"Literally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two feet in length, sharp-pointed at the lower end, while on the upper end, next to the tree, was a russet pear-shaped growth. They are so nicely balanced that when in their maturity they drop from the branches, they fall upright in the mud, literally planting themselves. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... we are here striving is unattainable; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls; and that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illusion. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, [Footnote: Trauerweiden der verbannung, literally the weeping willows of banishment, an allusion, as every reader must know, to the 137th Psalm. Linnaeus, from this Psalm, calls the weeping willow Salix Babylonica.—TRANS.] breathes out its longing for its distant home, what else but melancholy can be the key-note of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... empty, the mind is seized with a desire - no, that is too strong - a willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which constitutes (in me) the true spirit of correspondence. When I have no remarks to offer (and nobody to offer them to), my pen flies, and you see the remarkable consequence of a page literally covered with words and genuinely devoid of sense. I can always do that, if quite alone, and I like doing it; but I have yet to learn that it is beloved by correspondents. The deuce of it is, that there is no end possible but the end of the paper; and as there is very little ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her midwinter reception, this same Samuel Walcott fell deeply and hopelessly and utterly in love, and it was so apparent to the beaten generals present, that Mrs. Miriam Steuvisant applauded herself, so to speak, with encore after encore. It was good to see this courteous, silent man literally at the feet of the young debutante. He was there of right. Even the mothers of marriageable daughters admitted that. The young girl was brown-haired, brown-eyed, and tall enough, said the experts, and of the blue blood royal, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the other players. In "Bell and Hammer," however, he always managed to buy the "White Horse," while other people would squander their all in bidding for a card which perhaps turned out after all to be only the "Hammer." At "Snap" he was simply terrible; he literally swept the board, but kept passing portions of his winnings under the table to Barbara, whose pile seemed to be as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. By the end of the evening he was the life of the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... reason, above authority, a surer guide than any outward or written revelation. While this divine voice was above the Scriptures, it never conflicted with them, for they were revealed also to inspired men. Hence the Scriptures were not to be disdained, but were to be a guide, and literally to be obeyed. He would not swear, or fight, to save his life, nor to save a world, because he was directly commanded to abstain from swearing and fighting. He abhorred all principles of expediency, and would do right, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... like these before my eyes, and then change and turn them into what they please. In truth and earnest, I assure you gentlemen who now hear me, that to me everything that has taken place here seemed to take place literally, that Melisendra was Melisendra, Don Gaiferos Don Gaiferos, Marsilio Marsilio, and Charlemagne Charlemagne. That was why my anger was roused; and to be faithful to my calling as a knight-errant I sought to give aid and protection to those who fled, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... service, had, in the ship Augusta, sailed from Port Eoyal in Jamaica, accompanied by the Dreadnought and Edinburgh, under the command of the captains Suckling and Langdon. He was ordered to cruise off Cape Francois, and this service he literally performed in the face of the French squadron under Kersin, lately arrived at that place from the coast of Africa. This commander, piqued at seeing himself thus insulted by an inferior armament, resolved to come forth and give them battle; and that he might either take them, or at least ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... intimation in the dream that he would "quickly come to his native land" (cito iturus ad patriam tuam). "This, of course," continues the Professor, "represented his expectations at the time of his escape. But the very fact that he fails to say that the promise was literally fulfilled, and glides over the intervening years in silence, strongly suggests that his expectation was not ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... that gratified Epimenides with the seeds of this nutriment, when he directed him to inquire how great benefit a man might receive by mallows and asphodel (Hesiod, "Works and Days," 41.) Do you believe, said Periander, that Hesiod meant this literally; or rather that, being himself a great admirer of parsimony, he hereby intended to exhort men to use mean and spare diet, as most healthful and pleasant? For the chewing of mallows is very wholesome, and the stalk of asphodel is very luscious; but this "expeller of hunger and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... took place at Bayonne between Catharine of Medicis, her son Charles IX., and the Queen of Spain, attended by the famous Duke of Alva, and the Count of Benevento. Many political discussions took place; and the opinion of Alva, as expressed in the text, is almost literally versified from Davila's account of the conference. "Il Duca D'Alva, uomo di veemente natura risolutamente diceva, che per distruggere la novita della fede, e le sollevazioni di stato, bisognava ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... see, superintendent?—there's not a paper nor anything in this chest to tell us who this man is, nor where he came from when he came here, nor where his relations are to be found, if he has any. There's literally ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... dying. The lady watches all his movements, as if more intently interested in Mr. Praiseworthy's strange character. "And here's one," he says, "I fear I shall lose; and if I do, there's fifty dollars gone, slap!" and he points to an emaciated yellow man, whose body is literally a crust of sores, and whose painful implorings for water and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... line which leads to Antwerp, I saw every train literally packed with fugitives. They had come, not in organized, orderly companies, but in droves—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. They were dazed and confused, escaping from they knew not what, carried they knew not whither. It is well ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... am not quite sure whether I saw all these pictures in the drawing-room, or some of them in the dining-room; but the one that struck me most—and very much indeed—was the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, literally the head cut off and lying on a dish. It is said to have been painted by an Italian or French artist, two days after her death. The hair curls or flows all about it; the face is of a death-like hue, but has an expression of quiet, after much pain and trouble,—very beautiful, very sweet ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... would fix on some object as far as the eye could reach, and then shut his eyes again, when I would lead him up to it. On reaching it he would take another look, and we then started for the next point. It was literally a case of ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... lip, is also used for speech. In the figurative language, "of one lip," means that they all spoke one language; so in Job 11:2, literally, "a man of lips," is translated "a man ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a hand on Lucien's arm, and literally forced him into the traveling carriage. The ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... the friends of the Reformer, fearing for his safety, clandestinely hurried him out of Augsburg, literally grappling him up from his bed only half dressed, and brought him away to his university. He had answered the pope's summons, and yet ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... food, physical and mental; and was soon so deeply absorbed in the delightful book that I forgot to eat my pudding. I sat up late with it—the book, not the pudding—after putting Lady Turnour to bed (almost literally, because she thinks it refined to be helpless), and when morning came I was no longer disgracefully ignorant of St. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... other, by the woman upon whose knees she leaned with her hands. The motion was really graceful, though wild and dervish-like, but there was nothing lascivious in it, like the dancing of the Moors, nor could it well be, the upper part of the body only was in agitation, being literally "the playing with the head." I never saw this before or again in North Africa. I gave the young lady twenty paras, the first time she had so large a sum in her life. Received a present of leghma from the Sheikh, very acrid and intoxicating. The women admire much my straw hat, made of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... have abbreviated this remarkable letter, but of course the text of the passages cited is literally given. J.L.M.] ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... houses at Everton, and the occupants of them so independent, that they seemed loth to receive lodgers on any terms. It must appear strange to find Everton spoken of as being "out of town," but it was literally so then. It was, comparatively speaking, as much so as West Derby, or any of the neighbouring villages ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... drug store they parked the Swallow, locking it carefully, and walked off, leaving the Swallow literally swallowed up by a crowd of admiring people. Frank hated to go and when they had wandered half a block away made an excuse for going back. Bill said he would look at some sweaters in a sporting goods ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... that is changed and metallic. She is literally being nailed to the cross.] You're ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... the Thursday evening; and now those who had been wanted in the criminal court were gone, and peace and quiet were restored. At eleven o'clock neither of the hotels were open; the waiters and servants who, during the last week had literally not known what a bed was, and who, during that week, had snatched their only disturbed naps before the kitchen fires, or under the kitchen dressers, were taking their sleep out for the past week. It was still raining hard, and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... the destructive statesmanship and constitutional conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though he had heard so convincingly much. A shiver ran down his spine and he broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a shadow,—let alone anything material—had breasted the sea-wall, passed over ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... certificate as a licence to impurity, and upon sexual union as a form of animal indulgence to which we are so strongly impelled that even the most refined are tempted by it into an act of conscious indelicacy and sin. Such people read literally the psalmist's words: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." It is surely some such feeling as this which makes parents shrink from referring to the subject, which underlies the constant use of the word "innocence" as the aptest ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... to see you," half laughed Elaine as she literally flung herself into her nurse's arms. "I feel so unstrung—and I thought that if I could just run off for a few days with you and Joshua in the country where no one would know, it might make me feel better. You have always been so good to me. Marie! Are ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... Ward (quoted in Penological and Preventive Principles) describes what he saw in 1893:—"In this splendid model institution there are noisome, slimy cells, where daylight never enters, in which human beings are literally buried alive. Under the massive arches of enormously thick walls, where even in the outside rooms perpetual twilight reigns, are inner cells, two feet wide by six feet long, and destitute of a single article of furniture. Until recently, those confined in them were walled in, the ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... distinguish reality from unreality—as we would define it from our agreed framework—a special cooerdinate system might be built up where 'Everybody was up in the air at work, today,' might be taken literally. Under the old systems of physics that couldn't happen, of course—it says in the textbooks—but since it has been happening all through history, in thousands of instances, in the new systems of multivalued physics we recognize ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... themselves out of the bountiful earth which would give everything we need almost for the asking. The air is full now of rumors of a Spanish war, and a Natchez-Chickasaw alliance. If these things are true we would find ourselves entirely cut off from French supplies, and this colony would literally starve to death. Yes, starve to death with untold millions of fruitful acres all about us. Had we strength to fight I would not care so much. With but two companies of undisciplined troops, a mere straggling handful, ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... 