"Recoil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you are parleying with the great Enemy of Souls. Oh! if you did but know, if you COULD but know, you would be as decisive in your recoil from him, as you would from hell suddenly opened at your feet. Never mind the future. The one thing you have to do is the thing that lies next to you, divinely ordained for you. What does the 119th Psalm say?—'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet.' We have no light ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... musician strikes us as being too robust. If people would believe me, they would not form the highest idea of Wagner from that which pleases them in him to-day. All that was only devised for convincing the masses, and people like ourselves recoil from it just as one would recoil from too garish a fresco. What concern have we with the irritating brutality of the overture to the "Tannhauser"? Or with the Walkyrie Circus? Whatever has become popular in Wagner's art, including that which has become so outside the theatre, is ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... presence of pressing exigencies were apt to deprive governmental action of the necessary vigor; and his kindness of heart, his disposition always to respect the feelings of others, frequently made him recoil from anything like severity, even when severity was urgently called for. But many of his radical critics have since then revised their judgment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln's policy was, on the whole, the wisest and safest; that a policy of heroic methods, while it has ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... though expecting some recoil or hesitation on the part of those to whom he made this statement, but none came. He therefore strode on, and they followed, till arriving at the door of the tall, narrow house, where the light in the highest window gleamed like a signal, he opened it with ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... no refuge. She had been too much tired to hear anything the night before, but to-night there was scratching, nibbling, careering, fighting, squeaking, recoil and rally, charge and rout, as the grey Hanover rat fought his successful battle with his black English cousin all over the floors and stairs—nay, once or twice came rushing up and over the bed—frightening its occupant almost out of her senses, as she cowered ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Why should he, whose beliefs were so uncertain, who had grown into doubts of that faith on which all the conventional proprieties about him reposed,—why should he not discard them, and obey a single, strong, generous instinct? When a man's religious sensibilities suffer recoil as Reuben's had done, there grows up a new pride in the natural emotions of generosity; the humane instincts show exceptional force; the skeptics become the teachers of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and impudent, had no respect for Cashel, and showed any they had for their mother principally by running to her when they were in difficulties. She never punished nor scolded them; but she contrived to make their misdeeds recoil naturally upon them so inevitably that they soon acquired a lively moral sense which restrained them much more effectually than the usual methods of securing order in the nursery. Cashel treated them kindly for the purpose of conciliating ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... on the part of a person naturally or habitually reserved will often be followed by a phase of recoil. At breakfast next morning their overnight talk seemed to both Sir Richmond and Dr. Martineau like something each had dreamt about the other, a quite impossible excess of intimacy. They discussed the weather, which seemed to be settling down to the utmost serenity ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... the father, "for to-day at least, her hand, if uplifted against the emperor, must recoil upon the empress. The honor of my august sovereigns cannot be divided. Your majesty must throw the shield of your love over the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... comes in through one bank will go out through others, and the equilibrium will be preserved. Should the bank, for the mere purpose of producing distress, press its debtors more heavily than some of them can bear, the consequences will recoil upon itself, and in the attempts to embarrass the country it will only bring loss and ruin upon the holders of its own stock. But if the President believed the bank possessed all the power which has been attributed to it, his determination would only be rendered the more inflexible. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... the natural recoil of virtue away from vice," said Jasper Very. "God has given to woman an intuitive sense which, without any long process of reasoning, shows her when a man is bad. It is her protection against his greater strength. It is the Almighty's gift to her, and is beyond the value ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... of womankind— In shape and height majestically fine; Her cheeks the lily and the rose combined; Her lips—more opulently red than wine; Her raven locks hung tastefully entwined; Her aspect fair as Nature could design; And then her eyes! so eloquently bright! An eagle would recoil before her light." ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... was lost, he precipitately quitted the field, leaving behind him, not only his camp-equipage, but his throne, the ornaments of his wives, his bow, his quiver, and his sandals. The reproaches uttered recoil upon himself. Whose conduct is the more cowardly, that of the man who fights at the head of his troops for six hours against an enemy, probably more numerous, certainly better armed and better disciplined, and only quits the field when his forces are utterly ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... I had seen them do elsewhere. Courage and self-possession are valuable qualities, and for their sake we sometimes forgive bad men and bad causes; whereas, from nothing do we more instinctively recoil than from hypocrisy. On this principle it is, perhaps, that we have a sort of liking for Punch, incorrigible scoundrel as he is; and that great criminals, who rob and murder at the head of armies, we deify, while little ones ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... coming, Hector's parents implore him to seek refuge within the walls, but the young man is too brave to accept such a proposal. Still, when he sees the fire in Achilles' eyes, he cannot resist an involuntary recoil, and turning, flees, with Achilles in close ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... with sweet grace the dimpling streams along, Listening the Shepherd's or the Miner's song; But, when afar they view the giant-cave, On timorous fins they circle on the wave, 115 With streaming eyes and throbbing hearts recoil, Plunge their fair forms, and dive beneath the soil.— Closed round their heads reluctant eddies sink, And wider rings successive dash the brink.— Three thousand steps in sparry clefts they stray, 120 Or seek through sullen mines their ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... said, that Jesus, by giving himself up to suffer death, proved the truth of his mission and doctrines, by his readiness to die for them. But this is an argument which will recoil upon those who advance it. Are there no instances upon record of mild, zealous, and amiable men who preached to the savages of America that they ought to worship the Virgin Mary? and did they not cheerfully die by the most excruciating torments ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... we met—our eyes and hands, accidentally; and, though I, myself, could not help starting back with a cold chill at my heart, I yet fancied there was something monstrous insulting in the evident recoil of her person from the contact with mine, at the same moment. I was about to turn hurriedly away with a slight bow of acknowledgment, when the touching tenderness of her glance, so full of sweetness and sadness, made me shrink with shame from such a rudeness. Besides, she was so ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... And none may fathom nor understand The charm it holds for the restless rover; A great grey chaos — a land half made, Where endless space is and no life stirreth; And the soul of a man will recoil afraid From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth. But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves Her dole of death and her share of slaughter; Many indeed are the nameless graves Where her victims sleep by the ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... which are fit only for perorations. This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions which he brings out; and, when at last his good sense and good nature recoil from the horrible practical inferences to which this theory leads, he is reduced sometimes to take refuge in arguments inconsistent with his fundamental doctrines, and sometimes to escape from the legitimate consequences ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as I supposed,' resumed the doctor, with the same measured utterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me, they have had nothing but ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... is very unbecoming to talk in this manner of so sacred a profession. A hunting and card-playing clergyman ought to be stripped of his gown without hesitation. Any right-minded person would recoil with horror at such a character. It is a great disgrace to the profession; no clergyman ought to enter into any kind of improper dissipation. Your ideas are very light ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... was convinced now that long brooding over ancient wrongs had unsettled the man's mind. There had always been something in his dazzling blue eyes that troubled Jack, and now he knew it was the pale light of suppressed frenzy. Still, he would have to face him sooner or later, and he did not recoil now that the hour and the place and the man ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... a violent exercise like bicycling! Where one gets so hot! So unbecomingly hot! You'd be simply stifled, darling." I caught a darted glance which accompanied the words and which made Ettie recoil into ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the burghers were law-abiding and peaceful people, and that their Government was at all times able to control them. It was interesting to see the argument of the burghers getting out of hand, which was used with such effect in the case of Dr. Jameson and quoted by Sir Hercules Robinson, recoil upon ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... approached him now on the snow-covered slope, he was conscious again of that swift recoil from chill disapproval to reluctant attraction. Though she was not beautiful, though she was not even pretty according to the standards with which he was familiar, she possessed what he felt to be a dangerous allurement. He had never imagined ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... long, an army of their insatiable foes arrived and besieged the town, and treachery at a postern one stormy night made them masters of it, when scenes of horror followed under the mask of religion that even at this distance of time make one recoil with terror and disgust at the dogmas of the corrupt ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... foremost soldiers,—then fell back. Fallen was their leader, and loomed right before The sullen Prussian cannon, grim and black, With lighted matches waving. Now, once more, Patriots and veterans!—Ah! 'Tis in vain! Back they recoil, though bravest of the brave; No human troops may stand that murderous rain; But who is this—that rushes ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... still; her body was full of strange sensations, of involuntary recoil from shock. She was tired, but restless. All the time Siegmund lay with his hot arms over her, himself so incomprehensible in his base of blue, open-eyed slumber, she grew more breathless and ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... merchant and merchandise, cannot long subsist. To sell on an auction-block or deliver over to a slave-driver an immortal soul, for which Christ has died, is an enormity before which the Christian sense of right will always recoil in the end. "In this," it is written, "there is neither Greek nor Jew, nor circumcision nor uncircumcision, nor barbarian nor Seythian, nor bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Let slaveholders put to themselves the question what they would say to-day if the epistle to Philemon ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... life for herself? What could be more legitimate? Of having failed to understand the relations of the child who remained to her with the man whom she had chosen? What was more natural? She was more wife than mother, and besides, fanciful and fragile beings such as she was recoil from daily contests; they shrink from facing realities which would demand sustained courage and energy on their part. I had admitted all these explanations of my mother's attitude towards me, at first from instinct and afterwards ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... I, of course, except the Moors and Arabs, who will never, I believe, adopt European civilisation; they seem to recoil from before it, like the wild beasts of ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... that he is, yet has a vein of mysticism and idealism in him which sometimes makes him recoil from the hard-and-fast interpretations of natural phenomena by physical science. Like M. Bergson, he sees in life some tendency or impetus which arose in matter at a definite time and place, "and which has continued to interact with and incarnate ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... direction is always far more fantastic than a plan. I would rather have the most archaic map of the road to Brighton than a general recommendation to turn to the left. Straight lines that are not parallel must meet at last; but curves may recoil forever. A pair of lovers might walk along the frontier of France and Germany, one on the one side and one on the other, so long as they were not vaguely told to keep away from each other. And this is a strictly true parable of the effect of our modern vagueness in losing and ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... "Opening it very softly, I saw Mr. Whitney standing with his back to me, and facing the muzzle of a rifle. I had only time to note that the rifle was braced on two iron brackets and that Mr. Whitney was holding a string which was attached to the trigger; when I saw a flash, the rifle's recoil—and Mr. Whitney still ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... concealment, where, unseen himself, he had seen and watched from the first, with keen interest, all the movements of the other, whom, at length, he seemed to recognize, with recollections which caused him to recoil, and his whole countenance to contract and darken with angry and disquieting emotions. He was not allowed much time, however, for indulging his disturbed feelings; for scarcely had the object of his annoyance disappeared, before his attention was attracted by a slight rustling ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... when Mr Shanklin alluded to his blunders, and he scowled all the more viciously now because he felt that, after all, he could do little against his two patrons which would not recoil with twofold violence on his own head. No, he had better confine his reprisals to the Crudens by Mr Shuckleford's assistance, and meanwhile make what he could ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... ye sages, who can weigh the cause, And trace the secret springs of Nature's laws; Say why the wave, of bitter brine erewhile, Should be the bosom of the deep recoil, Robbed of its salt, and from the cloud distil, Sweet as the waters of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and bitter passions which they had engendered. But she knew that he was come of noble stem; was poor, though descended from the noble and the wealthy; and she felt that she could sympathise with the feelings of a proud mind, which urged him to recoil from the proffered gratitude of the new proprietors of his father's house and domains. Would he have equally shunned their acknowledgments and avoided their intimacy, had her father's request been urged more mildly, less abruptly, and softened with the grace ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out. The flash of impulse and recoil had passed swiftly through his mind before he woke up, as it ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... minds were turned to the great events going forward in France. It had not yet occurred to the Italians that the recoil of these events might be felt among themselves. They were simply amused spectators, roused at last to the significance of the show, but never dreaming that they might soon be called from the wings to the footlights. To de Crucis, however, the possibility of such a call was already ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... off, David?' said Ancrum, rousing himself from what seemed a melancholy brooding over books that he was in truth not reading. As David shook hands with him, the small fusty room, the pale face and crippled form awoke in the lad a sense of indescribable dreariness. In a flash of recoil and desire his thought sprang to the journey of the next day—to the May ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the woods pervaded his senses, and he felt her hair brush against his cheek. Then she stood released, having recovered herself with a swift impulse, like a wild creature that had felt in time the first touch of the snare. This elusiveness, this sudden recoil from his contact, sobered him. What he might have done, had she remained a moment longer in his arms, must be forever a matter of conjecture with him now; but the intoxication vanished like a vapor from his mind, leaving a keen vision of the situation in its uncoloured reality. There arose within ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... structural iron workers, stretching across the entire country, and reaching a dastardly climax in the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, in which some twenty men were killed. The recoil from this outrage was the severest blow which organized labor has received in America. John J. McNamara, Secretary of the Structural Iron Workers' Association, and his brother James were indicted for ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... of this world, or that a philosopher, who looks into the operations of nature, may not plainly read the power and wisdom of the Creator, without recoiling, as he says, from the abyss? The abyss, from which a man of science should recoil, is that ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... earthquake shock or lightning dart Comes a recoil of silence o'er the lands, And then, with pulses hot and quivering hands, Earth calls up courage to her mighty heart, Plies every tender, compensating art, Draws her green, flowery veil above the scar, Fills the shrunk hollow, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... disliked the maid Fitzwalter; and had now seen a chance to injure her through Robin. Since he had given this girl the arrow which he had denied to her, the Sheriff's daughter, there could be no doubt that strong friendship, at the least, existed between them, so that any blow at Robin must recoil ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... grow suddenly cold as he stood and watched her recoil momentarily from his two-edged glance. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... door, and stand on his defence, was the work of a moment. Corsican houses are strongholds; Orso Paolo was in possession of the enemy's fortress. He threatens death to the first assailant, and the boldest recoil. What was to be done? It was proposed to set fire to the house, but Ruggero's youngest son, a child of seven or eight years old, had been left asleep in the house when the family went to church. He would perish in the flames. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... 'em for bombing Boche dugouts now!" said he; and remembering the dugouts I had seen, I could picture the awful fate of those within, the choking fumes, the fire-scorched bodies! Truly the exponents of Frightfulness have felt the recoil of their own ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... escape is aroused directly by the perception of danger; of that there can be no doubt. It does not depend on trembling, but for that matter neither does it depend on feeling afraid. Sometimes we recoil from a {131} sudden danger before experiencing any thrill of fear, and are frightened and tremble the next moment, after we have escaped. The stirred-up state develops more slowly than the tendency to escape. The seen danger directly arouses an adjustment towards ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... glance that I took made me recoil with horror. It was no statue that I saw in that niche, but a shrivelled human form—a hideous sight. It was dark and dried; it was fixed in a sitting posture, with its hands resting on its knees, and its hollow ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... the Apaches ride after them and lance them in the back; clumsy escopetos drop loaded from the hands of dying cowards. Such are the battles of New Mexico. It is only when these red-skinned Tartars meet Americans or such high-spirited Indians as the Opates that they have to recoil before gunpowder. [Footnote: Since those times the Apaches have learned ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... all of a piece like pillars, their immensely long shadows running away from their feet, with the points of the hats touching the wall of the Casa Riego. Another, a shorter, thicker shape, appeared, walking with dignity. It was Castro. The other two had a movement of recoil, then took off ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... strange to note, too, how the ebb of this wave of scepticism upon questions relating to the immaterial world is only recoil that adds force to a succeeding wave of cynicism with regard to the physical world around. "Hamlet," "Macbeth," and "Othello" give place to "Lear," "Troilus and Cressida," "Antony and Cleopatra," and "Timon." So true is it that "unfaith ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... his hand groping for hers. As he found and clasped it, he made a movement as if he wished again to draw her towards him. Gently she resisted, and at once she felt that he responded to her feeling of recoil, and Nan, with a confused sense of shame and anger, was now hurt by his submission. Most men in his place would have made short work of her resistance,—would have taken her, masterfully, into ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... extended a public patronage to the "fancy," or who rode their own horses at a race. Such a reproof, however, unless it were made practically operative, and were powerfully supported by the whole body of the aristocracy, would recoil upon its author as a piece of impertinence, and would soon be resented as an unwarrantable liberty taken with private rights; the censor would be kicked, or challenged to private combat, according ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... is nothing to be done. If anything goes wrong, eternity is too close to consider. There came a muffled drumming on the steam-chests; a stagger and a terrific impact; and then the recoil, like the stroke of a trip-hammer. The snow shot into the air fifty feet, and the wind carried a cloud of fleecy confusion over the ram and out of the cut. The cabs were buried in white, and the great steel frames of the engines sprung like knitting-needles under the frightful force of the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... coldly received—no more than a cheer of encouragement from his immediate friends. As he made his points the applause grew. When he finished one half of the audience burst into a storm of cheers; the other was thunderstruck by the sacrilegious recoil of the Bishop's weapon upon his own head: a lady fainted, and had to be carried out. As soon as calm was restored Hooker leapt to his feet, though he hated public speaking yet more than his friend, and drove home the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Michael's train and their faces to the naked rails on the other side. Higher up Michael could see the breast of an engine; it was backing, backing, towards the troop-train that waited under the cover of the roof. He could hear the clank of the coupling and the recoil. At that sound the band had their mouths to their bagpipes and their fingers ready on the stops. Two or three officers hurried down from the station ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... furtive look of care, appeared almost as blooming and bright. Would it ever come to pass that a harsh man of the law would feel it his duty to speak to my Flora as I must now speak to the young girl before me? The thought made me inwardly recoil and it was in as gentle a manner as possible that I made my bow and began ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... than for another!" he replied, with an involuntary recoil from his own words. For the one thing a man must believe—yet hardly believes—is, that he shall one day die. "She'll be ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... view of the steaming horrors of the slaughter-house, that we recoil from killing; but is it the killing which is wrong in itself, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... creatures who suffer under the accursed necessity of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God's eyes, for doing what they have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justly punished in everlasting fire; we recoil against the paradox. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... could strike in his favour. You go by your experience in judging men; I by my instincts. Nature warns us as it does the inferior animals,—only we are too conceited, we bipeds, to heed her. My instincts of soldier and gentleman recoil from that old young man. He has the soul of the Jesuit. I see it in his eye, I hear it in the tread of his foot; volto sciolto he has not; i pensieri stretti he has. Hist! I hear now his step in the hall. I should know it from a thousand. That's his very touch on the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on so well, and tells Mr. Lear it might not be improper for him to hint how foolish it would be in the servants left there to enter into any combinations for supplanting those in authority [meaning the upper servants]. The attempt would be futile, and must recoil upon themselves; and next, admitting that they were to make the lives of the present steward and housekeeper so uneasy as to induce them to quit, others would be got, and such, too, as would be equally if not more rigid in exacting the duty required of the servants below them; ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... a tropic sea. As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from a backward fall, The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a sheer cliff's wall. Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a breath, And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the throat of death. Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal joy, Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's heart in a boy. For the central crest of the night was cloud that ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the nation. Should the war cease to-morrow, it has inaugurated a new era in our nation's history. The folly of the Gulf States, in throwing away a political condition where the conservative sentiment stood by them only too well, must inevitably recoil on their own heads, whether the strife last a day or a generation. No man can estimate the new measures and combinations to which it is destined to give rise. There stands the Constitution, with all its severe conditions,—severe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... weak, Conquering that manhood which should them subdue. And what gift bring I to this untried world? Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dread desolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth Whose potent unity and concentric force 90 Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life away, But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... how such a contrivance could carry guns of any calibre unless they fired from the rear in the line of flight. The problem of recoil becomes a very difficult one in aerial tactics. It would probably have at most a small machine-gun or so, which might fire an explosive shell at the balloons of the enemy, or kill their aeronauts with distributed ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... the many young and zealous friends who gathered around him. These meetings were even more numerously attended after his return from Boston than they were before he was summoned to the bar of the General Assembly; for persecution and injustice naturally recoil on the perpetrators of it, and the victim of such harsh measures is sure to gain friends and supporters among the warm-hearted and ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... my performance so far as it has gone? The pretext on which I bared my foot for its delicate job under your very eyes, eh? Not so vain as it looked, in either sense, I fancy! Should you have said that your hand would recoil from a revolver the moment it went off? You see, I staked my life on it, and I've won. And what about that fall? It was the lottery! I was prepared to have my head cracked like an egg, and it's still pretty sore. The broken wrist wasn't ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... craven knees, and thanked the Lord for allowing you to keep your miserable life? Had you succumbed to the blows of fate with a whine of texts upon your lips? Who are you?" she went on, rising, breathless in her wrath, which caused him to recoil in sheer affright before her. "Who are you, and what are you, that knowing what you know of this man's life, you dare to sit in judgment upon his actions and condemn them? Answer ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... elephant was on the left flank, and for an instant this turned obliquely to the left; I quickly seized the opportunity and fired the "Baby," with an explosive shell, aimed far back in the flank, trusting that it would penetrate beneath the opposite shoulder. The recoil of the "Baby," loaded with ten drachms of the strongest powder and a half-pound shell, spun me round like a top—it was difficult to say which was staggered the most severely, the elephant or myself; however, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... being greatly decayed with age, were mangled beyond my power of description; and a person must have been an eye witness to form a just idea of the tremendous scene of carnage, wreck, and ruin that everywhere appeared. Humanity cannot but recoil from the prospect of such finished horror, and lament that war ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... been much shocked at reading Gray's(53) death in the papers. 'Tis an hour that makes one forget any subject of complaint, especially towards one with whom I lived in friendship from thirteen years old. As self lies so rooted in self, no doubt the nearness of our ages made the stroke recoil to my own breast; and having so little expected his death, it is Plain how little I expect my own. Yet to you, who of all men living are the most forgiving, I need not excuse the concern I feel. I fear most men ought to apologize for their want of feeling, instead of palliating ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... trick wouldn't work twice. I kept working. I had almost completed the sequence when I felt the powered grip of the suited man on my arm. I twisted, jammed the needler against his hand, and fired. The arm flew back, and even through the suit I heard his wrist snap. My own hand was numb from the recoil. The other arm of the suit swept down and struck my wounded arm. I staggered away from the door, ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... it, hurled it down; then Judas, without ceasing to smile, searched for a still larger fragment, and digging his long fingers into it, grasped it, and swinging himself together with it, and paling, sent it into the gulf. When he had thrown his stone, Peter would recoil and so watch its fall; but Judas always bent himself forward, stretched out his long vibrant arms, as though he were going to fly after the stone. Eventually both of them, first Peter, then Judas, seized hold of an old grey stone, but neither one nor the other could ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... ten-inch rope. It sang like the deep tones of an organ, loud above the rattle of the rigging and the shrouds; but that was its death-song. It gave way with the noise of a cannon, and in the smoke that followed its recoil they were dragged out by the wild ice, and driven hither ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... fate against which to strike. He raged behind prison-bars of circumstance. Now, for once, was an enemy for his onslaught, although even here he was restricted. He was held in check by his ignoble need. He feared lest, in smiting with all the force at his command, the blow recoil upon himself. He feared lest he lose all where he might lose only part. But when he began to speak his caution left him. There was real fire in the grim, unshaven man; the honest fire of resentment against wrong, the spirit of self-defence ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said it is clear that we must not seek too high for Jeremiah's rank as a poet. The temptation to this—which has overcome some recent writers—is due partly to a recoil from older, unjust depreciations of his prophetic style and partly to the sublimity of the truths which that mixed style frequently conveys. But those truths apart, his verse was just that of the folksongs of the peasants among whom he was reared—sometimes of an ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... was only a pang. The only too-natural recoil came the next minute. Was not she as religious as there was any need to be, or at least as she could be without alienating her children or affecting more than she felt? Give herself to Him? How? Did that mean a great deal of church-going, sermon-reading, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her father, and three women. One, old Ursel, the wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman, with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, from whom Christina felt a shrinking recoil. The meal was dressed by Ursel and her kitchen boy. From a great cauldron, goat's flesh and broth together were ladled out into wooden bowls. That every one provided their own spoon and knife—no fork—was only what Christina was used to in ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mesty followed. They opened the door, and beheld a spectacle which made them recoil with horror. There was Mr Easy, with his head in the machine, the platform below fallen from under him, hanging, with his toes just touching the ground. Dr Middleton hastened to him, and, assisted by Mesty and our hero, took him out of the steel collar ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Christian apologetics towards the ground of religious experience, a recoil produced by the pressure of scientific criticism upon other supports ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... being destroyed, the obvious alternative is to hide it—and the Baron is equal to the occasion. His studies in the old library have informed him of a safe place of concealment in the palace. The Countess may recoil from handling the acids and watching the process of cremation; but she can surely sprinkle ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... The tender chords that tie my soul To earth. Yes, I must die, I feel that I must die And though to me has life been dark and dreary Though smiling Hope, has lured but to deceive, And disappointment still pursued its blandishments, Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me, As I ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... and the Something crept stealthily thither. A long-drawn, breathless minute and then—the room was flooded with brilliant light, and a figure, kneeling before the cabinet, uttered a strangled cry and leapt up, only to recoil before ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... its Northern supporters, with a view to party triumphs. If General McClellan succeeds, Slavery, so far as it still exists, will be cherished, maintained, and perpetuated. The viper will be warmed into life again, and although it might perhaps recoil for the present, it would only be to strike at some future period with greater force and venom at the life of the Republic. These men tell us they are for the Union as it was. Are they for the revival of such scenes as were perpetrated by Brooks in the American ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... creeps, the road honeycombed underneath by our shelters, and descend it for four or five hundred yards as it dips down towards Souchez. But all that ground is under regular and terrible attention. Since their recoil, the Germans have constantly sent huge shells into it. Their thunder shakes us in our caverns from time to time, and we see, high above the scarps, now here now there, the great black geysers of earth and rubbish, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... fostered by some and buffeted by others. What will be the general opinion, or the reception of it, is not for me to decide; nor shall I say anything for or against it. If it be good, I suppose it will work its way; if bad, it will recoil on the framers. ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... from the unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... lived a good, honorable, upright life, I might have won the love and the respect of this young girl. If she knew me as I am, as the police know me, she would recoil from me in horror; but she must never know—never! I do not think she saw my face—ay, I could swear that she did not. I will tell her that I was a traveler happening to pass and saw her at the mercy of a ruffian, ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... she said to herself, and there was no hope of escape from the fever of its wound. A curious physical fear took possession of her, parching her throat and robbing her of breath. It was a recoil from the conviction that she must continue to suffer because her son, so young even for his twenty-three years, had openly flouted her for one of the harpies of the city and delivered over his manhood to the ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... The recoil of this attack "followed hard upon" the tones of congratulation and triumph of partisan editors at the consummate skill and dexterity with which their candidate for the presidency had absolved himself from the suspicion of abolitionism, and by ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the room, and then sat down again, drumming drearily on the arm of his chair. What now? What new line could he follow? By eliminating the servants, Tatsu, and himself, what remained? His guests. He felt a swift recoil at the bare suggestion, even though a mental and hidden one, of implicating them in this matter, and experienced a succeeding disgust and impulse to abandon ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... singular, that an attempt to explain them may perhaps be excused. If a gun is loaded with ball it will not kick so much as when loaded with small shot; and amongst different kinds of shot, that which is the smallest, causes the greatest recoil against the shoulder. A gun loaded with a quantity of sand, equal in weight to a charge of snipe-shot, kicks still more. If, in loading, a space is left between the wadding and the charge, the gun either recoils violently, or bursts. If the muzzle of a gun has accidentally ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... was pleased to learn from Linda that the knife had not been poisoned. Gilbert's eye brightened at the intelligence, though he had not given utterance to his fears—fears they were—for even the young and brave recoil in terror from death, when it assumes a form and hovers near in a detested shape. Having informed the youth that a messenger had been despatched to his father, the priest left Gilbert in charge of the sacristan, and proceeded on his daily errand of mercy through the neighborhood. ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... gladness; it is the death in it that makes the misery. We call life-in-death life, and hence the mistake. If gladness were not at the root, whence its opposite sorrow, against which we arise, from which we recoil, with which we fight? We recognise it as death—the contrary of life. There could be no sorrow but for a recognition of primordial bliss. This in us that fights must be life. It is of the nature of light, not of darkness; darkness is nothing until the light comes. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... back, almost upsetting some one behind him by his recoil, on seeing his daughter in her motionless ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to whatever you choose to say to me. Moreover, I think it likely that the evil which you call down will fall upon me, since Satan is always at hand to fulfil his own wishes. But if so, my father, I am sure that this evil will recoil upon your own head, not only here, but hereafter. There justice will be done to both of us, perhaps before very long, and also to your nephew, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... moment he is making love—what he calls making love—to the woman of his choice, his wife, his mistress, or his fiancee! These are the men who do the most mischief in the world. Your brute, your beast, your groveller in ditches, is not nearly so dangerous. Women recoil from him. They understand him. But the man who presses their hand awakes them, rouses their susceptibility, causes the tender trouble to steal over them that so often ends in grief, or despair, or death! And this is because neither ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... and going in the most elastic way in spite of the long run, but the eland was labouring heavily, as Dyke drew trigger, felt the sharp, jerking recoil shoot right up his arm to the shoulder; and then to his astonishment, as he dashed on out of the smoke, he was alone, and the eland lying fifty yards behind, where it had come down with ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... bitterness. 665 Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm. Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty 670 At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of love and pity. And what, if in a world of sin (O sorrow and shame should this be true!) Such giddiness of heart and brain 675 Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for the precious holy cross which is laid upon Christians, and their inability to overcome indignation and impatience, the world would long ago have been crowded with Christians. But on account of trials men recoil, saying: "Rather than endure these, I will remain with the majority; as it is with them, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... fraud of it. Nor could I help agreeing with him, when he told me all of it, as with tears in his eyes he did, and ready to be my slave henceforth; I could not forbear from owning that it was a low and heartless trick, unworthy of men who had families; and the recoil whereof was well deserved, whatever it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... inches, in action between Switzerland and the Somme. All of these, with a very few exceptions, are mounted on railway-trucks. In fact, the only large calibered piece not thus mounted is the Schneider mortar, a very efficient weapon, having a remarkably smooth recoil, which has a range of over six miles. It is transported, with its carriage and platform, in six loads, each weighing from four to five tons, about four hours being required to set up the piece ready for firing. Nearly all of these railway ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... feverishly alert; he felt the night wind in his face, he heard the ceaseless stirring of the leaves, and he saw the sparkle of the gravel in the yellow shine that streamed from the library windows. But with his first step, his first movement, there came a swift recoil of his anger, and he told himself with a touch of youthful rhetoric, "that come what would, he was going ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... that is the position of very many. They are hovering between the idea of extinction and that of torment. They try to believe in torment; they have been inoculated with that idea; they think, or are afraid, that it is Scriptural; but they recoil from any hearty reception of it. They have not got the length as yet of the idea of final salvation. But some day that truth may flash upon their souls like a gleam ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... then, that the steps took the same course on this evening, eleven days later, when he had had to recoil under Romola's first outburst of scorn. He could not wish Tessa in his wife's place, or refrain from wishing that his wife should be thoroughly reconciled to him; for it was Romola, and not Tessa, that belonged to ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish undeniably the very serious losses he ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... though they defended the word thou for you on the notion, that they ought not to accustom their lips to flattery, defended it also strenuously on the notion, that they were strictly adhering to grammar-rules. But all such terms as 'thee knowest,' and others of a similar kind, must recoil upon themselves as incorrect, and as censurable, even upon their ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... coward that dies And dares not look in death's dim eyes Straight as the stars on seas and skies Whence moon and sun recoil and rise, He looked on life and death, and slept. And there with morning Merlin came, And on the tomb that told their fame He wrote by Balan's Balen's name, ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... closed in the centre of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backward upon its haunches. The address of the riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur; and having glared on each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars of their visors, each made a demi-volte,[57-7] and, retiring to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of a manufacturing town, had sprung to arms at the first alarm, and, gathering in the narrow street on which the portal of the castle opened, so completely commanded it with their arquebuses and crossbows, that the Spaniards, after an ineffectual attempt to force a passage, were compelled to recoil upon their defences, amid showers of bolts and balls which occasioned the loss, among others, of two of their ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... summits of the bergs had come into contact with such violence that both the projecting masses of ice had become detached and had gone thundering down into the water, fortunately at some few yards' distance astern of the whaler, and the shock of collision had been so great as to compel the momentary recoil of the bergs, with the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... however, pointed all his guns forward, and discharged them all at the same moment, and the recoil shook the vessel from her hold on the ground, and she floated off, and pursued her way up the river, followed ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... abode, on an errand of still greater urgency. "Go, Caleb," said Mr Clayton, "visit and comfort the poor sufferer; and may grace accompany your first labour of love." I proceeded to the place, and, arriving there, was ushered into a small close room—to recoil at once from the scene of misery which was there presented. Lying, with his hat and clothes upon the bed, dying, was the man himself; his wife was busy in the room, cleaning it, quietly and indifferently, as though the sleep of healthy life had closed her partner's eye, and nothing worse. On ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... bottom of the deep. Black were his robes, dejected was his air, His voice was frozen by his cold despair; Slow, like a ghost, he mov'd with solemn pace; A dying paleness sat upon his face. Back she recoil'd, she smote her lovely breast, Her eyes the anguish of her heart confess'd; Struck to the soul, she stagger'd with the wound, And sunk, a breathless image, to the ground. Thus the fair lily, when the sky's o'ercast, At first but shudders in the feeble blast; But when the winds ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... of the brain, which bears convincing proof of the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator, is the antero-posterior, or forward and backward curve of the spinal column. Were it a straight column, standing perpendicularly, the slightest jar, in walking, would cause it to recoil with a sudden jerk; because, the weight bearing equally, the spine would neither yield to the one side nor the other. But, shaped as it is, we find it yielding in the direction of the curves, and thus the force of the ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... of civilisation than ever before, and a movement began in the world of minds which was deeper and more serious than the revival of ancient learning 55. The dispensation under which we live and labour consists first in the recoil from the negative spirit that rejected the law of growth, and partly in the endeavour to classify and adjust the Revolution, and to account for it by the natural working of historic causes. The Conservative line ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... a short pause;—and then a shiver, that recoil and tremor which men feel at any exposition of the relics of the dead, ran through the court; for the next witness was mute—it was the skull of the Deceased! On the left side there was a fracture, that from the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soweth, that shall he also reap.' If he sows seeds of unkindness and cruelty to man and beast, no one knows what the blackness of the harvest will be. His poor horse, quivering under a blow, is not the worst sufferer. Oh, if people would only understand that their unkind deeds will recoil upon their own heads with tenfold force but, my dear child, I am fancying that I am addressing a drawing-room meeting and here we are at your station. Good-bye; keep your happy face and gentle ways. I hope that we may meet again some day." She pressed ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... their garments in kindness and affection. The eyes of the two in Shurado[u] (Hell of fighting) were blinded. On this side and that they pulled at the scabbard of the sword. In the wrestling, the springing in and recoil, the sword slipped from the scabbard. Without intention to five or six inches it pierced the shoulder. Atto! The wife fell—"Namu Sambo[u]!"[42] Plucking out the sword O'Iwa cast it aside. By the action ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... hairy-thighed, hoofed satyr. But he had built his nest with the birds of night, and slaked his thirst at impure sources, and only now did he realise how his mad dream of vengeance upon the Power that had cast him down and wrecked his future was to recoil upon himself. "I have done with Love," he had said, "and with Hope, and with Life as it is known of the honourable and the upright and the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... juz' biccause those Yankee' they arrive. Ah, that muz' bring some splandid news, that lett'r of Irbee, what you riscieve to-day and think I don't know it. 'T is maybe ab-out Kincaid's Batt'rie, eh?" At Flora's touch the speaker flinched back from the roof's edge, the maiden aiding the recoil. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... had anticipated; that in fact, and not to put too fine a point upon it, His Majesty's vanity had been taken down a peg or two—for the which I was rather sorry, because I somehow had a premonition that the resulting soreness of temper would recoil upon me. And, for once in a way, my premonition was promptly verified; for after scowling round for a minute or two upon all and sundry, maintaining meanwhile an ominous silence, the king straightened himself up ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... His recoil of disgust was too marked to be ignored. Louise half sat up in bed again, supporting herself on one hand. Her nightgown was not buttoned; he saw to the waist a strip of the white skin beneath, saw, too, how a long black strand of her hair fell in ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... lake, a human action creates, all round, concentric ripples which continue to the very shores or limits of the Universe; then the wave is thrown back upon itself, returns to its starting-point, and the man who began the first movement receives a recoil exactly equivalent to the original impetus. Reaction is equal to action; obstacles on the way may delay its return or break up its energy, but the time comes when the fractions return to the centre ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the dull varlet! See! he treats us like old dotards and crawls at our feet to deceive us; but the cunning wherein lies his power shall this time recoil on himself; he trips up himself by resorting to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... inclinations, the voice of duty or the will of God. The want of simple faith, the indecision which springs from distrust of self, tend to make all my personal life a matter of doubt and uncertainty. I am afraid of the subjective life, and recoil from every enterprise, demand, or promise which may oblige me to realize myself; I feel a terror of action, and am only at ease in the impersonal, disinterested, and objective life of thought. The reason seems to be timidity, and the timidity springs from ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
