If the sharp rack, and screw, and chain be gone, These later days have tortures of their own; The guiltless writhe, while Guilt is stretched in sleep, And Virtue lies, too often, dungeon deep. Awake the Present! what the Past has sown Be in its harvest garner'd, reap'd, and grown! How pride breeds pride, and wrong engenders wrong, Read in the volume Truth has held so long, Assured that where ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... I can burst them asunder at will! I had hoped to avenge myself on that accursed Sydney, in a terrible appalling manner; but the law has become the avenger—he will die upon the gallows, and I am content. Ha, ha, ha! how he will writhe, and choke while I shall be at liberty, to read the account of his execution in the papers, and gloat over the description of his dying agonies! But I have an account to settle with you, Kinchen; you recollect how you hurled the wine-bottle at my head, as I was about to ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... kind man, who hated any injustice, but when his wife awoke he said many unpleasant things to her, opening his mouth with difficulty, and he complained that he was left alone, like a jackal, to groan and writhe for pain. His wife met the undeserved reproaches patiently, for she knew that they came not from an angry heart—and she brought him numerous good remedies: rats' litter to be applied to his cheek, some strong liquid in which a scorpion was preserved, and a real chip of the tablets ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... past him to the door, avoiding his outstretched arm with an artless art which made me writhe; for once I had been the willing victim of all ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... her vagaries and absurdities during the last few years when she had been so provoking had been smiled at, had been, Susie knew, put down to her treatment of her. Treatment of her, indeed! The thought of these things made Susie writhe. She had been looking forward to the next season, to having her pretty sister-in-law with her in the happy mood she had been in since she heard of her good fortune, and had foreseen nothing but advantages to herself from Anna's presence in ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... universally named the Impaler in consequence of a practice which is well known to our readers through the so-called Bulgarian atrocities. A sharpened pole was forced into the body of the victim, and the other end was then driven into the earth, the unfortunate man, woman, or child being left to writhe in agony until ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... looked at him, long and straight and black; his figure seemed to writhe like that of a snake about to strike; then he turned on his heel, went back to the cabin and opened a bottle of champagne. When eight bells were cried, he slept on the floor beside the captain on the locker; and of the whole starboard watch, only ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... another writhe as he watched the two riders out of sight, and then muttering in an ill-used way, "Pick 'em out with a pin indeed!" he half turned in his seat, lolling in his saddle, and patting and playing with his horse, when lazily turning his eyes round amongst ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... to feel A yearning nature's strong appeal Should writhe on this eternal wheel In ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and writhe to restore the circulation. ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... a quiet laugh over his predicament. And, to add zest to the situation, I informed Singleton of what was going forward. He came over every night for supper, and to my delight the bluff Englishman was received in a fashion to make the doctor writhe and snort with mortification. Never in his life had he been so insignificant a person. And he, whose conversation was so sought after in the gay season in town, was thrown for companionship upon a scarce-grown boy whose talk was about as salted, and whose ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... yours; instruct me, sir; If it be so, I'll kneel and weep before you. With all the obedience of a penitent child, Imploring pardon. Kill me, if you please; I will not writhe my body at the wound, But sink upon your feet with a last sigh, And ask forgiveness with my ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... and Lust's exhausted stores No more can rouse the appetites of KINGS; When the low Flattery of their reptile Lords Falls flat and heavy on the accustomed ear; When Eunuchs sing, and Fools buffoon'ry make. And Dancers writhe their harlot limbs in vain: Then War and all its dread vicissitudes Pleasingly agitate ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas



Words linked to "Writhe" :   move, wriggle, wrench, worm, twist



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