1. Literally, the period of impurity. The period of mourning is the period of impurity, according to the Hindu scriptures. By performing the Sraddha rite, one becomes pure again. Till then, one can perform ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... was by no means a luxury, for, although very good, the company was numerous, the cabin near the boiler, all the dishes smoking, the room low and small, and the thermometer as aforesaid on deck, so that we literally were steaming, for it must have been ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... it evaporates and leaves nothing. Emerson was so afraid of the letter that killeth that he would hardly trust his words to print. He was assured there was no such thing as literal truth, but only literal falsehood. He therefore resorted to metaphors which could by no chance be taken literally. And he has probably succeeded in leaving a body of work which cannot be made to operate to any other end than that for which he designed it. If this be true, he has accomplished the inconceivable feat of eluding misconception. If it be true, he stands alone in the history of teachers; he ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... "Now there's the kind of cablegram to send—even on baby business. Those four code words translated mean: No new arrivals; heavy arrivals expected shortly; is now in dry dock; there is nothing wrong. Literally translated it means: Baby not born yet; twins expected shortly; your wife now in hospital; everything lovely! I suppose, Hankins, you have carbon copies of all these cablegrams you've ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... and Billy fancied hazily that it was because he so ordered; as a matter of fact, Mr. Dill, catching sight of him there, had thrown the men and their importunities off as though they had been rough-mannered boys. He literally plowed his way through them and stopped deprecatingly ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... not mean literally," the elder brother explained. "But it is away with their license which is almost as disastrous a fate to a man who has planned to make his living by wireless. Nor is the loss of the license all that happens. In addition ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... smaller tenements, part was converted into a little inn; part, the residence of a female who formerly showed the room where Shakspeare first saw the light, and the low-roofed kitchen where his mother taught him to read. The walls of the room in which he was born are literally covered with thousands of names, inscribed in homage by pilgrims from every region where the glory of Shakspeare is known. At the time when Shakspeare's father bought this house, it was, no doubt, quite a mansion, as compared with the majority of the houses in Stratford; but he little guessed the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... This was the scene of their tete-a-tetes, of his earnest efforts to persuade her into his faith in the Church of Rome, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this platform Crimsworth and Lucy Snowe and Charlotte Bronte herself had given instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted and overcome. Here M. Paul and M. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... was to get it off him, for the beast was very heavy, but I managed this at last with the help of a thorn bough I found which some elephant had torn from a tree. This I used as a lever. There beneath lay Scroope, literally covered with blood, though whether his own or the leopard's I could not tell. At first I thought that he was dead, but after I had poured some water over him from the little stream that trickled down the rock, he sat ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... (added Dr. Johnson) GOD had never spoken figuratively, we might hold that he speaks literally, when he says, "This is my body." Boswell's Tour, p. 67.—Here his only objection to transubstantiation seems to rest on the style of the Scripture being figurative elsewhere as well as in this passage. Hence we may infer, that he would otherwise have believed in it.—But ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... Union, the record lies before us, open and palpable, a tale of disaster and tragedy almost without parallel in the modern history of the world. We see in the statistics of Irish population, of Irish disease, of Irish poverty during the nineteenth century[60] a black picture of material decay that literally ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... duration, notwithstanding the entire novelty of the laced coats, cocked hats, and other appendages of naval uniform. I can scarce describe the emotions experienced in glancing an eye over the immense number, seated so thickly on the matted floor as to seem literally one mass of heads, covering an area of more than nine thousand square feet. The sight was most striking, and soon became, not only to myself, but to some of my ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... quivering with the awfulness of what He was saying—"he that believeth not shall be damned," as though it just broke his heart to say it. And it did break His heart that it might not be true of us. For He died literally of a broken heart, the walls of that great, throbbing muscle burst asunder by the strain of soul. That is the true setting of that ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... exhausted, and after the 3d of July, when Taylor sealed the river by planting his guns below Donaldsonville, all the animals went upon half or quarter rations of grain, with little hay or none. At length, for two or three days, the forage depots fairly gave out; the poor beasts were literally starving when the place fell, nor was it for nearly a week after that event that, by the raising of Taylor's blockade below and the arrival of supplies from Grant above, the stress was ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... Withheld from him, and forbidden to come any more on board, she sunk into the deepest dejection; it preyed on her vitals; she lost all relish for food and life, rejoiced no more, pined under a rapid decay of two months, and fell a victim to her feelings, dying literally of a broken heart. Her child is yet alive, and the tender object of our care, having been brought up by a sister, who nursed it as her own, and has discharged all the duties of an affectionate mother to ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... some journalists there, among others M. Merle, the husband of Mme. Dorval. After dinner, Joanny, who has the most beautiful white hair in the world, rose, filled his glass, turned towards me. I was on his right hand. Here literally is what he said to me; I have just returned home and I ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... long shanty 40 feet by 10 to 12 feet in width stood where the Porter residence formerly stood. A man by the name of McIntire owned it. It was literally covered with California honeysuckle, and a view point of the town. This entire block was acquired by the late James G. Fair, one of the famous mining men of Nevada, and it still remains in the family ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... want nor disease could quench, and with it a certain gift of expression street oratory had brought out. Even in private conversation he had got into the way of declaiming. But Jeff knew he was no empty talker. All that he had he literally ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... themselves it was too distressing to be contemplated. On Mount Pitt they were fortunate enough to obtain, in an abundance almost incredible, a species of aquatic birds, answering the description of that known by the name of the Puffin. These birds came in from the sea every evening, in clouds literally darkening the air, and, descending on Mount Pitt, deposited their eggs in deep holes made by themselves in the ground, generally quitting, them in the morning, and returning to seek their subsistence in the sea. From two to three ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... mustn't take me too literally, Peter. I am so heartily happy and contented, you know. I think it is such an extraordinary piece of good fortune to be in the middle of all this growing, germinating life. It is a splendid time to live in! It is as if a whole new world were ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... had put his cup down on the ground then, and he literally stepped into it. Some of the tea spirted over my dress—the grey one. I meant to tell ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... scamps! I'll get even with you for this!" he exclaimed, shaking a long finger at Dave, Roger, and Phil. "I'll show you yet! You just wait!" And with that threat he literally ran down the hallway and down the stairs and out of ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... CONSUMPTION (Lat. consumere), literally, the act of consuming or destroying. Thus the word is popularly applied to phthisis, a "wasting away" of the lungs due to tuberculosis (q.v.). In economics the word has a special significance as a technical term. It has been defined as the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... his servitude. Why appeal to me! Am I my brother's keeper? Nay, is he my brother? Is this negro, more like an ape or a baboon than a human being, of the same race with myself? I believe it not. But in some instances, at least, my dear slaveholder, your slave is literally your brother, and sometimes even your son, born of your own daughter. The tendency of the Southern democrat was to deny the unity of the race, as well as all obligations of society to protect the weak and helpless, and therefore ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Literally: "And sometimes the dead."—"Ah, are those the airs you assume?"—the play on the insertion of the letter R (mots, morts) has no meaning ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... he was to win fame for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry written primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a rhetorical age the result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of cases the poet of the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great as were the facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name, not by the gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but by declaiming before public or private ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Henin, southwest of Arras. For a week British guns had been bombarding this sector without cessation, and during the night preceding the attack the fire had increased in intensity to a degree that surpassed any previous bombardments. The British literally blasted their way through the German front and rearward positions. Vimy Ridge, dominating the coal fields of Lens, where thousands of French had fallen in the previous year, was captured by the Canadians. The terrific bombardment by British guns during ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... barking sheep-dog, the shuffle of the moving flock, were signs that the farm day was beginning, although all the stars had not faded out of the sky. A little flying shadow, Bobby slipped out of the cow-yard, past the farm-house, and literally tumbled down the brae. From one level to another he dropped, several hundred feet in a very few minutes, and from the clear air of the breezy hilltop to a nether world that was buried fathoms deep in a ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... have answered the gentleman as far as my information extends. I have examined that law. It is as strong in favor of the master as the laws of Kentucky or Missouri. I believe it is the law of Mississippi transcribed literally, verbatim. That is my understanding. The law is as complete on the subject as the law of any ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the time, and his wife couldn't leave him. She had to send the child to England, and who should she send her to but me? Look at her now, and say if the English air hasn't agreed with her! We two mothers, Mr. Kendrew, seem literally to live again in our children. I have an only child. My friend has an only child. My daughter is little Anne—as I was. My friend's daughter is little Blanche—as she was. And, to crown it all, those two girls have taken the same fancy to each other which we took to each other in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... hereafter. Story was a light-hearted, discursive person, with a large amount of bric-a-brac information, who could appreciate Hawthorne either as a genius or as a celebrity. He soon became Hawthorne's chief companion and social mainstay in Rome, literally a vade mecum, and we may believe that he exercised more or less influence over Hawthorne's judgment ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... men turned their faces towards Rome, but scarcely had they taken a dozen steps when the road in front of them literally swarmed with rough-looking armed men, who effectually barred their progress. In an instant they were surrounded. Resistance was impossible; the two friends glanced at each other and about them in dismay. The new comers were ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... eggs. Not being able to procure these, she brought us some cooked meat for supper. After having a game I sent her home, but she appeared again when her mother brought the milk. I did not know till afterwards that she wanted to stay the night and that her mother had literally to drag her away, poor little thing. She has long black eyelashes, from under which she looks out at one with a shy trusting look ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... one from day to day, have been tabulated in a work called Sailing Directions, and they are so arranged that he may daily see how much he is ahead of time, or how far he is behind time; nay, his path has been literally blazed through the winds for him on the sea; mile-posts have been set up on the waves, and finger-boards planted, and time-tables furnished for the trackless waste, by which the ship-master, on his first voyage to any port, may know as well as the most experienced trader whether he be ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... printing office Patsy was laughing hysterically as her horror dissolved and allowed her to discover the comic phase of the duel. She literally fell on Arthur's neck as he entered, but the next moment pushed him away to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... these mills were worked to their full capacity. At the cessation of hostilities many mills were literally worn out; others were destroyed by the invading armies; and fewer were in operation in 1870 than before the War. During the next decade, hope of industrial success began to return to the South. The mills in operation were making some money; the high price of cotton had brought ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... heard what I had done, and discovered her son behind me, literally struck her dumb. The language of the eye, superseding on this occasion the language of the tongue, plainly revealed the impression that I had produced on her: "You bring my lost brat home in a cab! Mr. Stranger, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... to read it himself. But shortly after he failed so miserably with Captain Ashe, the boy came into possession of a priceless treasure. It was that little treatise on "Greek and Roman Mythology" which I have mentioned, and which he must literally have worn out with reading, since no fragment of it seems to have survived his boyhood. Heaven knows who wrote it or published it; his father bought it with a number of other books at an auction, and the boy, who had about that time discovered the chapter on prosody in the back part of his grammar, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... mere objectification of a mood, of some unusual period of ecstasy or sorrow, a blind outcry of thanksgiving or of bitterness, or they are the clumsy expression of some practical truth, as, the wisdom of acquiescence, and the futility of preoccupation with evil. But taken seriously and literally such statements are simply untrue to the facts and blur our fundamental perceptions. If actually accredited, either would lead to quiescence; if everything were equally good or evil all striving would be meaningless, one might as well jump from a housetop or walk into the ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... musk of roses seemed literally to fill the bottom of the vale. With it was mingled the scent of the grass and of the field flowers. Over all hung ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... new gown she submitted the style and colors to what seems literally to have been her other half, and he solemnly pondered over both before pronouncing his august ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... personal service in business generally. The shillings of the public are the gross returns for the book. These have to be divided between all the agents employed in producing the book—author, printer, binder, publisher, bookseller, etc. This is not literally what happens, but it is arithmetically true in the long run. How much for each? Evidently just as much as they can each get, for there is no right but might and nothing but tug-of-war. There is nothing absolute in the partition of profits: infinite action and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... in his corner and sighed. He was a heavy man, and he had not known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much to move him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the scum that gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly died ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... given to justify my title, "The Land of Upside Down," the land of contradictions to all our Occidental ideas. That {4} Japan is a land "where the flowers have no odor and the birds no song" has passed into a proverb that is almost literally true; and similarly, the far-famed cherry blossoms bear no fruit. The typesetters I saw in the Kokumin Shimbum office were singing like birds, but the field-hands I saw at Komaba were as silent as church-worshippers. The women carry children on their backs and not in their ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... Iceland and Norway. The first part, which is really padding and has nothing whatever to do with Frey or his matrimonial affairs, treats of one Ogmund, who was called Ogmund Dint, for the very good reason that he had been literally dinted as to the skull. It was done by a gentleman named Halward. Everybody naturally expected Ogmund to dint back; but he was something of a conscientious objector in the matter of face-to-face dinting, and being too proud for vulgar conflict he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... England, when they not only refused to accept my resignation as Secretary, but made me promise to write them letters about farming in the Mother Country, and on other matters of interest that I might meet with on my travels there. My first idea was to do this literally;—to make a walk through the best agricultural sections of England, and write home a series of communications to be inserted in our little village paper. But, on second thought, on considering the size of the sheet, I found it would require four or five years to print in ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... said deeds consisting in being able to carry away as much fruit as possible without being caught in the act. For the Landdrost exercised a watchful eye over that fruit. It was currently reported, however, that his was the first garden to be literally left desolate before the season had far advanced, and it was usually his misfortune to be deprived of his fruit just after he had retired for the night, after having prowled about with an empty gun in his hand from sunset till late in the evening. It was even reported that one evening, after the ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... of Argyll was put in command of the royal forces, and arrived in Scotland in the middle of September 1716. He hastened to the camp, which had been got {124} together somehow at Stirling. He came there almost literally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found few soldiers there to receive him. Under his command he had altogether about a thousand foot and half as many dragoons, the latter consisting in great measure of the famous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospect looked indeed very ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him—its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he lived only to aspire—after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone—at his fine lineaments fixed in study—I comprehended ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... are the sure results of over-crowded cities. Of all creatures man is least fitted to live in herds. Huddled together like sheep, men would very soon die. Man's breath is fatal to his fellows. This is literally as well ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... at last stood before the house. Everything was as silent as the grave, and the door was locked. Yet I must get in, so I rapped with my fingers, and then pounded with my fist on the door and shutters, but all in vain. Finally Spittellorle—[A nickname; literally: "Hospital Loura."]—came out of the red house next mine, and I heard all. The old woman had become idiotic, and was in the stocks. Ulrich was at the point of death, and Doctor Costa had taken him home. When I heard this, I felt the same as you did just now; anger seized upon ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... back, the fingers were passive, while his countenance became grave and his eye thoughtful. Greenly knew that his interference would now be hazardous; for whenever the vice-admiral assumed that air, he literally became commander-in-chief; and any attempt to control or influence him, unless sustained by the communication of new facts, could only draw down resentment on his own head. Bunting, too, was aware that the "admiral was ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... have recently heard poured forth without measure upon the whole population of India.... The people of India do not like us, but they would scarcely know where to turn if we left them. They are sheep, literally ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... remember that the earliest language was picture language. And it is a great help sometimes to dig down under a word and get the picture. Here, it is a man standing on a roadway, earnestly beckoning, and pointing to the road he is in. The Old Testament word means literally "same road." The very word the Master ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... sooner entered the swamp than I was covered with musquitoes of the most ravenous character. They rose from the ground in thousands, and fastened on my "new chum" skin, from which the odour of the lime-juice had not yet departed;[10] and in a few minutes I was literally in torment, and in full retreat out of the swamp. Not even the prospect of a full bag of 'possums would tempt me again in ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... position almost insupportable; for he knew not how to control the restless longings of his heart. At first, he complained of the heat—a complaint merely preliminary to others, but with sufficient tact to prevent Maria Theresa guessing his real object. Understanding the king's remark literally, she began to fan him with her ostrich plumes. But the heat passed away, and the king then complained of cramps and stiffness in his legs, and as the carriages at that moment stopped to change horses, the queen ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... calves so well-turned that the Prince of Sin himself might have taken pride in them. For boutonniere he wore a smouldering ember—so true an imitation that at first he himself had hesitated to touch it. Literally to crown all, his ruddy hair was twisted upward from each temple in a cornuted fashion ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Perkinses were related by marriage to the Mortons, of whom there are over fifty living adult descendants on the town-site now. So one begins to see why she is called "Aunt Martha" Merryfield. She is literally aunt to over a hundred people here, and the habit of calling her aunt has spread from them to ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... self-training, signs of an ambition which showed itself early and which was from the first a clean and a high ambition, there are also other legends showing Lincoln as a naughty boy among naughty boys. The selection here made from these lacks refinement, and the reader must note that this was literally a big, naughty boy, not a man who had grown stiff in coarseness and ill-nature. First it must be recalled that Abraham bore a grudge against the Grigsbys, an honourable grudge in its origin and perhaps the only grudge he ever ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... had the hours hung as heavily upon Marcy Gray's hands as they did at the period of which we write. There was literally nothing he could do—at least that he wanted to do. He did not care to read anything except the newspapers, and they came only once a day; he had never learned how to lounge around and let the hours drag themselves away; he very soon grew weary of sailing about the sound ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... where were sixteen sets of saws,—some gang saws, sixteen in a gang, not to mention circular saws. On one side, they were hauling the logs up an inclined plane by water-power; on the other, passing out the boards, planks, and sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. The trees were literally drawn and quartered there. In forming the rafts, they use the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in the corners and sides of the rafts, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... pursuit of a troop of brindled gnoos, and presently came upon another, which was followed by a third still larger—then by a vast herd of zebras, and again by more gnoos, with sassaybys and hartebeests pouring down from every quarter, until the landscape literally presented the appearance of a moving ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... 7th of September, 1825, the father, after a six months' illness, died at the age of forty-eight, leaving a wife and five children and an insolvent estate. There was literally nothing left for the family; the creditors seized everything; even the small sum which Phineas had loaned his father was held to be the property of a minor, and therefore belonging to the estate. The ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... literally 'to which there were.' This construction is found only with sum. It is ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... of indirect delineation through speech is a conveyance to the reader, through a character's remarks about himself, of a sense of him different from that which his statement literally expresses. Sir Willoughby Patterne, in "The Egoist," talks about himself frequently and in detail; but the reader soon learns from the tone and manner of his utterance to discount the high esteem in which he holds himself. By saying one thing directly, the egoist conveys another and a different ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... it appears that the virus of slavery, introduced into the Constitution of our body politic, by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government, that literally there is no health in it. The only remedy that I can see for the disease, is to be found in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... responsible for my wife's death; but, of course, there is not a word of truth in it. The coroner has taken the matter in charge, and his verdict will soon set at rest these scandalous lies. There is nothing too sacred for these political harpies and ghouls: they literally have dragged the loved dead from the grave in the hope of injuring my reputation. Well, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... by the surging mob which invaded the palace, and in half an hour he shouted himself quite hoarse in adjuring the crowds from the tribune to let the Assembly deliberate in peace. But while he was literally croaking in his attempts to make the people hear reason, news was brought to him that M. Blanqui and some other adventurous spirits, taking time by the forelock, had repaired to the Hotel de Ville, and were setting ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... yes, indeed he is, and she loves him with her whole heart. Ah! mamma, you don't know how glad it makes me to see it. The poor little thing seemed to be literally famishing for love when I ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... Anderson, a merchant in Fredericksburg, who was an Indian trader at Pittsburg in 1774; he says that he questioned Gibson as to whether he had not himself added something to the speech, to which Gibson replied that he had not changed it in any way, but had translated it literally, as well as he could, though he was unable to come up to the force of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... four hours to find, could be spared only for four or five miles. Such a journey can rarely have been accomplished. Our zigzag course had prolonged it into from two hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty miles; and it is literally true that, of this entire distance from Westport House to Sackville-street, Dublin, not one furlong had been performed under the spontaneous impulse of our own horses. Their diabolic resistance continued to the last. And one may venture to hope that the sense of final subjugation ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... preceding popular view, which is here, as in so many cases, the precise opposite of that reached from the side of science. This, as we have already so fully insisted, must set out with geography, thus literally replacing People and ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... country on each side of the road was a desolate vista of shell-holes as far as the eye could see. Where villages had been, there was now no trace left of any sort of habitation. One might think that, however heavy a bombardment, some trace would be left of the village which had suffered. There was literally nothing left of the village through which had run the road they were now travelling. Over this scarred stretch of country were dotted camps and groups of huts, with duck-boards crossing the old shell-holes, some of which were still full ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... hills, and found the creek went between them, forming another pass, where there was another water-hole under the rocks. This, no doubt, had been of large dimensions, but was now gradually getting filled with sand; there was, however, a considerable quantity of water, and it was literally alive with fish, insomuch that the water had a disagreeable and fishy taste. Great numbers of the dead fish were floating upon the water. Here we met a considerable number of natives, and although the women would not come close, several of the men did, and made themselves ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... divergent among the parties concerned. History alone can pass a final verdict on the conduct of States. But in no case can a formal rule of right in such cases—especially when a question of life or death is depending on it, as was literally the fact in the Manchurian War as regards Japan—limit the undoubted right of the State. If Japan had not obtained from the very first the absolute command of the seas, the war with Russia would have been hopeless. She was justified, therefore, in employing the most extreme measures. ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... honour of paying his respects to the Viceroy; and received for answer, that the customs of the country did not allow a person in his situation to come within the walls of the Viceroy's palace, but that one of his officers should receive his visit at the gate; which visit to the gate was literally made. Mr. Van Braam, in relating this circumstance in his journal, observes, that the Viceroy "assured his Excellency, he ought not to take his refusal amiss, as the same terms had been prescribed to ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... arms to exterminate me. The very idea tingled through every fibre of my frame. But, terrible as it appeared to my imagination, it did but give new energy to my purpose; and I determined that I would not voluntarily resign the field, that is, literally speaking, my neck to the cord of the executioner, notwithstanding the greatest superiority in my assailants. But the incidents which had befallen me, though they did not change my purpose, induced me to examine ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... and saw his patient; and had he literally complied with Lady Scatcherd's request, he might have told her at once that there was no hope. As, however, he had not the heart to do this, he mystified the case as doctors so well know how to do, and told her that "there was cause to fear, great cause for fear; he was sorry ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... found himself in a small stone-walled courtyard doubtless inside a sally-port. It was filled with milling figures and many waving torches. And there was Thal, desperately pale and frightened. Behind him there was Don Loris, his eyes burning and his hands twitching, literally speechless from fury. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion. Moreover, subject-matter never can be got into the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within. Literally, we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... very spots where He stumbled and where Simon was made to carry it for Him, that these things cannot be true. Speaking of Jerusalem Jesus said once, "There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down," and it came literally true, so the present streets are not those He trod. Yet even so the scene is wonderfully interesting, for the old Jerusalem must have been like the present town, and the sights Christ saw must have resembled those we see, as for the first time ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... people, while I fought the pale-faces on the left." This history of a warfare protracted to four months—for the period between the planting and harvesting of maize is of that or greater duration—was beautiful, though brief, but it was literally true. A gentleman present assured me that the dignity of his manner, as well as the matter of his speech, sent a thrill of awe to the bosom of every ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... tide rises to such a height that it flows up the St. John River channel to some distance, silencing the roar of the Calls, which pour over a great ledge of rock left by the ebbing sea. Taken very literally from a tale in the ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... continued Kate, whose tears fell while she spoke, 'that he will move so little out of his way, in my behalf, as to enable me by his recommendation—only by his recommendation—to earn, literally, my bread and remain with my mother. Whether we shall ever taste happiness again, depends upon the fortunes of my dear brother; but if he will do this, and Nicholas only tells us that he is well and ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... vulgarity of it—that product of five centuries, that English gentleman. Never realized the vulgarity of demanding of life something for nothing; of asking from a man as a free gift what that man had sweated for and starved for all his life; yes, literally, all his life. It was an illumination, as Morton said, upon that pitiful thing we call 'class.' He demanded all this as his right, too; demanded power, the one precious possession. Well, the other ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the case was literally given away. Perker should have secured a man like the present Mr. Gill or Mr. Charles Matthews—they might have "broken down" the witnesses, or laughed the case ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... breathe him. Zeus, Athene, Heracles, Prometheus, Agamemnon, Orestes, the House of Oedipus, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, and Antigone, spoke something to the Hellenic nations; woke their piety, pity, or horror,—thrilled, soothed, or delighted them; but they have no charm for our ears; for us, they are literally disembodied ghosts, and voiceless as shapeless. But not so are Christ, and the holy Apostles and saints, and the Blessed Virgin; and not so is Hamlet, or Richard the Third, or Macbeth, or Shylock, or the House of Lear, Ophelia, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round, literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red, black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... sense, and would probably have succeeded if he had been a little more careful, but the lynx was a fool. He didn't know the very first thing about the proper way to hunt porcupines, and he ought never to have tried it at all, but he was literally starving, and the temptation was too much for him. Here was something alive, something that had warm red blood in its veins and a good thick layer of flesh over its bones, and that was too slow to get away from him; and he sailed right in, tooth and claw, regardless of the consequences. ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... taken him literally. And Grant, if he had little taste for the task, had learned books and other things not mentioned in the curriculums of the schools she sent him to—and when the bag was reported by Phoebe to be empty, he had returned with inward relief to the desultory life of the Hart ranch ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... consist in the labour of her hands, and in her ability to assist him in his home. But between these there is a middle class of men, who, by reason of their education, are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of womanhood, but who literally cannot marry for love, because their earnings will do no more than support themselves. As to this special young man, it must be confessed that his earnings should have done much more than that; but not the less did he find himself in a position in which marriage with a penniless girl seemed to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... outline of the man as he stood at the unlighted window. His deep sonorous voice rolled down through the darkness from above us,—an earnest, measured voice, the more solemn, the more impressive, because we could not see the speaker, and it came to us literally as "a voice in the night,"—the night of our country's unspeakable trial. There was no uncertainty in his tone: the Union must be preserved and the insurrection must be crushed,—he pledged his hearty support to Mr. Lincoln's administration in doing this. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... have remembered that the joyous Allan literally drew his blood from the house of the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... in Petronius (chap. viii) and that in Juvenal (Sat. vi, 125) are not to be taken literally. "Aes" in the latter should be understood to mean what we would call "the coin," and not necessarily coin of ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... village, had no competitor save when the sitting of the court brought in one or more from neighboring settlements, and, being thus circumstanced, without opposition, and the only representative of his craft, he was literally, to employ the slang phrase in that quarter, the "cock of the walk." He was, however, not so much regarded by the villagers a worthy as a clever man. It required not erudition to win the credit of profundity, and the lawyer knew how to make the most of his learning among those who had none. Like ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... set to music passages from the Bible, almost literally transcribed,—like the immortal scene in which Joseph makes himself known to his brothers, and, after so many trials, can no longer contain his emotion and tender feeling, and whispers the words which have wrung tears from old ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... scrambled to his feet, still holding fast to his gun, however, like a true hunter, and rushed towards the wagon, where he found all the Caffres who could not get inside sticking on the outside, as Pearson had said, like monkeys. There was literally no room for more, but Tom cared not for that. He seized legs, arms, and hair indiscriminately, and in another moment was on the top of the living mass. He had leaped very smartly to this point of vantage, nevertheless ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... and General Andres Lopez Azaldegui was despatched to the island with full powers from the Gov.-General, whilst he was supported on the coast by armed vessels from Zamboanga. Sumoroy fled to the hills, but his mother was found in a hut; and the invading party wreaked their vengeance on her by literally pulling her to pieces. Sumoroy was at length betrayed by his own people, who carried his head to the Spanish Captain, and this officer had it exhibited on a pole in the village. Some years afterwards ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... a twopenny ride at the Zoo, few Europeans ever mount or ride a camel, thereby missing an art or a pastime or sport, which to the novice, until he has been thoroughly and literally broken in, is the most back, heart, and nerve-wearing means of locomotion he could possibly choose ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and in desperation he leaves his reservation, we shoot him. We have put him in the control of an agent, whose authority is as absolute as the Czar's. We have kept from him the motive to be different and he has been literally a man without a country and without a hope. Multitudes of people say, "Oh, yes, the Indian has been wronged," but it makes very little impression upon them. It is much the same feeling that the worldly man has who acknowledges, ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... the express purpose of killing some more Egyptians and getting more honor to himself. The Israelites soon heard that Pharaoh was pursuing them with an army, and they remembered his dreadful war chariots. They found themselves literally between the devil and the deep sea. Whereupon they murmured against Moses for bringing them out into the wilderness to die. But he, disregarding them, stretched forth his miraculous rod over the sea, and lo! the waters parted, forming a wall ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... told, is not to be taken literally—all is symbolism and has a meaning other than the more direct one. But the fact remains, as can be testified by the present writer from three years' residence as a university student in Germany, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... you charge," I added hastily, "and I would like to wash and brush up, too; I have had a tumble," which was literally true. ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... suddenly of gout in the stomach. After the remains of the old Squire had been consigned to the family vault, Algernon accompanied his mother and brother to the library to hear the reading of the will. No suspicion that his father would realize his threat had ever crossed his mind; and he was literally stunned when he found that his unnatural parent had left all to his elder brother, and cut ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... the middle of October, could be picturesquely and alliteratively described as being raw from repeated rejections. His bruised heart and his despised ell literally cried out for the appreciation so long and blindly withheld. Now all at once Phoebe disclosed a second virtue; her first and only one, hitherto, in the eyes of Cephas, having been an ability to get on with his mother, ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... staircase, and dragged his crimson dressing-gown to the top of the cellar stairs, the uproar growing momentarily more terrific. Half-way down the whitewashed steps he paused, viewing the remarkable scene below him with interest and amazement. The cemented floor was literally covered with neatly chopped kindling-wood, which rose as in a tide under the efforts of a large red-faced man who, with the regularity of a machine, stooped, grasped a billet in either hand, shook them in the face of Miss Gould, who cowered upon a soap-box at his side, and flung ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... and, the wrappings notwithstanding, its knees were slightly bent. More than that, indeed, the gold mask, which, after the fashion of the Ptolemaic period, had been set upon the face, had worked down, and was literally pounded up ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... if to rise to emphasise his statement; but Corporal Vinson, far from imitating the movement, sank deeper and deeper in the large arm-chair, into which he had literally fallen a few minutes before, and with an accent of profound anguish, for he understood Fandor's desire to shorten the conversation, he cried ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre |
