"Quivering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the news home he could hardly get up the front steps with it. When he announced it at the table, and tried to be careless, his hand trembled till the saucerful of coffee at his quivering lips splashed over on the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... salutatory in forlorn rhyme to end off with," laughed Norman, "and read it, all arrayed in white, in a trembling voice, and everybody applauded, and even old Judge Seymour admired it, while you were reading, with your pink cheeks and trembling hands and quivering voice." ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... himself, ordered her crew to row towards the bathing-ground, and there to rest upon their oars. All happened as had been arranged. His lovely bride came forth, the mayor glided in behind her, she became confused, and had floated out of her depth, when, with one skilful touch of the rudder and one quivering stroke from the boat's crew, her adoring Boldheart held her in his strong arms. There her shrieks of terror were ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... stream of water, fringed with bushes and small trees. On the near side of this fringe of trees and bushes and only a short distance from where our two young friends sat on the backs of their horses, crouched a huge grizzly bear over the body of a horse that was still quivering in the death agony. ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... say, when girlhood is trembling, quivering on the portal of womanhood, a world of mysteries. But it is not half so dramatic as twenty-five, when a woman, if she be rightly healthy in mind and body, comes into woman's estate, feeling, desiring, ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... composer himself. He adds significantly: "A poet, again, might easily write words to them [Chopin's ballades]. They move the innermost depth of the soul." Indeed, the "Ballade" (in G minor), Op. 23, is all over quivering with intensest feeling, full of sighs, sobs, groans, and passionate ebullitions. The seven introductory bars (Lento) begin firm, ponderous, and loud, but gradually become looser, lighter, and softer, terminating with a dissonant ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... suddenly as though it had been stabbed and killed, and the woman whose eyes had been strained and lifted throughout as in a trance, and whose body had been rigid and quivering, sank down upon herself and let her eyelids fall, and ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... all looking upon me, that they were all leaning towards me,—some with frightful derision, others with furious aversion. Every arm was raised against me, and they made as though they would crush me with the quivering limbs they had torn one from ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and his mind awoke. He did not dream of self-defence, he did not reach for his pistol. He drew himself up instead to face death, with a quivering nostril. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... stable, the black horse was taken out of the traces, and the bridle was left on without a remonstrance on Sam's part, and exchanged for a much newer one, while twenty-five dollars in dirty bank-notes were carefully counted out by Sam, and then Gordon jumped into the buggy and drove off. He was quivering with suppressed mirth. "The biter is bitten this time," he said as soon as he was out of hearing of Sam Tucker. Then he ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... riding down into Surrey from London one Sunday last August and reading an editorial on Louvain—so well written, so quivering with noble indignation that one's blood boiled, as they say, and one could scarcely wait to get off the train to begin the work of revenge. Perhaps the most moving passage in this editorial was about the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... approaching Roberts's house, in considerable fear he entered the house and closed the door, awaiting, with fear, the approach of the light. To his horror, he perceived the light passing through the shut door, and it played in a quivering way underneath the roof, and then vanished. That very night the servant man died, and his bed was right above the spot where ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... be without honor, and you would not marry him." A moment's silence followed, broken by a long, deep sigh that ended in little quivering waves, like the faint ripples that reach the shore,—the whispered ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... to have, ma'am. I know well enough that I ain't satisfactory to you," she returned, her voice quivering, "and I can't be, and I know you want me to go—and I—I've come ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... grapple. The Rebel line was a rolling torrent of flame, their bullets shrieked angrily as they flew past, they struck the snow in front of us, and threw its cold flakes in faces that were white with the fires of consuming hate; they buried themselves with a dull thud in the quivering bodies of the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... rejoined him. The artisan's face was overcast—his lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation. "Brother," he said to Rameau, "to-day the cause is betrayed"—(the word trahi was just then coming into vogue at Paris)—"the blouses I counted on are recreant. I have just learned that all is quiet in the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... after the beautiful reconciliation at sunset, the faint mists of doubt in their brief parting for a night had now no power against the ardors of anticipated meeting. As we shot out upon the steaming water, the sun was just looking over the lower ridges of a mountain opposite. Air, blue and quivering, hung under shelter of the mountain-front, as if a film from the dim purple of night were hiding there to see what beauty day had, better than its own. The gray fog, so dreary for three mornings, was utterly vanquished; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... mumbled, chewing his lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the landau rolled slowly out of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in smoke, the ship stood out to sea. Soon with a roaring rose the mighty fire, And the pile crackled; and between the logs Sharp quivering tongues of flame shot out, and leapt, Curling and darting, higher, till they lick'd The summit of the pile, the dead, the mast, And ate the shriveling sails; but still the ship Drove on, ablaze above her hull with fire. And the gods stood upon the beach and gazed, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... L'Olonnois, his lip quivering, "O' course we don't want to go home. Ain't our desert island all right? Where you goin' to find any better place 'n this, like to know? Besides"—and here he drew me to one side—"they's a good reason for not goin' just yet, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... crooning songs of low-swinging chariots and golden stairs? Was Mrs. Leighton still patiently sewing? The Reverend Orme, was he still sitting scowling and staring and staring? And Natalie? Was she there, or was she gone, married? He drew a great, quivering sigh. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... sky out of doors, and through the linen awnings, stretched under the glazed roof, there filtered a bright white light, while the open doorways, communicating with the garden gallery, admitted moist gusts of quivering freshness. For a moment Claude drew breath in that atmosphere which was already tainted with a vague smell of varnish and the odour of the musk with which the women present perfumed themselves. At a glance he ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... telling you that I wass a Pharisee?" cried Lachlan, quivering in every limb, and ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... hot iron to the quivering flesh Be this test to my soul, to look on him, To set my living face by his dead face; Then tax him with the deeds ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... not remember all those worse horrors which her imagination had been conjuring up, and from which she was actually saved. She stood trembling and shaking in the storm of her grief, trying to stem her floods of tears with her quivering little hands, and unable to keep them from raining through her fingers on to ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... wings are the sails; and as he approaches, it is impossible to look him in the face for its brightness. Two other angels have green wings and green garments, and the drapery is kept in motion like a flag by the vehement action of the wings. A fifth has a face like the morning star, casting forth quivering beams. A sixth is of a lustre so oppressive, that the poet feels a weight on his eyes before he knows what is coming. Another's presence affects the senses like the fragrance of a May-morning; and another is in garments dark as cinders, but has a sword ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... surmise. The next moment he knew the truth, for with a heavy thud the man struck the stones, falling sidewise, and then turned over upon his face, to lie with his limbs quivering slightly for a few moments before he lay ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... seen the lake's vast expanse, nor its blue sheet blending so harmoniously with the sky, the fishermen's boats which ploughed its surface, the wooded heights which crowned it and cast their quivering reflection on its waters, the rocks covered with moss, the green Alpine plants in their vivid and brilliant colouring; nor had she ever watched the sun set behind the glaciers, nor the long shades ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... unknown depths had she not come into sudden contact with his supporting shoulder. Faint and dizzy, and trembling like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to foot. A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her, resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand closing tightly ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... at the net, Strip off the quivering fish; Hid in the mist The winds whist, Is like my ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... me, then, to thank Nastasia Philipovna for the great delicacy with which she has treated me," said Gania, as pale as death, and with quivering lips. "That is my plain duty, of course; but the prince—what has he to do ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pledge for the tranquillity of the future. This mission is at once splendid and cruel; simultaneously it exalts and revolts; for the spasm through which we are passing wounds us and immolates us!... To-day the poor quivering refuse raked from the furnace knows all the bitterness of the laurels. Such pride as we retain makes it impossible for us to accept an illusory and transient glory. We know the falsity of attitudinising, and we have probed the emptiness of certain dreams. The fire has licked up the scenery, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... at the dog. The half-gnawed bone was still between his forepaws, but with head raised high, ears cocked up, and flashing eye, he was listening intently—listening to the silence as it were, and an angry quivering ran down the length ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... which in a picture are directly life-communicating, and life-enhancing. Those of us who care for nothing in the work of art but what it represents, are either powerfully attracted or repelled by his unhackneyed types and quivering feeling; but if we are such as have an imagination of touch and of movement that it is easy to stimulate, we feel a pleasure in Botticelli that few, if any, other artists can give us. Long after we have exhausted both the intensest sympathies ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... gradually growing louder and louder as he descends, until within a few yards of the earth they cease, and he drops like a fragment hurled from above into the herbage, or flits about it for a short distance ere alighting." The Lark sings just as richly on the ground as when on quivering wing. When in song he is said to be a good guide to the weather, for whenever we see him rise into the air, despite the gloomy looks of an overcast sky, fine ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... stood innocently obedient to his wishes, like the boy upon the burning deck, awaiting his return and his version of whatsoever he had been accused of. There was something delicately heroic in the little, slender old thing, with her troubled eyes and her cap and her quivering sideringlets. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... canoe followed him down the outside edge of the same fork. When he came to the junction it was natural to suppose that he would follow the current down the main stem of the Y. But instead of that, when the canoe dropped into the comparative stillness of the pool, the line was stretched, taut and quivering, across the foot of the left-hand fork and straight up into the current of the right-hand fork. "He's gone up the other branch," shouted Chichester, above the roar of the stream, "we must follow him! Push across ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... replied Rosamond, in a quivering voice. "But indeed I am afraid I don't know enough to teach even the very little girls. So I'm afraid you'd better get somebody else. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the chairman's head; he took counsel with this neighbor and that, secret counsel. Behind the barn they whispered, like pairs of lovers, or far out on the open field, where only the quivering heat could overhear them. Appealing to courts of law is always bad business; one never knows whether one is going to get justice or injustice. But before one should let the village be laid in ashes, now, just now, when the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... brands that filled them with terror. Then the horses, instinctively following some leader, turned again and ran back to their old places among the trees and behind the windrows, where they stood, quivering with terror. ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... eagle screams from the misty cliff, With a quivering lamb in his taloned griff. And the echoes leap over hill and hollow, As the old stag bells ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... contemptuous anger in her eye which the man could not face. He lost all control of himself, uttered coarse oaths, and stood quivering. Then the woman began to lecture him; she talked steadily, acrimoniously, for more than an hour, regardless of his interruptions. Nervously exhausted, he fled at length from the room. A couple of hours later they met again in the nuptial chamber, and again Mrs. Jordan ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... bitternesses and restraints and disappointments which all well-bred city children must suffer in the course of their training for the more or less factitious life of society:—obligations to remain very still with every nimble nerve quivering in dumb revolt;—the injustice of being found troublesome and being sent to bed early for the comfort of her elders;—the cruel necessity of straining her pretty eyes, for many long hours at a time, over grimy desks in gloomy school-rooms, though birds might twitter and bright winds flutter ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... a little grove of quaking aspens. Their leaves, quivering in the morning breeze, attract the eye. Crossing the railway, the road makes a climb up a hill that at one time may have formed a natural dam across the river. Here is a scarred tree on the left where Handsome Jack ran his stage off the bank in 1875, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... a laugh compassable only by a healthy man in whose head every tooth still remains as white as sugar. By this I mean the laugh of quivering cheeks, the laugh which causes a neighbour who is sleeping behind double doors three rooms away to leap from his bed and exclaim with distended eyes, "Hullo! Something ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... her whole being. If it were impossible to love this son any longer, she could still suffer for him. Quivering with this last expression of motherhood, she wept as she saw the brilliant staff officer of the Emperor turn to enter tobacconist's and pause on the threshold; he had felt in his pocket and found nothing. Agathe left the bridge, crossed the quai rapidly, took out her purse, thrust it into ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... having been written on papyrus and involved in the realm of dead matter. His idea, thrilling his own soul, would have revealed itself in every particle and movement of his body; for "soul is form, and doth the body make." Its first product would have been his own quivering, animated, and animating personality. He would have impressed every one of his associates, every one of whom would in turn have impressed a new crowd, and thus the immortal array of influences would have gone on. Not impressions on parchment, but impressions on the soul, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... emptied their horns and cups to that health. Then stood up the man furthest on the left and cried out, "Drink a health to the Undying King!" And again all men rose up and shouted ere they drank. Other healths they drank, as the "Cold Keel," the "Windworn Sail," the "Quivering Ash" and the "Furrowed Beach." And the wine and mead flowed like rivers in that hall of the Wild Men. As for Hallblithe, he drank what he would but stood not up, nor raised his cup to his lips when a health was drunk; for he knew not whether these men were his friends ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... words to set his hands trembling and his whole body quivering with anticipation. There was in him now none of the old hunter's coolness, none of the almost stoical indifference with which the men of the big North hear these sounds of the wild things about them. Rod had yet to ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... strengthened spirits. And it is the foundation of all the others, for it is only they who know how to soar that can creep, and it is only they who have renewed their strength hour by hour, by communion with the Source of all energy and might, who when they 'drop with quivering wings, composed and still,' down to the low earth, there live ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... satisfied, and Napoleon resolved on making an end of all his adversaries. Russia alone, silent and immovable, remained the ally of England, and its last support. Its armies occupied Poland, always quivering under the hands of its oppressors, ready to rise up against them at the first appeal. It was upon the Vistula that the emperor had resolved to go and seek the Russians, intoxicating the Poles beforehand ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... six-and-a-half years of age, bright, happy, and spoke English thoroughly well. From infancy he had been distinguished for this faculty, variable with the state of the atmosphere. As a rule, the act of shaking hands was generally attended by a quivering sensation like that produced by an electric current, and contact with his tongue ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... conscious of his movements. His limbs were trembling, his hands were icy cold and damp with sweat, his tightened throat seemed as if it must break the drawn muscles in its straining. But his great black eyes shone tearless as he walked straight to the bed and stood gazing down upon the quivering face upturned to him. Then, after a moment of preparation, the dreadful breathing ceased, and a ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... flying and drums beating and laid down their arms. The Dutch soldiers marched in followed by the English troops, who were made prisoners of war and confined in the church. It was the 9th of August, 1672, and the air was quivering with heat, when the flag of the Dutch Republic once more waved over Fort Amsterdam, and the name of the city of New York was changed to New Orange, in compliment to William Prince ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... were to save our powder until Celliers let off his gun. Already the savages were within thirty paces of us, a countless mass of men packed like sheep in a kraal, their fierce eyes shewing white as ivory in the sunlight, their cruel spears quivering in their hands, when the signal was given and every gun, some loaded with slugs and some with bullets, was discharged point-blank into the ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... have imagined her proud, inhuman cousin reduced to this state of quivering emotion. Never before had she seen a ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... from his face as he twitched to his feet. He was trembling violently. In the shadow of the hood I saw a furred face, a quivering velvety muzzle, and great soft golden eyes which ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... to my feet with quivering knees, and my face turned white as a fresh-washed towel; I had heard a war-cry I knew too well—'twas the murderous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... religion is the end or object of this life. When it is so considered it becomes destructive of happiness. The real end of life is, happiness. It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleeding, quivering hearts of men. It devours their substance, builds palaces for God (who dwells not in temples made with hands), and allows His children to die in huts and hovels. It fills the earth with mourning, heaven with hatred, the present with ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... canvas expanded to the wind than the Susan Jane heeled over with a lurch as if she were going to capsize, bringing her bow so much round that her jib shivered, causing several ominous creaks and cracks aloft from the quivering topmasts. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... companion did not respond; she remained silent, gazing dreamily into the far distance; and when I looked at her, awaiting some answering remark, I saw that she was quite pale, that she was biting her under-lip in a fruitless endeavour to stay its quivering, and that there were undoubtedly tears in her eyes. She averted her face quickly, but I was confident that I was not mistaken as to those indications ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... inclined upon her shoulder, and her arms helplessly outstretched, Valeria was sleeping heavily. He did not speedily succeed in waking her ... but as soon as she saw him she flung herself on his neck, and embraced him convulsively; her whole body was quivering. ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... love for pictures and books. After a very happy hour, while saying good-by in the hall, the child suddenly seized her teacher's hand and stammered, "How can you help telling lies?" The teacher says, "As I looked into her plain little face with its quivering lips, I loved her. I determined to fight for her and with her." It was a fight, for habit was strong and environment did not change. For over five years that teacher faithfully presented the "thou shall not" and "thou shall" which shaped ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... What would it be, could we now gaze indeed Upon thy living landscape? could we breathe Thy mountain air, and listen to thy waves, As they run rippling past our feet, and see That lake lit up by dancing sunbeams—and Those light leaves quivering in the summer air; Or linger some sweet eve just on this spot Where now we seem to stand, and watch the stars Flash into splendour, one by one, as night Steals over yon snow-peaks, and twilight fades Behind the steeps of Jura! here, O here! 'Mid scenes where Genius, Worth and Wisdom dwelt,[D] ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... banks, and the spires of Nuys rising beyond them, helped to amuse my fancy. Not being able to brook the confinement of the carriage, I left it to come over at its leisure; and, stepping into a boat, rowed along, at first, by the quivering osiers; then, launching out into the midst of the waters, I glided a few moments with the current, and resting on my oars, listened to the hum of voices afar off, while several little skiffs, like canoes, glanced before my sight, concerning ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... upcurled. In cool weather it keeps him warm. Then, after he has finished his meal, you may see him crouched close on some level limb with his tail-robe neatly spread and reaching forward to his ears, the electric, outstanding hairs quivering in the breeze like pine-needles. But in wet or very cold weather he stays in his nest, and while curled up there his comforter is long enough to come forward around his nose. It is seldom so cold, however, as to prevent his going out to ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... as yet uncopied, that should hold Church breathless, with the pencil of the Andes and Niagara quivering in his fingers,—pictures that Turner might well cross the seas to look upon; but Miselle remembers them through a distracting mist of bodily terror and discomfort,—as some painter showed a dance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... too, and presently the night watch tramped through the barrack on its last visit of inspection, flashing lanterns into the faces of the prisoners. To-night the inspection seemed unusually thorough. It set their strained nerves quivering anew. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... draw off your boots, fair brother," began the dame; but poor Christina, the more anxious to propitiate him in little things, because of the horror and dread with which his main purpose inspired her, was already on her knees, pulling with her small quivering hands at the long steel-guarded boot—a task to which she would have been utterly inadequate, but for some lazy assistance from her father's other foot. She further brought a pair of her uncle's furred slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nearly cherry-blossom time again, and the days and the weeks are slipping away into months before I know it. I am working at full speed and wonder sometimes how I keep up. But I don't dare leave any leisure for heartaches, even when the body is quivering from weariness, and every nerve cries out for rest. I must keep on and on and on, for all too easily the dread memories come creeping back and enfold me until there is no light on any side. From morning until night it is ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and stood thus, all tension. He raised clenched, quivering hands toward the ceiling. "O King of Jesters!" he cried, in horrid blasphemy; and then again, "O King ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... blankly across the two miles of quivering death trap we still had to cross before we gained what safety there might be in the Halfway shore and the neighborhood of Macartney's picket, and my thoughts were not of Collins—"Why, in heaven's name, didn't Collins have sense enough ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... once stepped out, and was instantly observed by the Danes, who of course seized the opportunity and let fly several arrows at him, which grazed him or stuck quivering in the roof close to the spot where he stood. He was not slow to reply. One of the vikings, who was approaching the house at the moment with a bundle of faggots on his back, received a shaft in his shoulder, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself hurled forward, and glancing over his shoulder when he found his footing again saw a big trunk tilt a little. It seemed to hang quivering for a second or two, then toppled further, and with a great humming came rushing down. Then there was a stunning crash, and he stood gasping, deafened, and bereft of sight, amidst a stifling cloud of dust ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... poet hath hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... oblations of the Christian home. The Lord does not ask the Christian parent, as he did Abraham, to build an altar upon the summit of some lofty cliff, and there to thrust a sacrificial knife to the heart of his child, and offer his quivering flesh and bleeding body a burnt offering to him; but he commands him to bring his child to the altar of baptism in his church, and there dedicate his life, his talents, his all, as a living sacrifice "holy and acceptable unto ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... and drew away at the cord till he could see what looked like a great silver shuttle darting about in the quivering water, and then, panting still, he drew out a fine mackerel, with its rippled sides, glorious with pearly tints, and its body bending and springing like so much ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... sandy beach at the foot of Escape Cliffs was accordingly chosen. The observations had been commenced and were about half completed, when on the summit of the cliffs, which rose about twenty feet above their heads, suddenly appeared a large party of natives with poised and quivering spears, as if about immediately to deliver them. Stamping on the ground and shaking their heads too and fro, they threw out their long shaggy locks in a circle, whilst their glaring eyes flashed with fury as ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... which is the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awakening and giving aim to these powers of laughter, but it is not to be confounded with them: it enfolds a thinner form of them, differing from satire, in not sharply driving into the quivering sensibilities, and from humour, in not comforting them and tucking them up, or indicating a broader than the range of this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can live over his experiences, and see once more the moonblanched silver mountain peaks against the dark blue sky; hear the lonely sough of the night wind through the pines; feel the dance of wild expectation in the quivering pulse; the stir, the thrill, the joy of hard action in perilous moments; the mystery of man's yearning ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... quivering fin, Through the wave the sturgeon flew, And, like the heaven-shot javelin, He sprung above the waters blue. Instant as the star-fall light, He plunged him in the deep again, But left an arch of silver bright The rainbow of the moony main. It ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... beauteous as the tear-filled eyes Of little child at little miseries. Trembling at first, then swelling as it rose, Like rising light that broad and broader grows, It filled the hall, and so possessed the air, That not one living, breathing soul was there, Though dullest, slowest, but was quivering In Music's grasp, and forced to hear her sing. But most such sweet compulsion took the mood Of Pedro (tired of doing what he would). Whether the words which that strange meaning bore Were but the poet's feigning, or aught more, Was ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... contrived to stick a hint or two about the terrible dinner in Evan's quivering flesh. He did it as delicately as possible, half begging pardon, and perspiring profusely. Evan grasped his hand, and thanked him. Caroline's illness was now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... life the stately steamer, quivering with every stroke of her iron heart, swept along the gleaming river on her upward passage, bearing to their destination her freight of human souls. Among theme was our bridal party, which, as the day was so clear ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... annual temperature of Las Canadas is that of N. latitude 53 degrees, Holland and Hanover; in fact, here it is the Pyrenees, and below it Africa. The sun blazed from a desert of blue, and the waving heat-reek rose trembling and quivering from the tawny sides of the foregrounds. The clouds, whose volumes were disposed like the leaves of a camellia, lay far down to the north-east, as if unable to face the fires of day. And now the great trachytic dome, towering in the translucent air, was the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... have been denounced by some one?" asked Razumov, without taking his eyes off her quivering face. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the fear of death presaged in the swelling veins of his neck, was begging his Maker to strike him dead, and fighting for more air between his prayers. A second time Ortheris drenched the quivering body with water, ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was a meditative monad, called a sage; And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought: "Tradition, handed down for hours and hours, Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world, Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence When I am very old, yon shimmering doom Comes drawing down and down, till all things end?" Then with a wizen smirk he proudly felt No other mote of God had ever gained Such giant grasp ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... the thick shawl which Jerome had found in a closet, and himself pinned over the wild fair head, under the quivering chin, while he quieted her with grave admonitions, as if he were her father. Then he led poor Henry Leeds—still crying out that he would not have the doctor—into his house and his bedroom, and got him to bed, though ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his hair and the side of his face, and looked past her to where Miss Terrill was surveying the dead boar from her saddle, while her pony reared and shied, quivering with excitement beneath her. Holcombe mounted stiffly and rode toward her. "I am very much obliged to you," he ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... fleece was taken from the still quivering body, and the appetizing smell of mutton steaks reminded the hungry men that the breakfast hour had long since passed. The meal over, nature asserted her claims, and the thoroughly tired-out travelers wrapped themselves in their ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... the ordinary amusements of youth. Like a quiet little mouse she slipped in and out, never voluntarily opening a conversation, nor prolonging it a moment longer than was necessary. A struggling smile had seemed the height of merriment to which she could attain, so that to see the quivering shoulders and streaming eyes was indeed a revelation of the unexpected. Arthur's feelings were curiously contradictory at that moment. He was gratified at the tribute to his sister's fascination, and yet in some inexplicable manner conscious of a jarring note in his satisfaction. He himself ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... in the delicate shadow of the lime-tree. Outside, the lawn was drenched with light, light that ran quivering into the little inlets and pools among the shadows. The cropped grass shone clear as emerald, and all the garden showed clear-cut and solid and stable in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... kind from those already related. Whereas everything hitherto was a reflection of outer life and feeling, there now begins a kind of inner life. In the Saturn world a life of light begins flickering here and there, and growing dim again. A quivering glimmer is seen in some places, something like flashes of lightning in others. The Saturn heat bodies begin to glimmer, to sparkle, and even to emit rays. This stage of evolution having been reached, ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... a Roman holiday for the French inhabitants of the town of ——, who lined the roads en masse quivering with suppressed emotion and happiness, thinking they were eyewitnessing a great German retreat. "Our French soldiers will soon be here again," they whispered to one another. But it wasn't a retreat—it was one of those mysterious ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... that throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then kindling each decaying part Creeps back to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... saved. Yet this discovery filled me with wonder. This one, so gay, so genial, so laughter-loving—this one, so glowing with the bloom of health, and the light of life, and the sparkle of wit—this one! It seemed impossible. There swept before me on that instant the vision of the ice, that quivering form clinging to me, that pallid face, those despairing eyes, that expression of piteous and agonizing entreaty, those wild words of horror and of anguish. There came before me the phantom of that form which I had upraised from the ice when it had sunk down ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... fifth commandment. He began in his deepest bass voice: 'Honor thy father—' He stopped and looked up to heaven as if he saw the rest of it there. He went on with a tremendous emphasis on the next word. 'And thy mother,' he said (as if that was quite a different thing) in a tearful, fluty, quivering voice which was a compliment to mothers in itself. We all felt it, mothers or not. But the great sensation was when he got into the pulpit. The manner in which he dropped on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, and showed his beautiful rings ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the water. And morning comes at length, ushered in, before night has yet departed, by the strong, shrill cry of the great fish-eagle, as he sits on the topmost bough of some forest tree and at measured periods repeats his quivering and unearthly yell like an evil spirit calling. But hark at that dull, low note of indescribable pain and suffering! long and heavy it swells and dies away. It is the devil-bird; and whoever sees that bird must surely die soon after, according to ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... now had our few things loaded on the two colts, for they had fully decided to go with me, and I was not in the least put back by McMahon's dire forebodings. We shook hands with quivering lips as we each hoped the other would meet good luck, and find enough to eat and all such sort of friendly talk, and then with my little party on the one side and McMahon and Field, whom we were to leave behind, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... right in time," Carson said. "The thing is new yet, and you can't expect it to be mellow all at once. What I'm afraid of, apart from the inability of our cook to stand the racket, is that this quivering will structurally weaken the ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... dusty town by the Porta Cavalleggieri on one of those beaten white noons when the shadows look to be cut out of ebony, and the wicked old walls forbidden to keep still. The very dust seems alive, quivering and restless under heat. St. Peter's church, smothered in rush mats, was a-building, the marble blocks had the vivid force of lightning; two or three heretic friars were being hailed by the Ponte Sant' Angelo to a burning in the Vatican; Molly was almost blind, had a headache, a back-ache, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... have welcomed renewed blindness in exchange for one glimpse of Glaucus, or of some token of his care, men and women have cherished the gifts of those they loved. True, not all have valued them, nor have all had the power so to do. The beautiful Valois, quivering beneath the brand of the red-hot iron because of her madness for the cold, white diamond, knew nothing of the secret bliss in possessing purely as a token of love either a diamond or a rose. Nor did Maria Louisa, leaving her Jove-like husband to his fate, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... said Rachel, her lip still quivering. "But if I disliked her I hope I should have said the same. Surely it is not necessary to love the writer in order to defend ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... and gave skips on her red boots in time to the lively tooting of the boys, while the girls gazed at the lovely dolls and jabbered away with their yellow braids quivering ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... leg rested on the ground; her skirts were thrown over her head, and her head was buried in the sofa, thus elevating her white bottom in the air. Between her ivory thighs we could see the panting lips of her luscious bijou. She was rubbing the top of her slit with one finger, and by the quivering of her buttocks, I guessed she was enjoying herself ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for a flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail sack after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether we had seen any actual horse and man at ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... stiffened body. Weightier and weightier the mountain burden lies on thee; more and more does every breath exhaust the little handful of air, that still plays up and down in the narrow space; thy pulse throbs madly; and, cut through with horrid anguish, every nerve is quivering and bleeding in this deadly agony. Have pity, kind reader, on the student Anselmus of whom this inexpressible torture laid hold in his glass prison; but he felt too well that death could not relieve him; for did he not awake from the deep swoon into which the excess of pain had cast him, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... sir," cried Mr. Gilbert from his place beside Miss Crenshawe, when the bow at last dropped from the quivering strings, "I protest I have not heard such music since St. George and Garat played and ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the quivering landscape glowed! His brain seemed boiling as he rode— Was it a dream, a drunken one, Or was he really riding on? Was that a skull that gleamed and shone On the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... save where it lay in immediate contact with the snow, charred and shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of smoke. There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was either pure oxygen or air, and capable therefore—unless its tenuity was excessive—of supporting our alien life. We might ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... shoulder, down it came, As on some partridge in the corn a hawk, That long has tower'd in the airy clouds, Drops like a plummet; Sohrab saw it come, And sprang aside, quick as a flash; the spear Hiss'd, and went quivering down into the sand, Which it sent flying wide;—then Sohrab threw In turn, and full struck Rustum's shield; sharp rang, The iron plates rang sharp, but turn'd the spear. And Rustum seized his club, which none but he Could wield; ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... can say a great deal in that." He put one foot on a chair and held his arms over the quivering room. He seemed transfigured into a Hebrew prophet passionate for satire and the truth. "Oh, keep quiet for two minutes," he cried, "and I'll tell you something you'll be glad to hear. You're a little afraid Stephen may come back. Don't be afraid. I bring good ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... and the shade of the pepper tree was grateful. The spring murmured for a few feet beyond the last quivering shadow of the feathery leaves, then was swallowed abruptly by the burning sand. Enoch lifted his tired eyes. Far on every side lay the uneven, rock strewn desert floor, dotted with cactus and greasewood. To the east, vivid against the blue sky, rose a solitary mountain ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow |
